Getting Around While Travelling

Of great concern to you as a would-be traveler might be how to get around a given locale once you have arrived at your destination. You can rent a car in Europe if you like. Just keep in mind that in order to drive in Europe you need an International Driving Permit, which you can obtain from your local AAA or National Auto Club office. These are the only two agencies in the United States officially authorized to issue IDPs, so beware any others offering to give you one. The US Department of State's website has a page that's chock full of information on driving in far-off lands. Then, of course, you'd need to book you're rental in your destination; the rental agency names will look familiar to anyone who's rented a car in the States. It is also worth noting that the VAST majority of private cars are equipped with manual transmissions; while this may not be the case with rental fleets, it's probably not a bad idea to have some experience on a stick shift.

While I have at times thought that having a car would be of benefit, these have all come as I was out in the countryside. Driving in central Barcelona looks to my American eyes like an unnerving proposition and there is a distinct dearth of available parking in a city as densely populated as the larger ones you'll find in Europe. There are a ton of options that you simply do not find in the US (or at least in the great majority of the country). On the local scale there are Metro systems in Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Palma de Mallorca, Seville and Valencia. You might even be treated to a live performance and dancing!
If you're not staying in one of those cities, you can check out the Cercanias commuter train service provided by the kingdom's national railway, RENFE. These commuter rail networks serve Asturias, Cadiz, Malaga, Murcia/Alicante, Santander, San Sebastian, and Zaragoza. The Cercanias sites are in Spanish, but you should be able to use a translator program to take care of that. Smaller cities such as Girona, Granada, Los Barrios and Algeciras have readily accessible bus systems to ferry you about their environs. Others, such as the town of Jaen, with a population of 120,000, are also building tram system.

RENFE will also ferry you between cities. Offering nearly comprehensive coverage of Spanish territory, the railway can almost certainly get you wherever it is you'd like to go. One of MY favorite aspects of the service is the price; a single-passenger one-way ticket from Barcelona to Girona will set you back as little as 6.75 euros depending upon the type of service you use. The day trips are naturally the cheapest. AVE high-speed trains are naturally the most expensive, but if you're in a hurry and don't like the idea of flying, they're a great alternative.

Speaking of flying, Europe has a number of discount carriers to choose from as well as some great websites to help you find cheap fares. Again, these will get you where you're going in most cases, but be sure to read the fine print. Unsuspecting travelers can incur fees for using credit cards to purchase flights, failing to check-in online, failing to check-in on time, checking bags, checking heavy bags, looking cross-eyed at the flight attendants or complaining about the fees while in an airline queue. It can be maddening and the misses and I have had a bad experience with one of the airlines in question whose name begins with an "R" and ends with a "Yanair."

Last but certainly not least, there are always buses, and I mean that quite literally. You can take buses on the city, county, provincial, regional and national levels. They're going to be slower, obviously, but if you're in no great hurry they can be a nice way to see some landscape at a slower pace. And buses go from just about everywhere to just about everywhere else, so if your destination is a little more out-of-the-way such as Los Barrios or Gibraltar, it's still not inaccessible.

I would be remiss at this point if I failed to mention that Barcelona has its own bus system, as do all of the major cities in Spain. If you are feeling adventurous and are not easily intimidated, the bus maybe the way for you to travel. There are myriad lines snaking across the city; almost no corner lies beyond the purview of the bus systems. These range from buses that have small circulations through a few neighborhoods to buses that travel to the furthest reaches of greater Barcelona. A good deal of redundancy is built into the network as well to prevent buses being overcrowded and keep wait times during peak travel hours to a minimum. The bus stops are also well-marked and most have maps to help you plot your travel. The network is extensive with well over one hundred different lines serving the city, so it is certainly possible to get "temporarily misplaced." But getting lost can sometimes be the best way to explore the city, so if you are possessed of an intrepid soul and perhaps a working knowledge of Spanish or Catalan, you may be richly rewarded for hopping onto the "wrong" bus and ending up in a wholly unintended but magnificent destination.

Marriage and Wine and a Bit of Personal History

Since it has been far too long since I posted a piece on here, I think I'll take this opportunity to do so. The biggest news by far is that Sarah and I have finally gotten married! This is excellent for a number of reasons. It finally draws to a close the arduous process that is marrying in Spain (I'll detail that in a later post), it allows me to get a visa as the spouse of a student (although I have to fly back to the United States to do so) and, of course, it means I am married to a wonderful girl with whom I get to share the rest of my life (if all goes to plan). And it only took four months of cajoling, wandering blind, weak and desperate from office to office and a near breakdown to do it! Piece of cake. I owe a great debt of gratitude to all of our new friends in Barcelona who helped make our wedding day so special and I shall one day recount the story of the happiest day of my life. Today is not that day.

A friend of mine on Facebook asked me a few days ago to detail the experience of moving overseas in my blog, which I naturally intend to do. I shall thus begin with this tidbit: I now appreciate wine. Being the prude that I was throughout my high school years, I didn't have my first taste of beer until the ripe old age of eighteen. It was not love at first sip and, despite my best efforts to hold my nose and imbibe to the point of inebriation, I could only stomach enough to get a bit of a buzz. Eventually, though, I overcame my initial misgivings and learned to love many different types of beer.

It wasn't until Sarah that I expanded my repertoire to liquor and even then I stuck primarily with fruity cocktails along the lines of Margaritas. The primary exception was Jameson; I turned my nose up at it when I first met my wife and now I love her almost as much for introducing the Irish whiskey to me as I do for anything else she's done for me. (Just kidding, Kiddo.) But I steadfastly refused to enjoy any decent wines.

Then I moved to Barcelona. You can visit and even live in Barcelona without enjoying wine, but it would be a little like going to Chicago and not eating one of their tomato-engorged pizzas. The world would be a lot less colorful for you, the air a little less fragrant, the people a little less Catalan. Your friends would have a little less respect for you if you came home without stories of wine-infused delights like sangria or tinto de verano. I would tell you what the latter is, but then you would have one more excuse for not coming here. You must experience this for yourself, basking on a warm late summer afternoon in square Gracia while on your way to Park Guell.

One of the beauties of wine in Barcelona is that even the cheap stuff is a pretty damn good value. Carrefour-brand wines can be had for under one euro, although you should probably part with at least a euro and a half and get something of a bit better quality. They get more expensive from there, but our tastes have been more than satisfied with wines less expensive than five euros. And while I don't have enough experience with wines in America to tell you with complete confidence that the wine here is better, I can say that it is cheaper and quite delicious and when you finally do cross the pond, you should be ready to experience your trip with a little shine from the glass of Rioja (that's a Spanish wine-making region) you took with your 2pm lunch.

Spain hasn't got the market cornered on delicious wines, though. On Sunday, Sarah and I decided to have a post-nuptial picnic on a grassy knoll in Park de la Ciutadella. As we sat and enjoyed the tap dancers and their accompaniment on the gazebo and watched the pigeons flock to the stone gryphons guarding the enormous, opulent fountain, we supped baguette, brie, salchichon and a French syrah from Chateau Valmy nearly as decadent as the golden chariot adorning the capital of the cascade. It was tres magnifique! And none of it would have been as splendorous without being willing to try wine in the first place. I owe my friend and former boss Bob a huge "Thank You" for turning Sarah and me on to such a delectable spirit.

I shall leave you with these parting words and a picture or two: travel with an open mind and don't forget your camera.