Thu, Jun 2 Home At Last!

 We got up at five and went down to the Elite Lounge and had scramble eggs and sausage for free (Thanks, Hil!), collected our luggage and got on the waiting van. Also, thanks to Hilary’s warning, we didn’t go right to the gate after passing through Security, as you can’t return to the huge and entertaining shopping center! We cruised through the FC Barcelona football shop and various others. The floor is very reflective and if you look down while walking, you can get rather dizzy! So we sat for a bit, and heard a plaintive “Meow”, and found we were sitting next to a pet carrier with a very nice black cat inside. The owner opened up the top so we could see her!   Very therapeutic for travel stress!

We boarded at 9:30 AM, and, as this is the first day of this particular flight to JFK, the plane was less than half full…so Bob got a window all by himself and I took a whole center row of three seats! Unfortunately even with all that space, I’m too tall to really sleep lying down, but it was fun to try! We saw two forgettable movies had two meals and landed at JFK at 12:30 pm. Whisked though Immigration and Customs and now sitting in JFK while we have a three hour wait until we board for LAX. We’re waiting until we get a little appetite and will go to the deli across from our gate!

  Later from SB: We got hotdogs and a coke and went to the gate to wait.  We had applied for an upgrade, but didn’t figure on getting that as flights to LA are usually full.  As we started to board the plane, we were pulled aside (I figured we had come to the boarding pass area too early) and the attendant ripped our passes in half and handed us Business Class seat assignments!! Hooray!! Why did we eat those hotdogs?? 

Anyway, we got on and two kind people changed their seats so we could sit together, and settled into our plush chairs with foot rests, and accepted our glasses of champagne, our menus, our Boise head sets with handheld screens gizmos with endless movies and TV programs already loaded!

Even though we weren’t particularly hungry, we managed to eat and drink our way across the country until we fell asleep and missed the ice cream sundaes!

We landed at LAX at 7:30PM, got our luggage, called the Comfort Inn Cockatoo whose van arrived in 15 minutes and took us to the hotel where we picked up our car and started the groggy drive home.  We each drove half way and just barely managed not to fall asleep!  Arrived home at 10:30 and collapsed.

Picked up Miss Maddie at 10AM on Friday, and she howled all the way home and is very happy to be home again with us!

XXX, Katy

P.S.  final stats:  We drove 2074 miles in Catalunya which has 12.400 sq. miles of area (just a little larger than Massachusetts and Rhode Island combined).
Bits of history mostly gleaned from Cadogan Guides "Barcelona & Catalonia", an excellent book!

Thu, Jun 1 Back to Barcelona

Wed, Jun 1 We packed up and left the Parador at 9:30. It was pretty chilly - in the high 30s when we got up and there was a new sprinkling of snow on the mountains. We headed south through the tunnels and through some lovely farm country of green and gold wheat fields. We passed through red canyons right out of New Mexico and past the convoluted rocks of Montserrat, before entering Barcelona.









We had a dress rehearsal of how to get to the airport and Renaissance Hotel when we delivered Hil last week, so we found the hotel without too much difficulty. We were using Hilary’s Premiere Executive points and so got ushered into the executive part of the hotel and got a half bottle of white wine, nuts, and fruit delivered to our room as a welcoming present!

We then had to return our car to the mysterious Victoria Car Rental people in the Terminal 1 parking structure.. We had complex instructions on how to enter the airport and which color-coded area to park in. The garage is amazingly complex and we were trapped on the wrong floor, but managed to find an empty space, park and lock up. We were told to put the key in an envelope along with the parking ticket and location of the car and drop it into the slightly open window of a van parked in space 306 on the second floor in the blue section. We found the van and slipped the envelope into the window and left…who know what happens then??…But it was half the price of the major car rental companies!

We then walked a long ways to the hotel van pickup area…no seating, very windy…we waited and waited…people came and left but no Renaissance van. After 45 minutes we gave up and went back to the terminal and got a cab from the taxi stand. Big mistake! We thought we had communicated that we wanted to go to the Airport Renaissance, but after a bit we realized we were headed downtown! We alerted the cabbie who managed to maneuver us on surface streets back to the hotel. The meter read about 16 Euros…quite a bit for a 2 mile ride to a hotel next door to the airport. Bob went in to the hotel to get someone to negotiate the fee….but, and this is really weird…the hotel person came out and showed us that there is a little sticker in tiny print only legible with a magnifier from the inside of the taxi window that says that taking a taxi from the airport has a minimum fee of 20 euros…almost $30! Well, we had to pay, but rather irritating to be stuck with this because the hotel’s van was tardy!

Anyway, we finally got back to our room and had our wine and fruit and organized our gear so we’ll be ready to grab our executive free breakfast at six tomorrow and grab the van (it better be there!!) to the airport!

Grabbed a hamburger and soup and beer in the bar for supper.

Tue, May 31 Aranese Villages

  It was drizzling when we got up so we dawdled a bit, ordered eggs for breakfast and returned to our room. The hotel shop was open for the first time since we checked in and Bob couldn’t resist picking up a map and booklet about this area! We had considered checking out and leaving for somewhere sunnier midway between here and Barcelona, but with the book in hand, rain or not, we ought we should explore the region further. 

We drove about ten km east on the highway and turned into the town of Artíes that we had passed through two days ago, as it has a notable church, and is the birthplace of Gaspar de Portolá, the governor of Baja & Alta Calif. and founder of San Diego and Monterey!

Although the town is tiny, driving around its twisted cobblestone streets is confusing, so we parked and explored on foot. We found the Portolá house and statue, and crossing the little river that flows through town, the Església de Santa Maria o’Artíes, the old Romanesque church.
  It was filled with murals depicting various violent scenes from the bible, some of which are recreations, as the best ones were taken to Barcelona, but some look original. It was a lovely space and must have looked quite gaudy back in its heyday.

With the aid of our new map, we drove through town and up a valley into the mountains. The huge sheer walls of granite were very dramatic and in summer this area is full of trekkers and rock climbers, and probably fly fishermen, as well! It was raining intermittently, but we walked a couple of miles up a gentle slope on an old jeep track through meadows full of beautiful flowers: purple columbine, white columbine, large yellow ranunculus and narcissus.

We entered the forest which is spectacularly healthy, unlike the forests of the American west, and tried to look for birds. We found our friends, the black slugs, and the beautiful Red Squirrel with tufted-ears, but birds were, as usual, very scarce. We returned to the car and drove back to Vielha and a ways on the highway to France which is very near, but turned back as our rental can’t go there, and returned to the hotel to organize our stuff before we return to Barcelona tomorrow.

For dinner we picked the hotel’s tasting menu which started with a plate of a bit of pate, sausage on tomato bread and a tiny cup of onion and garlic soup. That was followed by meat-stuffed cabbage, and then bean and meat soup for RRZ and trout sandwiched with ratatouille for me. For dessert we got a sweet omelet flamed with rum. Out table had a lovely view of the whole valley - a nice way to finish our stay in the Pyrenees!

Wed, Jun 1 We packed up and left the Parador at 9:30. It was pretty chilly - in the high 30s when we got up and there was a new sprinkling of snow on the mountains. We headed south through the tunnels and through some lovely