Friday, August 28th - Mataro to Barcelona, Spain

After breakfast this morning we packed up, checked out, and headed for the train station.  We caught the 12 noon train, went to Placa Catalunya and switched to metro to go to Placa L'Espanya and then switched to another metro to Ildefons Cerda and then walked a couple of blocks to our new hotel.  That all sounds easy but let me tell you my suitcase isn't getting any lighter and pulling it is hard work, especially when you have to go up and down stairs!!!  However, I made it - very hot and sweaty - but I made it.

The hotel is the same one for our trip, which starts tomorrow, so this will be my room for the next three nights.  Randy has to move to another room tomorrow.  It is a nice room but no nicer than some of the ones that have been about half the price.  and this one is definitely way out of the way so not much to see around it.  At least it has a transit connection that is reasonably close.

We arrived around 2 so by the time we got checked in we were getting hungry.  The girl at the front desk tried to send us back to Placa Catalunya or Placa Espanya but we decided to check out the mall next door for a food court.  The mall was huge with many floors and about a 16-screen cinema, as well as hundreds of eating places.  We ate at a really busy place and the food was excellent.  Given all the food places in the one mall, I'm quite sure we won't starve while at the hotel.  We wandered around for a bit and even did some shopping.  We both bought deodorant, and here you could actually take the lid off the deodorants and smell them.  I got yelled at for doing that in Mataro.  

We then walked back to Ildefons Cerda station to check on times for the train I have to catch to Monserrat tomorrow.  I was planning on going to Placa Espanya and catching the Monserrat train from there but it turns out that the Monserrat train leaves from right here at Ildefons so my connection is much easier than I though it would be.

I then came back to the hotel and showered and Randy kept wandering around.  ((He actually went back to the shopping mall and bought another shirt.  He is turning into a real shopper!)   I am trying to figure out how to make another trip with Canadian Humanitarian to Ethiopia and Malawi work this fall.  It should be easy since I'm already half way there but it's not.  I have to get a visa, which requires my passport to be in Ottawa for a few days, and before I can fill in the visa application form I have to know where I am flying from when I enter Ethiopia and when that will be, but I'm not sure when I'll have my passport back so it's a bit of a catch 22.   Then I have the added problem that I can't go anywhere, or at least not very far, when my passport is back in Canada so I have to figure out where I'm going to stay put for a while  possibly from the week of September 21st to the week of October 5th, and by October 7th or 8th I have to get out of Europe anyway because my 90 days in the Schengen area is up and the Schengen Agreement says I have to leave for at least 90 days before I can come back again.  I have never seen them enforce this agreement but I'd rather not get caught in the area without a passport.  Anyway, it's all very confusing for my little mind to deal with.

Randy came back to the hotel about 8 p.m. and we went out for dinner.  He had walked around our strange area of the town and discovered that we are right near the Olympic Village from the 1996 Barcelona Summer Olympics.  And that backs on to Parc de Montjuic, which is accessible from the harbour by aerial tram so it looks like we're not that far out in the boonies at all.  we're just on the back side of some things.

Before going to bed I discovered that the boys choir at Montserrat doesn't sing on Saturdays.  My whole reason for buying a ticket on my own was so I could be there when they sing.  The optional tour on our bus tour doesn't get there until afternoon on Sunday so it wasn't going to hear them so I decided to go on Saturday instead.  Now it turns out they don't sing on Saturdays anyway and the optional tour might be there in time for mass on Sunday, which is the only time they sing that day.  Oh well, I guess I'll have to decide tomorrow morning just which day I want to go.