Barcelona travel blog part twelve -- Pretty Woman: el musical

If you've been a fan of this blog for any length of time, you know we enjoy seeing shows -- all levels of shows from Broadway to college to community theater to high school. It really doesn't matter. 

Seeing a show in a foreign language was a first for us, though. (That said, I think I have seen some shows in French and muddled through, but we don't understand any Spanish beyond Hola!)

Why did we go? The show had been on Broadway and we knew the basic plot from the 1980s movie with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Don has done some stage management so he was curious about the sets and how they would work -- when you take out the dialogue, you can concentrate on so much more. Plus it was cheap -- $40 a ticket for the front row of the mezzanine. We felt as if they were putting on the show for us.

A quick backtrack ... on the metro we met Dennis. Dennis gets around Barcelona on his electric unicycle. He proudly told us seven years ago he was the second person in Barcelona to get an electric unicycle. There are newer models out that are a lot lighter and have more features, but are also a lot more expensive. He has only had to make two repairs on his in seven years (costing 50 euros total to repair) -- and he uses it all the time. He has only had one flat tire in that time. I felt as if I was chronicling a story for Humans of New York (or Humans of Barcelona). Covid has made it harder to strike up conversations with random strangers and learn about their lives. I have missed doing that.

Random picture of the inside of the metro -- love how you can walk effortlessly from one car to the next.

We were disappointed to not receive a Playbill (or the Spanish equivalent of one). We posed for a picture anyway. There is a QR code we could click to see one. It is in either Spanish or Catalan. 

The poster that caught our interest. Upon doing a little bit of research, found out the theater was a 10-minute walk from our Airbnb -- a vote in its favor. I also saw signs for Ghost (another musical) and Grease (coming later this year). After we came home we borrowed the Broadway soundtrack from the library.

Nice prop to pose with in the lobby.

In lieu of a playbill, a poster of the performers.

From the show we walked "home" along the road parallel to Av. Paral-el. The street is filled with family-owned restaurants. Up until 11 pm the restaurants spill out onto the car-free plaza. After 11, they move indoors (I suspect there is a noise ordinance in place). We chose our restaurant for the evening based on knowing they serve paella. Don and I are not seafood people (I'm getting better, but as this would be our last meal in Spain, I didn't want to risk it.) Mine was vegetarian, and Don's was with chicken. A handy menu with pictures and descriptions in several languages helped us to decide what we want -- yes, I know that screams tourist trap, but what can you do when you don't understand the language and just want to eat! Our "expensive" meal of the trip was 30 euros ($30) and included two glasses of beer and a glass of wine. I am so ready to move! A side note: our server was wearing an orange sweatshirt that said "Columbus" on it. When we asked him about it, he said he has never been to Columbus. He just liked the sweatshirt. The sweatshirt worked to encourage us to give an extra tip./

As much as we tried to milk the evening, we walked back to the Airbnb after midnight, knowing we would have to wake up at 7 to catch our 11:15 am flight, and we still had to pack up the place. My notes say "tomorrow morning will be rough," truer words were not written as later that next day we both had runny noses and the beginning of Covid. Thank goodness we were healthy on our trip.

Thus ends our adventures. In the morning with took the metro one stop to Placa Espana and found the Aerobus back to the airport. As I had bought a round trip ticket a few days earlier, and I could still find it, it was easy to board the bus. Had I realized how easy it was to take the metro, we likely would have done that instead. The bus is pretty amazing, though. It seems to run every five minute at all hours of the day and night. I could be wrong on that note, but anytime we were walking around the city, we saw the Aerobuses running. I wish we had something similar from Princeton to Newark and Philadelphia airports.

After going through security and customs, we waited for our flight. The flight home was uneventful. Once again we were seated next to each other. We had two meals and personal TVs to watch whatever we wanted. Other than being restless, and our pilot trying to break the speed record by bouncing along every bit of turbulence between Spain and the United States, it was an uneventful flight. We went through customs in record time and picked up the car. We were nearly home about the time we were supposed to land. After a nap, we realized we were both sick. 

Welcome home!