Travel day and I’m heading for Barcelona. This was gonna be tough. My ass was still thoroughly kicked from my 1 stop pub crawl on the Via del Corso, my foot felt injured, I had a bump on the back of my head. The idea of tattoos was still floating in my impaired consciousness so I stripped down and did a skin survey. Niente! After taking stock of my overall physical condition, I decided that I might have more miles to go than gas in the tank.

Hitting the breakfast room at 9:30 is another world, one filled with loud and boisterous children who want to make music on their plates with forks and knives. Well you can’t blame a kid for being a kid. I suffered silently in the corner drinking lots of coffee and water and trying to force down a croissant.

I tried to piece together the night before as I struggled through breakfast. There was one thing that kept happening that bore a bit more consideration. The waitress kept colliding with me throughout the night. There were those first two times as I arrived then later on, as she was serving another table she bumped up against my back with her butt. She giggled and said she was sorry, I said no problem. It happened again and she apologized again. I told her I enjoyed it. After that we were off to the races. It was funny and fun and added to the night, and a little bit to my ego.

I’d had about as much breakfast as I could stand and the kids were between movements in the breakfast symphony so got upstairs, packed, and girded my loins for a long day. When you want to dance, you have got to pay the piper.

Checkout and limping to the metro station. Found my metro card had expired. Wanted the 100 minute card for 1.5 Euro, but only had a 10 Euro bill. Ticket machine won’t give more than 6 euros in change. No change machine. Getting change meant going back up to the street. Not on this foot. The Spanish steps were bad enough. I got the day pass for 6 euros. Took my 4 euros change and chalked it up to a misspent youth, uh, middle age.

Metro to Roma Termini, and the airport express to Leonardo Da Vinci. We name our important places after generals and politicians. The Italians memorialize artists and thinkers. Just sayin…

Bit of a time finding my flight. I bought a British Airways flight online, but the actual flying was being done by a company called Veuling. Time was short and the extra walking that needed to be done to sort out the flight was at a fast pace. oh vey! A full flight meant a long boarding, which meant a lot of standing a shuffling. Finally got my bag in the overhead and my but in the seat and fell right to sleep.

The announcement telling the attendants to “Prepare for landing” roused me. I was still in takeoff mode so I went back to sleep. The bump of the landing woke me for sure, and the off boarding process was only a little less awful than the boarding.

Considered a bus but opted for a cab. 30 euros later I was limping into the hotel. After a bit of confusion about payment, meaning they tried to charge me twice, I was welcomed and asked what I needed. I requested some ice.

After icing my foot and recouping. I went to a local restaurant and ordered a liter of Sangria and a dish of Paella. By the time I wolfed down half of that steaming platter of seafood and saffron goodness I was feeling my gas tank needle creeping toward “E”.

Hola Barcelona!