7/27/07 - Barcelona and the Segway Tour (Mary Jo)

Since we had a Segway Tour to go to at 10am, we had to get up “early,” and so we had breakfast, and then walked to the Place St. Jaume, where we were to meet our Segway guide, Edgar. We hung out for a bit in the square, and I was a little surprised to see trucks parked there. Edgar later explained that trucks are allowed to park in the square until 11am so they could deliver the goods to the local shops.

Edgar showed up on a Segway, and we then walked a few feet to his shop where he keeps the Segways stored. We walked them to another square - Place de San Juste, or Plaza de San Justo, where he gave us a 15-minute lesson on how to operate the Segways. After practicing we were off!

I would recommend this tour for everyone. We had so much fun zipping through the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona.

Edgar showed us the Cathedral, various shops, other churches, squares,

streets where the richest used to live, a street where they used to have jousting (pretty cool),

the seaside, where we were able to go faster, the Olympic area near the sea,

and the city park, where we saw some children playing “war” with flour water and eggs. They were a proper mess, and they were having a great time. Okay, I should probably talk a bit about crashing on the Segway. I admit I was trying to do too much. I had just taken a picture, and was leaning forward to put my camera in the pouch at the front of my Segway. Of course, when you lean forward, the Segway goes forward, and I kind of forgot that when I was putting my camera in. There was a huge wall in front of me, and I um, forgot all the lessons we had about stopping, and crashed head on into the wall, tumbling on the ground, and banging myself up a bit… but my camera survived! I was able to climb right back on, and continue.

Our Segway tour lasted around 3 hours. After that, walking seemed just a bit inefficient and slow. We decided to go to the Hard Rock Café for a bite to eat and the Corte Ingles for a bit of shopping before heading back to the Barcelona Ramblas Hostel. I had gotten 2-day unlimited Metro tickets, so we hopped on the metro and went to Placa Catalunya. We walked up the steps (my knee was a bit sore from the spill I took), and walked up to this huge Plaza. The Corte Ingles was huge & to our left. The Hard Rock Café was straight in front of us… across the street.

As usual, I got the kids a t-shirt from the Hard Rock Café, and there was a long line waiting to get in. The place was PACKED. I was glad that I took the advice of Andrew (from the DIS) and made reservations for the HRC over the Internet. We were able to be seated right away. We were there for a long time as they had misplaced our ticket in the kitchen, so they gave us some chips & guacamole - good, and then shortly we got our meal. It was very good.

After lunch we walked to the Corte Ingles to get some toiletries that we had forgotten at home. This is where I got some serious sticker shock. We got some simple things - deodorant, face cream, bandage for my leg, and a couple of other things - 58 euros, or $70. But we needed them and so I got them. I then looked at crew socks, and they were 13 euros for two. It looks like I’ll be doing some washing on the ship. We didn’t get them. With the euro and the weak dollar, things are pretty expensive here. After the Corte Ingles we took the metro to Las Ramblas and walked back to our hotel. It was a good day today, we had a ton of fun, and saw a lot of Barcelona we wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

High: Segway Tour

Low: Crashing into the wall and twisting my knee