Northern Spain is very different. They are Spainsh by force, Catalonian by choice. Franco, and many others before him, attempted to make them conform under Spanish rule. The flag, the language and even some of the festivites and dancing were outlawed. But now, the culture is making a comeback with a vengance, including the lanuage.

Rick Steves says Catalan is as different from Spanish as Italian. He wasn't kidding. This isn't simply a dialect difference or one verb tense, entire words and the composition of their alphabet are different. So, imagine our fun trying to communicate with a gruff female attendant at a gas station at 1:30 a.m. when we were lost. Yea...that was a potential marriage ender too.

Cities don't look very far apart on a map. They're simply two inches. Can't take that long. Based on some quick calculations, Alicante to Barcelona should be four, five hours tops. If we get within an hour of Barcelona we can easily turn in the car and jump on the ship. Oh...and there's a cool beach town right in that area. Vamanos!

Well, things are never as easy as they seem, but they make for good stories the next day.

Thanks to the all nighter watching the sun come up (it was worth it) we shot out of bed at noon. Check out is at noon. Crap! Hurry, pack everything up...we gotta get out of here.

Now it's about 12:30.

We had an amazing pizza the night before. I mean best thing I ever ate good. We thought "let's hit that place quick for lunch." Simple. Unfortunately, Spanish streets are a lot like Lakewood - they go in circles. We thought we knew where the pizza place was then went through various iterations of stubborn determination, defeat and sweat. Just as we were about to give up, an hour later, we found it. Yes...we had walked circles for hours and even passed within a block of the place. That was the best diet coke I've ever drank.

So now it's somewhere around three.

We head back to the car and drive to the Castle de Santa Barbara. It dates back to he eighth century and is not to be missed. Naturally, even though the castle is on the hill right above us, it takes 30 minutes and lots of wrong turns to get there. It was worth it. The views are amazing and the archetectre beautiful.

Now it's after four.

Vamanos! We gotta hit the road. It's all fun and games for the first two hours. Passing beautiful old orange groves and estates, snapping pictures of the huge black bull cutouts scattered along all the hillsides, me reading fun facts out loud from Steve's entries on Barcelona. But then it gets old. Quickly.

The toll freeway goes much faster. But each stretch we hit costs between 14 and 19 euro. That adds up. We decide to take the free freeway, and that was our big mistake. Now the trip got longer.

So, short story, it gets dark quick and we are kinda stuck on this slower freeway. We finally get to Tarragona. Sigh...goal accomplished. At this point,it is eleven. Makes most sense to stay in a cheap place since we aren't going to be there long. All booked up. Nothing available.

Well hell...we are this close to Barcelona, let's just keep going. After a series of wrong turns we get on the right track. However, it is the slow track and no one is around. Pat starts to panic that we are going to run out of gas. Pat never panics, so this is serious. We coast in to a gas station, at 12:30, with tempers flaring only to realize this catalonian language barrier is greater than we thought. This female attendant is screaming over the pa system and all I can make out is "touch it...touch it!" That meant pick up the pump handle, insert it in the gas tank, and push the button...apparently.

Long story short, we survived and finally found a nice hotel outside Barcelona around 2 a.m. apparently there was a huge rave party going on at the arts center across the street. I was so beat I missed it.