Continuation of our Travel Day to Barcelona………
With our luggage in tow, we headed out of Baggage Claim to find our shuttle bus into the city called Aerobus.
The YouTube movie I had watched about the route we needed to take to get to the shuttle bus stop was spot on, although it seemed much shorter in real life. We got to the shuttle bus stop and purchased our tickets for Euro 5.90 each. A few minutes later, the bus arrive and we boarded. It was nice that we did not have to wait until the shuttle was full, about three minutes after to got on, it departed for our 30 minute ride to our stop at Placa Catalunya. Face masks were mandatory on the shuttle bus.
We arrived at our stop, the third of the four on the bus route and got off the bus with our luggage in tow. I had directions written down on an index card, my normal method for having the directions handy for specific routes we need to take. It is easy to hold a single card and not be obvious that we are trying to find our way, making it easier to single us out as tourists. Of course, this time, with luggage, it is pretty obvious anyway. We had learned that the offline Google Maps is not always accurate, and sometimes has difficulty finding out where we are initially, especially after a long international flight. That had happened to us in Milan, Italy, the GPS on the phone was not ready when we needed it.
Our Room At The Hotel Jazz
It was only a few blocks walk to the Hotel Jazz, and we found it without difficulty. There was one couple ahead of us trying to check in and their room was not ready. so they had to put their luggage into a secured storage until they could check-in. We were anticipating the same since it was only around 11:30 AM, and official check-in time was at 3:00 PM. We were pleasantly surprised that our room was ready and we could check-in and get everything settled in, including ourselves.
Our room was on the sixth floor and was a superior King room. As is our tradition, we took pictures of the room before we unpacked and had everything cluttering up the room.
Our Room At The Hotel Jazz
We had learned on our Italy Trip in 2019, when we were also able to check in early after the long overnight flight, that it really helps to go ahead and take showers when we get into the room early. It is just refreshing after having been in the same clothes for the long day and night of flights. It certainly helped today also.
We got our valuables into the safe and transitioned to daytime travel with our backpacks. The first order of the day was to head to the Vodafone Store to get our prepaid SIM cards for our phones. The store was about a 10 minute walk away. The streets were really full of people and we discovered that tomorrow is a holiday, Constitution Day, which we will have to research and explain later.
View Of Barcelona From Our Large Opening Window
We arrived at the Vodafone store and put information into a small computerized machine about what we were there for, and took a numbered ticket to wait in what appeared to be a pretty long line of ticket holders ahead of us.
We waited for about 20 minutes and our number was called, of course in Spanish, so we did not readily recognize it. We were number C0008, not short enough for my limited Spanish understanding to hear and decipher.
A lady came to help us and we headed over to her small station. Unfortunately, she could not speak much English either, but understood what we were trying to purchase. We wanted the Euro 10.00 prepaid SIM card, but unfortunately, that was “sold out”, and she pointed to a small sign on her desk indicating which prepaid cards were available. For some reason, they did not even show the next higher priced card at Euro 15.00, which was shown on the Vodafone Web Site under their prepaid SIM card selections. The next price increment up was Euro 20.00 per card, so we really had no choice but to get those. These higher priced cards just included more data and minutes than we needed for our trip. Luckily, they should work in both Madeira and St. Martin since they are included in the European Union roaming.
It only took about 15 minutes for her to process the applications and install the cards, and almost that long for me to pay with the credit card. The machine wanted me to select either paying in Euros or US Dollars. We always pay in Euros, but the question it asked me was not straightforward, and then when I did get it right after two more attempts, it also asked for a confirmation of the currency selection, which was just not easy to understand. The questions were sort of a double negative and so trying to figure out the yes or no choices was just not straightforward, especially being tired. The lady in the Vodafone store probably thought I was an idiot after needing her to start completely over and input the credit card charge into the machine three times before I got it right.
