Last Day in Spain (Supposed to be)

It was the afternoon on Thursday and I was looking forward to finishing work for the day so we could fly back to Belgium and I could begin packing for my trip to Scotland. A colleague then mentioned that some of Northern Europe's airspace was being closed due to a volcano eruption in Iceland.  For once, we experienced travel delays that were not because of the French!  At that time, it was reported that Belgium would be closing their airspace as of afternoon on Friday so we thought we would still be able to fly home.  As the day progressed the situation kept getting worse and worse - Belgium decided to close their airspace as of 7 PM and that meant no more flight for us!  I really wanted to get back because I had a flight booked Friday night from Amsterdam to Glasgow that I 'needed' to get on and at that point all of the airports were saying the situation would be resolved Friday afternoon / evening - so it looked like my flight was still going to happen.  I could only think about not being able to get to Scotland so I was quite disappointed and the only thing about the volcano that made me smile all day was an email from my Grandma:
Subject: Eruption
"That cloud is sure making an ash of itself. Hope your flights are on time."

So I researched and found flights from Barcelona to Paris Thursday evening, then thought we could rent a car and drive the 2-2.5 hours from Paris to Brussels.  But, there were four of us in the same situation and we didn't all agree on how to proceed so we ended up reserving hotel rooms for another night - with one catch.  We had 5 people that needed rooms and only 4 were available, one was a woman so by default she got her own room, so two people had to share a room.  Even though there was one person staying at another hotel that had open rooms, someone made the decision that sharing a room wasn't a big deal - mainly because they knew they wouldn't be sharing the room!  So around 9:30 PM we leave work and end up flipping coins to figure out who needs to share the room and surprisingly I didn't have to!  However, when we arrived to the hotel, one of the people that were supposed to share the room checked in first and since I didn't force the issue I of course end up sharing a room.  But to me wasn't that big of deal just annoying that the situation could have been avoided if one of else went to the other hotel! 

Then, we head out to dinner and I was starving and in need of some wine.  We went to this amazing authentic Italian restaurant that supposedly has HUGE portions of pasta and you need to share one order for two people, or order a pizza for yourself.  I did not want pizza so I was going to order my own pasta because I was starving, I knew I wasn't paying, and I was not yet convinced of the HUGE portions - it is Spain, not America!  There were two of us that ordered our own pasta and they kept saying no, no - you can't do that, you will need to share, then I said fine - please cancel my order I will share, because I just wanted to eat.  They bring out the food and I laugh in the face of this "HUGE" order of pasta.  The other guy and I who were sharing both said immediately - this isn't enough.  After we killed the pasta we ordered another serving and ate about all of that too and it was delicious.  Tagliatelle with seafood sauce, so amazing. 

After dinner the same three of us went back to 'El Billars' for some drinks and to play some pool.  Unfortunately, all of the pool tables were taken because they had some tournament going on and we found the next bar game that was open - electronic darts.  I ended up dominating the two games we played until a pool table opened up - but in the meantime there are a couple Spanish slot machines that we started throwing money into and were having no luck, mostly due to the fact we had no clue how to play them.  Sounds dumb I know, because how hard can a slot machine be?  Evidently very difficult - all of the buttons are in Spanish and the machine is having all of the random lights flashing and sounds being made because at certain times you can change one of the reels up or down by one position and we had no luck understanding when / how to do that.  So we ended up just pressing buttons and random and not surprisingly we lost all of the change in our pockets.  Then a pool table finally opened up and I again won two games - going undefeated in all games in 'El Billars' that week except for the slot machines...  oh and yes, I had to be quiet when going to bed not to wake up my roommate. For the record - there were separate beds, no snuggling with the married colleague.