Travels with The Rayman

A few disparate thoughts.  

                                                                           The picture I lead in with is Sardine Lake.

We took a drive up to Davis Lake which is 7 miles above Portola, CA.  It is like many CA lakes.  It is dammed.  A charming spot to cool off as the winds from the west blew across the cool waters of the lake.  We were in heaven.  It has been so hot on this trip.  Unseasonably, say the locals.

Anyway, when we arrived a Mexican man approached Rayman and asked for assistance with his tire.  Tire trouble.  Me, I have trouble being tired.  Not him.  He had tire trouble.  So, as Rayman assisted the fellow, Beau and I walked down to water’s edge and splashed around in the water.  Beau, still doesn’t know he can swim so his antics included racing into the water to about chest (his chest) high and then whipping around and running out at break neck speed.  A spectacle he made of himself.

Rayman eventually sauntered down to join us being careful not to get his feet wet.  Me, I was mid-calf and wanting to go further but then Beau wouldn’t be allowed to frolic, this much I feared.  So, I stayed in the water and Rayman on dry land.

We decided it was time to leave.  The coolness of the breeze made us momentarily forget the hot asphalt that wove around the RV park.  Little Bear RV park to be precise.  And with that lapse of memory, we headed back to the car.  That was when I smelled some meat barbecuing.  OMG.  The Mexican was there under the shade of a tree with his family barbecuing dinner.  It was about 5:30 p.m.  Being the shy and retiring person that am I, I exclaimed, “Oh, my.  Does that smell good!!  They acknowledged my compliment with a wave.  Rayman and I decided to sit by the edge of the lake at a picnic table to soak in the beauty and cool air not too far from the Mexican family.

That is when the husband/father that Rayman had assisted came up and offered us some carne asada tacos.

Now, who do you know that would render such an act of kindness?  He is there with his family.  His car is old and a bit in disrepair.  They are not a family of means.  Probably they are having a hard time making a go of it from the looks of things.  But he was so generous and kind.  It almost brought a tear to the eye.  We, of course, declined and thanked him profusely.

That was one of the better days of our trip.  It really doesn’t get much better than that.  People being kind to people.  And that’s why I’m a crazy, wild ass liberal.

But I digress.

So, we drove down from the lake and returned to the camp for our dinner.  And as we drank, we toasted to the great Mexican family by the lake.

That was a few days ago.  Now, we find ourselves at a campground at Eagle Lake, a lake that is so low of water that the east ramp is closed.  The fishing pier is sitting on cracked, dry river bottom dirt.  The town at the lake is a mess.  It is ladened with “For Sale” signs and most of the homes look like they are Camp Poodeys.   This place is in a world of hurt.  Lucky for us we are camped for two nights across the lake on the West Shore.  It is part of Lassen National Forest.  A lovely campground that is poorly attended.  It seems the lake is so low from this drought that the boats that get launched from the west side must also be hauled out at the end of the day.  So, people aren’t coming here this year.  Lucky for us.  Plenty of wide open space which is in sharp contrast to the Little Bear RV Resort where we were packed in like sardines.  And it is quiet.  Really, really quiet.  Great interlude before we meet up with our crazy bicycle friends in Ashland on the 20th.  For a week.  And yes, we are riding our bikes.  On paved streets.  Without freaking out.  A milestone.  Did a loop of about 5 miles many mornings.  The only problem I had was a steep part of the road, my chains came off the rails.  Another morning, I just couldn’t make it.  Actually, I never made it.  Shifting is apparently not my forte.  But I haven’t given up.  The picture below is taken looking out from our campsite.  Below that is a tree trunk.

But I digress.

What to do here at Eagle Lake?  Nothing.  We sat outside having our gin and tonic and watched the 2 blue jays, the woodpecker, and the chipmunks fighting for a place at the water spigot.  There is a water spigot right by our site.  And they are desperate for water.  Don’t they know a huge lake is just a few hundred feet from here?  Oh, well.  They seemed to get along.  And we thoroughly enjoyed taking the time to watch their shennanigans.  Beau liked it too.

