We couldn't find lodgings in Barcelona. A Formula One race and a futbol game filled the city with visitors. Striking out with all the hotels, I checked vacation apartment rental agencies. No luck there, either, until a nice man, Lars, called us back to say that a brand-new, never before rented apartment had opened up; were we interested?

Interested? We were desperate. We snatched the opening and rolled into town looking for the Ciutat Vella—the Old Town. Tomas, another agency associate, told us to look behind the central post office building...

... and follow the street to the left.

Triangulating by cellphones, we finally hooked up with Tomas who escorted us to our flat. As we walked, he explained that our unit was on the fourth floor. No elevator.

Hey, OK. We can use the exercise, ho, ho, ho.

So we're living in a fourth-floor walk-up, the kind of apartment you got in Hell's Kitchen after immigrating from Sicily. Except it isn't a fourth-floor walk-up; it's a fifth-floor walk-up. I'd forgotten that in European buildings, the first floor is up one flight of stairs.

Tomas grabbed the bag Jean was carrying, leaving me with my backpack and a suitcase. By the time I'd climbed to our door, my vision was blurring. But the apartment made it all worthwhile.

We have a combination dining and living room, two bedrooms, two baths, a full kitchen and a laundry, all for about half the cost of a good hotel. And we couldn't be better located. We live in a quintessential old European neighborhood, with 12th-century churches and Roman ruins steps away. Likewise, the Esplanade and Las Ramblas. We're near a metro station. We're surrounded by restaurants and shops.

One major drawback: no internet access. Ordinarily I work around this problem; I haven't had a connection in any room we've stayed in so far on this trip. But in this case, those stairs separate me from a connection. Moreover, most hot spots in Spain have proved too lame to handle a blog upload. In every case, I've had to hardwire to somebody's ethernet. And it's hard to find places that will let me do that.

One other problem: the locks are so new that it's almost impossible to open the doors, requiring much jiggling of keys and tweaking of knobs to get in. Over the last couple of days, Jean and I have gotten the hang of it, though.

This evening, a woman rang the bell to our apartment. In courtly Spanish, she explained she lived on another floor and was having trouble with her door. Jean replied, also in Spanish, that opening the doors was difficult, but that she would help the woman get into her apartment and show her the tricks. After a number of exchanges, the woman's partner came up and asked if Jean was going to be able to help them out—in English! Turns out they're from Mendocino, not far from where we lived in California. If the partner hadn't come up, I wonder if either Jean or the woman would have realized they were two Americans talking to each other.

(The apartment rental agency: www.visit-bcn.com.)