Rental car

Our plan, after spending three days in Barcelona, was to get a rental car and drive down the coast to a castle-turned-hotel (a “parador”) for the night. Our Barcelona apartment was only 4 km from the Hertz place, and it looked like it would be an easy task to ride the Metro down there, get the car, and come back to pick up our luggage and the head out of town.

The only concern was that all of Spain shuts down at 2pm for the afternoon siesta, so we had to be back to get our bags by then, or we’d be stuck until they reopened at 5pm. But we were leaving at 11am (checkout time), so that wouldn’t be an issue.

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Walking underground to and between trains: 30 minutes.
Riding trains: 10 minutes.
Walking down Avenida Diagonal: 20 minutes.
Stopping for ice cream: 25 minutes.
Waiting in line at the Hertz counter: 30 minutes.
Escaping the three level parking garage: 20 minutes.
Driving aimlessly around trying to get bearings: 10 minutes.
Realizing we need to use the GPS and getting it to work: 15 minutes.
Driving through jam packed Barcelona traffic, this time in the correct direction: 19 minutes.

This got us to the apartment office with one minute to spare and three years off our lives. But we made it, drove down the coast, and had a nice swim.

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