Here I am in the resting mode.  My gin and tonic are out of the camera’s glare.

Tomorrow we leave Beaumeister in the air conditioned RV and head out early to Lassen Park to see sulphur pools and lava beds.  Yes.  We have electricity.  We are the only campers that do.  We booked the only full hook up the camp has.  It’s designated as a handicap spot.  Actually, we could have been bumped but, like I said, there are hardly any people here so no one bumped us.

One of the most interesting things we saw today was the Shoe Tree.  I posted it on Facebook.  What a scream.  Here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nsQ0mDlzM8

Oh, one other observation.  It is cloudy.  The thunder is rumbling.  No lightening.  But we sure had lightening, thunder, hale and rain yesterday in the Little Bear RV Resort.  That is because Rayman washed all the windows of the RV in preparation for our road trip today.  No good deed goes unpunished.  But he took it with grace and humility.  The bitch!!  (that’s an oft used line from Braking Bad.  Jesse uses it all the time when and when not appropriate.  Here I am doing the same!!)

Our friend, Margaret, sent an email inquiring about us.  It read, “Holy cow.  What do you do there?”.  She asked this question after discovering that we are growing moss by staying in the same campground for days on end (2 days short of a month).  By the way, the picture above are cows in Spain!!

That’s a valid question.  So many days, even more hours.  And here we are up in the Sierras, at about 4500 ft. where the air is dry and the temperatures have been hot, hot, hot.  Too hot to cook in The Dog House.  Boiling water heats up TDH.  So, what to do about that problem?  Cook outside!!  Barbecue.  We barbecued chicken.  We barbecued pork tenderloin.  We barbecued asparagus.  We barbecued lamb chops.  And I tossed Greek salad which was comprised of fresh tomatoes, fresh cucumbers, kalamata olives, feta cheese, red onion sliced thin and then soaked in ice water to tame the heat (of said onion). and sliced avocado.  All that dressed with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic aged vinegar.   Oh, and some dried oregano for good measure.  So, problem of heat in TDH solved.

Inquiring minds might want to know if TDH has air conditioning.  Yes, it does.  And we have used it every day since arriving.  When it finally starts cooling off (long after the sun goes down), we shut off the air conditioner, fling open the windows and sleep with the fresh mountain air permeating our home on wheels.

But I digress.  We have been doing a lot of nothing.  Nothing is new to us.  Usually, our days are filled with activities of all varieties.  In TDH things slow down considerably.  It’s a small space so RV cleaning doesn’t take a great deal of time.  We have no yards to tend.  Our yard consists of gravel.  We have a fire pit (read stones placed in a circle around a shallow hole) and we have a picnic table.  That’s the yard.  So not a lot to tend to that either.  This leaves us free to read, play computer games (that’s Rayman’s thing), blog, read, play Scrabble.  And get this.  No TV.  We have 2 TVs and they have not been on since we arrived.  TDH doesn’t have a satellite dish that works (we think), and so the TVs remain silent.  This is a bit of a revelation.  No talking heads.  This frees up our own heads.  Really, people, consider turning off your TV.  The silence is wonderful.  Occasionally we put on our iTunes and play songs on our Jawbone speaker that works off our bluetooth.  (Can you believe the name of our toys?  And all these toys require charging and charging requires cords.  We have a whole basket of cords.)  Music makes us feel good.  So, we spend a lot of time feeling good.

But I digress.

