Sunday, sleepy Sunday

I finally fell asleep around two a.m. Barcelona time.  I got up in the mid-morning to try the hotel's breakfast, then slept until the early evening.  I clearly needed the rest.

After work and final unpacking and writing down expenses and so on, I showered and went walking in search of dinner.  Had I done this at ten-thirty local time in Raleigh, I would have been out of luck or seeking fast food.  In Barcelona, though, dinner is just getting into full swing at that hour.  I ended up at one of the restaurants on the square I can see from my hotel window, where I enjoyed jamon iberico and pan con tomate

Click an image for a larger version.

as starters (there's way less ham there than it appears, because they so thinly slice the meat) and a chicken paella as a main.

I ate all the ham, a third of the bread, and a third of the paella, but these were the smallest portions I could order.

Eating alone as a sixty-year-old man, I am practically invisible.  I thus was privy--whether I wanted to be or not--to intimate details from people at all the tables around me.  All spoke English, all were in town for Mobile World Congress (MWC, which is also the reason I am here), and all were discussing their various indiscretions or plans to commit indiscretions.  I was quite amazed at the amount of information people were willing to share, though I expect they also thought I did not speak English.

No one was discussing a fact that is likely to make all of our lives worse:  the metro and bus workers have chosen to strike during MWC.  Oh, boy.

MWC's effects have spread to my small hotel, where the bandwidth has gone from quite good as hotels go (yesterday) to positively painful (this evening).  I have no real choices here, but wow is my hotel overloaded.

Taking a brief stroll on La Rambla after dinner, I couldn't help but recall the night when Scott and I walked its length and then walked, at my insistence, all the way back to our hotel.  The journey proved to be way longer than I had thought, and we spent much of it joking about how long it was taking, even as we were both suffering a bit.  I worried that I never gave Scott enough time or enough love, and that now I won't have the chance to make it up to him--can we really ever make up anything to anyone?--and so I fell into a bit of melancholy.  I love my son very much, and I do miss him.  I hope we get the chance for many more good times together.

It's going on two a.m. here, so it's time for more sleep.  Tomorrow, I do work email and hit the show floor!