Ode to Our Gnome (RIP)

One of the things we'd planned to do on our trip was take pictures in different locations with our Sounders Gnome.

This went very well during the London part of our trip, with the Gnome traveling with us and getting his picture snapped at a number of iconic London locations.

Alas, Gnome was in one of the suitcases stolen when we arrived in Barca, so no photos of him in Spain.  Sad.

Enjoy the pics we did get of Gnomie:

Good to Be Home!

September 27 was a looong day of travel...but we were looking forward to being back home.

It was easily midnight before when we got settled at our hotel near London Heathrow...and our wake-up call was for 6am. The "Hotel Hoppa" bus left hourly for our airport terminal, and we didn't want to take a chance on a final conquista (or whatever the British version of conquista might be) to make us late.

At the airport we had access to American Airline's large business class lounge, where we had a nice breakfast from the fruit, yogurts, breakfast sandwiches and beverages provided. There was even a coffee machine that made a good cappucino. There were outlets for some recharging of our phones and such, which had been tough to do since the thieves got away with all of our charges.  

A little nap before our flight

Best part were nice comfy chairs, where Ally got to curl up and nap. She is still battling the cold that's plagued us all, and the pressure of the night before's landing on her sinuses was not a lot of fun.

The flight home was on a 767, not a 777 like our flight over. While flying in the business class section was still a treat, it wasn't quite a spiffy as on the 777. Since there wasn't three-across seating, Jorge was not able to sit near Ally and I.

Even though the plane was older, the crew took great care of us and the food was excellent. Since we were flying in the daytime, there wasn't a lot of sleep to be had, but we did get to watch several movies/TV shows. Once we saw Chariots of Fire was an option, Ally and I both knew we had to watch it to compare to the stage version we'd seen in London. We also watched the pilot of the new series Nashville (great!) and the first two episodes of the comedy Veep (hysterical!).

Another nice perk of the business class was using the "fast track" line through customs. When we left the plane, a representative was there with our boarding passes for the Chicago-to-Seattle flight and the special bright orange folder that got us through the fast track line.

Our only travel hiccup of the trip was on the final leg in Chicago. We were an hour late taking off because of some minor problems that needed to be fixed. I was finally able to grab about an hour of sleep on this flight.  Poor Ally was battling the sinus pressure again on our descent, and was surrounded by tissues at landing (blowing her nose seemed to bring the only relief).

We landed in Seattle about 6:15pm, got our luggage, and Tia was waiting at the curb to take us home. We tried to stay up as late as we could to get back on local time, but I don't think any of us made it past 9pm.  So good to be home!

The Tube & Other Travel Gems

Truth is...I love the "tube" (aka the London Underground). You can get absolutely anywhere on it for little money, and there's no hassle driving on the crazy London streets or trying to find nonexistent parking.

One thing that struck me while spending time in tube stations is the sheer number of different languages you hear around you. It's almost impossible to pick out what they are because there are so many going on at once. Even English, spoken as they speak it in London, sounds foreign.

We were lucky to have a tube veteran like Ally with us, because even it you know the right train to take, you still need to get on the correct side of the platform for the direction you want to go. It didn't take her long to get back into tube mode, and soon we were zipping around the city.

London has several different tube lines going in all different directions. Which line you take determines how far down you go in the subway. For example, the District Line is closest to the surface and at some points is even above ground. The Piccadilly Line is the deepest, so if you take those trains, you'll be taking stairs and (if you're lucky) loooong escalators down into the deep of the tube station.

The Piccadilly Line connected through our station at Earl's Court, and went all the way out to Heathrow Airport. So that meant that when you rode the Piccadilly Line, you were sharing the space with lots of people traveling with lots of suitcases. Depending on the direction you were traveling, they either looked excited to be coming into the city for vacation, or exhausted and ready to catch that flight home.

Tube stations were also interesting. Outside of the city, most were just a place for the train to stop with maybe a ticket machine or two. They got bigger and nicer in town. Earls Court was a typical one, with ticket machines, a souvenir shop, and several cafes and sandwich places outside. South Kensington was bigger, with more shops in the station. You could grab some food for dinner, some flowers, buy lotto tickets and such. The Fulham & Broadway station (by Stamford Bridge stadium) was nearly a mall, with a grocery store, clothing stores, food court and more. And when you get to regional stations like Paddington or St Pancras, it's a full-fledged shopping center. From these stations, you can connect to trains taking you just about anywhere in the UK.

The trains themselves are functional and plain. They aren't that big, and have just one row of seating along each side. I found it interesting to observe that young women were more likely to offer their seat to an older person than young men were. And when entering or leaving or train, you were warned to "mind the gap" between the train and the station. Sometimes the gap was pretty large.

