La Vida Loca

This weekend, Barcelona is our home away from home.

We're here for four days to binge on art museums, eat as much Spanish food as possible, and also reacquaint ourselves with the celestial object known outside of the Netherlands as "the Sun".

Getting here was something of a close call, as a fire at the Utrecht train station on Friday night shut down almost all train traffic in the Netherlands, including the trains that run to and from the airport.

An American I know once referred to Utrecht as the bunghole of the Netherlands.

He went on to explain that if something goes wrong with car or train traffic in Utrecht, everything in the entire country grinds to a screeching halt.

At the time, I thought that was a little harsh: Utrecht is a fine city, and I prefer to reserve the term "bunghole" for truly godforsaken places. The suburbs of Houston, for example.

After Friday, however, I'm beginning to see what he means.

One taxi from Nijmegen and €230 in taxi fare later, we arrived at Schiphol with just enough time to get through security, grab a sandwich, and make a beeline to our gate.

I'm trying not to fret about a taxi fare that was almost as expensive as two round-trip plane tickets to Barcelona.

One way of looking at it is this: getting screwed by the Dutch train system now and then is still much less costly than owning a car.

Another positive take on this incident is that my willingness to gripe about the trains feels like an indicator of how well I'm integrating into Dutch society.

Most Americans can't complain in good conscience about a train system that offers a convenient and viable alternative to going just about anywhere in a car.

Most Dutch people, on the other hand, complain bitterly about the trains at the slightest provocation.

I'm still grateful for the Dutch train system, but it is definitely in the doghouse until further notice.

But that's a long way to say that we made it to lovely Barcelona, where our only point of difficulty has been adhering to the Spanish custom of eating lunch around 2 and dinner around 10.

In addition to trying not to embarrass ourselves by walking into restaurants before 8:30 p.m., we've been wandering our way through crazy food markets...

Making a long-awaited pilgrimage to the Joan Miró museum...

Hanging around on sunny park benches...

And keeping a watchful eye out for chicken-themed street art:

In other words, it's pretty much the perfect weekend.