Day 35-37: Altea to Barcelona

Day 35 (Monday) in Altea was just wonderful. We are staying in a small 3 story "Casita", named El DISEÑO, in the old town. The Caligiuris will be using the ground floor as an art gallery, but the first exhibition isn't until November (next month), so we had the whole place to ourselves. (By the way, if you're interested, you can rent the place for your own holiday; check out their Web page.)

Yesterday evening, we met with the students from the current semester of the Edge course up at the Library, which is used both as a school and community meeting place, for Tapas and conversation. If I were a 20-year-old student again, this is where I'd want to come. At 10 we headed back to the Casita and stopped on the way to share a pizza with a couple of students from Oregon.

Today, after a nice breakfast in a local cafe, we met Steven and Aryn for even more coffee down by the beach and ended up chatting the morning away. They invited us to join them around 3:30 for the weekly student debriefing and some teaching. Kathy and I walked the beachfront and found a supermarket where we bought some groceries for lunch (along with some instant coffee, so we could get coffee right when we woke up). Back at the house we made sandwiches (picture on our Flickr picture page) with cheese and coffee for desert, eaten on the patio overlooking the Mediterranean. It was absolutely delightful.

At 3:30, Havilah Caligiuri met us in the square and walked us to the Library where we listened to the students share about the contacts they'd made the previous week. This was their first week, but they had already met an amazing number of local people. Part of that is because they are all enrolled in Spanish courses at local universities and schools. Altea is home to one of the University's Art schools, and the Edge students have a lot of opportunities to interact with them. Plus the Art School attracts a large number of international students, which is great.

After the teaching, we went walking through the town for a bit, and then, back to the house to freshen up. At 10:00 we met Steven and Aryn for a nice dinner on the Cathedral plaza overlooking the city. As you can tell, the Spanish eat a lot later than we're used to. (We didn't tell them that Kathy is usually asleep by 8:30.)

The next morning, (Tuesday, Day 36, October 16), we met Steven down at the Bus stop in town at 7:45. With Steven's help, we caught the right bus into Alicante to pick up our 11:00 reservation for the train to Barcelona. This is the last day of our Eurail pass; we've been train-travelling now for exactly one month. The train to Barcelona was almost completely full; I can see why reservations are required. There are quite a bit fewer trains than in the northern countries, where we could jump on any train without any problem.

The trip to Barcelona took almost 5 and a half hours. We got in at 4:30, found the TI office in the train station, and bought a three-day metro/bus pass. Our ship doesn't leave until Saturday, so we'll be spending 4 nights in Barcelona. Once we got the Metro pass, we found our way to the hotel, which is on one of the prettiest squares in Barcelona (according to the Lonely Planet guidebook; I think that they're right.) We're staying at the El Jardi hotel, and have a room overlooking the square and Santa Maria Pi, the church where PI was discovered (just kidding about that!).

We had dinner at a nice (but overpriced) restaurant on the Ramblas (our hotel is only a couple blocks from this central walking street), and then walked from the top down to the harbor, and then to bed.

On our first full day in Barcelona (day 37, Wednesday, October 17) we did some domestic errands (finding a laundry to iron some shirts, getting some foot powder for my 35-day-old shoes, finding hairspray and doing some shopping.) We also got to do some power sight-seeing. Our focus today was Gaudi, the Barcelona Art Noveau architect and artist, and his various houses and his unfinished cathedral masterpiece, Sagrada Familia. We also had lunch at Cafe Rita in the Eixample district, which is really a find. (You have to get there before they open if you don't want to line up with everyone else for a seat.) The three-course lunch was 8,50, including bread and beverage.

After lunch we had a short siesta, then headed out to pick up the laundry and find the dock where the cruise ship comes in. (We'll try again tomorrow.) On the way back, we picked up sandwiches at subway and took them back to our room, rather than waiting for the restaurants to open up at 10:00.