Speaking of gaps, there wasn't much of any gap between the sides of the trains and the walls of the underground. Two inches max. Guess they didn't want to do any more excavating than absolutely necessary.

We did witness one close call on the tube. Somebody getting off got their leg stuck in the door while it closed. The train was starting to pull away and there was lots of yelling and pounding on the car and it finally stopped and opened the door. Yikes!

Once onboard a train, the recorded announcement tells you the name of the station, and then the final destination of the train. My favorite was the Piccadilly, which went like this: "Earl's Court. This is a Piccadilly Line service to Cockfosters." Had to smile every time that perky British voice said "Cockfosters."

We did figure out that our neighborhood of Earl's Court was not named for some minor royalty, but the large Earl's Court arena that sits just behind the tube station. That was the location of the indoor volleyball competition at the Olympics.

In Barcelona, the tube is called the metro. Same basic principal as in London, though the Barca stations had escalators only for people going up, not going down. Not a huge deal, unless you're "going down" journey included heavy suitcases. The trains were much wider than London's, accommodating 2 rows of seats on each side and plenty of space to stand in the middle. I noticed a lot more space between the trains and the walls of the station, too.

The Barca stations left a lot to be desired. Most just had ticket machines and maybe a couple of vending machines. A few of the larger transfer stations had a tiny booth with snacks. Also gone was the clean white subway tiles of the London tube stations. Barca was into bare concrete walls.

The London stations were home to more entertainment. It wasn't unusual to find street musicians playing inside the stations; some playing instruments, some small groups and others playing an instrument along to a karaoke tape. The Barca subway, though, did have an Elvis impersonator in full white costume, lip synching to Elvis recordings. Priscilla Presley would have been appalled.

We were fortunate in Barca to be fairly close to a couple of main bus lines. In both cities, your metro pass was good for either, and while the underground can often be faster, the bus is far more scenic.

Barcelona Day 8 - That's All, Folks!

Sorry to skip Day 7, but there wasn't much going on. We went to the Picasso Museum, where the wait in line was 40 minutes. Would have been much less, but for some reason they opted to go with just one cashier regardless of the length of the line. Conquista!

Picasso's art is weird. There was an entire wall of line drawings of horses dying, for example. Then there was his ceramic phase, where his plates looked like the stuff kids make at those ceramic parties. We had hoped to take a bus tour of Barca after, but we were too late. Conquista!

Day 8 was spent packing, then we took a final trip into town for lunch and some final souvenir shopping. We found a little cafe in a street off the Ramblas, where Jorge and Ally both had the Spanish take on pizza; Ally's was topped with sliced hotdog wieners, Jorge's with Canadian bacon and a fried egg. I had one of the best green salads of the trip, with a ham sandwich.

Churro heaven

Dipped in chocolate

The topper was dessert - churros dipped in warm chocolate. Ally and Jorge had been waiting for this, and it didn't disappoint.



After, it was back to our nice apartment for the final time. As we were near the Plaza Catalunya, it got quite windy...almost like a little cyclone. Ally was very glad of her last minute decision to change from that short skirt to jeans otherwise that skirt would have been up around her head!  We saw our bus up ahead and made a mad dash for it.

Front door to our building

We decided to take a cab to the airport, rather than giving the asshole thieves another shot at our stuff by going downtown to catch the Aerobus. Learned a valuable lesson that regardless of how easy the transit connection seems, it's better to spend the money for a cab from the airport to your destination to keep your belongings safe. In this case, a 25 Euro cab fare would have saved us the easily $3000 (if not more) it's going to cost to replace our stolen goods...not to mention the inconvenience and the just plain being pissed off about it.

We get into London late tonight, and our flight home leaves at 10 in the morning. Been a trip, for sure!

Barcelona Day 6 - Getting Our Groove Back

First, I need to explain the concept of being "conquisted" (cone KEES tud). It's a new term coined by Jorge that basically means getting screwed in Spain.

Being conquisted was first recorded on our first full day here. We were at Playa Catalunya, trying to find some clothes for Jorge that weren't designer label. We decided to have lunch in the cafe on the top floor of this huge department store, El Corte Ingles. The service was really snooty...but the worst part was getting the bill and seeing we were charged 2.25 Euros for each piece of bread eaten from the bread basket that was voluntarily put on the table. Ally was particularly incensed: "you can't put bread in front of Barreras and not expect us to eat it!" So that became being "conquisted" or effed over by Spain.

The very first episode of conquisting was of course our stolen luggage. Others include more snooty servers, and the fact that people here just aren't friendly; you try to talk to them, and they just aren't interested.

