Barcelona 12 May 2016

Recovery Day

We're awake well before first light strikes the spires of the Cathedral. Our bodies are still disoriented by the shift in venue. So today is a bye day for travel. We accomplish a couple of the classic Big Tasks of travel: we find a post office and buy postcard stamps. We find a bakery and buy a morning pastry ... and then, overachievers we! a natural food store where we buy organic juice, a lemon, a head of garlic, whole milk yogurt, and make the find of the day: organic gazpacho in a tetrapack. (Delicious! We need this product.)

After a futile search for an internet cafe to print out a receipt, we have street food lunch at a counter in the wonderful market, La Boqueria – shrimp salad with octopus and tomatoes and a plate of artichokes – and then buy ingredients for tonight's salad. 

Later, after an internet search, we find a copy shop that can handle our printing requirement, and make a third venture out into the busy, noisy, streets of Barcelona, our third for the day. We are getting fairly familiar with the streets and alleys near our apartment, with the locks on the doors, the funny old elevator (picture to come) we need to get up five flights to the third floor (!). 

The difference, and the distance we have traveled, is definitely sinking in. There isn't a wooden building anywhere around: all is stone and brick, masterfully handled, much of it centuries ago. The wall outside the window was put up in the 1500s at the latest, and has been variously pierced, patched, and repurposed half a dozen times. 

We feel a bit the same today: pierced, patched, and relocated. We're glad we planned slow days and few destinations for this day. Tomorrow we hope that our bodies will have gotten here, too.