Saturday, November 1, 2008

Punked Again

I am a dreamer. An endless optimist. My mind soars with the eagles.

I see it there and I know. I just know that it is right. That it will be mind blowing. A must. Have to. Can't miss. Once in a lifetime chance.

And, without fail, it fails. It punches me in the face. Always. It happened at the Bronx Zoo when I thought that the little airborne carriage on a wire (is there a name for that thing?) would take us on a glorious tour above the entire zoo. Did we see lions? Tigers? Bears? No, we saw the tops of 7 trees and then were back on the ground. Ahhh.

But I conveniently forgot our history of the sky carriages (isn't that always the way of the dreamer?) today when I made Kelly and I wait in line for over two hours for the Barcelona sky carriage.

From the ground it looked glorious! Awesome. We would see everything. And on top of that, it looked like it would take us up to the highest point in the city. We would have it all!

So we waited. And waited. And waited. The sign on the little ticket booth at the front said 3o minutes. Uh, either that was written by a pre-schooler who had not yet learned the clock or someone was having a laugh. We continued to wait. Yes, I thought about leaving the line. Enjoy the day by walking about. But every time I would start to inch out of the crowd, a carriage would move gently overhead and I would be lost in its wonder. We waited. The line never seemed to move. And behind us was the family from hell. You know the one. I don't even have to explain.

Finally, finally we get to the front of the line! And the guy closes the ticket window. He turns in his little booth and jams to music that I am not sure is actually there. We wait some more. After about 20 minutes he turns back around and opens the window. Hello!

The luster is fading but, wait, our moment has come! We are heading up in the elevator. (I close the door before the family behind us can get in.) We are up. Up and here it is. . . . another line! We have watched the day slip by us and here we get to watch it from the top of the tower.

Our turn in the carriage! Except, though we leave the Addams family behind us, we are the last to get in. So, of course, everyone has crowded around the windows. Kelly and I are stuck in the middle of the magical air carriage.

I catch little glimpses of the sprawling Barcelona. It must be beautiful out there. However, just as I am squeezing next to a window we are headed back down! WHAT! Hours of wait for fifteen frickin' minutes of ride!?!?! It seems that it is another air carriage somewhere else in the city taking people to the top of the mountain. All we got for 18 euros and 3 hours of our lives is a teaser.

I want my money back! My dreams. My hopes of a world view like no other are dashed.

Again.

1 comment:

kelly said...

its called a cable car.

and, ¨punked again," "the family from hell," "i want my money back".... some would say those are pessimistic thoughts.

it was really more like 4 minutes... not 15.

however, the view from the second line was amazing, and the cable car did take us very close to our hostel, cutting out walking back. yay!