True confessions.  I am missing Breaking Bad.  That horrible show that we have watched thru the 3rd season (two to go).  I’m missing that.  But the news, no way.  Want news?  Read.  It’s all there on the internet.  So, we’re missing the horrors of the Israelis and the Palestinians (that’s new???), the Congress and Senate behaving badly toward the President (that’s not new either), the Supremes rendering bad decision after bad decision (the sheer number of 5/4 split decisions is new).  Ugh.  It is so depressing.  So, without the TV we are free to contemplate our state of affairs in silence.  I’ll tell you one thing.  Global warming is happening.  It is hotter than Hades up here.  Not a bit of snow to be seen on any peak.  And this has cooled our heels.  Most days we are hanging around TDH(during the heat of the day) just to stay cool.  The beach has turned us into weather wimps.

Speaking of Scrabble.  Rayman and I have a healthy competition going here.  It is amazing how many games end up just a point or two different (his score to mine or vice versa).  We have been having great fun playing Scrabble.  It can be very interesting but the other night I think I misspelled yodel but neither of us realized it until he tried to use the blank that I said was a U.  There is no U in yodel.  But by the time we figured it out, it was so late in the game we just ignored it and finished the game out.  Rayman spelled the F word the other night and then came back and added an -er to it.  I’ve spelled some interesting words too.  Sponge was one of my more exotic words.  Fun, fun, fun.

I’m reading a book about Lewis and Clark ahead of arrival in Oregon.  Fabulous book.  Lewis wrote journals and in those journals he also drew pictures of various plants and animals they encountered along the way.  He calculated their positions using scientific instruments, he kept all the men( with Clark’s help) in line.  He traded with the Indians (lots of different tribes).  He was the doctor administering mercury  to cure venereal disease which was rampant amongst the men.  Uhm.  They carved canoes, made moccasins, ate horses, dogs, elk, buffalo, beaver tail, very little vegetables and so suffered from scurvy.   I could go on and on and bore you to tears.  What they did was amazing.  Oh, and they let Sacagawea join the party because she was married to a french trader (beaver skin trader) who knew several Indian languages.  She was teenager and pregnant when she started her travels with them and gave birth during the journey.  It was a hard birth and they fed her rattlesnake rattles crushed and cooked and it caused the baby to be born soon after she drank it.  Lewis reported.  You decide.

Anyway…we also play golf here.  There are about 6 different courses here and we will play 5 of the 6 before we leave next Friday.  After we play, we eat lunch and then I go back to TDH and shower and nap.  Perfect.  Rayman plays on his computer.   Thing is, it is too hot to walk 18 holes when playing golf so we plan in the next few days to kayak and bike for some cardio exercise.   We do take turns walking every other hole usually.  Always trying to stay in shape.

Check the link below for pictures of one of the courses.

http://www.plumaspinesgolf.com/

We have met some new people that are all friends with our friends from Morro Bay that are here.  So, tomorrow night a potluck is planned,  And before dinner, some of us have been gathering (just this week) for cocktails before dinner sitting out in front of various RVs to visit and tell stories.  Sort of an adult version of “sharing”.  Remember when you came to school on Monday and the teacher had sharing?  We all got up and bored each other with our activities.  Much of it may have been made up, kids being kids.  Well, that is sort of like our cocktail hour, I figure!!  I’ll bet our teachers back then had a few snickers and raised eyebrows.  I remember the time that the parents were invited to hear our oral report about various countries of Latin America.  I did Peru and Bolivia.  Do you know that there are two lakes with “interesting” names.  Yes, Lake Titicaca and Lake Poopo (I pronounced it pooh pooh).  And I embarrassed the heck out of my grandmother and my mother when I got up in front of all these people and talked about those lakes.  Here is more info if you are so inclinced re: said lakes.

http://www.laketiticaca.org/

http://www.eosnap.com/tag/lake-poopo/

But I digress.

Did I mention today?  We played golf today, ran back to TDH, showered, changed and ran out the door to meet some friends for dinner at a place called Big Springs Garden near Sierra City.  Here’s some pictures.  It was a wonderful evening with a trio playing music and us eating, drinking and snapping our cameras.  A good time was had by all.

