We left home around 7 PM Thursday, to allow plenty of time to make our 11 PM red-eye to Lisbon, where we would connect to Barcelona. This is the same schedule we had for the Azores trip about a month ago, and it worked well.
This overnight flight went much better than the previous one, however; the plane was more comfortable, and much quieter, and also there wasn't some guy giving us back massages with his knees for the entire night, which was helpful.
We flew TAP Air Portugal and were surprised that they also woke us up at 12:30 AM (Newark time) for dinner (chicken or ravioli). And then they woke us up again at 4:30 AM (Newark time) for breakfast (a tiny ham-and-cheese sandwich, and a crunchy granola bar).
Lisbon is 5 hours ahead of Newark, and it was about a 6.5 hour flight, so we landed some time around 10:45 AM local time. This gave us plenty of time to clear customs, stretch our legs, eat again, etc.
The next leg was just over an hour and a half, plus another hour of time change, which put us in Barcelona just before 5 PM. By the time we waited for our bags, got our transit cards, figured out where the metro was, and navigated 3 different trains to within a block of our hotel, it was just after 6:30 PM.
Today was strictly a travel day, really, so anything we got to do here was just a bonus. Being somewhat tired, all we managed was to go out for dinner at a nearby tapas restaurant.
Both Sabrina and I can navigate a conversation in Spanish, but most of the menu was in Catalan, so we just suggested we were interested in some tapas, and then agreed or passed on a bunch of suggestions from the waiter until some food showed up (in a mix of English and Spanish).
At the end of dinner, we got involved in a fascinating conversation with the women at the table next to us, who had been speaking in Spanish the whole time we were there. One of them was born in Cuba, of Catalan parents, then spent some time in the Boston area, and eventually Florida, before moving back to Catalunya (Barcelona). She had lots of questions and some recommendations. Her friend didn't seem to speak or understand any English.
We finally called it a night around 9:30 PM, then strolled around the neighborhood a bit to settle all of the cheese in our stomachs. Along the way, we popped into a few different grocery-store/bodega type shops to pick up a few essentials for the rest of the week.
Tomorrow, we begin our vacation in earnest, starting with a multi-hour bike tour around the city.
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