Day 2

 

Our apartment is in the El Born neighborhood of Barcelona, which is trendy, hopping, vibrant and cool, just like Martha and me. It is also the home to the Santa Maria del Mar, the cathedral built in the 1300’s that was the basis of the book and Netflix series Cathedral of the Sea. Our apartment is about 100 feet from the cathedral, which is great if you can tolerate those stupid bells ringing all the time.

Anyway, Martha and I were walking in our neighborhood yesterday and saw a tour group standing in front of the Santa Maria del Mar. Everyone in the group had a plastic shot glass hanging around their neck and the tour leader’s clipboard said Tipsy Tours on it.

Turns out that Tipsy Tours is an alcohol-centered tour of Barcelona. Not judging here, but you don’t really have to come all the way here for this. The Tipsy Tours website has all 5-star reviews with comments about how wonderful Barcelona is, including “Got a little bit tipsy. Would have stayed out longer but the trains close at midnight,” and “It felt like we were having a bar crawl with friends,” and “Great tour with some questionable dancing. The stories are a bit saucy.” 

On the other hand, The Santa Maria del Mar has an average rating of 4.5 stars. One of the negative reviews says “I purposely jogged to this place after reading a book about it. But there were a lot of drunk people around.” Of course there were a lot of drunk people around; they were taking a Tipsy Tour, having a great time and writing 5-star reviews. Why don’t you lighten up a little?

Speaking of which, I give our neighborhood a 5-star review for the ability to get a contact high by walking around. Marijuana is mostly technically illegal in Spain (perhaps more on this later) but it’s hard to go anywhere without walking through clouds of smoke from young adults taking hits on their porros.

And finally, it’s obvious that Lucy (pictured here in center and on bench) is very sad because she misses us so much.

Day 1

Having learned from many overnight flights to Spain, I have a carefully-curated program of caffeine, sugar and alcohol to get me through that first difficult day.

Somehow on this trip the inputs got out of balance and neither my Spanish nor my English was making much sense the today. I seemed to be either saying nothing really fast or something really slowly. The Spanish people I attempted to talk to acted like nothing was wrong, but I can only guess what they told their families when they got home.

I was actually doing fine until Martha and I decided to go for a walk and we got hit by an unexpected massive storm with thunder, lightning and hail. Sure, we could have taken refuge in a church, library, or museum, but there were so many bars so close to where we were, and it was a matter of personal safety, so we were basically forced to have a couple of glasses of wine at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, which is when I should have been on my caffeine course.

I tried to counteract this with some cookies and a Diet Coke, but then we ran across a place that served some amazing food, which you can’t exactly wash down with water, and my day essentially ended at 7:30 pm. So sue me.

Spain Again? Really?

 As we sat quietly on the plane wondering why we weren’t going anywhere, the pilot got on the PA system and explained to all of us in a loud, clear voice that came through just fine, that the mechanics had told him the PA system wasn’t working and that they were trying to fix it.

The situation wasn’t improved by the fact that the list of movies included eight Harry Potter titles (who knew?), four Hobbit movies, two Shreks and a lot of films with very uncompelling descriptions (like “A mother of three is gifted a nanny by her brother. Marlo comes to form a unique bond with the nanny named Tully.” I could go on, but why).

On a positive note there is no one sitting to my left, and for the first time in 7 or more trips to Spain, I actually recognized the person who sat down to my right. It’s Martha. 

The fact that I’m going to Spain for the first time with my wife is delightful in many ways, but also raises a logistical issue around how to introduce her. Spanish is a very male-oriented language. I generally try to just let Spain be Spain, but this is a tricky one. The Spanish word for husband is the pretty benign marido. One might expect the word for wife to be marida (words ending in o are masculine and a are feminine). But the word marida doesn’t exist. Rather, there are two words for wife in Spanish – mujer, which means “woman,” and esposa, which means “handcuff.” I refuse to use these words because despite my insensitivity they are just too much for me. “This is Martha, my woman,” for example. 

A sort of woke word that is just starting to be used as an alternative in some circles is pareja, or “partner.” This one is not offensive, but it seems almost like it invites judginess, like it should only be used by men wearing hemp drawstring pants, or maybe it’s only for couples who feel like they’re too good to use words that have worked just fine for centuries. And it introduces uncertainty; I continually used pareja in my Spanish class at Hood, which caused the students to assume that we were  living together but not married (they later told me this). Maybe I’m overthinking this, but I may just introduce her as “Martha.”

Regardless, there’s nothing about any of this that a couple of glasses of wine won’t fix, so that’s where I’m going now. Then I’ll probably watch a movie that has a bunch of explosions in it and next thing I know, we'll be in Barcelona.