Barcelona and Friends

At Park Guell

The weather in Barcelona was absolutely perfect.  Clear skies, warm sun, cool breeze, what more could you ask for?  We went out to Park Guell,  a park designed by Gaudi.  It's a crazy dream like world of mosaic tiles and curved lines.  The park was a bit of a hike but the kids made it ok without much complaining.  The view back to the ocean was really spectacular.  Barcelona is a very clean city.  It's also very easy to get around on the subway and super cheap in comparison to Paris.  Food there is also very inexpensive in comparison.  The language was a total drag.  I took 3 years of Spanish in high school and know more of it than French, but I think because I have been speaking french for the last 6 weeks I could not transition at all.  In fact it was a big jumbled mess and I eventually stopped even trying and just Englished my way through. 

We had a scary moment while we were walking back home from Park Guell.  We had stopped to get the kids a couple of drinks and after we drank them headed off towards the subway.  On the way I stopped everyone to fill up the water bottles at a faucet.  When we looked up Hannah was gone.  We were in a completely fenced in area so we were baffled as to where she went.  We sat the other kids on a bench and told them if they moved we'd remove their toenails(not really but they understood what we meant) and then Todd went one way and I went the other.  I decided to stand on a park table to see if I could see her, it was not crowded but it was so confusing as to where she could have gone.  All I could think was that someone could have grabbed her, but it did not make sense this all happened in a matter of seconds.  A woman saw me yelling for her and pointed towards the subway entrance, I ran down the hill to find Hannah walking out of the subway, crying.  Several people where trying to help her and when she saw me she immediately stopped crying and said "I told you I wanted to go on the escalators!!" (Hannah deals with stress by yelling at you.) Then sobbed again.  She had apparently not stopped walking when we did and we failed to rein her in.  She kept walking the 200 or so feet to the subway entrance and I am guessing just followed people down thinking she was still with us.  Suffice it to say we were thoroughly freaked out and I have not let go of her hand sense.  All the kids have our phone number on them.  I write it on the girls arms when we go out and the boys have it either memorized or on a paper in their pocket, or both.  It can happen anywhere but for some reason here it's really scary.  

Park Guell

Deprived of TV for 2 months they found My Little Pony and were in Heaven

View from Park Guell, you can see Cathedral in distance, we walked from there

Gaudi apartment

Another cool Gaudi apartment, I was sure the kids would love this one....

BUT, this is how excited they were.

Our apartment had all kinds of little windows and doors, this one looked out the door to the stairs, the girls spent a couple hours on the chair looking out.

The beach was fun for all.  I guess the beach in Barcelona is a fairly new addition to the city.  There was apparently an industrial waste land here that they demolished and threw into the sea and replaced it with sand they had taken out of the sea.  However it got there it is very nice.  It took us a couple hours of walking to get back to the beach area, by then it was 5pm and we still had not had lunch which meant that we all were about to kill each other.  Todd left us at the beach and went to retrieve some food.  The kids changed into their suits and began to play in the water.  As nice as the weather was the water was freezing cold.  I put a toe in.  But the kids were unstoppable and did not seem to even miss a beat jumping in the water. 

The next day Todd went for another long run and the kids and I were going to go into the Church across the way.  But when we got over there the line just to get tickets was over an hour long so we opted for the park instead.  I just would not have survived that with the 4 of them.  

While at the beach they were running rescue drills...one landed in front of us

Gothic Area

The waiter brought her a blanket. Aka table cloth 

Dinner of the roof of our apartment

Austin had been begging us for days to get KFC, there was one on the corner so after a day of being super good he got his wish. 

Todd and I travel pretty well together.  But there is one thing where we differ completely.  I am really happy if I am the first person to the airport to check in and am sitting at the gate an hour early.  Todd considers it a failure if we have to wait at the gate at all.  So as you can imagine there is a bit of a power struggle on mornings when our flight leaves at 7am.  Today was no different although I was trying to just hand over control and follow the lead(I did ok with the exemption of a few well placed snide comments)  We had to be to a train station about 1/2 mile form our apartment by 5:21am in order to make it to the airport in time for the flight.  We got out of the apartment, carried the girls and prodded along the boys.  After some slight confusion and bad advise in the subway we found the platform in time for our train.  Airport security here is nothing like it is at home.  I am not even sure they really looked at our passports traveling between the European countries.  They also let you take way more through security.  You can take bottled water for example.  So once through we got some breakfast and then got on the plane.  The flight was uneventful and when we got off the plane we were met with clear but very cold skies.  

Airport breakfast... apparently they don't have syrup here. Just chocolate which was satisfactory obviously.  

Made our train. yay.

Adios Barcelona