Scenes from Barcelona Airport
Jun. 2nd, 2025 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerItaly Travelog #29
BCN Airport - Saturday, 31 May 2025, 1pm
We landed at Barcelona airport a few hours ago. It's where we're making a connection on our trip home from Sardinia today. The flight here was easy; just a boring 90 minutes in an airplane. The leg home to San Francisco from here is a lot longer. It'll be a whopping 13 hours.
We're on the ground for a few hours in Barcelona so we've taken a tour of the airport, from one end to the other. That's not just because we have time to kill or because we want to stretch our legs before being packing into cramped airline seats for another 13+ hours; it's because we have to. Our arrival gate was at one far end of the airport, while our departure gate is at pretty much the opposite end.
As we cruised around BCN airport we found that it has a few outdoors patios. It's nice to have an opportunity at an airport to get outside for sunshine and fresh air. So few airports (*other than tiny ones) have outdoors spaces once you're behind the security cordon.
Alas, while these patios at BCN offer sunshine they don't exactly offer fresh air. That's because they're smoking havens. And the smokers are fucking pigs. Despite there being ashtrays every 5 meters the floor is basically one big ashtray. You can barely set a foot anywhere without stepping on cigarette butts.
The purpose of our exploration wasn't just to find our next gate. It was also to get lunch. BCN has a lot of places to buy a meal in its big central concourse. That's especially true if your idea of a meal is, "I absolutely love ham and Swiss, please show me 17 variations on ham-and-Swiss sandwiches!" 😅 Alas, Hawk doesn't like ham, and I don't like Swiss. That knocked out, like, 80% of the restaurants.
We did find two restaurants that served food both of us could enjoy. One was an airport-typical world-fusion restaurant with options that seemed fashioned to middle American tastes. We decided that would be our fallback restaurant if we couldn't find anything actually interesting. Then we found a Spanish cafe in one of those outdoor patios that sold a variety of empanadas.
Hawk picked a pair of veggie empanadas (left in the photo above) while I picked three different types (right): one chicken, one beef, and one pulled pork. We also split a plate of fries not pictured above. Oh, and I enjoyed a mug of German beer that wasn't heinously expensive. At US airports such a beer would often cost $15 nowadays.
Instead of beer being heinously expensive, you know what is? Sodas.
In a convenience store near our gate I spotted these soda and beer prices. A bottle of Coke is €4.59; a can of beer is €3.99. And that's no crap beer. That's Estrella Reserva 1906, a beer I've bought several times at home and found to be one of the best overall beers I've found. Granted, the beer is a smaller serving than the soda, at 330ml vs. 500ml. Still, it's a flip of the norm in the US to see any single of beer selling cheaper than a single of soda.
Another thing that struck my US eyes as odd today was this:
So, ham, particularly jamón Ibérico, is a big thing in Spain. Lots of stores at the airport are selling it. But this one is bold enough to insist that it's the best in the airport.
Best in the airport? Sure, I could believe that. It's way more plausible than one of their competitors claiming to have the best ham in the world. I mean, I'm not sure where the best ham in the world is but I'm pretty darn sure it's not in an airport. 🤣
BCN Airport - Saturday, 31 May 2025, 1pm
We landed at Barcelona airport a few hours ago. It's where we're making a connection on our trip home from Sardinia today. The flight here was easy; just a boring 90 minutes in an airplane. The leg home to San Francisco from here is a lot longer. It'll be a whopping 13 hours.
We're on the ground for a few hours in Barcelona so we've taken a tour of the airport, from one end to the other. That's not just because we have time to kill or because we want to stretch our legs before being packing into cramped airline seats for another 13+ hours; it's because we have to. Our arrival gate was at one far end of the airport, while our departure gate is at pretty much the opposite end.
As we cruised around BCN airport we found that it has a few outdoors patios. It's nice to have an opportunity at an airport to get outside for sunshine and fresh air. So few airports (*other than tiny ones) have outdoors spaces once you're behind the security cordon.
Alas, while these patios at BCN offer sunshine they don't exactly offer fresh air. That's because they're smoking havens. And the smokers are fucking pigs. Despite there being ashtrays every 5 meters the floor is basically one big ashtray. You can barely set a foot anywhere without stepping on cigarette butts.
The purpose of our exploration wasn't just to find our next gate. It was also to get lunch. BCN has a lot of places to buy a meal in its big central concourse. That's especially true if your idea of a meal is, "I absolutely love ham and Swiss, please show me 17 variations on ham-and-Swiss sandwiches!" 😅 Alas, Hawk doesn't like ham, and I don't like Swiss. That knocked out, like, 80% of the restaurants.
We did find two restaurants that served food both of us could enjoy. One was an airport-typical world-fusion restaurant with options that seemed fashioned to middle American tastes. We decided that would be our fallback restaurant if we couldn't find anything actually interesting. Then we found a Spanish cafe in one of those outdoor patios that sold a variety of empanadas.
Hawk picked a pair of veggie empanadas (left in the photo above) while I picked three different types (right): one chicken, one beef, and one pulled pork. We also split a plate of fries not pictured above. Oh, and I enjoyed a mug of German beer that wasn't heinously expensive. At US airports such a beer would often cost $15 nowadays.
Instead of beer being heinously expensive, you know what is? Sodas.
In a convenience store near our gate I spotted these soda and beer prices. A bottle of Coke is €4.59; a can of beer is €3.99. And that's no crap beer. That's Estrella Reserva 1906, a beer I've bought several times at home and found to be one of the best overall beers I've found. Granted, the beer is a smaller serving than the soda, at 330ml vs. 500ml. Still, it's a flip of the norm in the US to see any single of beer selling cheaper than a single of soda.
Another thing that struck my US eyes as odd today was this:
So, ham, particularly jamón Ibérico, is a big thing in Spain. Lots of stores at the airport are selling it. But this one is bold enough to insist that it's the best in the airport.
Best in the airport? Sure, I could believe that. It's way more plausible than one of their competitors claiming to have the best ham in the world. I mean, I'm not sure where the best ham in the world is but I'm pretty darn sure it's not in an airport. 🤣
