Luck Is The Residue of Design

One of my all-time favorite sayings is from Branch Rickey, "luck is the residue of design."  It's a particularly adroit way to say, luck happens because of your effort.

Sometimes, however, you don't make your own luck, it is just happens to you.  As is the case with the location of our apartment.  We are right between the Barceloneta neighborhood and the El Born neighborhood.  Head a few blocks southeast, and we are at the beach, as in the Med.  Head northwest and we are wandering around narrow streets of bars, restaurants, churches, and shops.  There is only a couple of straight roads near us.

Right outside our door is the Barceloneta Metro stop.  Right across the street is a neighborhood of tapas bars, a market, and great restaurants.

Okay, I KNOW that tapas is not a Catalonian-thing.  As Tommy Lee Jones said in the best-delivered line of "The Fugitive," I don't care.  (Admit it, you click on it, and gloried in all of his "I don't care-ness."  Go ahead, do it again.  Yup -- it DOES make you feel good!)  We love tapas, and the Barcelonians have realized it is a great way to both make people happy AND make money.

(Editor: Glen, time to get back on track.  Writer: Um, what?  Since when has this blog ever stayed on track?)

Anyhow, we blew through immigration like a rocket sled on rails.  Literally there was no line, no questions from immigration, and we raced down to get our bags.  Thanks, United, it's a good thing we had to wait 45 minutes for that, or we might have been impressed by Spanish efficiency.

As our cabbie had never heard of it, we had to spell out the name of the road the apartment is on.  And, you would think, with us staying there, everyone in the city would know the street!  Mark me down as surprised.

The airport was closer to the city than I had thought, so we got there relatively quickly.  It helped that it was Saturday morning, with rush hour not happening.

We staggered into the apartment, with Milena there to greet us.  She showed us around the apartment.  On first impression, it seemed a bit rabbit warren-y (better than the other kind of Warren), but it turns out to be perfect.  Not large, but not small.

The AC works well, the location is perfect (I may have mentioned that), there's a washer and dryer (most Spanish apartments have washers but not dryers), an HHI fridge* that is on the large size, two bathrooms, hot water that is hot, a dishwasher, and excellent wifi.  Really, the only thing missing is a blue tooth music player, but we will live without it.

(Right now, Carol is napping, I'm blogging, and listening to Dwight Yoakam.  Not exactly Spanish, but much of the Spanish music I've heard in the 32 hours I've been here is either American/English pop, or Spanish rap.  I did hear an Everly Brothers song in a restaurant, so that was unexpected.)

(*HHI fridge is our code for a small fridge like on the HGTV show, "House Hunters International."  In every episode, the Americans moving overseas are shocked and disappointed by the small fridges.  You can NOT tell me they weren't aware that before doing the episode.  We were actually pleasantly shocked and anti-disappointed by the size of this fridge).

Milena then went over a map of nearby and far-away (sort of) attractions to see.  I then made the mistake of showing her my planning documents.  The level of detail may have frightened her, but it's always good to send a message that they aren't dealing with any old clueless American schmuck, but instead with the Iron Tourist American Schmuck (ITAS™).

(Re-reads sentence to self.  "Wait, that didn't come out right."  Editor: yes, but at least you gave your readers a guffaw.  Writer:  Good use of guffaw.)

After she left, we headed out to the Barceloneta Market.  Full of seafood markets, there were also some nice veggie and fruit stands.  We wandered around, taking it all in, and then went next door to an actual supermarket.  We bought an initial foray of food, such as cookies, yogurt, limes, sparkling water, bread, and a few other staples. 

After dropping that into our kitchen (at some point, I will post a posting of pictures of the apartment, but doing so too early in the blog could bore my loyal readers, and you'll go read some other blog by someone spending a month in Barcelona!) we went through the maze of streets of El Born to the Formatgeria Le Seu, which is our local -- 12 minute walk -- specialty cheese shop. 

The cheeses are fabulous (no pictures allowed of the shop, which thankfully will keep the Soviets and ChiComs from stealing NATO's cheese shop secrets, if we still lived in the Cold War era) and we had quite a long, and somewhat confusing chat with the cheesemonger.  She's from Scotland, and we started talking about cheese, moved on to her previous work history in Scotland, including the times she was sexually harassed by the Scottish oafs she worked with, and then her brogue got stronger and we had no idea what she was saying. 

It brought us back to our honeymoon, when we asked the husband of the B&B owner for directions and could understand only every tenth word, even though we were theoretically speaking the same language.  Same thing here, and just a few minutes earlier we understood everything she had said. 

So as she talked and as we didn't understand, we enthusiastically nodded, squeaked out a few expressions like, "huh," and "doesn't that beat all."  And I swear I've never used the latter one in my entire life to date, so I can check that off my bucket list.

It was time to wrap up, so I cut in to ask if she could recommend a good nearby wine shop.  She switched back from the Klingon Scottish she was speaking into English Scottish, so we actually got clear, simple directions. 

Meanwhile, we are quite cognizant we're strolling, with inexpensive cheese that would cost a fortune in Paris or Whole Foods, through some very cool streets.  We bought some wine, and stopped at the apartment to drop it off.

Then we went to one of the local tapas bars recommended by Antonio (who runs the place we rented), but it is closed until September 20, because the owners are on a month vacation.  We couldn't really fault them for that, so we picked another place. 

The beer was cold, and, more importantly, the jamon was fabulous, along with the Piquillo Peppers, the Spanish omelet, and the chicken croquettes.  Normally I wouldn't have a beer with lunch but I wanted to ensure I napped after eating. (Editor: Actually, it was two.  Writer: By ordering a second, I was channeling Kris Kristofferson's greatest lyrics, even if it was lunch, not breakfast).

I hadn't slept on the plane, so the 150 minute nap was glorious.