el Gran Viaje, part 2

Ah, day 13 of 15. Wow. It's been rough. "Death march" is an amazingly appropriate term for these guided city tours. Aside from that, I'm out of clean socks, my favorite sweatshirt is starting to look the part, I reek of that stale, hotel smell, and I've discovered a few new pet peeves. But things are going great!

No, really. I've done some really cool things and I am going to be doing some laundry after this, so all's well. Let's see, what happened after Sevilla... Cordoba, Toledo, and a few random stops for lunch: Merida and Caceres. Checked out the Mezquita... I refer to it as the Muslim Vatican. Other than that, I really don't have a lot to say. I mean, I've done a lot, I just don't know how to talk about it. I guess the other major things I've done included a 3.5 hour session of forcing fine art upon myself in the Prado Museum and thanks to those three hour death marches, I've walked the halls of the Royal Palace in Madrid, numerous other cathedrals, a couple of synagogues and El Escorial, where I hung out in the crypt that holds most of the Spanish royal family.

Honestly, I'm done. I've been done. But now I'm really, really done. Tomorrow, we are trooping out to Segovia to see the Roman aqueduct, then on Saturday, we have an 8 hour bus ride to Barcelona. Thankfully, we will be stopping in Zaragoza to eat lunch and "stretch our legs," which is code for "walk around yet another cathedral." We should be rolling into Barcelona around 9 pm, give or take an hour. THEN, I get to unpack my suitcase, eat, shower, repack my suitcase, catch a few hours of sleep and then leave in the wee hours for the airport to travel back in time.

The plan is to go from Barcelona to Atlanta, then from ATL to Chicago. Where does the time travel come in? Well, I leave BCN at 10:40 am, and should be in ATL by 3 pm-ish even though I'm definitely going to be stuck on that plane for 10 hours. Since the extent of my math whiz abilities stops at balancing my checkbook and splitting the bill at lunch, I'm not going to think about it too much and just take Delta Airlines at their word. If everything goes as planned, I should be in Chicago by 8 pm on Saturday. However, I keep hearing about ice storms happening in Chicago and at home, so I'm really pulling for some good luck to get me to the States again, in one piece and on time.

written by

achavero on December 13, 2007 from Madrid, Spain

from the travel blog: Amanda in Barcelona

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