TRANSPORT pages

As always, the airport is astonishing. So many languages, destinations, costumes. Dorothy, we're not in Mendocino any more!

All we had to check in with was a six letter code and my last name, but that was enough. TSA is mysterious as always, but much happier than before ...more the UK model of kindly mothers making sure you have all the requisite parts. Shoes off, pockets empty, computers in their own basket. Through the weird imaging machine, and then we're back to comfortable California.

As cabin class pax on Turkish Airlines, we're entitled to the quiet of the United lounge. There's a fog bank to the west, blue skies over head, airplanes coming and going with regularity. We board in about an hour. Next transmission is likely to come tomorrow from Istanbul.

Istanbul!

Culture shock ...and I thought I was shock-proof, culture-wise. My first reaction (to the airport) is: okay that we are only here for three hours.

Arriving 25 minutes early, they had no gate for us, so they parked on the tarmac and bussed us into the most crowded gate area I have ever seen. Finally finding the first class lounge (about a mile away through bustling corridors; a masterpiece of surfaces, but with awesome food!) we finally felt like we had enough air to breathe. Soft chairs, a little dark. Our bodies think it's 6am, but the clock says 5pm.

Our goal for today was to go to Gaudi's magnificent Sagrada Familia Basilica, widely agreed by everyone to be Barcelona's crown jewel. And apparently, they were all there!

We arrived by the so-called Hop On Hop Off bus ...what a bad joke that is! What happens is that people camp in the seats upstairs in the double decker bus and never get off ... so one waits in vain at the hop-on stop, or rides downstairs and sees little. Luckily, by the time we got to Sagrada Familia, we had gotten seats on top ... so we could see the blocks long line waiting for tickets, and the mob in front (actually in back) of the magnificent building.

We did not get off the bus. Maybe what we saw last time was enough? We could see that construction was continuing apace. Maybe we'll try again first thing tomorrow morning?

So what if we did get a little lost transiting the Barri Gotíc on our way home? We got to walk past a bit of the Roman Wall left over from 200 CE, and here's Rochelle waiting for the photographer to get in the elevator. She's fuzzy in the picture, but that's just bad lighting. There can be no doubt that the photographer was himself a little fuzzy from lunch...

Travel day. We packed and left our lovely flat and found a taxi who zipped us to Barcelona Sants, the big new train station. The taxista and I transacted our whole business in Español, and I felt very comfortable. There wasn't much too it, but it wasn't awkward for either of us, and for me that's saying a lot! Got the lingo, must be time to leave Spain!

Sants is huge and busy, feels more like an airport ...and there's scanning of all your baggage and goodies (somewhat relaxed compared to TSA; one of the checkers was singing to another one, and when I smiled at him, he winked back), then scanning your tickets, checking your documents...

And then we're on the train, very plane-like, comfortable seats and little tray tables. We had a lovely sandwedge -- a triangular croissant-like thingy with lovely ham and cheese and lots of seeds. We had talked with a couple from SoCal in the waiting room, and they were relying on the train for food and were grumbling about their choices. I guess we have learned something about traveling.

Then we smoothly moved out through tunnels, outsquirts of high-rise apartments, the usual railroad-side squalor, and finally we were zipping along through the country...

next group : Collioure