The Richards Family Fairytale: Barcelona, swallowed magnets, and cow brains.

It has been a busy couple of days. We left Paris for a few days and went to Barcelona. So the night before we left while Jackson was supposed to be going to sleep in bed, he came into our room and told me he had to tell me something. So despite the fact we had lectured the kids extensively about this...100+times. Apparently he swallowed 2 of those small ball magnets. Yes, the ones all over the news about how kids swallow them and then get bowl obstructions and all manner of issues from them "connecting inside the intestines and blocking stuff off." So after a few moments of panic and horror(me, Todd remained perfectly calm looking up from his computer to confirm they were attached when they went down.) Jackson was "100% sure they are attached" and because they would do nothing but X-ray him and wait to see if a problem devolved we wait and watch(the watching part is very gross and we won't discuss what that involves.) So after our last minute nightmare we got on our way. It was actually most economical to fly, we took Spain's version of Southwest. It was an uneventful flight, the kids were good. The airlines makes you pay extra to pick out your seat. Initially we thought we would have to do that but then after some research realized they had to seat us together...there are laws I guess that your kids have to sit with you...bummer. Anyhow so some slight seat rearranging and we were all together. We then took the train from the airport to the city, it was crowded but pretty simple, although Todd ended up buying 4 metro passes when we really only needed one. But I have a suspicion we will end up using all of it anyway. Barcelona is really beautiful. I like it here more than I expected but I think that much of that has to do with the weather...we are back in California. It feels like L.A. here, there is a cool breeze from the Ocean and it's perfect and after the month we have spend in the rain I think we all just want to hang here for a while. Our apartment is AMAZING. I spent a good deal of time researching this place and it has totally delivered. We are right across from The Sagrada Familia, a unique church that is still under construction and has been for the last 110+ years. There is a park below us and it's really perfect. At night it's beautiful as they light it up and it just glows. It is on the 4th floor. Really it is on the 6th floor, but for some reason in Europe they randomly select which floor floor 1 starts at. In France it starts on the 2nd floor, here apparently floor 1 is on floor 3? Anything to make things simpler. Or make you fell better as you are climbing 6 flights of stairs to get to the 4th floor. The stair case here is in an interior courtyard of sorts and the kids were so loud going up and down it that eventually we decided to have them take their shoes off to go up and down the marble steps and implement a "no talking at all" rule while going up and down...it worked. The cleaning lady was laughing at us and I think in Spanish telling me she thought that was a good idea. My mom(who's afraid of heights) would hate this place, it has 4 balconies and is 6 floors up with floor to ceiling widows. But she need not worry, Austin(Mr risk avoidance) is busy shutting and locking windows at every turn.

Says a lot

The french have mastered one thing...public seating...it's all about encouraging loitering.

Train to airport

My travel companions

Todd's travel companions...I chose wrong

Hannah entertaining everyone on the train with her "math" skill...even in english they knew one plus one was not 20.

So once we got a little settled(dropped our bags, and btw I packed 3 backpacks, that's it) we realized we were starving. It was 3pm and we had not eaten so everyone was on the verge of complete meltdown(can you sense this is a build up for something?) And it just so happens(as McDonald's owns some of the best real estate in the world) that there is a McDonald's across the street. So there we went. The kids were happy and Todd and I got our share of sodium. After that we walked through town. We went about a mile or so to this street market called the Rambla. It's actually a mile lone pedestrian street that has all kinds of street vendors, artists, and craziness. There is also a ton of small pets, birds, rabbits, turtles, etc for sale there. And the kids were doing there best to work out how to get a pet turtle home. We then went into a crazy food market. If it's eatable they sell it there. Todd enjoyed torturing Austin who was completely disgusted and unable to hide it by the site of cow tongues, brains, hearts, livers, and unmentionables. It was pretty fun and eventually we found our way out and back to the Rambla. It leads to the ocean where we sat under the statue of Columbus pointing to the ocean and realized how far we had walked by the relief experienced upon sitting. After we gathered ourselves and our children we walked along the water for a ways to a metro stop and took the metro home.

Today we are hanging enjoying the view at the moment while Todd is on a run, scoping out where we should go. And they we are planning to head to Park Guell and the beach.