Jul 17, 2009
Day 1 Mataro, Spain
Wow. That was a long day of travel. There’s nothing like getting your period right before your 22 hour transatlantic journey (sorry boys, I know that’s TMI). But the day of travel was worth it since the tickets were free. We flew from Phoenix to LA to Philly to Frankfurt to Barcelona. It’s pretty amazing that the only delay was on the last leg. Thank heavens! And it was only 20 minutes late. We didn’t have a layover longer than an hour. We did a lot of running from gate to gate. We got to the Barcelona airport and it was really nice—brand new. Went straight to Avis and picked up our VW Golf. It’s a cutie! It will serve us well for 18 days.
We started driving, relying on our Garmin Nuvi 275T to get us to the hotel in Mataro. When booking our hotel, we chose the town on the water right off the freeway but outside of Barcelona because we knew we would be exhausted and in no mood for crowds. All went well, even thought the Garmin thought we were in Madrid for about 10 minutes. We got to our hotel in only 20 minutes of driving. We went for a walk, exploring all the back streets and shops, then we ate some Tapas and had a bottle of Rose for $15 total. Then we went back to the hotel for a 2 hour nap. Well needed!
We have kind of a promise to run every day, not only because we plan to eat, but also because it is such a great way to explore. So after our nap we went for a 3 mile jog (really! it was slow!) by the beach. It was so beautiful, with lots of people strolling with their dogs and lots of others running and biking or eating at seaside restaurants. We circled up around the harbor, then back through the city center to our hotel.
After a shower, we walked to a Jamon restaurant where we ate tapas—manchego, and some ham John really wanted to taste. They feed the pigs nothing but acorns, and I’m not sure of the science, but it tastes really good! Tomorrow morning I think we’ll run a the beach again since the breeze is so nice, then head up to Carcasssonne. I posted more pictures on another blog site I’m trying out at pcmasuedu.shutterfly.com I’ll take a vote and see which one you like best.
