I made a gigantic mistake today, and it may affect the rest of my trip. On my way into Barcelona, I stopped for gas. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to grab the wrong nozzle and didn’t notice that I was filling my tank with Gasoil A instead of Gasoline 95 until I hung it up.

There was stop-and-go traffic when I left the highway, and my engine clearly wasn’t happy. It stalled a few times at stoplights. Sitting still while waiting for a green, a scooter came up and knocked my mirror askew (great driving, jerks). Otherwise, it was a pretty smooth ride to the hotel Matt had selected for us to meet. He was already ensconced in our suite, but came down to help me unload and get squared away with reception.

We were supposed to meet a former client of mine and some of her friends for lunch at what looked to be a really nice restaurant, but I needed to hunt down a mechanic and Matt had another phone meeting urgently come up, so we canceled.

As it turns out, there were several mechanics nearby, so I went to one and asked. They were all very busy, with lines of people, but eventually I got to talk to someone. He thinks there’s a chance that if I keep topping up with the right gas, and if I didn’t put too much in (I don’t think I did), then I should be fine. Fingers crossed. And if not, he gave me his card. I was too stressed out to go give it a whirl right then. Instead, I went back to the hotel.

The hotel has a spa area with a large, color-changing jacuzzi, a steam room, a multi-directional shower, and an infrared sauna. I enjoyed the jacuzzi and the steam room quite a bit. I was the only one there.

Then I went back to the room and napped.

Matt had another meeting, in person this time, so he went off for that. I joined him later, at an Irish pub, where I had a burger and fries. 🙂 It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great. It was standard international Irish pub fare.

We were both tired, so we went back to our hotel, where we are spending the rest of the evening lounging around, reading books, and in Matt’s case, watching YouTube videos.

Tomorrow we will meet up with Deniz and Laura at our apartment for the week, a place Deniz selected for its size and proximity to most of the venues we will be enjoying music for Primavera Sound Music Festival. It’ll be great to see them!