Here is Barcelona's crown jewel - the Sagrada Familia. Gaudi died in 1926 and the construction to finish this project has never stopped... this was very evident this morning as we awoke to the sound of jackhammers 15 feet from our bedroom window! Have I mentioned that we are right across the street from this church? Granted, it was 9:30 in the morning and the workers hadn't considered the poor jetlagged Canadians across the street. It didn't phase Julia - I had to pry her out of bed at 11:30 this morning and even then she fell back asleep as I went to grab her some clothes from the other room. It's now almost midnight and everyone is winding down and getting ready for bed... this is working perfectly with the timeline that Spaniards have with their mealtimes! We are tired, but not overly so, and the kids have been phenomenal keeping up with everything we've done today.
We started out with an 'ensuite' breakfast courtesy of Chloe and Jeff's excursion to the neighbourhood grocery store. Coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, croissants covered in extremely thick chocolate and the Spanish version of minigo yogurts. Fully sugared up we headed out into the wild yonder (ie - the metro). The metro was clean and easy to navigate and before we knew it we'd zipped down to Las Ramblas which is a long pedestrian street full of shops, cafes and crazy street performers. The thing I remember most as 'unusual' was the McDonalds cafe that looked like any other European outdoor cafe except that instead of sipping sangria and snacking on olives people were eating Big Macs and Happy Meals! We wandered for awhile then stopped for a tapas lunch in a cute little plaza where, as we ate, we watched both a juggler and a flamenco dancer. The juggler was pretty good but the flamenco dancer had a little more work to do... she lasted about 5 minutes but obviously wasn't feeling the love from the crowd and moved on. Just because you 'think' you can dance doesn't always mean that you 'should'. Enough said.
This is Chloe being tied up in a centuries old chain at the castle atop Montjuic - we explained that this was a popular parenting technique hundreds of years ago for unruly children. Both girls were so well behaved after this!! (Joking, of course, but it does make one think...)
We had taken a funicular to the base of the mountain and then a gondola/cable car up to the top where a castle is located as well as many buildings and structures left from the 1992 Olympics. It was a beautiful walk around the castle (well, Jeff and I thought so, the girls didn't necessarily love it) and the view over the city and port was gorgeous. The hit of the excursion was a very cool, steep slide which the kids enjoyed a few times until the metal of the slide combined with bare skin became a bit too much to take. With slide-burned bums we stopped for a refreshment and recharged our batteries. (Okay, I personally didn't have a slide burned bum but I did commiserate with the kids because I know how much it hurts!) There is that particular sound of skin squeaking on slick metal that kind of sticks with you... all of you nodding your heads know what I'm talking about.
This picture is out of order but it's from the lunch we ate before heading up Montjuic - Julia doing the classic "I love mussels" pose. This picture was taken before she'd actually eaten any of them and it turns out that she didn't love this particular batch. As it turns out, she's more of a white wine/shallot kind of girl (?!?), not a zippy tomato sauce lover. Not to mention, those mussels were huge! I forgot to mention the amazing market we went to after lunch - La Boqueria. Half of the stalls were closed for holidays and I can only imagine the hustle and bustle it would have when it's totally full. As it was, it was perfect for us! The kids were shocked and amazed (and a little horrified) seeing the oozing squid, huge (unshelled) prawns, skinned rabbits and a giant pig head for sale, but were soon placated but the giant candy stall filled with everything you could imagine. This was a very popular stall, and not only with our family! There were fruit stands and juice stands selling every kind of fresh pressed juice imaginable - I had a coconut one and I'm not afraid to say that it was absolutely the tastiest coconut beverage I have ever had! I would love to try everything there (time, and stomach space permitting!) and if we're in that area again I will definitely get one. So many choices!
We dragged ourselves back to our apartment for a little R n' R before dinner (which is when Jeff made the miraculous discovery - ie - the modem cable... see below post for more details!). Jeff contacted a friend who lives here in Barcelona and we met him for dinner. As we walked out the door to meet him the craziest rain started. Not just rain, but TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR! Insane. So, we regrouped and came upstairs for some refreshments in the apartment while we waited for the rain to stop. We didn't have much to offer - a bottle of wine, some salami and some grapes - we worked with what we had. Luckily our guest was easy to please! Ryan is a chiropractor who also graduated from Palmer and is currently working here in Barcelona after previously working in Peru - he's actually from the Calgary area so we had a lot to talk about. The rain eventually slowed down enough for us to venture out to a nice little Italian restaurant (which we chose solely based on it's location and indoor tables!).
So now it's off to bed. This post turned out to be quite the novel, but I have trouble stopping once I've started. I blame in on gr. 10 typing class... it worked too well!
Buenas noches!
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