>>>My Spanish isn't good enough to be of use to you, but I can give you some great restaurant recommendations if you're going <g>
>>>
>>
>>We will be in Barcelona and Costa Brava so if you can recommend any good (or bad ones so that I exclude them <g>) restaurants, I will appreciate it.
>
>If you are near Costa Del Sol, don't eat red meat unless you go to the German restaurant. There, you can eat anything on the menu :o)
>
>One of my instructors at the Defense Language Institute was from Spain. It was very difficult at first to understand her, but nothing compared to the instructor from Chile! :o) Actually, the spoken language in Argentina, Peru, Chile, and Spain sounded very similar to me. I think they are all closer to Castellano (Spanish)... but then there is Galician, Basque, and Catalan spoken there too. Which one are you listening to? In Barcelona I heard mostly Catalan but they spoke both (everyone)...
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>What I mostly noticed was the different verbs used in everyday language:
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>coger -> tomar
>enfermar -> enfermarse
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>And different words (nouns) too:
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>billete -> boleto
>patata -> papa
>autobus -> guagua
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>Really, it's the verb tenses that were always throwing me (it still does!)...
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>He ido al escuela esta mañana -> Fui al escuela esta mañana
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>And some phrases like antes de nada -> en primer lugar
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>And vosotros was used all the time in Barcelona and I never heard it in Central America. There I heard ustedes...
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>Basically, they would speak to me using castellano as soon as they realized it took me entirely too long to figure out what they were saying when they spoke in Catalan...
>
>Walk around and listen to everyone speaking. You will notice a huge difference in some converstations and then they switch between the two sometimes also!
>
>If you can, try to get to Manilva and Frigilana.. Beautiful!

We are not going to be near Costa del Sol. And I don't eat red meat, but thanks for the warning. I know what Catalan is the dominant language in Barcelona but Spanish is still an official language. And since I only know and listen to Spanish, they (the people I come across) will have to speak to me in Spanish (of course, if they do want to speak with me at all <g>).

Thank you for all input.