October 21, 1996

Today we crossed into Spain. Trucks, hundreds of them, greeted us across the border. Some were lined up in parking lots; some were in lines at restaurants; some were at gas pumps and some were just plain lined up. We passed them all. A bit further along, we passed even more. We had entered Spain on a secondary road that could rival any expressway for pavement quality and speed - and it was free. We had briefly considered hopping on the E15 when we were forced to inch through a small French border town, but there hadn't been a money exchange there so getting on a toll road would have meant the equivalent of washing the dishes to pay for the meal. I hate to think what that would be, perhaps it would mean the worst; sending us all the way back. 'Do not pass GO, until you pay $100'. But there was no need to consider any such fate, the road we were on was fine and we were happy.

So far driving in Europe has been - let's be honest - boring. Driving anywhere for three days non-stop is boring. Our only excitement has been our stops at a French Hyper Market for groceries and at two gas stations for road maps. Changing drivers has taken over as our entertainment. When "How ya doing John?" wanes from a "good" to a "fine" to a yawn-masked "ok", it's my turn to take over. We don't bother pulling into a rest stop or a service station any more. (We're too intent on getting this driving behind us and those stops would waste time). No one coming? We pull to the shoulder; I grab the headrests; I press my body into an arc between the seats; John swings his legs over the stick shift and slides into my seat; I do a double twisting mount and take the reins. Puts those old Chinese fire drills to shame.

Today was a short day as driving days go. 280 kilometers and only three hours brought us to Barcelona. We maneuvered through the city streets flawlessly (that's because I was driving - sorry John, but it's true). We needed a Morocco road map and a guide book and Barcelona was the place to get them....on any day of the week except Sunday. It never ceases to amaze us that we always pull into big cities on Sundays, great for traffic, lousy for everything else. So why not see some of Barcelona?

It's a beautiful city with a checkerboard pattern of downtown streets lined with shop after shop. But metal garage doors were pulled over most of them, so we headed for the Old City. Las Ramblas there is referred to as the street of a thousand faces. Sure enough the missing faces from the shopping blocks were there in the pedestrian median: moving, strolling, buying newspapers and watching statues. Normally statue-watching isn't one of my favorite pastimes, but wait! I think I saw one move. Ah! so that's it. If you wait long enough, one of them is bound to waver, blink, offer the slightest finger sag. There were human statues everywhere. There were colonial figures, men in armor, a Renaissance princess, a fortune teller, even a scarecrow (although I never once saw him move).

The Barcelona Cathedral never moved either and it too had statues of intricate spires reaching from it's top. The Old City streets which led to it and to other squares were different from the square blocks we'd seen earlier; these streets were narrow and winding, an invitation to get lost - which we did. Eventually we found tourist information and a good map to get us back to our van.

Barcelona evenings are for strolling too - at la playa (the beach). The beach area is so different from other areas we'd seen that we felt we might be in another city altogether. Modern creations of metal, depicting things known only to the artists who created them, towered between the two giant hotel and office complexes and down an avenue one whole side of which was taken over by the Olympic Villa Mall. "A mall? Let's see a movie." We did and later, back at the van, we pulled the curtains and slept in the parking lot overlooking the beach.

The next morning we were up before the sun (not hard to do when it doesn't rise before 8:00 am) navigating our way once again to the bookstore. By 10:30 we'd found our map, our guide book, some film and were working our way (traffic light after traffic light) out of Barcelona. Next stop, el puerto de Almeria. We have a boat to catch.