Back from Vacation

It is difficult to find the right people to vacation with. Once I went to New York City on spring break with a friend from Massachusetts. Longest 3 days of my life. She complained about walking about, visiting museums and libraries, and had a creepy obsession with wanting to visit a museum dedicated to sex toys. I mean, NYC was a great place, I just went with the wrong person. Same with a mission trip I went on in Mexico over Christmas one year. My poor brother (only 15 or 16 at the time) got to be traumatized by people who basically yelled in tongues and would wake him up by praying over him with a Bible and flashlight in the middle of the night. We definitely drove straight home after they dropped us off in Oklahoma, turning down their offers of an extra place to stay (to be honest I was also afraid of spontaneous exorcisms occuring). 

Sometimes we vacation with people who like outdoor activities and want to be constantly moving, other times we find friends who want to lay on the beach. I find my parents have one of the funniest/adorable vacationing relationships I've ever seen. When we went to Florida as a family, I distinctly remember that they would both get up early for a walk on the beach, then dad would do things like reconaissance on the bus routes in Florida, while mom would come back out to the beach after breakfast and soak up sun for most of the day. Also amusing : the fact that dad would get up so early and then take morning and afternoon naps. This might not be an accurate re-telling, but this is always how I will remember it in my mind. For the record, I absolutely loved that vacation. Getting to spend so much time with my family was absolutely wonderful!

However, this is not about NYC, Mexico, or Florida. This is about Barcelona. :)

Barcelona was my first trip to Europe that I actually remember. And though I would love to go back to Germany with my parents and do some remembering there, I've gotta say that Barcelona left an amazing first impression! To begin with, the city is so clean! There was a bit of trash here and there, and some graffiti in random places, but overall I was surprised at how tidy it was.

It was also fun to get lost in. My parents and Adam can both attest to how stressed out being lost causes me to be, but it wasn't so bad there. There was always a metro close by, and it was laid out in such a way that it was generally not bad to find your way to a known landmark if you are patient enough. Also, people were quite helpful whenever we broke down and asked them. Adam can also do N/S/E/W pretty well, so he was pretty good at keeping us on track. I know being bad at directions is an annoying stereotype to fit in, but in my defense, the gene for being good absolutely skipped me. What happened G'ma and Mom??

Also amazing...the food!! Even the "fast food" from a restaurant called Pan or Pans was pretty good. I love sandwiches and the bread at every place we stopped at was very good. I liked eating at completely random shops and cafes because undoubtedly no matter what you ate would be delicious (and sometimes a surprise as we couldn't decipher some of the Catalan/Spanish menus). Also, the sangria in Barcelona was amazing. Pretty much tasted like carbonated grape juice. Our favorite restaurant was run by a British guy and it was called "Ben." We happened upon it right before visiting the National Museum of Art (soooo much ART!!) and came back the next day because the food was incredible.

I don't even know where to start on the site seeing. We saw the Aquarium which was fun, winding, and full of interesting fishes. There was even a huge shark tank (you can take a dunk for 400-ish Euros) and a sting ray tank that you can look down into and watch stingrays swimming a foot from your hand. We tried to go to an IMAX theater nearby, but it was closed, so we braved a Spanish shopping mall instead, which was pretty nice. We tried on fun (and crazy looking) clothes, Adam found a nice shirt and I found a cute pair of shoes to wear.

On Tuesday (I think) we went on a  4 hour tour of Barcelona starting at 11 am. We were supposed to meet the guides in a plaza in the city center, but as we had never been to that part of the city before (and a lot of places in Barcelona have plaza looking areas!) we got a little lost and had to ask directsion twice. However, we did eventually find our guides, got bikes (no helmets, though there is a city law about wearing them) and then we were off (but then, you knew that...). It was actually the first time I'd ridden a bike in about 5 years. Took a little getting used to. We then proceeded to bike everywhere! We looked at historical buildings such as the Sagrada Familia, Opera House, several war memorials, city walls (which are pretty cool if they are hundreds of years old), and some neat fountains and parks. Our tour guide was an Aussie who was fun and told stories in a interesting way. He had dreads and spent the entire tour, when not socializing or telling stories, hitting on a French girl who was also on the tour. It was awesome to watch! At the end of the tour we stopped at a bakery down by the beach and had lunch. The beach is SO windy!! There were a ton of people windsurfing and parasailing, but they were all in wetsuits because it was also extremely cold. Ok. Maybe only 40 F, but that is still cold! We had spinach lasagna, focaccia (sp?) bread, and a pitcher of sangria. All were delicious, and I am actually salivating remembering them now.

Anyway that is all for now. I will add pictures to the next blog post about the last half of our trip which includes : (a) a castle, (b) a proposal, (c) some fun museums! Oh,and a movie adventure.

Later.

Love you!
Becca