Barcelona

For President's Day, we knew we had one last trip to take before we moved back to the US.  Unfortunately, I got the cities mixed up that Shanna had and had not been to in Spain.  I thought she'd been to Madrid, but not Barcelona.  Turns out, it was the opposite.  But I had already booked our trip to Barcelona before I found out my mistake.  One other thing to note about this trip, while it's always neat to see a new city (and for me, a new country), this particular trip was mostly just exhausting.  Ben had always been a great traveler, but due to a few mistakes we made, he was not a happy camper this time.  We forgot his sleep sack, which is basically a blanket that he wears over his pajamas.  It stays on him all night so he can't kick it off, and it keeps him warm.  We also had his crib in the hotel placed right under a window.  The hotel was so hot we had to open the window, but this allowed cold air to flow in and down on to him.  The end result was he kept waking up through out the night, and during the day, we were exhausted.  So this blog post won't be as long as previous ones.

That said, though, we did see some neat things.  The first day there we opted to just go with a hop on/hop off bus.  Before that started running for the day, though, we visited a building designed by the famous architect from Barcelona, Antoni Gaudí.  His works are known for not having any straight lines and intricate colors.  This building looked like it was inspired by a Mardi Gras mask.

Notice in the picture that Ben is asleep.  While most of the pictures of him during our travels has him asleep like that, almost all the ones in Barcelona were like that due to him being up all night.  After we toured the building, we headed to the pick up for the hop on/hop off.  I never really liked those because the audio quality wasn't great, and it's just a dry presentation.  But we were so tired, there's no way we could have done an extensive walk like we usually do.  At least Ben enjoyed seeing the city from the upper deck.

We stopped and walked through a beautiful church along the tour.

For lunch, we stopped in a hole in the wall seafood place and had some of the best Paella I'd ever had.  Even Ben loved it, devouring it faster than we could put it in front of him.

The rest of the day was spent just walking around city center, shopping and touring.

The next day we took a taxi to a unique place on top of one of the mountains around Barcelona.  It was a huge church, and outside of it was an old amusement park.  What we didn't realize was they were closed on Mondays, and didn't find that out until we get up there.  But the church was beautiful, as was the view of the city.

At this point we were getting hungry, so we headed back to the city center to the big market place.  They had all kinds of fresh seafood, meats, cheeses, etc...  We found a little sit down restaurant to eat at, and had some delicious seafood.  I had to get a picture of the Jamon in the market.  I've never liked ham, but discovered I love Italian prosciutto when we moved to Germany.  In the past year, I've learned that it doesn't come close to aged Spanish Jamon.  It's not cheap, but the flavor is incredible.  They were selling entire legs in the market that you sliced yourself for the low low price of 125 Euro per leg.  Although, considering the cost of it when packaged, that's a pretty good price.  

That afternoon we took the hop on/hop off bus to some of the more remote locations, including the stadium where the local football team, FC Barcelona, plays.

Despite being exhausted, we did enjoy the trip.  The weather was beautiful and the food was delicious.  

To see pictures, click any image above or here.