The rain in Spain…
Monday, May 12th, 2008…falls mainly on Barcelona it seems.
Two months ago, I organised a surprise weekend away with my wife for her birthday. I chose Barcelona because I figured that you could fairly much guarantee sunshine in mid-May. Or so I thought. You would not believe the planning that went into it - I shipped the kids off for the weekend, even engineering an “unexpected family event” to get the kids out of school for the Friday (hey parents, don’t you ever try this, it could have lasting detrimental effects on your child’s well-being. Maybe).
We flew off on Friday afternoon in glorious sunshine. We were a little surprised when the pilot announced that the weather was “not so good on the ground, with a light drizzle and temperatures of 16°C”. When we got off the plane, we were greated with driving rain and were soaked before we even got into the airport terminal…
…and so it continued…for 2 days…non-stop. I have never been so wet in my life. You couldn’t even marvel at the unfinished Gaudi-inspired cathedral because you couldn’t see the top, whether it be for the rain or the unbroken sea of umbrellas.
To top it all, we were in a bit of a rush to get back to the airport for the flight back, so asked the helpful staff at the train station which platform we needed to go to. Without hesitation he said “9″. In fact he was totally correct. We arrived at the platform and jumped on the train as the doors were closing. As we made our way to the airport, we recognised all the landmarks that we had seen on the way in - a piece of graffiti here, a discarded shopping trolley there. However, just as quickly as the airport loomed into view, it loomed out of it again as the train continued. And continued. In fact, it continued for another 40 minutes. In fact, we didn’t check that there were two different trains alternating from platform 9. Guess what - we chose the wrong one. The upside is that we got to see some nice bits of Spanish coastline as we headed down towards Portugal!
When it finally stopped, we managed to get back onto a train heading back to Barcelona straight-away and somehow back to the airport with minutes to spare, only to be confronted by a massive queue to get through airport security. Having none of that, my wife cut through the crowd, heading straight for the front, with me in tow, timidly apologising and humphing along the lines of “what can you do? She’s French and hasn’t grasped the concept of queuing”.
When I was 23, I headed off round the world on my own with a rucksack for company. I think that person is long gone.
