España no es buena en transporte público

Loosely translated, this means "the dereliction of the conveyance of aggregated peoples in Spain."

Okay, that's true. But what that means exactly and literally translated is "Spain is not good at public transportation."

Our first experience of Spain's inadequate public transport came when we took the train from Grenada to Sevilla. Remember when I told you about the Spanish conductor coming in to the car and assuming we knew what he was saying? Well, what he was saying was, "The train tracks ahead are flooded. You need to take a bus to avoid the flooded train tracks, because trains do not float very well." Now, I understand flooding. But I sort of feel like rain is a common occurrence (after all, the rain in Spain does fall mainly on the plain, Eliza Doolittle), and maybe the Spanish should find a better way to deal with it (rain) than bussing 500 passengers between 2 and 8000 miles out of their ways.

Our second experience of Spain's rather questionable understanding of mass transit was when we flew from Sevilla to Barcelona. After Reid and I got to the airport, we sat for a while in the waiting seats, and then we heard the announcement that our flight was boarding. It was even on time. Hooray! So all 250 passengers got in the line that led to the boarding gate, and then we...stood there. For half an hour. I generally understand the "ing" part of "boarding" to mean "in the process of getting on board" as in "moving," but this is apparently not the case.

We eventually got on our plane after a nice long walk on the tarmac (not to the tarmac, on the tarmac. I felt like a Michelle Obama, climbing up the stairs to my very own private-plus-249-other-people plane), and sat down. Unfortunately, I was seated next to a Spanish lady who looked liked Jabba the Hut and didn't seem to understand that "no hablo espanol" means that I don't speak Spanish.

The fact that I was sitting next to George Lucas's inspiration for a worm-fiend did not detract from the fact that the landscape over which we flew was gorgeous. Barcelona is surrounded by some of the most beautiful and picturesque mountains I have ever seen. They certainly don't have the grandeur of the Rockies or the wooded splendor of the Appalachians or the snow of the Alps (okay, I've never seen the Alps), but their combination of jutting rocks and rolling hills spread in greens and golds and browns was amazing. Plus they had those cool white windmills that actually turn air into energy.

The oddest part of the trip was the end, actually. After we touched down at the Barcelona airport, the entire plane burst into applause. It was as if the Spanish were saying, "Hooray! We made it without dying! Thank you, Mr. (or Ms.) Pilot for only jarring our bones just a little on this touchdown and for making it the whole way through this hour-long flight without running into the side of a mountain!"

Now, I have since learned that applauding at the end of flights used to be common. And, as we all learned after the US Airways incident on the Hudson, pilots certainly should be commended for doing a good job. But I'm more inclined to think that the Spanish were applauding because they are so used to bad mass transit that they are overjoyed when they make it somewhere without trouble.

So anyway, we walked for about half an hour from the plane (on the tarmac again, I did my Jackie O wave walking down the steps) to the building. This I learned: never ever fly into Barcelona Reus airport. It looks like they began to build it in 1983 and then just forgot to finish. Then we got on a bus and rode two hours, and then we were finally in Barcelona. Yay (or yea!)!

In Barcelona, we mostly walked around. I'm pretty sure we explored most of the city because we got lost several times, but we also were not on a schedule and that was great. We bought some delicious apples at a two-story grocery store:


Seriously, how cool is that? That is, by the way, Reid, not some random stranger. And then we went to the Sagrada Familia temple, designed by Gaudi.

This temple/cathedral/whatever (I'm honestly not sure what exactly it is) is amazing. Antoni Gaudi began to design and build it in 1882, and it's still a work in progress. According to Barcelona's tourist guide, it's not expected to be finished until sometime between 2033 and 2083. Yeah, wow.

Gaudi was clearly ahead of his time in his designs:


And the inside is just beautiful:


Just look at those colors!

Humans (Reid and I are in the middle, wearing black and brown and looking related) were again dwarfed by the size of the building:



Reid and I paid the 12 euro to get into the cathedral, which was probably worth it. It's worth going just to see the outside, though.

Then we wandered around the city some more, found a Burger King for dinner, and returned to our hostel by 7 p.m. We were very tired, so we hung out in our room until we finally went to sleep.

The next morning, we went to the good Barcelona airport (called the Barcelona airport instead of the Barcelona Reus airport. That should've been a hint to me), and again discovered that Spain does not know how to move people. We had to take a bus from the boarding gate to the plane. Does that make sense?

Anyway, we ended up in London, which is a day for another post. Or a post for another day. I feel like both phrases actually apply there.

I'd very quickly like to give some impressions of Spain that I have thus far saved:

--In Barcelona, people lisp--that is, their accent means their "s" is pronounced "th." Thus, Barcelona sounds like "Barthelona." Also thus, it is common for people to spray it and say it (or thpray it and thay it?).

--Also, in the north of Spain, there are two different types of Spanish: Castilian and Catalan. Therefore, in Barcelona, all the signs were in three different languages (those two and English). I found this fascinating. Apparently Castilian is the traditional Spanish, while Catalan is a mixture of Spanish and French (thank you, Yahoo! Answers).

--Everyone smokes in Spain, including young children and pets (okay, that part's not true). I think this is gross.
--The Spanish like piercings, especially lip piercings. You know the ones that kind of look like moles or zits right above or below peoples' lips? A ton of people had them, and very few people pulled off the look. There were also multiple ear piercings, eyebrow piercings, and nose piercings.
--Another aspect of Spanish fashion is this: they are trying to re-vamp the mullet. It is not working. We saw all sorts of mullet-ish hairdoos. The best one was the dreadlock mullet. Please imagine: business up front, hippy party in the back. It was awful.
--While the Spanish have not mastered mass transit, they are good at individual transit. There are many people who walk, lots of small cars, and a ton of motorcycles. Reid considered stealing a few of the motorcycles, but we decided that they would be hard to get through customs (almost as difficult as the fighting bull we were going to bring Dad--we settled on a t-shirt instead).

Spain, overall, was a wonderful place to visit. Reid and I began in a very traditional Spanish town (Granada), and ended in a very modern city (Barcelona), with Sevilla falling somewhere in between traditional and modern. While our trip was non-stop travelling, I think we took enough time in each place to enjoy what it had to offer. I enjoyed it very much, and I think Reid did, too.