Day 26 Seville to Barcelona

A sunny day dawned to wake us up for the last time in Seville. We have been sleeping with an open window, which is good. We have really enjoyed our stay here, as in all the other cities. It would be a good place to live, methinks.

Rather than the cost of a taxi we enquired about bus to the airport and our friendly concierge came through again, marking details on the map. We used one bus to the train station and an airport bus from there. We couldn't quite find the bus stop for the latter at first, but Joan soon sussed it out - she is less shy about asking for help, something I am reluctant to do. It was a relatively short trip to the airport, so we had time for a relaxed coffee and cake before proceeding to the gate. The security check-in scanners were very sensitive - they even detected the metal in the spiral of my notebook. (Lesley, I am now emulating Bob by always having a little notepad in my shirt pocket).

The flight was 20 minutes late getting away due to late arrival of the aircraft, but the flight was very pleasant, about an hour, in no small part due to the kind consideration of the check-in chap who had allocated us exit row seats. I was able to pass the time quite easily by reading my first newspaper in over three weeks. At the Barcelona end, we were out of the terminal very quickly.

Despite Joan's misgivings (having read about difficutly with baggage on buses) we had opted to continue our commitment to public transit, and were able to locate the TMB 46 bus quite readily and it departed almost immediately. It was a cool overcast, i.e. dull, day but we enjoyed the trip into the city. According to my carefully researched plan, we needed to get off at Plaza de Espagna and changed to the L3 Metro. We got off at the right stop after confirming with a fellow passenger. Put on the square we asked a policeman to point us at the entrance to the Metro. This consisted simply of an unobtrusive lift cubicle. So far so good, we thought. Once descended down below, we encountered a sequence of obstacles, a continuation of what we had observed at the surface - steps and an escalator. The problem for us and our luggage was that the escalator only went up - there was no corresponding down escalator. Your truly had to carry the two bags down three long flights. Our chiropractor would have tsk tsk'ed us for that. Three stops later we arrived at Drassanes stop on Las Ramblas, one of the main tourist streets. From there we ascended to the surface and were able to wheel ourselves about 400m to our hotel along nice smooth footpaths - no clattering over cobblestones here.

After a short splash we dashed off again to get an initial feel for the city. Las Ramblas is simply amazing. It consists of a wide tree-lined (liquid ambar?) pedestrian avenue, with single lanes for cars and buses on either side. This pedestrian concourse was packed with people (mostly tourists, I suspect, local and foreign) perambulating up and down. Stalls and street performers lined the edges adjacent to the traffic lanes. On the way we had bocadillos and cervecas (baguettes and beer), our first real food since breakfast. We also visited the markets with fabulous produce on display. As I mayhave mentioned, cured ham is a big deal here, and the selection of these presented here was amazing, as were the prices, which ranged from €20 to €80, the higher prices obtaining the more fat there was. We bought four oranges for €1.25.

We walked all the way up to Plaza Catalunya, and came back a different way. This route passed all manner of expensive shops and department stores.