Barcelona

[Neal Boortz]

In 1998 the State Department sent liberal talk show host Stephanie Miller
and myself to London and Dublin to make presentations before audiences at
the U.S. Embassies in those cities. We were there to talk about the
impact and role of talk radio in a U.S. presidential election.

While in London Donna and I decided to take that Chunnel train over to
Paris for a day. When we got to Paris nothing was open … nothing but
restaurants. Why? Because in my brilliance I had chosen Bastille Day as
the day for our visit. Does anyone work in France on Bastille Day? Only
restaurant workers and cab drivers.

Well … we did it again. We decided to come to Barcelona a day ahead of
the others so that we could enjoy a day on our own to see the city before
the rest of our cruise group arrived. Guess what? Bank holiday!
Pentecost … whatever .. .but for some reason the banks were closed today;
and when the banks are closed everything was closed. That included all
of the shops in our hotel. Restaurants? For the most part they were
open.

Oh well. We still have the full day tomorrow to see Barcelona, so our
day-early ploy played off. Belinda and the rest of the crowd will roll
in around 1:30 or so tomorrow afternoon. We board the ship on Wednesday
afternoon .. and then it’s off to Marseilles, Monaco, Rome, The Amalfi
Coast, Kotor, and ending up in Venice. The Queen and I are staying on to
spend a few days in Lake Como before we head back to the waiting
BoortzBus in Las Vegas.

Our Barcelona hotel has excellent wifi, so I’m able to get some notes
posted. Hopefully the ship will have a good wifi system as well.