Barcelona Spain
Arrival
We had a very busy time getting off the boat and finding our luggage.
The AIRBNB apartment Ryan found for us was perfect. It had 3 bedrooms, 1 full bath, a shower in the Mater, and another half bath. Plus a much wanted and used clothes washer.
The view from our outdoor balcony.
Wandering around the Rambla in Old Town
Street Performers
In Barcelona it's all about Gaudi
Park Guell
Gaudi spent a great part of his life working on the church Sangrada Familia . The Park Guell has several other buildings he built. I think Guell was one of Gaudi's benefactors with financing.
Of course - street vendors
A view of Sangrada Familia from the park.
Sangrada Familia
Stopping for lunch at a park before visiting the church.
The church was started in the early 1800's. When Gaudi died, the project continued on.
Karen checking out the Real Estate listings on the way back from the church. (Once a realtor always a realtor.)
Going out for Tapas with the adults
Shopping with the Grand-kids on the Rambla and site-seeing Old Town
Kim and Connie took an early taxi to the airport and returned home.
The kids were a little tired and enjoyed watching some cartoons in the morning.
There is a street in Barcelona called the Rambla. It has a lot of street vendors, shops, and plenty of people walking around.
Gracie checking out the back masseger.
There was a large open market. It had fruit, meat and a large variety of other things.
Addie with her Barcelona version of Chicken Nuggets
Gracie with her nachos and Grandma with her empenada.
Of course there was ice cream.
They had the coolest waffle cones I have seen.
Hudson is always very creative in the way he eats.
Barcelona has a bunch of different street performers.
Photo Bomber
We were taking photos in front of a church and this lady 'photo bombed' us. She had her face painted white and was in traditional Barcelona clothes. Then she wanted a tip for doing so.
The guy with the bubbles was a hit.
While the girls were shopping the boys went out exploring. We saw lots of dragons and gargoils type things on the building. We saw an ornamental iron with a dragon gargoil thing on it. Here is Hudson impersonating it.
Bryson also gets in the act.
Gracie showing off her new purchases from ZARA.
We finally found a great place for churros dipped in thick hot chocolate.
Ryan and Monica fed the kids and we met in a Sports Bar to watch the Manchester Soccer match.
Out for a late night snack of churos and hot chocolate
They have these cool LED light that are has some fins that spin like a parachute thing. You flip them in the air and they spin down with the blue light.
We had a guy give us some instruction and soon the kid were doing a good job flipping them in the air.
Sunday - Church, Picasso, and Maritime Museum
Church was in a kind of industrial building rather than a stand alone building.
It was a sell out crowd at church with every chair filled and people standing.
A lot of our transportation, other than LOTS of walking is the Metro. Barcelona has a good Metro system along with buses.
The Picasso Museum was kind of interesting.
Picasso lived in Barcelona for over 15 years. He donated quite a few painting to Barcelona. (Overall Picasso produced over 45,000 artifacts, most painting but some pottery and other media.)
It was interesting looking at his work first starting with realism.
Notice how he uses perspective. One view of the following two pictures is of the same painting just from different sides of the room. Notice the bed length of the old lady from one picture to another.
His work started getting more and more abstract
Until it is what we normally associate Picasso's paintings.
Ryan and Hudson negotiating on soccer jerseys.
The Maritime Museum was quite interesting. At one time Spain controlled the seas.
The Maritime Museum architecture is quite impressive
Stroll Down to the Waterfront
We took a little stroll down to the waterfront to check out a old boat.
They have a bridge and walking path over the bay of the marina .
At the end they have a shopping mall.
The marina has a TON of sailboats
The waterfront is lined with small vendors.
Can't miss the Christopher Columbus Statue
Day trip to Andora - with a Menairons Hike
Andora is a country that is aboiut a 3 hour drive from Barcelona. It is high
in the Pyrenean mountains and only had a total population of about 79,000. I
t’s main resouces are skiing, mountain biking, and general tourism. It seemed
like there was a lot of money there based on the cool looking condos and
high end bicycle shops.
We rented a 9 passenger van an off we went to Andora. The drive was
beautiful up through the mountains. The only problem was that 3 of the 4 kids
got carsick and threw up.
We stopped at a bar and ordered tapas (appetizers) that we shared.
The kids loved the chicken nuggets and the rest of the tapas were pretty good.
Ryan found a cool hike for the family to go on. The hike was focused on a legend
with a series of 11 activities along the way.
Like many other mountain places, Andorra has a myriad of legends and
popular stories in which mythological beings come into action. Some are real,
others with parts that have added a lot of imagination and some other are invented.
Here is the story of menairons that we follow along the hike. The hike is about
4 KM long (maybe 2.5 miles), which even Bryson could handle. The only lager
was Grandpa at time.
The menairons goblins that live in the Andorran forests and in the rest of the
Pyrenean mountains. They are so small that they live inside a box of sewing
needles. When you find one of these boxes, if you open the lid, all the menaironwill come out, and they will not stop moving and repeating "what do we have to do?"
"What do we have to say?" Until you give them a specific order. They love to work.
When they finish a task, you have to give them another one or return them to their little
house, because they are so unruly, that if you do not give them something else to do,
when they have finished they get angry and undo everything. So you'll have to be very
careful when you meet them and remember this simple rule. Otherwise, they are very
nice, hardworking and fun!
Trail map with 11 activities along the way
One of the stops along the trail every needs to take an oath.
Entering in through the secret gate or portal.
Pinata Game with pine cones
The Pinata activity was a blast. They had a board and you played a game
much like Battleship. You place your pine cone in holes on one side and
one team pushes the round wooden pegs and the team pushing out the
pine cones first wins.
One stop was kind of a hopscotch game.
Another activity the kids enjoyed was taking pine cones and throwing them into a bucket.
Many of the places were just to find things.
Overall the kids had a blast. About the time we completed the hike, it started raining, so we were very blest.
Since it was raining and the parking was awful, we drove around the city. The eating hours in Spain are very different from the US. Sometime during the day it is a challenge to find a place open to eat. After several tries, we ended up in another bar. They had a limited menu. I got a HUGE hamburger. Likely the biggest I have eaten. (Over a half a pound of meat with an egg and cheese on top.) Pretty good.
On the way home it was raining almost the worse I have ever seen. Luckily Ryan was driving .
Goodbye Barcelona
Watch out Paris
