The Barcelona blues

I awoke to the strange sounds of the room phone ringing. Groggily, I answer and hear "This is your wake up call!" Then I remember. It all comes back to me. I have no alarm. I have no camera. I have no phone. The night befores events come flooding back in. After a quick shower and some grub, I start out on my journey to find Apple. Mind you, I couldn't Google directions, no phone and all, so I had to do it the old fashioned way... A map. Needless to say, I got super lost (no surprise there). Finally I arrive. At this point, I'm actually thinking that everything will be ok. That this was just some sort of test and I had proven myself worthy and would be handsomely rewarded with a fixed phone. Oh sweet, dumb Pam. I was way off. The phone was done. Finito. Dead. There was no way they could fix it. They couldn't even swap it for a new one because they didn't have any American phones in stock.  I burst into tears in the middle of the store.

**Side note**

I put on a brave front when I travel alone. The truth is, I'm scared. It's scary to be away from home with strangers. Even though I have this great group of people with me that is in a sense, my new family for a few weeks, it still gets lonely. I rely on my phone because it is the only way I feel like my real family and friends are with me. It's like a security blanket. I know that when I'm feeling down, I can reach out to someone or even check Facebook to see what's up. At that moment, without my phone, I had never felt more alone in my entire life.

 

When I calmed down and wiped the tears and boogers off my face, I crossed the street and entered El Cort Ingles (like a Macy's). Not to be without pictures on this amazing trip, I needed to buy a camera. I purchased a hot pink Coolpix and felt a little better. I also realized that I had no way of telling time. Since I'm not super good at using the location of the sun as a timepiece, I picked up a cheap sparkly watch at Claire's. Excited to set up my camera, I headed back to the room. What a disappointment that darn coolpix was (or at least I thought). I felt pretty glum as I took pictures and deleted them, not feeling too pleased with the results. Determined to not let this setback keep me down I headed back to the fountain, the scene of the crime, to enjoy the sunshine, people watch and journal. As I wrote the bit about feeling lonely, I got teary eyed. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that at that moment I looked up and there were my pals Karen and John, who had just been talking about me! Everything happens for a reason, I'm telling you! We chatted for a bit then parted ways. Back in the room, I decided to have a siesta when two others from the tour (Shelley and Brenda) rang my room phone and invited me to join them for lunch. We had a blast! A pitcher of cava sangria with tapa after tapa, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Brenda and I grabbed a glass of cava while we waited for a shop to open. At 5, we headed to a small meat market (she and Shelley had been the day prior) they remembered her so treated her like family, and by association, me too!  We tasted many different cheeses, meats, and crackers. He even poured wine, literally, down our throats. "Abre la boca" 

Since we were pretty much family at that point, it was time to make it official. We headed into the back room. With meat hanging from the ceiling, the meat man in his best English and Brenda, in her best Spanish conversed. It was awesome, weirdly awesome. Such a random experience and one of the reasons I love traveling. Later that night, I joined Jeremy and Christine in the lobby for some wine and chit chat. So much fun. Great conversation with great company. What started out as a crap day, really turned out to be quite wonderful. But after all was said and done, I was ready to say "adios" to Spain and "bonjour" to France.