I don’t know what I was expecting. Perhaps there was some inherent racism, perhaps an ethnocentrism that I harbored and was unaware of it until I was forced to confront it. I know almost no spanish beyond the Sesame Street level. In the back of my mind, I was fine with this. I’m surrounded by bilingual people at home, so I’ve got numerous translators if I ever needed one. Somewhere in the back of my head I had convinced myself I could get by here in Spain without knowing the language, without even a half-hearted attempt to learn it before showing up. A little part of me in a dark corner I don’t normally acknowledge must’ve thought that the spanish speakers here do it only as a facade, as a gesture to show you that, yes, you’re in Spain now, look at us speak Spanish for a few sentences, then change to flawless English so you feel safe again. No, that is not the case: there are people here that speak just Spanish. Of course there are! I’m a fat idiot.

One such person that spoke only Spanish was our cab driver. With Disney dropping our transfer from the airport only in the last few days due to a mixup with booking, we were left to fend for ourselves for the first leg of the journey (the would get us from the hotel to the ship and back to the airport afterwards , though, along with our bags). In the confusion, we forgot to print out the address of our hotel. Serendipitously, a Disney Cruise Line representative was standing around as I searched for an ATM in the airport, and she had a pre-printed sheet with our hotel’s address on it. When we hailed our cab, we showed him the paper, he told us something that neither of understood in the least but both nodded dutifully at him.

The ride from the airport was quiet. The man realized despite our polite and near constant nodding that we had no idea what he was saying and gave up almost immediately. He had a radio station on called PartyMix25, which played a mixture of spanish-language music and english-language pop. Lisa tried to strike up a conversation a few times, but I just responded with grunts and one word answers. I was stewing in guilt, feeling ashamed that I would show up at someone’s door and expect them to cater to me. No wonder Greece and Rome had such elaborate supplicant rituals, you don’t have such formalities and guests start to think you owe them something.

The ride from the airport was also pretty long, at least 20 minutes (plus whatever time extension comes along with festering white guilt), and it came to about 21 euros. The ATM had spit out only large bills, and the downplayed emphasis on tips only furthered the confusion when it came to collecting my change. Was his nonplussed reaction to our exchange indicative that our business was conducted in a satisfactory routine manner or was it because I had insulted him by not tipping enough (or too much)? I would encounted this again and again as my normal, American, hefty-tipping ways were met with strange and varied reactions.

We’re staying at the Hotel AC Barcelona, which is right on the edge of the sea across the street fom the Diagonal Mar shopping center. It is one of a handful of hotels that Disney affiliated itself with for the Mediterranean cruises, and we booked it on our own (hence the transfers confusion). It cost a ridiculous amount (about 350-400 euros for the night, if I remember correctly) and it was actually the cheapest of the seven or so options that Disney offered. The reason I went with it and not another, cheaper hotel is for the convenience of Disney checking me in (so I don’t wait in line at the port) and transporting me and my luggage for me. The convenience factor played a big role in my decision as well as the increased time in the port I’ll have as a result of not having to stand around like everyone else at the port.

The Hotel AC Barcelona is really nice. It’s what the Contemporary in WDW would look like if it was actually contemporary.

“Clean lines”, as Lisa put it, with sharp contrasts, blacks, whites, brushed metal and unique furniture.

The staff all spoke English and was very courteous, accomodating and helpful. Check-in went as smooth as it possibly could have.

We retired to our room, which we were warned by my parents would be small but actually turned out to be spacious and modern, at least in contrast with our expectations. In retrospect, the amount I paid (which, since it was over 6 months ago, doesn’t sting as much) doesn’t exactly equal the room size, but the quality of everything in here is certainly on par with what you’d want.

The bathroom is gorgeous, with a giant bathtub that Lisa indulged in as I wrote this, falling asleep in its warmth.

There’s a bidet, the first I’ve ever had the opportunity to use, and although I haven’t had the need yet, rest assured I am awaiting my opportunity anxiously.

The only confusing thing is the shower door: there’s only half of one (see above photo). It seems intentional: it swings both in and out of the shower, but unless you’re standing on that half of the shower, water sprays everywhere as it hits your body. I don’t normally stand directly underneath the shower head, I like to point it outwards and let the water come to me, but we’ll work at it.

We were just stopping in, though, as we had to check in with the Disney Cruise desk in the lobby, then make our way up to see the outdoor pool and deck on the 13th floor, and then to lunch. The woman at the Cruise desk was a native, but a Dominican transplant from NYC, so it’s a small world after all. We completely checked in, so there was no need to do anything else once we got to the boat: just go to our room. Our bags will be picked up at 8 AM, we’ll meet in the lobby about 11:15 AM to get our room keys, and we’ll depart for the boat about 12:15 AM. Perfect.

We made our way up to the 13th floor. It was beautiful and we immediately wished we weren’t so dead tired so we could enjoy it. We promised ourselves that we would make our way up there again, but we both knew we wouldn’t.

