Tuesday, June 9: ¡Estamos en España!

The flight from Toronto to London was great.  I can' say enough nice things about British Air.  The seats were really comfortable and the attendants were super nice and the food was actually pretty good.  I slept for about three hours of the six hour flight, which I didn't expect to be able to do.  Best of all, each of us had a little screen for the "entertainment system" and I left mine set to display a map showing where the plane was currently so I could follow our progress.   I had a window seat and watched out the window to follow our progress along Lake Ontario, framed by lights.  They put out the cabin lights for dinner while we were over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and I went to sleep.  When I woke up I got a nice view of the Atlantic, soon followed by Northern Ireland, the Irish Sea, and a path across England to Heathrow Airport in London.  What a beautiful world we live in!

For the flight from London to Barcelona it was cloudy most of the time, but at the very end we got to see some nice hills around the city and the Mediterranean Sea to the east.

I was pretty tired when we got to the Barcelona airport, but managed enough Spanish to get through Customs and ask about finding a taxi.  On the way to our apartment my first impression of the city was of lots of interesting apartment buildings with pretty wrought iron balconies.  We stopped in front of one of those buildings and I went in to join Barbara and Mike.  I hadn't seen them since August and it was so good to be together again.

The apartment is cute and comfortable and we have a little ¨terrace¨ too.  Here are some pictures from the terrace:

Barbara and Mike toast the start of our vacation

We walked around the corner to a nice little grocery store and stocked up on a few things.  We expect to eat most of our lunches and dinners out, but breakfast and snacks will be here.

For dinner we walked to a tiny little restaurant down the street and had tapas and paella.  The food was wonderful and the atmosphere was lovely.  The restaurant had a few little tables inside plus several more outside.  Pedestrians walked down the street between us and the restaurant.  The waitress was very nice and put up with our tired attempts at Spanish.

Now we're going to fall into bed and recover from our jet lag and do some more exploring tomorrow.