Just today, we were dealt a couple more conquistas. We were going back to the Ramblas and then onto the Barri Gotic to look at more old buildings. We walked up to the metro station and found that our 5-day metro pass no longer worked. This is day 5, but since we purchased our pass around 9pm we assumed it would be good until 9pm tonight. Wrong! We were just conquisted again. 

So we bought the 3-day metro pass and joined a fairly large crowd of folks down below. Jorge noticed that instead of the schedule of upcoming trains, the readerboard had a message that said the metro was on a 24-hour strike. Crap! Don't know why all those people were still standing there; we waited for a while and there was no whiff of a train, so we left. Double conquista!

Heading out on foot

We decided that if we were going to go anywhere, we'd have to walk. So we did. We found that our apartment is a block away from Barca's large Central Park which was crowded with people because it was a holiday in Barca. They were celebrating Catalunyan independence from Spain, which is a bit premature since they have yet to become independent from Spain. Perhaps they are just practicing for when/if that ever happens.

Side street

We strolled down several of the side streets during our walk and checked out little shops with cool and less expensive souvenirs (okay, we checked out a couple of stores because they had air conditioning as it was quite warm) and eventually worked our way through the Barri Gotic to the Ramblas. Thank heaven Jorge had downloaded all of those IPhone apps that provided us with detailed street maps, so we were seldom lost.
 

Cathedral

We did stop and tour an old cathedral so Jorge could take some more pics of cool church architecture...teasing him that for someone who has no interest in religion, he sure likes to spend time taking photos inside churches. We weren't sure if the guard would let Ally in wearing her shortish shorts, as we'd seen him turn some people away in booty shorts. She made it in without problem.

Automatic candles

We did notice something cool and progressive inside the church; instead of having votive candles that you can light after giving a donation, there was a large bank of electric candles that automatically lit when you deposited a coin.

 

Burger King?

Every little square we passed seemed to be set up for a concert...all part of today's holiday. When we got to the Ramblas, the big parade was underway with lots of large figures dancing down the street...one even looked a bit like the Burger King. Incidentally, both BK and McDonald's had large presences in both Barca and London...and just like at home, you would often find a BK within a block or so of a McDonald's. Kentucky Fried Chicken was also a big player on the fast food side.


After a lot more walking around, we decided to try the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. I know what you're thinking - why would we go all the way to Spain just to eat at an American restaurant? Well, so far the food we've had in Spain has been less than inspiring...and really overpriced. I also thought that maybe the Hard Rock menu might have a salad or something that I could eat. Best. Decision. Ever. Not only did the menu have lots of good options, the food was actually very good. Jorge said it was the best meal he's had in Barca.

That good old American meal did more than satisfy our hunger...it seemed to give us our spunk back. From now on, we'd be the ones doing the conquisting! It didn't take us long; we went to the bus stop in hopes we could catch the #41 which runs right past our apartment. The stop was packed with people all with the same idea because the metro wasn't running. The buses here aren't huge, so it wasn't a given that we'd get on the bus and the next one would probably be another 30 minutes or longer. We were nowhere near the head of the line, but when the bus came it stopped, for some reason, right in front of us (the first stroke of good luck we've had in this city). An old couple pushed their way in front of us; he had a cane, but when that bus door opened, he practically used the cane as a pole vault to get past us and get in the door. We got our revenge, as the old people had to leave their seat to go back and run their ticket through the machine and we took their seats. Now before you go thinking that we were mean for taking seats from old people, you've gotta understand how screwed we've felt by this city. Turning the tables on some grumpy old people felt good - we had our groove back and were finally giving out conquista rather than getting conquisted in the rear end all the time.

Yeah, baby....we're back!

Barcelona Day 5 - Unfinished Business

Unfortunately, after our late night at the soccer game we had to be up and early Sunday morning to make our tour time back at the Sagrada Familia.

Sagrada Familia

I mentioned before that its designer, Gaudi, was odd. Make that Odd. He put together these detailed, extensive plans for this magnificent church. Construction began in 1886, and it is nowhere near complete. Right now, they estimate it will be done in 2026. I wouldn't bet on it. And Gaudi croaked in 1926, so he doesn't care.

Inside church, looking up

It's taken so long because the design is so intricate. Carvings, mosaics, stained glass...you name it. The choir loft is three stories up from the church floor and can seat 1000 singers. Really, Gaudi? A thousand singers? The Mo-Tab Choir doesn't even need that much space.

Just a couple of turistas

It's really an impressive undertaking, funded now by the admission paid by tourists like us to see the inside and take funky photos. As Jorge commented, once they finish the construction, it'll probably take another three years to wash and clean it all up to get ready for the grand opening.