What happened to Beau?  Don’t cry for him Argentina.  The same people (pictured above) we supped with stopped by TDH this a.m and took Beau with them so Beau could play with their Labradoodle puppy.  And we have hired a wonderful young girl who is here with her family to feed and walk and play with Beau when we are out golfing.  $10 a day.  A good deal for her and us.  Beau, otherwise, is having a great time in TDH.  He has adjusted beautifully to this nomadic life.  He is sleeping beside me as I type this tome.

Well, it it after 10 and it has been a very long day.  Lights out.  I shall dream about doing nothing much tomorrow.  A winning plan.

RVs are not without their problems.  And ours is no exception.  In fact, being that we bought a 10 year old “rig”, we anticipated that we would have problems and that is why we bought an expensive insurance policy that will cover most problems.  And it is with a great deal of consternation that I am now announcing that we are going to start getting our money’s worth out of said policy.

There is a paradox in life, isn’t there.  On the one hand, you don’t want to have to use an insurance policy.  You certainly hate paying for insurance.  I am speaking for myself but I don’t think I”m without company on this matter.  In fact, if you take the time to add up everything you spend on all your insurances, you might be shocked and dismayed.  Seems like a huge rip-off until you need it.

But I digress.

To continue, our RV is outfitted with hydraulic levelers that you need to use (unless, of course, you like running to the front or back of the RV because gravity takes you there).  Cupboards also swing open with great gusto if you aren’t level.  The possibilities are almost limitless.  We need those levelers to work.  And ours started acting out.  The back ones in particular started sticking and refusing to retract.  And you cannot move with your levelers down, even partially because the control system goes into high alert and starts howling at you…think smoke detector.

I would also like to point out a certain irony.  RV parks are often located in out of the way places like where we are now.  And all RV stores and services are located in big cities.  Hummmmmm.  Problem.  I guess  the idea is that you get your RV fixed in the city before you go to the out of the way place.  But life just doesn’t happen like that.  Stuff goes bad when you’re using it.  Not when it is sitting in the RV storage unit.  And so what to do?

We asked at the front desk of our RV resort and discovered that there lives a man that makes “RV calls”.  He lives in Reno.  Reno is 60 miles away.  $80 for him to come here plus $75/hour for labor.  So, I called him because we were in a pickle.  He couldn’t come for 2 days and we had to move sites.  Discussion ensued with the Rayman.  We finally got the levelers up but then they wouldn’t go down.  That being the case, we decided to take the RV to Reno.  Well, RV places in Reno is an investment worth looking into because, gosh, they sure are busy.  After calling three places and being told it would be anywhere from from 2 days to 2 weeks before they could help us…we found a place that said, “Sure.  Bring her on in and we’ll take a look at it.”  So off we went.

Arriving at the place after only taking a few wrong turns, the man, Henry (I’ve changed him name to protect the innocent), that talked with us was very soft spoken with many tattoos.  And he looked like a cross between ZZ Top and Bergdahl’s dad when considering his facial hair.  But here is the thing.  I have never seen dirtier hands on any set of arms in my life.  Did he get that dirty that day?  or was this dirt a lifetime in the making?  They looked stained by dirt?  And what was really curious to me was that when he filled out a work order, the paper didn’t get dirty.  No smudges anywhere.  How could that be?  I was fascinated.

He diagnosed a faulty contol pad after he flopped down on the cement floor and “felt up the legs” of the leveling jacks and pronounced them dry as a bone.  “Don’t you grease these?”, he asked.   Rayman said, “Well, no.”  Didn’t know I had to.”  We are after all newbies in this RV thing.  Big faux paus.  So, he greased the doomaflachies and then he boarded the RV to operate the lifts.  They worked but a bit haphazardly and that is when he concluded the control pad was the main problem here.  So we headed into the “office” and that is where we saw this short, gold bedecked, salt and pepper headed man standing by the door.   He looked like somebody out of Jersey (he did have that accent so I’m not making stuff up here) that belonged to that a close knit family (read the mob).  He took charge.  He told Henry, the man with the dirty hands, exactly what to do in no uncertain terms.   Then he left.  I asked who he was.  He was the owner.  Rayman figures the RV repair business is a money laundering operation.  A front.  And now that I think about it, the other two mechanics there both had copias amounts of facial hair and tattoos too.  Perhaps they were hired by the owner and directly from a prisoner release program?   Just saying.

