Barcelona, Spain

We arrived later than we thought because we missed our connection in Paris. We got a late start out of San Francisco for some undisclosed technical problem that had us sitting on the runway for nearly an hour. In Paris we had sandwiches and had to chill for six extra hours. The later plane got us into Barcelona around 9 at night but it’s still light out because of the higher latitude. We found a taxi, and we careened off to our hotel, the BCN City Htop, just next door to the Hospital de San Pau. They had our reservation, and that’s when I went digging into my passport bag and discovered I had no credit card and no debit cards. That’s right, I had flown in to Spain for 6 weeks with nary a card! I didn’t let on to the desk clerk just cool as a cucumber, we signed in. She didn’t ask for the card anyway because it had all been entered online. Up in our room, I was in a panic at first tearing through all of my bags and mentally retracing my steps. We had just arrived, and I had pulled out my smart phone and passport many times, but hadn’t needed to look for the cards. That’s when I remembered the last time I had used the ATM was in Sonoma. So logically, the cards were in Sonoma. So I sent a text to Alaina outlining my problem. She was just leaving work for a lunch break so had time to get right on it. She found my cards in my Suburu wedged in between the seat and console. Apparently the little grey wallet just slid out of my pocket. I told her where to lock them up, then came up with a plan to live without them. Flexibility is one of my strengths. Norm and I have a joint account, so he could access the account with his card for both of us. And I can move money online from one account to another. The credit card will be missed, but Norm can cover that too, and I had plenty of cash. We had this very serious glitch solved within an hour with gratitude to Alaina. Mostly I felt a bit blue out of embarrassment. I’m not the spring chicken I used to be, so I don’t remember things as well, such as rechecking the documents. Not to mention I’m not so fit, I walk a bit slower and fumble around more. But we are here, and managing ourselves in the twilight of our lives.