Our lunch was unspectacular. In true frightened tourist fashion, we ate at the hotel restaurant, Dia and Nit’s. It was wholly unremarkable, despite a promising menu. I had “Typical Catalan Fish and Seafood Rice with a light Romesco” for an appetizer and “Veal Hock cooked in low temperature during 24 hours with Sage and steamed summer vegetables” as a main course, while Lisa had “Roasted Spanish Gazpacho with brie and parmesan cheese in different temperatures and textures” to start and “Cod cooked in low temperature on a Mallorquina coca with sobrasada, saute spinach and pink, dehydrated onion from Tropea” as her main course. Hers was at least interesting.

We ordered Cava with the meal, which is a drink that wants to hit you in the mouth, at least the one we had. It’s dry to the point of puckering, the kind of dry that forces one eye closed against its will. This turned out to be kind of pleasant when paired with the sweetness of my main dish, but drank alone it was really hard to finish, and all I could think of, for reasons I don’t understand, was Ernest Hemingway calling me gay because of it.

We went back to the room and crashed. I hoped that we would wake up at a reasonable time so that we could recover from jetlag, and also so we didn’t waste the entire day. We got up at 8 and despite protest from Li, I forced the two of us out of the comfort of the hotel room across the street to Diagonal Mar in search of more inspiring cuisine.

It was a mall. I could feel the shameful gaze of Anthony Bourdain boring into the back of my skull from whatever part of the globe he’s currently in. We made our way past the Burger King, our heads slung low, hoping that there was an outlet of non-industrial cuisine to be offered. A few places seemed to be promising, but their proximity to more traditional, american fare made us wary. The prospect of eating another nation’s idea of fast food was intriguing, but not exactly what we wanted out of this trip. We made our way through the mall and eventually made it outside to a plaza, where six or seven restaurants (and a McDonald’s) dared us to come in. They were Tapas bars for the most part, with the odd chinese food place in there for good measure. We made our way to each, and the lack of english on the menu scared us away, even though in our hearts that’s what we wanted, because we had no real way in. The sole provider of a menu in English sounded unappetizing, so we made our way dejectedly to the center to the plaza’s center, contemplating what we should do.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught another restaurant, one that was still part of the plaza but more open to the road, so it was highly visible from the street but tucked away in the plaza. We made our way over there and lo and behold, they had both a spanish and english menu, english speaking staff, and cuisine that sounded incredible. It was. The name of the restaurant was Tapas Bar and Restaurant, in Diagonal Mar, bordering Paseo de Taulat.

Lisa took the initiative and ordered an onslaught of Tapas: Shaving of foie gras with corn powder, Cheese and chicken croquettes, Navarre spicy chistorra sausages, Potatoes with salsa brava, and a plate Shavings of Iberian ham with cheese, almonds and bread. I ordered something odd that struck my eye, a local variation on an old favorite: french fries with fried eggs. Everything was incredible, but the standouts for me were the Shaving of Foie Gras with corn powder (which, spread on bread, made for an incredible, melt-in-your-mouth richness that gave me premonitions of my first massive coronary), the Cheese and Chicken Croquettes (the unknown cheese in them had a tang that was amazing) and, surprisingly, the Fried Eggs and French Fries, which made me wonder why we don’t dispose of home fries in favor of french fries. We loved everything so much that we asked our waitress, an amazingly sweet accomodating girl named Maria, if there was anything we had forgotten, anything she heartily recommends. She brought us out some Andalusian style fried baby squid (which Lisa was hesitant as people had told her they were so fresh that they still had the ink in them. This creeped her out) and some Beef Carpaccio with mozzarella, olive oil and salt, which we didn’t see on the menu but was fantastic.

We were brimming over with food by the time we were done and with the cold breeze starting to blow in from the sea, Lisa was ready to go. We had already been there for two hours, but when we asked for the check so soon after the meal was finished, our sweet waitress seemed hurt, as if our lavishing praise up to this point was all farce and now we were ready to abandon her, unsatisfied with her offerings. Two hours must be a quick meal here and indeed it was, people long finished with their meals languished at their tables, smoking cigarettes, laughing the night away. Our protestations that no, she had in fact saved our first day in Barcelona from being wasted with her wonderful food, was met with concern and doubt. She extended a nice gesture of sorbet and we relented, not only because we both felt bad for slighting her, but also because yum sorbet. Lisa had Lemon and I had frambuese and it was indeed yum sorbet.

We parted ways an additional hour later and heaped more love upon our dear waitress for saving our day. She thanked us profusely and took our picture for us.

She was as much a part of making the meal great as the food was, and I hope that I’ll heed this lesson as the trip goes on: don’t let the guilt keep you silent, talk to the damn people! Oh, and we ordered Sangria and it was her first time making it. She did a great job. It made the first day something we’ll remember rather than a day we lost.