Sleeping in on holiday is one of life\u2019s greatest pleasures.\u00a0 Nothing to worry about except for maybe the cleaning staff barging in.\u00a0 Luckily, we had no problems and got up a little later than usual.\u00a0 There was no sign of hangover from the previous evening, so that was a good sign.<\/p>\n
We went down to breakfast and the same crowd was there eating, and we were eating the same food as well.\u00a0 The breakfast was just as good, but I think if I was staying longer than a few days it would probably get old. \u00a0Kuniko and I were both craving some eggs.\u00a0 Our flight that day was in the early evening, so we arranged with Julio, the manager, to hold on to our suitcase while we explored some other parts of Granada.\u00a0 We explained that we had raided the beer cabinet, and he added it to our charges, and presented us with a bill.\u00a0 Everything looked fine, but then he said something that caught our attention.\u00a0 He said, \u201cAnd we only take cash.\u201d<\/p>\n
To make a long story much shorter, Kuniko had handled most of the hotel reservations (including this one) and she was sure that she had already paid online via credit card.\u00a0 The manager assured us that he hadn\u2019t received any money – just the reservation via the internet, and in fact they have never taken credit cards.\u00a0 So we had to schedule an ATM visit sometime during the day to pay for our hotel.\u00a0 Kuniko was a little upset because she was sure she paid, and I trust my wife when she said that she had taken care of it, but I figured the guy isn\u2019t going to lie to our faces, and anyway we\u2019d need to pay to get our suitcase back.\u00a0 So the day started off with some confusion (and a little stress).<\/p>\n
To cut through any sense of suspense, later in the trip through a telephone call to Japan we found out that we had not in fact paid in advance for the hotel, and we had just been confused with some other charges to other hotels.\u00a0 So Julio was all good, we paid him off at the end of our stay in his hotel, and everybody was OK.\u00a0 But I will say that it took some wine and deep discussions before we reached an understanding and could enjoy the rest of our day. So luckily we were in the center of the local wine region and there were plenty of sangrias available.<\/p>\n
So we left our suitcase (hostage) and headed into Granada.\u00a0 This time we headed to the modern side of the city.\u00a0 The city center was very different from the old Arabian district where we were staying, and it seemed like just about any other modern European city.\u00a0 The streets were lined with tourists, the weather was beautiful, and it felt very busy and very safe.\u00a0 We walked around in sort of a random pattern taking pictures, enjoying a park where we watched a group of older folks playing bocce ball, and walked through a semi-abandoned shopping mall looking for lip balm.\u00a0 I finally found a pharmacy to sell lip balm, but I couldn\u2019t remember how to say “lips” in Spanish, so I fumbled through the transaction.\u00a0 Lips in Spanish is \u201clabia\u201d which reminded me of some of the antics we got into during our Spanish classes in high school.<\/p>\n
As part of our research into our hotel miscommunication we stopped at a small caf\u00c3\u00a9 boasting free Wi-Fi and tried to do a little research over the internet with bocadillos and sangria.\u00a0 For some reason the staff spoke to me in French – I look like an out-of-towner but not that far out of town, I guess.\u00a0 We also went to a tapas bar that was listed on the internet as one of the best in the city.\u00a0 It was so packed, but we bumbled into a corner to stand, and enjoyed a plate of spicy chorizo, bread, and a half bottle of a really nice Rioja (that I had been wanting to try for the last year).\u00a0 The tapas bar was a lot like a pub in the UK – more of a community meeting place, but this had been taken over by tourists like us, and it was next to impossible to have a conversation with all the activity in there.\u00a0 Still, the place had plenty of atmosphere and I\u2019m glad we stopped by.<\/p>\n
We slowly made our way back to the Arabian district, stopping at the ATM to pay off Julio on the way.\u00a0 We made a final stop at one more tapas place, and unknowingly shut it down (lunch service ended at 4 pm).\u00a0 This was almost our dinner, but they were just wrapping up lunch.\u00a0 The food there was excellent – especially the veal in a rich, meaty sauce and some montadillos.\u00a0 They had some good wines by the glass there as well, and I could try a local white wine that was recommended in a guide book – a sherry-like buttery white that I couldn\u2019t imagine drinking for more than one glass.<\/p>\n
Finally we went back to our hotel and paid Julio.\u00a0 He was a little concerned that we might feel bad about the whole thing, and to his credit offered to let us go without paying and to pay him later if we liked.\u00a0 We did insist on a receipt, but that turned out to be a difficult maneuver with his printer failing during the print.\u00a0 That made for an awkward delay as we and the taxi driver that we had hired waited Julio to fix his printer and print the receipt.\u00a0 But finally we were on our way, and the taxi to the airport was an easy and smooth trip.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, our next bump in the day happened when our flight was delayed.\u00a0 They wouldn\u2019t give us an ETA on when our plane would arrive, so nobody had any idea if it would be 90 minutes or 9 hours.\u00a0 The staff seemed to sense the angst, and gave everyone vouchers for dinner at the airport.\u00a0 The vouchers (strategically, I think) didn\u2019t have any amount on them, but there was a secret cut-off point that the cashiers knew.\u00a0 Passengers who overloaded had to give up some items, and that made people more cautious as they selected their dinner.\u00a0 We got a beer, a soda, and a couple of sandwiches and had no problem at all.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t all that hungry, really, but it was a good way to kill time until the plane arrived.\u00a0 When it did, everyone was very relieved.\u00a0 The flight departed around 9:30 pm – about 90 minutes later than expected, and after 45 minutes we arrived in Barcelona.\u00a0 We picked up our luggage, found a taxi stand, and from there we caught a taxi and got to our hotel just before midnight.<\/p>\n
Our hotel was located in the lively (and maybe a little dicey) part of town called La Rambla – a big thoroughfare through the city lined with markets, shops and nightclubs that open in the evening.\u00a0 The hotel itself was down a side street directly across from a building designed by Antoni Gaudi that brought a lot of traffic.\u00a0 The hotel was a little old, the room was a little small, but it was very comfortable and clean.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t waste too much time before crashing out for the night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sleeping in on holiday is one of life\u2019s greatest pleasures.\u00a0 Nothing to worry about except for maybe the cleaning staff barging in.\u00a0 Luckily, we had no problems and got up a little later than usual.\u00a0 There was no sign of hangover from the previous evening, so that was a good sign. We went down to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-HQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}