I had to laugh when one of the animals carved beneath the nativity scene on the outer church wall was most definitely a turkey - that "so American bird" that you can't find on the menu anywhere over here. So I guess they have heard of turkeys...they just don't know they are delicious to eat, apparently.

We decided to skip the bus and walk back to our apartment, taking the opportunity to see more of the city as we strolled. We wandered across Barca's answer to "auto row" and stumbled across the only gas station we saw during our entire visit. Just where DO they gas up?

A few words about our place - it's great! Like our London place, Ally found this via the Airbnb website. Or landlady is Gloria, who even bought us bread, cheese, ham, salad and a bottle of bubbly knowing that we were arriving late in the evening from London and would likely be hungry.

This place is much larger than the London flat - we have two bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, a large living room with a comfy sofa, nice kitchen and a terrace. It's a longer walk to the metro station than we had in London, but having wi-fi more than makes up for it.

The only drawback is there are only Spanish language stations on TV. The Discovery Channel is the only channel we've found with any English language shows, so we have watched a lot of "How it's Made" shows...amazing what goes into making the cones for ice cream cones. 

Oh yeah...before I forget...it is really nice to have two Spanish speakers in the group. So far we haven't met a sign or a menu they couldn't decipher. 

Barcelona Day 4 - The Game!

Jerseys were on, scarves were safely in the backpack...we were ready for our adventure at Camp Nou!

We took the metro toward the stadium, with more and more FCB jersey-clad fans getting on at each stop. We'd gotten on the metro in daylight, but darkness had fallen during the trip. The stadium was all lit up, and excitement was in the air as we made our way down the street toward it.

A few things about Camp Nou. First, it's capacity is just about 100,000...which makes it the largest stadium in Europe. Our gate number was 95...the gates went all the way up to 105. Our seats were in the 400 level; before you feel sorry for us, there was a 500 level. There was no roof above us as on the lower floors, which made for better viewing...and it was a lovely evening so no worry about rain.

Reppin' at Camp Nou

We got to our seats early, and the first order of business was getting all of the photos taken to prove we were there. Ally is wearing the joint Sounders/FC Barcelona scarf that was issued for the 2009 "friendly" match FCB played in Seattle. Not many people in the stands, but it was still early and (like in Seattle) it was a late arriving crowd.

Our view

We were right behind one of the goals, and we had a great view of the action. Since Barca dominated possession, the majority of the second half was played right in front of us...including both dramatic goals.


With such a huge capacity, I was expecting lots of noise from the crowd. Not so. The Spanish audience was more subdued...no yelling and constant chanting and singing like we have at Sounders games. If someone made a good play, there was polite applause...the kind you'd hear at a symphony concert. We also didn't get constant chatter from the stadium PA announcer (not that I would have understood any of it if he had) that we're used to in the US. He intro'd the starting lineups with little fanfare, the teams walked onto the field, shook hands, and the game started.

So excited to be here!

Gotta admit...it was quite thrilling to see our favorite team playing in this magnificent venue. We'd been talking about and planning this for so long...and here we finally were.

A couple other things about the stadium. The name "Camp Nou" literately means "the new stadium." In this case, "new" seems to be a relative term. It was built in the 1950s, so you do not see elaborate snack bars built into the stadium. Instead, there were small kiosks selling hot dogs located around the concourse. It didn't hit me as odd until later that people were buying hot dogs and beer and it was like 11:00 at night. At halftime, Ally and I went to the restroom. As we stood in line, I started looking around and you could see from the exterior that the restroom was not very large. Ha ha ha - it was just two toilet stalls! And there was just one toilet paper dispenser, and it was mounted on the wall outside of the stalls...so you have to grab a hunk before you went in. I will never again complain about the line at halftime at Century Link field!

The game was scoreless until the very end, when FCB scored twice to win...so we left happy. We were lucky enough to get on one of the first metros leaving the area, though we were pretty well packed in. We passed fans at other stations who weren't able to get on, so we felt pretty good. It was 12:30am at this point. 

Things were moving along until we had to change trains. Every train that came through was already packed with drunken loud kids, teens to early 20s. We waited through three trains and couldn't get on. The longer we waited, the more kids showed up on the platform trying to get on trains. Turns out there was a big concert last night at the beach, and apparently every young person in Barca was heading there.

We finally managed to push our way onto a train. It was brutally hot and what little air was circulating was full of cigarette smoke and the smell of weed. The kids were loud and obnoxious. At each station, huge crowds waited to get on the train, and even though the train was full, they shoved their way on. Never so glad to reach our station and get off the train. It's now close to 1:30am. It was the perfect storm of thousands of returning soccer fans hitting the metro at the same time as thousands of concert-bound kids.