Anyway, Henry the mechanic, said he would call the insurance company and get the authorization to repair the RV then he would order the part then he would wait for the part to arrive and then he would tell us when to come back so that the jack’s control panel could be repaired.  When we left, we agreed that 1.  the jacks were working better in the manual mode.  2.  we needed to pray they would continue to work in the manual mode because I have no earthly idea how we will we go about getting this repair made if they don’t work again  3.  your guess is as good as ours as to whether the Reno outfit will come through with everything before we head to Oregon.

And that is why it is a problem that all the repair shops are in the cities.

That’s what cooking in an RV is like.  And that’s what I’ve been doing this a.m. while Rayman is away in Tahoe Donner playing one of the prettiest golf courses known to man (in this neck of the woods).  Coyote Moon.  Don’t you just love that name for a golf course?  Think of the logo possibilities, for heaven’s sake.  A coyote howling at the moon, anyone?  Coyote jumping over the moon?  Maybe not.   Dancing around a moon?  That might work.

But I digress.

Today I’m making black bean chili and this requires a shout-out to Margaret Fox who owned the restaurant in Mendocino, Cafe Beaujolais   http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/27/food/fo-fox2/ for more info.  Anyway, I bought her cookbook years ago.  It has been reduced to frayed pages, juiced-spotted pages, a paperback without the back, essentially.  They just don’t bind books the way they used to.  This cookbook has been falling apart for years.  I am guessing it is about 40 years old.  Maybe 30.  Who’s counting?

There I go again.  This recipe is fabulous.  There is no meat in it.  None.  Zip.  Yet, it tastes like it does in a way.  That’s because of the black beans.  I bought organic black beans from a food co-op in a town up the road.  Portola is the town and it is inhabited by 2500 people and they have a co-op which I find amazing.  However, there must not be many Mexicans around because these beans have been cooking for quite a long time and they aren’t completely soft…and, yes, I soaked them all night.  I would guess they have been in the bin quite a long time.  But be that as it may (BTAIM), the dish is worth waiting for.  Served with shredded cheese, fresh green onions, cilantro and sour cream…yummy.

You are probably wondering if I have that cookbook with me.  Well, no I don’t.  But I do have the computer and googled the recipe and now it is time to give a shout-out to Russ Parsons of the L.A. Times food section for publishing the recipe in the newspaper.  So, there you have it.

Now about this pin stuff.  In order to chop, chop, chop the onions, the garlic, the bell pepper, the jalapeños, one must use a cutting board and in order to use a cutting board, one must make space in the kitchen to lay the thing down and this requires that I cover up half my sink to make room.  And I must neat and tidy or the place will end up looking like Camp Poody.   Ah, another skill set being developed here.  At home I just fling things around with free abandon.  And at home I have oodles of space.

The other thing is this.  There is limited storage space and so I have already run out of Hungarian paprika (the red can), cumin seeds, cayenne and olive oil (not EVOO).  Oh, and I’m dangerously low on peppercorns.  Good thing Rayman is in Truckee.  I’ve already sent him a list of necessities including rum for mojitos.  Found a “muddler” at a local little gift store and made it a gift to myself and I’m dying to try it.  Yikes.  I need to add mint to the list of groceries.  Also, the refrigerator is quite small and while at Costco, I espied a bag of limes and it was such a good buy (read going broke saving money) that I bought it and it takes up approximately half the refrigerator.  Perhaps a slight exaggeration.  But it does take up one whole drawer.  Mojitos anyone?  Come on by and I’ll fix you up!!

