Talk about things going like clock- work! Wake- up call on time; taxi on time; quick ride to Orly airport; easy check- in at Vueling airlines and plenty of time to go to Starbucks - yes. There are Starbucks all over Paris including the airport! Unfortunately, may stomach had decided that it was not liking all of the rich food I had ingested over the past 5 days...so all I had was tea :). Plane left on time and arrived on time to the beautiful, almost empty BCN terminal. Our luggage arrived promptly. With no crowds and no immigration or customs ( traversing from one EU country to another), we were in a taxi and on our way into Barcelona in just a few minutes.
We admired the beautiful, well kept highway to the city and were at our hotel in about 20 minutes. And our room was ready. The staff at both the Renaissance Paris Vendome and the Renaissance Barcelona are warm, friendly, helpful and just plain wonderful. This hotel is beautiful, modern, has a lovely restaurant for our included breakfast due to my Marriott Rewards status ( as it was in Paris ).
Note: the next day there was to be a country- wide union strike with demonstrations against the austerity measures by the newly elected government ( as well as the petition by separatists for Catalonia to become a free country).
I sent email messages to our friends who were also arriving in Barcelona today. Tina and Tim met us in the lobby of our hotel ( after their nap to make up for the long red eye flight from Houston) and we set out to walk to Barceloneta to have Paella dinners at Con Majo near the beach. We got lost on the way and were an hour late for our reservation. No problem! We were seated at a nice round table in an attractive room ( surprised by the spacious, attractive room with elegant table settings. I had pictures a typical beach type restaurant. Very good shellfish Paella; best part was catching up with 2 of our favorite friends! Taxied 'home' and slept well!
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