From Charleston SC to Barcelona Spain

We visited charming Charleston South Carolina for two days a city with about 750,000 people, slightly smaller than Ottawa.  We stayed in a hotel located in the middle if the historic downtown area, very close to where all the action is.  We took a tour of the historic area and the guide was focussed on the Civil war which after twenty minutes or so is a little much but we did travel through many interesting spots, the most interesting was the old market area which was about 5 minutes walk from our hotel.  

Old mansion in downtown
Charleston SC

The tour was dotted with old historic mansions which were interesting to look at.

Typical house in
historic district

Most of the regular houses in the area were built on long narrow lots and feature a big pillated porch running most of the length of the house, and the entrance on the street which you would think is the front door to the house is actually door that leads on to the porch which you cross to get to the actual entrance to the house (see the photo on the left of this texte).

Entrance to the
Old Market

Inside the
Market

The second day, we went to the market and spent a good portion of the day exploring this area of the downtown and then on to King Street where there are still many old style shops and boutiques.

On Saturday morning, after an early wake up and a small breakfast in our room, we left for Brunswick Georgia which for some reason my new GPS (which by the way I love even more than my old one because it has "lane assist" a feature that indicates which lane you must stay in when you approach a multi-lane intersection) had calculated a distance of 410 miles when in fact the distance was closser to 190 miles.  We were in Brunswick shortly before 10:00 am so I went to our booked hotel and asked to cancel our reservation which they did as courtesy and we decided to stop for a good breakfast and drive through to Miami, another 400 miles away.  With the speed limit at 70 mph most of the way and the traffic travelling at almost 80 mph, we arrived at our hotel in Miami by 5:00 pm, freshened up and had a nice supper at a pub just down the street from the hotel.

Front loby at
The Wave

The next morning we headed to The Wave in Fort Lauderdale where we will be staying when we return here for our three month stay on January 15th.   The building which was converted from apartments to condos in 2008 is very modern an really quite nice.  It has a very large heated pool in the back which is a few steps to the beautiful sandy beach.  After having seen the surroundings of this place, we are confident that we are in for a great three month stay here with our friends Art and Ethel in January. 

Beautiful
sandy beach
at The Wave

We had a few items we wanted to buy for our cruise so we spent the rest of the day shopping for these.   In the evening, in preparation for our flight the following day, we re-organised our luggage to take what we needed for our visit to Barcelona and the subsequent trans-Atlantic cruise and leave the rest in our car which we left in the hotel parking lot for the three weeks we will be gone before returning to Florida.

Monday morning and we were scheduled to fly out of Miami to Barcelona Spain at 6:30 pm.

so we slowly packed the car with the things we were leaving behind.  We had to vacate our room by noon so after a nice long lunch, we headed for Miami International airport.  Of course we arrived there way ahead of our departure time so after we checked in, we played three games of cards, the score, two for me, one for Rosella  ....  they were all close games.

We were flying with Luftansa.  Eight and a half hours to Dusseldorf Germany with a 90 minute stop for a one hour flight to Munich with a 55 minute stop amd then a two hour flight to Barcelona Spain, 16 hours later we were in our destimation city. 

While the flight out of Miami was about 95% full, we were assigned seats at the rear of the plane and both managed to move to seats that were adjacent to vacant seats so we had lots of room for this long 8 and a half hour flight.  Shortly after our departure they served complimentary drinks, even for the low-class flyers in the economy section, then a pretty nice meal followed by complimentary digestives.  Lots of room, free booze and half decent food!  What more could we ask for?

Unfortunately, I had coffee after the meal and as a result was not able to sleep very much during this leg of our travel.  The rest of the plane travel went off without a hitch.  We arrived in Barcelona, bags in tow as scheduled at 3:30 pm (10:30 local time in Miami).  Since we had not eaten anything substantial since early morning, we had a snack at the airport before taking a cab to our B&B downtown where we had stayed a few years ago when we came to visit with our traveling friends Art and Ethel.  Tony, our host was here to greet us upon arrival. 

The B&B is loated in the old section of the city just five minutes walk from Las Ramblas, a very wide, 3 km closed pedestrian steet lined with kiosks selling everything from live animals to artisan ice cream and featuring buxters, lots of boutiques and restaurants and a super large, encloses market area.  The Ramblas is busy from early morning to very late at night and is always bustling with people enjoying the tree lined market ambiance; a great place to do heavy duty people watching.

Rosella reading
by the balcony

Being the off season, when we arrived at the B and B which occupies three apartments in the building in which it is located.  For now, we were the only clients so Tony assigned us a nice large room in the back with a small balcony and gave us full access to the whole appartment including the kitchen so are in fact staying here in a three bedroom apartment for the whole duration of our stay here. 

Upon our arrival, after opening our bags and freshening up a bit, we headed for a little stroll down Las Ramblas.  What a great evening it was, though a little cool (probably between 12 - 15 degrees C) the place was humming with activity and lots and lots of people enjoying the sights and sounds of this amazing place. 

We stoped at a grocery store on the way back to our B and B, bought a baggette, cheeze, fruit, yogurt and bottled water and had a picnic in the kitchen of our appartment.  We were both in bed and sound asleep by 9:30 but because of the time-lag, were both wide awake by 1:30 am, and unabled to fall  back asleep so we got up, Rosella read for a while and I caught up on my email and we both went back to sleep.  Rosella was up by about 9:30 am. I slept past 11:30 am. 

Guell castle
off
Las Ramlas

Both pretty well rested, we took our time to get prepared and headed out to Las Ramblas again to go visit the Guell Castle which was designed by the famoud modern architect Antonio Gaudi and is inconspictuously located between other buildings on a street just off Las Ramblas.  This building was acquired by the Barcelona city administration.  and they took over 17 years to restore it to its original form and boy, what a superb job they did!  

Stairs to the
upper apartment



Main entrance

Decorative
ceiling

Bay window
outside

Hallway between
bedrooms

Restored pipeorgan

Restored pipes

Alter inside
castle

Decorative roof-top
chimneys

We thoroughly visited the castle  and while it is very difficult to demonstrate the extreme luxury and beauty of this structure with a few photos, Rosella and I both agree that this building, which was spared absolutely no expense when it was originally built, (they estimate that Guell's fortune today would be about 70 billion-yes that is a  "B" - over $100 billion Canadian) is probably the nicest building that we have ever visited.

We then proceeded with a twenty minute walk to find a restaurant that was recommended to us by Tony.  With lots of asking for directions from people on the street, we found the place but regrettably, this being Barcelona, the restaurant is closed between 4:30 and 8:00 pm so we headed back to las ramblas where restaurants do not close in the late afternoon and stoped at a really nice catalonian pub nad had paella and fish for supper.  The food was excellent and with window seats overlooking Las Ramblas, the ambiance was superb.  More strolling and people watching and we were back at the B&B by 10:00 pm. and in bed by eleven.

Tomorrow by 9:00 am, we take the hop-on, hop bus for a tour of the city.

Stay tuned for more!