With our new SIM Cards installed, and the Euro 40.00 payment finally processed, we headed over to a side desk to make sure we entered our new Spain cell phone numbers into our contacts to make it easier to call each other. Then we had to make sure we had turned the data back on, which we had shut off to avoid Verizon charges of $10.00 per day for use in Europe, which can happen automatically of it senses you are now roaming if the data is left on.
We got confirmation texts from Vodafone on our plan and data, a whopping 140 GB. It will be nice to be able to use data for navigation and other things while out and about in Barcelona, but we certainly won’t need that much! Sometimes the offline Google Maps just does not work as well as real time live map functionality.
We had thought that maybe we should have tried going to another cell company, Movistar or Orange, but after having had to wait in the Vodafone store, and with all of the people crowding the streets today, we decided it was not worth the trouble just to possibly save Euro 20.00 total. We thought that maybe the price and availability was somehow tied to the holiday, but who knows. The much larger Movistar store was right near the Vodafone store, we had seen it going to Vodafone, but now it did not matter.
Eating Early Dinner
By this time, we were a little hungry, not having had anything to eat since the breakfast sandwich on the plane earlier this morning. We knew where one of our favorite restaurants was on Las Ramblas, and headed that way. We ate here for Thanksgiving when we were in Barcelona in 2013. Once again, it did not disappoint.
Christmas Time in Barcelona!
We split a pizza with prosciutto, and and order of fried calamari. The calamari was some of the best we have ever had, lightly fried, tender with large rings of squid. The pizza was also good, and we enjoyed the food with a 1/2 liter of red wine. OK, we had another 1/2 liter after the first one and really enjoyed the food and getting to relax.
After we ate, we headed to the nearby grocery store for some supplies, a couple of bottles of wine for the room, facial tissues, a diet coke for Stephanie, breakfast items, and some bottled water. We took that all back to the room and rested, enjoying some of the water and wine.
Our New Christmas Tree
We wanted to wait until it got dark to go back out and see some of the Christmas decorations on the streets. We headed back out about 5:30 PM and first headed toward the church we will go to Mass for on The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which is Thursday, December 8. The church is only a couple of blocks away, and we wanted to confirm the Mass time, especially for the Vigil Mass the night before. We will either go to the Vigil Mass or to the morning mass the next day at 9:00 AM.
We discovered a Lidl Grocery store right across from the church and went inside to see if we could find any Christmas decorations for a bargain. We found a couple of items, but there were not really any bargains to be had. We are trying to find something small to take on the ship with us to decorate our room for the holiday.
We then headed in the general direction of Placa Catalunya and decided to go to the large department store there called El Corte Ingles. It is about 7 floors tall, plus a food area underneath. It is a really nice store, we had to purchase some items there when our luggage was delayed on our 2013 trip here. We headed up to the 6th floor and finally found the Christmas decorations. We finally decided on purchasing on a small artificial Christmas tree in a wicker basket, and also bought some AA Battery powered white LED lights, with colored jingle bells for ornaments built onto the string. We also purchased a coupe of other ornaments.
Christmas Lights In Barcelona
We went back outside and walked around enjoying the Christmas lights strung over the streets and on the stores. We just wandered around and took a bunch of photos of the lights. We were getting tired from the long day and lack of sleep from last night, so we headed back to the hotel. On the way up to the room we decided to go up to the roof top bar/pool area to look around before going to our room. It was closed for any bar service, but we had a good view of some of the decorated streets.
Christmas Lights In Barcelona
We headed back to the room, tired from the long day. We had already walked 16,000 steps according to Stephanie’s Samsung Watch. Unfortunately, it was only 7:00 PM, but seemed much, much later. We relaxed with some of our wine and drank a lot of our bottled water.
I worked on the blog for a bit, but was so tired, I was almost typing with my eyes closed. At about 9:00 PM, we were just too tired to stay up any longer. We normally want to try and get to 10-11 PM to help adjust to the time difference, but we were close enough.
We headed to bed to try and get a good night’s sleep.