Vroom, vroom!
Barcelona is a very compact city. It is easy to walk everywhere, and most sights were within a 10 to 20 minute walk from our hostel. Those that weren’t were easily accessible by subway or bus. We found the public transportation to be very easy to navigate, modern, and efficient (once we figured out you had to open the door to the subway train yourself). As a sidenote, why can’t Pittsburgh bus stops tell you how much longer until the bus arrives? Let’s get on that, Port Authority.
One way to see the sights in Barcelona besides walking or public transportation are the GoCars (http://www.gocartours.com/).
Completely touristy (reminiscent of the Just Ducky tours in Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh’s only tour that goes in land and water!), they also were completely fun. My friend Tim told me that he tried the GoCars in Barcelona, and he would rent one again in any city that had them. With that rousing endorsement, we had to check them out, especially once we saw they had an offer for bloggers. (Disclosure: the offer entailed us getting the GoCar free for one hour, so long as we agreed to review the GoCar on our blog, whether the review was good or bad. Even if we had paid in full for the GoCar, my review would the same).
The GoCar facility is close to the Catedral, right across from a market where we gathered ingredients for our tasty sandwich we mentioned in the last post. The car part of the GoCar name is a bit of a misnomer – they pretty much are a scooter, go-cart like contraption that travels out on the road. There is no way that something like this would be street legal in the United States, and the lawyer in me was amused that we only had to sign a brief waiver relating to damage to the vehicle, not damages to ourselves. (Our mothers should not worry – there was no damage to anything or anyone, and we wore our helmets the whole time). With some quick instructions about how to use the GoCar, we were out cruising around the streets. We quickly realized we had no idea what we were doing. Me to Sean: Huh. Wonder if we should have asked if there are any instructions for actually driving in foreign traffic. Sean to me: Yeah. That probably would have been a good idea.
Being the cheapskates frugal conservers of money that we are, particularly on this trip, we were determined to stick to our free hour. It is easy to get carried away and cruise farther than you thought, so we ended up going over (which was only 5 euros extra). If you follow the pre-planned routes, a nice British lady talks to you and tells you which way to go (perhaps related to British lady on the Tom-Tom, except the lady on the Tom-Tom gets a real attitude if you don’t listen to her. Turn around when possible. Turn around when possible. TURN AROUND WHEN POSSIBLE!). If you go off course, which we mostly did, the GoCar British lady doesn’t talk to you other than to occasionally tell you, if you turn around, you could rejoin our course, suggesting, in a polite way, that it might be nice if you weren’t so rebellious and disobedient. The GPS feature is very nice, but it is hard to hear over the engine when you are cruising down the street. Conversely, when you pull up to a light, it blares out very loudly if you had the volume up when you were driving, causing people to stare at you even more than they already were.
We were quite the site in the GoCars, admired by little kids, laughed at by adults, and generally gawked at by all others. No matter – the GoCar was fun to drive, because it essentially was like driving a go-cart, without the track. (For all of you Pittsburgh readers, it somewhat reminded me of driving the cars on the turnpike ride at Kennywood – except you were actually on a real road). Although you can cruise pretty well, we were passed frequently. Me to Sean at one point: Woo-hoo! We’re up to 40 mph. Err, I mean kilometers.
We drove down to the beach area, which allowed us to see an area of Barcelona we had not seen yet.
After a while, the GoCars get a little uncomfortable. I think they are best for a fun short ride just for kicks, like we did, or for an all day rental to see the sights, where you periodically park and get out.
All in all, the GoCars were a fun way to spend our afternoon, and a different way to experience Barcelona.