Close but No Cigar (and by Cigar I mean Taco)

We entered another swing towards the expensive end of the sleeping facilities – like after Barcelona we couldn’t stand the thought of another hole in the wall bed, so after breakfast we started wandering through the city looking for anything but. Anything but Antonia’s closet. Por favor.

I stopped to compute for a while at a small café and Rey went next door to get his hair cut. It happened to be the best café ever, people of all sorts were coming and going, giving me chocolates and sangria. The old lady who owned it had a little friend stop by and they sang Spanish songs together. The cook, who was Finnish, complained to me that nobody would speak to him in Spanish; I empathized. They helped me find a hotel online, but I wasn’t convinced yet that I could find anything better, so I didn’t go for it. I also made a quick phone call to the mall where the only Taco Bell in Europe (that I could find) was located to determine the holiday season hours. We had until 8pm to get there so we set off to see what we could stumble upon.

As we had suspected it was a huge city. We wandered and wandered and found only fancy hotels and more Antonia’s closets (although most turned us away because it was Christmas eve). We also found another green tie for Rey and I almost found the shoes I want, but they just weren’t quite right. Rey had to give up on his shoe hunt, apparently the country only makes shoes up to size 45, they tended to laugh when he asked for a 47.

As we neared 4 and then 5 and then 6 we gave in and found a café with internet to Priceline a hotel. It was a tough negotiation via a little iPhone app, but we ended up with a €400 Holiday Inn room for $95. Not bad. We didn’t have time to check in so we just headed off to the mall. It was an adventurous drive, including a twenty minute stint in a tunnel underneath the city and a little bit of driving on the wrong side of the street (all of the street lines are the same color so I get confused). I was quite nervous that TB would have closed earlier or some natural phenomena would prevent my Christmas Eve Taco Bell celebration, so I was in a bit of a rush. We located the “restaurant” of interest on the mall map and wandered through the Christmas shoppers and lights and various displays until it emerged in our horizon. It was two stories. And it was closed. The employees were still in there, cleaning up, so I know I missed it by a matter of moments. I took the picture and the woman yelled at me, but I had driven from Switzerland, dammit, and the least I could get was a photo. We settled for KFC, since it seemed closer to a holiday meal than Burger King, and then got mall chair massages.

As we headed back in to the city (this time it was a much easier journey, as the way home tends to be) the sun was set and the most elaborate holiday decorations I would venture to say on the planet came out. We turned up the eurobeats real loud and drove around the city a bit. It’s a long, stop and go video but one of my favorite moments.

When we got to the hotel we were so thrilled to not be in Antonia’s closet, we took advantage of all the facilities, Jacuzzi and sauna included, although both were turned off, so I really just got cold.

We decided to go to midnight mass and asked the front desk for the biggest church in the city. It was
pretty fun, although we seemed to be surrounded by Americans and I wanted to be unique. Oh well. It was a cool, fairly modern church (decoration-wise) and although the city was crawling with people, we couldn’t find any open restaurants for dinner number two at two when we got out, so we ate cashews from the mini bar and went to bed.

In the morning we set off for the long haul up to Zurich to pick up Lindsay and then to Berlin. It was the morning of the 25th, Lindsay arrived at 7:10am on the 26th and our hotel check in was before 12:01am on the 27th. We had planned the schedule so I did the daytime driving and after a nice seafood brunch, we were off. It was a total of over 3000km, or about 16hrs to Zurich and another 8 to Berlin.

As can be expected, there were a few trials and tribulations on the drive, but it was really an utter success. I tried a few tricks with the GPS and we ended up on a lone mountain freeway somewhere outside of Zaragoza for a few hours and I got stuck in a bus parking lot in an attempt to escape the train tracks I somehow found myself driving on, but in the end it meant we got free airport-front parking in the local bus lot (just had to drive over a few curbs and bushes, no biggie).