Barcelona day 2 or 3

Sara is taking a nap, it is not quite 10 pm and still light outside. We are both tired, we got lost from each other and both spent most of the day wandering about lost as can be. But what a great place to be lost in. This morning she went to get euros off a AAA Visa card prepaid thing she bought from the AAA office in Memphis before we left, turned out to be most difficult. Sara doesn´t speak a word of Spanish. No one wanted to accept the card. She had been told to go to an American bank and told where CitiBank was. Well, only one person spoke any English there and also turns out that this stupid AAA Visa card is a royal pain in the arse. According to her, she had in hand all eight pages of small print that came with her prepaid card and insisted that she would not leave till she had some Euros in hand. She said the bank finally put her on the phone and allowed her to make a 1-800 call to one of the numbers on her papers and she was on the phone for hour and half !!! There was some talk of her leaving the bank and getting in a taxi but she insisted that she had no taxi money and that there was Visa fraud involved and I suspect that the bank might have graciously ended up with a big long distance phone bill on their account just to help her out. In the end she left with 300 Euros and the Visa people clipped her for an additional 20 bucks over and above what the AAA people had charged her in card issue fees, and 300 is the daily bank limit so they will get her for the extra 20 every day till it is emptied, but she says SHE WILL WIN IN THE END.........once she returns to the states. Color her NOT HAPPY with AAA and their prepaid Visa ATM card.

When she returned from that ordeal, we hopped the tourist open-top bus and rode to this huge apartment building that Gaudi designed in 1910, La Pedrera. Four families still live in it, the rest is converted to museums and bank space, shops, and a huge auditorium. It is a National Historic Places place for sure......I had never been there before, only seen photos. And speaking of photos, I took a bunch. The rooftop is all futuristic terraces and tiles and mosaics. It is breathtaking. It was there, in the miles of attic that we got seperated. It is pretty dark up in the winding, gothic arch attic spaces and I looked and looked for Sara. Turned out that she had fallen asleep sitting on a bench while watching one of the many short slide shows along the way. But with all the twists and turns, I never found her. I finally just went on my way thru the ins and outs of the areas on can visit in this huge complex, I sat on a bench near the exit for about an hour and did people watching and finally wrote out a note and left it with the entrance/exit guards. I said I was headed to the hotel and if I left there or went to the pool, I'd leave a note in the room. I got back to the hotel on foot about 7:30 at night, walked about 7 miles I´d reckon, and about 10 minutes later Sara walked in. Turned out that she had done a lot of walking as well. She was ready for a nap.

It is a good thing that they eat supper late here, like after 10 pm.

Now get this---I had read in a travel column online in the Seattle Times I think it was, about this new way for people to clip you for an extra 3% when you charge stuff overseas. Well she was sooooooo right , and worse than that, it is worse !!

According to the article, by Carol Ponzi or something close, the paperwork says at the bottom something to the effect , 'I agree that I was offered alternate ways to pay for this charge´...they convert the Euros to dollars on the spot, it APPEARS to be a great thing as you don´t have to think outside your home currency mentality, but in reality, you get charged an extra 3% over and above the additional 3% you are gonna be charged by most card processing co when the bill comes and according to her what you have to do is tell them to charge you in Euros, not Dollars...BUT...here is the problem....the waiter tells you that that is 'impossible'...that the machine is programmed as it is and if your card is from the states, you are gonna get the instant conversion no matter what.
OR the poor clerk , like at a small hotel, either doesn´t know about the extra 3% that the hotel is making or he pretends not to. So there is no CHOICE even tho the paper you are suppose to sign says that you understand that you have been offered a choice. Most people don´t notice it and don´t know what is going on.

It is a new way to cheat people legally according to the article in the Seattle Times . It would be one thing if you just didn´t notice and let it go , but the problem is that I notice and ask the seller to charge in Euros and they refuse, so there is no choice. At hotels, this is a big problem cause to use cash will sorta wipe you out. I plan to contact VISA about upon my return. I will also contact the writer of the article that I read as she seemed to be under the impression that one could simply request that the charge be converted back to Euros, NOT. The computerized cash registers are pre-programmed. I do not see this conversion switcheroo on the little sidewalk shop vendor slips, but DO on hotel and pricey restaurants. The newspaper writer mentioned rental car companies.

Well, seems that the Gulf Shores area was spared from Hurricane Dennis damage but there has been some email mention of EMILY..??? I must now go do a new search......
Lundy in Barcelona