{"id":38892,"date":"2023-04-27T18:04:42","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T23:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=38892"},"modified":"2023-04-27T22:33:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T03:33:45","slug":"barcelona-day-1-part-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=38892","title":{"rendered":"Barcelona Day 1 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Madrid Day 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s travel day. Leaving Madrid and headed to Barcelona via high speed train today. Pretty excited to see another city in Spain, Let’s go.<\/p>\n

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\nBut first, some photos from last night. RL laying in bed getting alone time watching a scary movie on her phone. I’m sitting in front of the computer getting my alone time blogging like a mad man.<\/p>\n

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\nWe set our alarm for 10am and by 11am it’s time to head to the train station. The station isn’t very far from our hotel, but just far enough that we didn’t want to walk with our packs if we didn’t have to. Our hotel did inform us that there’s yet another road closure today at 11:30am for something else. So we decided to get to the station a little earlier and just hang out there for a little bit. In other news, my sore throat and coughing has improved over night. No more fever as well it seems, so overall that’s good news. Let’s hope the improved outlook holds.<\/p>\n

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\nYet another beautiful sunny day here in Madrid. The weather could not have been better during our time here. Mid 70s during the day and low 50s at night.<\/p>\n

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\nCalling an Uber.<\/p>\n

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\nUber shows up in a timely manner this time.<\/p>\n

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\nIn about 5min we’ve arrived at the train station. They’ve already started blocking off the road here, but fortunately it was on the other direction so far.<\/p>\n

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\nThat glass cylinder is the memorial to the Madrid train station bombing in 2004.<\/p>\n

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\nFrom the outside, looks like a typical train station.<\/p>\n

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\nUntil you get inside…<\/p>\n

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\nBam! The old portion of the train station has been turned into a green house. So badass. Definitely one of the cooler train stations in existence.<\/p>\n

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\nMassive bird of paradise plant. Biggest one I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

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\nTime to head through a simple xray machine security and go the waiting area for our train at the newer part of the station.<\/p>\n

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\nOne last photo with this cool garden.<\/p>\n

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\nPast security, into the newer portion of the station…which ironically doesn’t seem nearly as appealing and has very few seats.<\/p>\n

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\nThere’s however a cafe and they do have seats here. Might as well grab a bite to eat before boarding.<\/p>\n

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\nNom nom nom.<\/p>\n

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\nnom<\/p>\n

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\nOK, time to board.<\/p>\n

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\nWill be visiting this at some point.<\/p>\n

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\nOf course, our car is one of the last ones on the platform.<\/p>\n

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\nNot like a Japanese train. Both of our seats had broken seat back recline levers, so as we sat down, it would start to slowly recline if we leaned back at all. Lame.<\/p>\n

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\nIt did however leave right on time though.<\/p>\n

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\nI would have never guessed this is what country side of Spain looks like outside Madrid. So arid and so Texas like.<\/p>\n

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\nLooks like West Texas close to New Mexico.<\/p>\n

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\nOlive groves?<\/p>\n

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\nRL got herself a screw driver. On this train ride, my tummy started cramping badly. All those days of drinking, not sleeping enough, being sick is finally wrecking my stomach. Well, it’s wrecking it more is a more accurate statement.<\/p>\n

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\nImodium to the rescue. I popped a few of those and halfway through the train ride, I felt good enough to say fuck it and get some wine. Maybe the wine will help my muscles relax and I’ll stop cramping as much.<\/p>\n

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\nMedicine.<\/p>\n

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\nThe catholic church dominates all towns and cities here.<\/p>\n

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\nTrain goes pretty fast, I think it gets up close to 200mph at times.<\/p>\n

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\nOutskirts of Barcelona.<\/p>\n

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\nTrain arrived 10min early and we got here in 3 hours flat. A nice pleasant train ride. Though, unlike a Japanese bullet train, this Spanish train was filled with people chattering the entire time. Not annoyingly so, but not library silent like a Japanese train.<\/p>\n

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\nDidn’t use the subway once in Madrid, but that’ll change here in Barcelona. Transfer from train to subway to head to our hotel.<\/p>\n

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\nApparently Banksy is now on the same level as Dali and Warhol…<\/p>\n

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\n6 stops later, we are here.<\/p>\n

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\nLa Rambla. Look at this amazing blue sky!! I feel like I’ve only seen skies this blue in Europe. It’s incredible. The weather here is also perfect, 50s to 60s.<\/p>\n

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\nJust look at that amazing sky!!!<\/p>\n

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\nDown this street off of La Rambla is our hotel. First impression is that Barcelona is grittier than Madrid. There are a lot more graffiti, trash on the streets, homeless people, urine and barf places, and a lot more international tourists and immigrants here.<\/p>\n

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\nWhere we’ll spend the next 4 days.<\/p>\n

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\nRL loves this photo because like an idiot, I made a funny face but didn’t know where to look in the mirror….at the camera…duh. Sigh.<\/p>\n

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\nOur room is on the top floor.<\/p>\n

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To be continued at Barcelona Day 1 Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Madrid Day 3. It’s travel day. Leaving Madrid and headed to Barcelona via high speed train today. Pretty excited to see another city in Spain, Let’s go. But first, some photos from last night. RL laying in bed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":38377,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-38892","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38892"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39808,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38892\/revisions\/39808"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}