"The Catalan Sun Shines Brig ..." a Barcelona Travel Page by Johnny_CA

Barcelona reminded me so much of Los Angeles, my home before moving to Amsterdam for work. The beautiful weather, the beach, plenty to do, great nightlife and the Spanish language. Now, you are thinking to youself, what's this crazy American talking about? Spanish in Los Angeles? For those unfamilar with LA, we have a large population of Hispanics (the politically correct term to include Mexicans and Latin Americans). However, LA does not have its own version of Gaudi or his works.

After a walk through the Guell Parc, I took a breather on Gaudi's bench. It was painted to resemble a dragon? Well, you can see from the garb that the weather was picture perfect. Oh, how I miss the sun and warmth!

We had driven to Barcelona as part of our 2-week roadtrip through Spain, France, Switzerland and Luxembourg. When we got to Barcelona, the hostel staff told us a place where we could dump the car off for the week and not worry about it. There was no parking fees and we were free to roam the city on public transportation. After a splendid week, my friend A4 and I went to pick up the car. As we approached the spot where I had parked it last, there was no car. I must have gone to the wrong street, I thought to myself. We walked around the block looking for a compact grey Audi. No sign of the baby. Two things crossed my mind, it was either stolen or towed away. I was told Audi's were top on the list of European car thieves. Since it was my company lease car, I wasn't too worried about the loss but more concerned about the hitch to our roadtrip. After searching for about another half an hour, I decided to ask for some help. We noticed an internet gaming shop with its doors opened. I tried my weak-ass Spanish on the first guy I saw in the shop and he pointed to another guy cause his English is better. So much for my Spanish. Javy, short for Javier, was a model and worked part time as a promoter for nightclubs. He had traveled the world and spoke fairly good English and he was more than willing to help us find my car. The first thing he said to me, maybe because I looked a little stress at this time was, "don't worry, we'll find your car. You're on holiday, enjoy your time." This must be the Spanish lifestyle. He remembered that they had a movie shoot last week on the street where we parked the car and remembered tow trucks taking the cars away. OK. He said go outside to the sidewalk and check for a piece of paper stuck to the floor with towing company information on it. We did so and called the number on the paper. Since my Spanish was weak as American coffee, Javy called for me and started smiling and nodding his head. They had towed my car as a "courtesy" because of the movie shoot and moved it to another street for my convenience. It was so nice of them. Javy jotted down the street's name, but there was a Street and a Boulevard by the same name but he wasn't sure which one. Before we headed on to find our car again, Javy asked us how long we were staying in Barcelona. We said we were leaving today. It was too bad he said, he wanted to invite us to a club that he was promoting. A4 and I immediately thought to ourselves, a model party...long legged beautiful Spanish women?!! We were really tempted to stay through the weekend but we had a schedule to keep. We thanked him and exchanged email addresses because I wanted to return a favor if he ever visited Amsterdam. We were off again. We got to the street where they moved it to and couldn't find it. We walked around for about an hour and no luck. Again, I had to bust out my illiterate Spanish on a traffic cop to ask for help. His name was also Javy, maybe Javier is a saint's name or something cause the saint was looking down on me that afternoon. Javy didn't speak English so I had to explain what we were looking for. He helped us search for about 10 minutes and confirmed that we were looking on the right street but no car. I asked them whether he could radio his dispatch and check with them. Without hesitation, Javy called it in and received a call on his mobile. They told him that the car was parked on the Boulevard and not the Street. That's why we couldn't find the car. Javy pointed us in the direction of the Boulevard and there we found our car! I must say the two Javies went absolutely out of their way to help us. They could have easily played dumb and I would have been stuck in Barcelona still looking for my car. I am so grateful for their help and their friendliness. I must say, the Catalan sun shines brightly on the Spanish people.