Jeff here. Despite what everyone said, Jeff managed to sleep the whooooole night last night without any problem. Jeff was absolutely dead to the world.
After such a huge sleep, it was finally time to tackle the battery charger problem. Before coming to Barcelona, I found a website dedicated to accessibility here and included on that website was a link to a company called “Cosmo Scooters,” who rent accessible scooters to tourists. After playing a bit of phone tag, we finally connected with their staff and they confirmed they would have a scooter charger that should work with my wheelchair–great success!
Before heading to the scooter shop, we decided to head downstairs and have a delicious breakfast, courtesy of the hotel. Breakie was fantastic and, much like Jeff’s trip to Britain, is sure to become his favourite morning activity. With full bellies and heightened optimism, we decided it was time to face the world and find that battery charger. With Clara’s expert navigatory skills, we found the place without any problems and that’s when the real fun began. As it turns out, Jeff’s battery charger is fine, the real problem lies with the wheelchair. Remember when the staff at Pearson “figured it out”? It appears as though they removed the circuit breaker that connects the charging port to the battery, leaving the plug unable to accept a charge. Luckily, this chair has a second charger port on the controller, which uses a different breaker to give power to the batteries. The guy at Cosmo Scooter was extremely helpful and even let us borrow his charger for the night just to make sure we were good to go before renting one.
Because we were in the area, we decided it would be a good idea to go check out the Sagrada Familia, but unfortunately the line was way, way too long. And when we say too long, we mean nearly around the massive building twice. Instead, we found a cafe right beside the Sagrada and after some tapas and Fanta (a new favourite of Jeff’s) we decided to head back to the hotel to charge the chair, which was pretty close to dying at this point.
Jeff was feeling pretty tired at this point, so the obvious decision was to lay down for a quick nap. Said nap quickly became a full on sleep, proving that Jeff is, in fact, terrible at beating jet lag. Waking up around 8pm, we decided there wasn’t really time to do much of anything too educational, meaning it was time to go find a place to drink. Given that we’re from Canada, the place we decided to check out a bar called IceBarcelona, which is constructed wholly of ice and requires special jackets to sustain the -4 degrees temperature inside. The patio of the bar was accessible, which gave us hope, but after inquiring we were shown the 1-foot drop inside the front door.
Arg. After a quick pow-wow with Melody, we decided to leave the electric wheelchair behind the bar and simply sit Jeff in a chair. Awesome. Ice bar, here we come! Turns out we’re the only ones stupid enough to enter a bar made of ice in the middle of summer, as we were the only people in the bar. Strangely, the next group of people to enter after us included another man in a wheelchair. Looks like Monday is “Handi-night” at IceBarcelona. All in all, the experience was pretty cool (no pun intended) and certainly something to check out, if only to see the pirated copies of National Geographic’s series “Life” or “Ice Age 3” playing on the TV (as per photographic evidence).
After the bar, and a bathroom break at the hospital featuring accessible washrooms that we found down the block from the bar, we were off to find our way home on the “Night Busses” that run in Barcelona. As it turns out, the bus schedules are completely different at night, although it’s still fairly easy to get around. A note should be made that someone here goes around to ever bus stop and changes all of the paper schedules from the day busses to the night busses. Not seeing that type of commitment from you, LTC. It was a bit dicey and confusing, but we eventually arrived home safe and sound, ready for bed.
Now we just need to see what type of shinanigans we get into tomorrow. Adios!
– Jeff and Clara