Barcelona Travel Day

Breakfast in the train station again.  You will see that in Europe lots of local people eat the pastry and drink the coffee standing up at the bar.  We opt to sit at a table.  But the pastries are very good here.  I opt for tea while Bob has coffee.  We then returned to the hotel and packed for our trip to Brussels.

We were trying to decide whether to walk about the town or just head to the other train station early.  I hate the thought of leaving our luggage so I think we will head over early and hang out until time for our trip.  More on that later.

The famous statue of Columbus.

Well, we decided to do the hop on hop off bus.  We took the red line to the sea, and then hopped off and hopped on the green line.

There we got off by Ste. Maria del Mar.  What a beautiful church.  After our visit to the church, we walked around and found a lovely cafe where we had tapas and wine.  Then back to the hop on bus and we got off at the train station.  We collected our luggage from the hotel and headed to the station.  Because we had a ticket to Paris, our transfer to the other station was free.  But of course, we got on the wrong train first.  A young lady told us which train to take and we were able to get off and wait for the correct train.  Part of the problem was they told us either track 13 or 14.  And not so good with Spanish, oh well we did make it to the correct station where we had to wait 4 hours for our train.  We thought the station would be like the other one but not so.  Completely open to the air and few seats.   Pigeons flying all over the place.  And cold.  Not food or coffee to be had.

The train arrived and we settled in our compartment.  Very cozy.  Had to put one suitcase in the shower and one on top of it.  The other two we were able to get up top.  Dinner was okay.  Sort of one step up from airline food.  But vodka and wine good.  While we were at dinner, they pulled our beds down.  Not talk about tight quarters.  Wow.  I took the bottom bunk while Bob was up top.   We had one last vodka and then lights out.  I did not sleep well but what else is new.

We arrived in Paris after a light breakfast.  Waited for a taxi that was large enough for all our luggage.  A wild ride through the streets of Paris at rush hour.  Then another wait for our train in a cold and not enough seat station.  But the train arrived and we settled in.  A great smooth ride through the countryside.