Hi dearie,  Along with all the other groceries I need, add fresh mint to the list.  For the mojitos, a good cause if there ever was one.  Hope you are making some birdies.  (kiss up, kiss up).  That’s how I’ll compose my email to him without the kiss up part.

I just hope I don’t run out of propane before these darn beans are cooked.  That’s the other thing about RVs.  You have what I refer to as a “heightened awareness” of all things utilitarian.  Like propane, water, gray sewage etc.  Never give that stuff a second thought at home unless PG&E turns off the juice.  And if that happens it is a great excuse to go out to dinner.  Here, I am stuck.  No car.  And I certainly don’t want to drive to restaurant in the RV.  That would require messing around the sewer hookup.  Nah.  Not doing that!!  And anyway, it might look a bit weird to pull up to a restaurant in a 33-foot behemoth for a plate of spaghetti.  Just saying.  I am, however, very glad I know how to drive the thing.  If I needed to go somewhere I could.

I’m giving the beans 5 more minutes.  They are finally getting soft.

Well, I waited for 5 minutes and they still are al dente.  Drats.

So, while I am composing this blog, I am hearing a bit of racket outside.  I looked out the door and this is what I saw.  This park needs more trash bins.  Last night when I went to dump my garbage (did I mention that our garage can is about 5 gallons?), I couldn’t get it open.  Turns out they lock them up because of bears.  So, while I was struggling with trying to get one of them open, a man and woman sauntered by with an empty pizza box (I guess empty based on their sizes).  I enlisted their help.  They were forthcoming.  The bins were completely full.  Now, this morning they are bulging and hence, the owner of the park, is now jumping up and down on them.

The beans needed more water.  Need I say more?

The thing is, this park is full of RVs and short on people.  Many sites have RVs hooked up and locked up.  No one is home.  The people to our right haven’t been here since we arrived.  The people on our left, well, left.  That was after we introduced ourselves and discovered in about 1 minute of conversation that they had spent the afternoon “in that brewery up at the end of dirt road nearby”.  And then she proceeded to praise Cliven Bundy, the crazy rancher near Mesquite, NV because “enough is enough”.  And he pointed to his beer, a Negra Modela, and said he was drinking the Negra in honor of our President, wink wink.  I said, “Ouch.”  Then as she went on about Cliven’s point of view and how she thought he was right, I interjected, “Well.  Here’s the thing.  I love Obama.  So let’s just agree to disagree.  We don’t need to talk politics.”  And he said, “Or religion.”  And while having a discussion sans politics, we discover that he is a retired truck driver and doesn’t have to pay for health care because he gets it through his union (but his union is not like those rotten unions back east) and she hates Obamacare and she retired from a school district  ((lordy, I hope she wasn’t a teacher)).  And that was that.  Except  did I mention that he sat there all afternoon outside the RV drinking beer and smoking cigars and playing his playlist on their outdoor speakers?  So, after dinner while the Rayman and I were engrossed in a challenging game of Scrabble while listening to Roy Orbison croon from the speaker next door (actually his playlist isn’t bad), we kept hearing him tell her to “shut up and sit down” and “we’ll discuss it in the morning” and “you are drinking too much, sit down”, and “don’t drink so much”,  and “I’m not picking you up off the floor again”.   OMG.  So, the next morning, the poor guy slinked out of here with his wife and we haven’t seen them since.  He knows we have to move spots on Thursday and my money is on them not returning until the next people move in.  Just saying.

So, the beans are done, we still have  propane,  and I’m going to sign off for now.  It’s time to read by book about Lewis and Clark(e)?  Want to get it done before we hit Oregon on July 20.

Good day.

