Beach Bumming it in Barcelona

We had gotten directions from the women at the front deck and it seemed to be an easy trek to the train station. Little did we know that in Barcelona there are little to no street signs, at least not the way that we are used to seeing them (you know where they are supposed to be on the street corners). After Tina almost passed out with anxiety (because she couldn’t find the street signs and we were clearly lost) we decided that the next best option was to ask someone.

Here’s how that went: the first person we asked spoke very little English and we ended up 5 blocks in the opposite direction. Person number 2 spoke no English but we were able to follow her hand motions and she actually did get us back in the right direction, but still not where we needed to be. Remember how Tina almost passed out because she couldn’t find the street signs, well Tina asked the first two people we spoke to “Where Are The Street Signs!” They didn’t understand her so we gave it another try and this time we were going to find out where those damn street signs were so we went to a sure bet…we went to Starbucks. This woman not only spoke English but she also answered the all-important question about where the street sighs are located.

You want to know don’t you, they are on corners, on the corners of buildings in small little print! How freaking annoying is that? So eventually we did find it to the train station and on our way discussed how rude it was that more people didn’t speak English, what gull these Spaniards have.

We may have made it to the train station, but everything in the train station was not only automated, but also in Spanish. We found the name of the town that had the beach and were on our way. Long story short, we almost got onto the wrong train twice. Once on the right train, Tina finally felt at ease. We all know how much she likes control, well today she had very little of it. So we got off at the Castelldefels, according to the guidebook, this beach is much nicer than the ones in Barcelona. What the guidebook did not mention is that there are two stops for Castelldefels, one to the town and one to the beach. Luckily this train station had attendants. We tried explaining to them that we just got off the train, but it was the wrong stop, and we wanted to get back on, but they didn’t speak any English!?!?! So from there on Tina just kept pointing to the place we wanted to go in her guided book, this seemed to work well, no talking needed. So we each paid another fair.

We found some “locals” (they had an umbrella and spoke Spanish, we should have stuck with them in the first place). As luck would have it they lived in Barcelona, but he grew up in Cannes. This is when Tina grabbed her other guide book and started talking to them about the Nice and Monaco region. They said the grand canyon de verdon was really nothing to brag about, but Nice was by far their favorite place on the cost. So Before we knew it we were basking in the sun at the beach.

Luckily everything went up after we got to the beach, every hundred yards or so they have little bars right on the beach. Our bar was the best because again our bar tender spoke very little English, we rented two beach chairs and an umbrella for 10 Euros and we each got a drink for a total of 12 Euros. The advantage of the language barrier was that he just kept pouring the alcohol because we didn’t know we needed to tell him to stop. He became our best friend when we tipped him 3 Euros, I guess they don’t tip in these parts.

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