Spanish For Dummies, But Who Was The Dummy?

Disembarking from a cruise ship is always an experience. Your luggage has to be left outside your cabin the night before and is returned to you the next day at the cruise port. Happily, we got our luggage this morning in a timely manner and got on line for a taxi. The line was way longer than I expected, but I’m not sure what I was thinking. With 2,000 passengers on board, what else could the line be? My mom and I had nowhere we needed to be, but standing in the rain made me antsy, and when you’re dragging the suitcase-from-hell whose wheels only occasionally work, well you can imagine my frustration. When the taxi dispatcher finally got to us, we had been standing on line for over half an hour. “Is that ALL your luggage?” as he looked up and down at our bags with disdain. “Yes, that’s ALL ours,” I replied.  All he said was, “It will be one hour for a taxi.” Okayyyyyyyy…. Do they have Uber in Barcelona?

Turns out, they DO have Uber in Barcelona! I was so excited because the wait time was WAY less than an hour. I easily ordered my car and was patting myself on the back for beating all the other people in line for a ride into the city. Just to make sure everything was okay, I called the Uber driver to let her know how much luggage we had. Our friends were on line with us and we figured all four of us could go together. Now, I would never call myself fluent in Spanish, but I can at least speak in the present tense with some semblance of passable grammar. When the Uber driver, Susana, picked up her phone, I asked her in Spanish if her car was “grande” or “pequeño”. This isn’t rocket science Spanish. I was able to easily tell the driver that we had “quatro bolsas grandes” (four large bags) and she said that was okay. Of course, Susana pulls up in something like a Honda Civic and I’m thinking there is no way all our massive amounts of luggage are going to fit in her trunk. When I remind her that I said FOUR people with FOUR big bags, she keeps telling me Uber doesn’t have a larger car. Ummm… that should have been mentioned BEFORE we got off the taxi line to wait for an Uber. Were Susana and I speaking the same language?

My mom and I split off from our two friends and my driver clearly felt bad. She spoke to me in Spanish the entire way to the hotel and surprisingly, I understood a lot of what she said! Even more shocking was my ability to respond to the driver and subsequently explain to my mom what we were saying. I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I am able to understand. I guess when speaking another language is your only option to communicate, you take the leap and hope you don’t sound like a total moron in the process.

Later that evening we met some of our friends from the cruise for dinner by the beach. Like us, they were also staying in Barcelona for a few days post-cruise. We were all so excited for eating REAL paella by the sea. My mom and I figured what better place to have taste-bud-blowing-paella than Spain? Hmmmm... How do you say “Yuck” in Español? Oh yeah... “YUCK.” If what we ate was really paella, then I don’t know what I’ve been eating all these years at “La Paella” in NYC. And why was the rice BROWN? Isn’t the rice in paella supposed to be saffron, which is YELLOW? I’ve had way better paella at Cafe Española in the West Village. Also, doesn’t paella have an abundance of seafood in it? This dish was a pile of rice with a few pieces of fish thrown in as garnish. And for the record, I don’t like when my shrimp still has eyeballs. No need for my fish to look me in the eye as I eat it, thank you very much. Thank God for eating dessert. Twice. The gelato is amazing here. That’s something, I guess.

Here’s to hoping I dream in Spanish tonight. Lord knows “necesito dormir mucho”. Hasta luego!