You can tell we’re winding down.  My blogs are short and sweet.  Today we drove to our next parador.  We are in love with paradors.  This one sits on a hill.  Cardona is the city is which it is located.  You can see far and wide.  It was a military installation that was begun in the 10th century.   iI’s architecture is a direct result of wars.  It is an ancient fortress that had been built to be a small city fortress.  Charlemagne stopped the Muslims here in the 6th century.  Quite unbelievable if you think at all about it.  Catalanyan lords lived in the castle through the middle ages and renaissance.  They were considered to be kings without titles because the fortress was completely impregnable and siege proof because of underground wells that couldn’t be contaminated.  And now it is a hotel.  Actually, it has been hotel since 1979.  The army used it as a depot after Franco went to meet his maker.  Finally, the government designated it a national monument and a tourist hotel.  And here we are installed on the top floor, right above the bar!!  A view from our room.

It is fabulous.  Of course it was also used as a church at certain points in time and Rayman found out that St. Ramon was the first patron saint of the place.  St. Ramon is reported to have been born caesarian and his mother died but he lived.  And so he went on to help women give birth to healthy babies.  I don’t think I am exaggerating here to say that his chest is puffed out a bit!!

Great way to spend our last “in the countryside” adventure of this trip.

We only got lost once while driving.  This may be an official record.

After driving for several hours we stopped at a “cafeteria” associated with a gas station and ordered coffee drinks, one fresh squeezed glass of OJ, and a croissant.  (spanish croissants don’t even come close, sorry, dear Allan).  As we’re sitting there an odor take over.  I said, “I must have stepped in something.”  Rayman added, “It smells like the toilet overflowed.”  “Let’s take our stuff outside.”  And we did.  Only to discover a truck of pigs parked right next to the cafeteria.  I made a video of the poor pigs.  More pigs in Spain.  This time a really bummer.

So, it’s time for wine.  Time to reflect and wait for dinner which doesn’t start seating until 8:15.  Ah, viva la Spain.

Driving to Barcelona, we spotted these.  Montserrat.

So, the last two days we’ve spent a bit of time being lost.  And we are starting to conclude that all further travel outside the U.S., Canada or Mexico must be done with a chaperon.  We need help, people.

It takes a tremendous amount of energy to do this travel stuff.  Couple that with language differences and by the end of the day you end up pretty well feeling like you just went through the wringer.  Twice,  Thrice.  Quatro times.  Our traveling companion ( for the week near Durango) Allan has a map for a brain.  Gifted with a keen sense of direction, he was amazing.  But…Rayman and the traveling princess are not blessed in that department.  And presented with two ways to go, we pretty much will pick the opposite of each other’s every time.

But I digress.

Last night we braved driving into to Barcelona to meet Ali, my cousin’s daughter, and her beau for dinner.  A tapas dinner.  OMG.  We narrowly escaped with our lives.  At one point I wanted to get out of the car to see if anyone had painted a bull’s eye on it when we weren’t looking.  One driver barreled across a roundabout and as you can tell by the name of the circle (roundabout), it means you go around it.  Not through it.  Multiple crashes almost materialized with not only our car but two others.  And then there was a motorcyclist who ran a red light.  Luckily I was asleep at the wheel.  Had I not been slow to cross the intersection, the motorcyclist would have been dangling from a tree.

Now this is interesting.  They just announced (I’m at the El Prat aeropuerto waiting to board our plane) that we should watch our screen for boarding instructions as they do not announce instructions.  Now that is a new one.  And I like it because it is relatively quiet for an airport.

That was a giant digression.

So, there we were, back in Barcelona, the city of the robbery.  We have resolved not to speak of THAT unpleasantness again.  But Barcelona has a variety of ways to fleece the tourist.  Firstly, the airport is a long way from the city.  So, if you take a taxi, it is 35 euros.  We stayed all night last night in a hotel that was about half way between the city and the airport.  We asked the lady at the check in desk at the hotel how much it would be to take a cab to the city.  30 euros.  Well, we had our zoom-zoom car.  How much would it be to park it?  18 euros.  Upon receiving that information, we decided to keep the car.  The hotel did not have a shuttle to the airport.  You could walk a couple of blocks and catch a local bus and the local bus would be 4 euro each to the airport.  But our flight was at the crack of dawn and we were not feeling safe about walking with our luggage to the bus stop to wait in the dark.

