Plan B and C

I'm a planner.  I'm one of those people.  I strategically think through where I want to go, plan what to wear, when to go, when to eat....everything.  I even read all official postings places.  What?  I just want to know what they are trying to tell me and honestly, it's normally helpful info.  This probably stems from teaching or maybe this is why I am a teacher...I'm good a planning or neurotic, however you'd like to put it.

This post is my reluctant admitance that my planning doesn't work in Barca. 

Now in St. Louis, I would call Brigitte up and say I want to go shopping.  We would find a day that she was off and then I would think what stores do I want to go to and pick the right mall.  Then I would choose clothes that would be comfy and easy to try on things with and then start thinking when am I going to eat?  Brigitte would arrive on time like always ;) and off we would go on our shopping adventure or wherever we had planned.  Normally the only hitches we might hit would be traffic jams, wrong turns, or possible crowds.

Here in Barcelona it doesn't seem to ever work that way.

Late last Friday night, I was researching.  The big "free" muesum weekend here is the last weekend of the month so I wanted to decide what muesums we should go through.  I read my whole Fodor's guidebook noting all the free muesums in my handy dandy notebook (Blue's Clues anyone?).  Then I continued looking up a few other muesums on-line and had a nice list. 

Although there were only 2 free muesums on Saturday, I was excited.  I really wanted to see the Museu d'historia de la ciutat (the history muesum of the city) for it is filled with Roman ruins and has a great audio tour.  Ryan was excited as well, so we set off that afternoon with high hopes.  We soon arrived although it felt quiet and reserved especially for a free day.  Though I pushed this aside as Ryan started chatting in Spanish and I honed into all the new signs to read.  Quickly I read a line in English that was a bit disheartening, free day: Sunday after 4.  Wait, it was Saturday and somehow I had gotten the wrong day.  We decided to wait to go to that muesum since we could buy tickets any day of the week and maybe we would try on a Sunday.  Now we could rush across town to the other muesum or just call it bust which we did.  We had big plans for our evening so an extra hour or two relaxing wasn't such a bad thing, just unexpected.

Now Sunday we planned to go to the Picasso muesum partly because it was the most expensive and partly because we really enjoy art.  After a long, restoring sleep Sunday morning, we set out with renewed hope and excitement.  I also had learned my lesson and double checked on-line the hours and confirmed it was a free day. 

Upon arrival, I did not read any signs to confirm this nor did Ryan have any Spanish exchanges.  Instead we relied on our observation skills. Namely the three hundred plus people waiting along the street to enter the muesum.  As we walked on for ages with growing trepidation that the line might never end, I began to wonder do I really want to go to wait?  Now I'm a patient person and can wait for long periods of time, but 2 hours to save some Euros????  When we reached the end after at least 3 blocks of walking, we looked at each the all knowing silent communication of "hell no" and walked away. 

I found myself at that moment in a familiar predicament...now what?  My plan failed and I didn't really have a back up.  Ryan suggested the Catalan History Muesum since it was close by.  I was game although I felt unsure if they had a free day or not...as we walked the 15 minutes to get there which by the way isn't "close by."  In America close by is either a 5 minute drive or physically next door possibly a block or 2 away.  We arrived to discover Sunday is the free day!!!!!!!  Of course there was a catch, this is Barcelona after all, the museu d'hisotira de catalunya closes at 2:30 on Sundays or in 20 minutes seeing as it was 2:10.  At that point we took the bus home and tried to regroup.

The moral of these misadventures:  one plan is never enough.  Barcelona doesn't just surprise you with random puddles of dog pee or strange beggars or naked gay pride parades...it also likes to change it's hours, specials, and attract unexpected hoardes of people.  It always has a curve ball so you best have a plan B and like plan C.  Who knows maybe even a back up to the back up of the back up plan.

Additional Note:
So I even needed to have a back up plan for this post.  When I clicked publish, it errored and I lost allllll of my writing!!!!!!!  I think blogger is reading my blog and has a sick sense of humor.