Thursday, April 18, 2019
After many days, which have included several days at sea and a tour of Napoli, I need a place with a cold beer and a good Internet connection. Hopefully, I can find that in Barcelona. I have no tours planned.
Where am I?
The map above shows where we’re parked, and where I spent most of my day, at Flaherty’s Irish Pub. What better way to enjoy Barcelona but in an Irish pub? Read on for all the details!
What did I see, first thing this morning?
It’s always fun to wake up in the morning and step outside to see what was not there the night before. This morning, a fort guards the harbor.
What’s been happening?
Sometimes, I’ve found, I just need to walk off of the ship and pursue my own agenda. Sometimes I want to see something spectacular. Sometimes I just want a quiet moment with some quality wi-fi access. And, sometimes, I just need a good, local beer. Barcelona was one of the places on this cruise where I was not seeking something spectacular. I just wanted a little quiet, some speedy contact with the rest of the world, and a cold, refreshing barley soda.
I can often find a “special” place with the help of a few apps on my iPhone. I’ve found that these apps can be a traveler’s best friends. They are:
- Untapped – this is an app that will show me where I can find good places for local craft beer.
- Wifi Map – this app shows me local wi-fi locations as reported by other individuals. It isn’t always accurate and isn’t always up to date but with judicious use, it’s a helpful tool.
- Maps – this app shows a map of an area and provides walking, driving, or public transportation access to and from almost any location.
So, if Untapped tells me where to find beer, and Wifi Map tells me where to find wi-fi and I can find a place that has both, then I’m good to use Maps to figure out the best way to get there!
Today, these tools converged on Flahery’s Irish Pub. A food-serving, beer-pouring, wirelessly-enhanced establishment in downtown Barcelona.
A shuttle service was provided to take us from the ship to the World Trade Center which is a business park located very close to the Columbus Monument, in the harbor area of downtown Barcelona. Please see the map, above. After breakfast, I took that shuttle downtown.
When the shuttle bus dropped me off I was immediately consumed by the hustle and bustle of a major European city. Barcelona’s downtown area is a dizzying mix of modern and old, of stationary and mobile and, as it turns out, of Spanish and Catalán.
One of the reasons I was anxious to get to look around Barcelona was that it is in Spain. After spending weeks in Indonesia, India, the Arab world, and then Italy, I was anxious to visit a place where I could actually read the signs (streets signs, store signs, the advertising signs on the sides of buses) and feel like I was getting closer to home. I read Spanish just fine and sometimes even feel like I have some advantage over fellow travelers because of it. So, I was anxious to walk around in this Spanish city and read all about it.
I was disappointed by my own expectations. Although Barcelona is in Spain and even though Spanish can be spoken here, much (perhaps even most) of the printed matter I saw when I looked around was in Catalán. It was also the language I heard most people speaking as they walked past me on the crowded streets. Couldn’t understand 80 percent of it.
Oh, well. No biggie.
The harbor area of Barcelona is that part of the city that immediately surrounds the Columbus Monument, seen here.
The Columbus Monument was constructed in 1888 to commemorate the return of Columbus from the New World. When he returned, Columbus reported to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella here in Barcelona. The monument is almost 200 feet tall and can be seen from all over the harbor area. Since I was on foot I found it to be a great landmark to use for navigating the streets that seem to meander off in every direction.
The harbor is surrounded by things that are thoroughly modern, as well as quite antique. For example here is a “recently” constructed shopping center, beautifully positioned to offer panoramic views of the harbor and the historic downtown.
Then, turn 180-degrees around and you are facing the old Aduana or Customs House building.
The Customs House is where duties were to be paid, usually on imported goods. The goods, when brought into Barcelona, might be stored in the port warehouse for inventory or temporary storage until they could be delivered elsewhere. Here is that port warehouse, currently undergoing some restoration. I do not know what the City of Barcelona plans to do with it.
Between the Columbus Monument and Flaherty’s Irish pub is one of the main streets in Barcelona, La Rambla. La Rambla has traffic lanes in both directions that are widely separated with a pedestrian-only promenade between them. The promenade is so wide that vendors and restaurants have been set up there while still allowing plenty of room for all of the pedestrian traffic.
A couple of restaurants on La Rambla 
Restaurants to the left, vendors to the right
After a short but extremely pleasant walk, I turned off of La Rambla and went down a small pedestrian alleyway into an open-air mini-plaza (or plaça as the Catalán sign read) and found Flaherty’s! It was about 12:00 noon, so I wondered how easy it was going to be to get a table alone where I could spread out all of my electronics and start soaking up wickedly fast wi-fi that I hoped would be permeating the air.
I stepped inside and found very few people in there. As it turns out, lunch is not eaten at noon in Barcelona. Instead, there’s a “siesta” environment where shops and services close down at about 1pm and then reopen around 3:30 or 4pm. During the time between those hours, people might go out in search of lunch.
So, getting a table at noon was no problem at all. I found one to my liking and started to log into the wi-fi with my two iPhones, my iPad, and my MacBook Pro. Did I mention that I had a pent up need for access to wi-fi?
I had what I would consider to be a longer-than-average wait before a waitress came up to my table to take my order. I was relieved to discover that I did not need to understand Catalán to order a beer. Her English was perfect! I started with a small glass of a local IPA which was not bad at all. But, for my second glass I found myself indulging in something considerably more familiar.
I worked on this blog, performed 278 app updates, and downloaded two episodes of The Orville over the course of the next four (or so) hours. I found it very noticeable that the speed of the Internet connection diminished as more people came in for lunch, then improved again just before I had to return to the ship. Still, aboard ship it would have taken me 3-4 weeks to accomplish the same thing owing to the wi-fi problems there.
I kept delaying my departure from Flaherty’s for as long as I dared. Once I decided that I couldn’t safely stay in the pub any longer (for risk of finding the Amsterdam rapidly disappearing over the horizon) I took the same path back to the shuttle as I had used to get to the pub, only in reverse. I am sometimes amazed at how different the same route can look when you take it in the reverse direction! How I failed to notice these water taxis at the edge of the harbor just a few hours before, I’ll never know!
A short shuttle ride later I was back at the Amsterdam which, I was relieved to find, was still waiting for me.
With photos uploaded, apps updated, beer ingested, and signage untranslated, I had reached the end of my day. No, I didn’t travel far and I didn’t see anything earthshakingly amazing, but I felt as though I had truly enjoyed a little taste of Barcelona. I only saw a small corner of the town, but that corner was filled with sights, smells, and sounds that represented not only the modern and thriving Barcelona, but also some of its history and certainly some of its culture.
Like every port one visits on a cruise, there is only so much that can be seen; one can’t see it all in a single visit. Something must be saved for later. And, the thrill of thinking about when that future visit might occur is the very foundation of the same wanderlust that brought me here in the first place. So much to see and so much to do.
I hope to return. Soon.
So, what’s coming up?
Another day at sea, during which time I’ll enter the Atlantic Ocean!
G’night!