With the decision to keep the car, that meant we had to drive in.  Driving in Barcelona is difficult.  Everyone knows where they are going…except us.  Glenda was, of course, totally useless.  And anyway, we forgot to bring her.  And I left all the directions which I had written down based on an email from Ali.  That’s because the Rayman and I had a “disagreement” which I will tactfully leave unexplained.  Even with all that, we only got mildly lost.  There are degrees of lostness.

1.  Mildly  2. Hopelessly 3. “We never got there” lost.

So we parked the car in a garage that ultimately cost 18 euro.  Price fixing at it’s finest.  And it’s not cheap given the exchange rate.
So, no more travel to Europe until and unless the dollar gets stronger.   We just felt used and abused.  Although, I guess money was saved by not doing the taxi to and fro.  But still.

Dinner was delightful.  The kids were great.  We had a great time.  I did not drink but one glass of wine since driving sober was a nightmare.  What would it be like a little tipsy?   As you can see from this text, we made it back to the hotel.

An aside.  Ali took us to the mall in the center of Barcelona that used to be a bull ring.  Beautiful building.  But when the Barcelonians decided to ban bullfighting the ring became a shopping center.  Here’s some pictures.   Top picture is the Rayman enjoying a tidbit in a beer bar in Barcelona.  The next two pictures are the bullring inside and out.

Now I must back up and say that the night before Barcelona, we had a completely different experience in the small town of Cardona, about an hour northwest of Barcelona.  We stayed in another parador that sat atop a tall hill.  Here are some pictures of the view and the place.

The most fabulous dining room ever.

Inside the fortress looking up from the registration desk.

Cheese tasting with a chart and explanation. Very clever.

I told you about it in the previous post.  Neither one of us had ever slept in such an old building.  After dinner we took a stroll as I wanted to photograph the outside of it with the uplighting.  This is when we heard the beautiful music.  There was a choir singing behind one of the doors.  We don’t know why they were doing this, but it was beautiful and so befitting the setting.  The next morning we saw them all at breakfast.  With their instruments.

Armed with our instruments of mass confusion, Glenda and the maps, we jumped on the road and headed toward Barcelona.  We managed to get there with only two bad turns but we recovered quickly.  Not nearly as quickly as last night when we left the restaurant and headed back to our hotel.  It was dark, we were tired.  And we were hopelessly lost.  Rayman resorted to the iPhone to help us find our way out of the Port of Barcelona, past the train station that had no trains?, to a dead end road.  Oh, and down a one-way street the wrong way.  Before returning to the hotel, we also managed to have a tour of the zona commerciale, a drive by of a shuttered sports arena and the UPS regional distribution center.  It was about 11 p.m.  We returned to the world’s narrowest car park.  Our zoom-zoom barely fit inside the drive down to the bowels of the building, the underground car park.  And this driveway was 1.  steep.  2.  involved 3 sharp turns  3.  narrow as hell.  But because we had done it earlier in the day, it was easier.  That’s because when we were leaving the garage to do a dry run to the airport earlier in the afternoon, we started out only to be met by a small van coming in.  That’s right.  The going out and the coming in utilized the same driveway.  And given that there were only two cars down there to begin with, what were the chances we would be met by an oncoming car?   And the other thing was that the garage was guarded by a big swinging gate.  You had to be buzzed in.  And, as it turns out, you also needed to be buzzed out.  And the buzz box was mounted on the wall before the last turn.  We missed it.  So, Rayman got out and looked for it, pressed it, got buzzed, raced back to the zoom-zoom car, jumped in and I tried to get up the steep ramp past the gate… in reverse.  Well, that didn’t work.  So, there I am with the hand break on to keep us from rolling backward into the wall while I am simultaneously revving the engine, engaging the clutch and eventually lerching out of the hole in the ground to the street.  It wasn’t pretty.