Barcelona - Day 2

Number of steps: over 15,000+
Number of drinks consumed: 1 Fanta, 32 oz sangria, coffee con leche, water
Number of tapas consumed: 3
Number of jamon/cheese sandwiches: 2
Today we woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed. Ready to take on Barcelona. With the sleep wiped out of our eyes we went down to breakfast. 

We weren't really sure what to expect as several of the reviews said the breakfasts were horrible. We had a backup plan to go to la Boqueria for breakfast if it was bad. Turned out it was fantastic. They had two espresso makers ready to brew you a fresh cup of coffee, hot milk ready for your café con leche and all the fixings of a European continental breakfast.  Pastries, fruit, yogurt, toast, cereal…and my personal favorite, ham and cheese with hard crusted - but soft in the middle - bread, and an assortment of salamis.  What were those reviewers thinking? They also had some warmed items like scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon. Which I couldn't imagine why you'd want to eat when there was a hard role, ham and cheese for the taking. 

 

Filled up on goodness we headed out. Our first stop was the hop on hop off tour of the East side, and in my opinion, more interesting side of Barcelona. I love these hop on hop off busses. They let you see so much of the city with little to no effort. The guide was a recording and was right on with all the sights.

 

The tour started and ended at Placa Catalunya. After we finished we were both famished. Café Zurich was right on the corner and while we assumed it was a tourist trap, with tourist trap prices, we thought the people watching would be worth it. And oh boy was it. 

 

Lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich and an Orange Fanta. I love Fanta in Europe. It tastes sooo different. Janet had a beer and ham/cheese sandwich. We ate and watched as so many different types of people walked by. It was very obvious who were the tourists and who were locals just trying to get through the crowd to get to work. 

 

 

We had to be at the tourist information desk at 3 pm for our Picasso tour so to kill time we wandered around Placa Catalunya. So many things going on there…so many groups of teenagers out on spring break trips. Ugh.

 

Our Picasso tour guide, it turned out, was none other than our buddy Carlos from the la Sagrada Familia tour. Again we were blown away with his knowledge and how much he clearly had a passion about art and specifically Picasso. 

 

 

He walked us all of the Gothic Quarter neighborhood point out old haunts of Picasso. One of which is the 4 Cats. 

 

Famous for being where Picasso and his buddies used to hang out and draw. The walls are lined with Picasso paintings. Janet and I surmised that they were likely replicas otherwise this little restaurant would need quite the security team.

 

From there we walked through the neighborhood of El Born which is where the museum is. He took us through many of the rooms in the museum explaining the differences in the work and really outlining all that Picasso accomplished. He really was a master at art. Some of the paintings he did when he was just 9 amazed me. I could barely draw a stick figure at 9, let alone almost perfect portraits of family and neighbors. 

 

Carlos released us to our own free time. Janet spent a few more minutes in the museum. I, on the other hand, was ready to sit. I sat out in the waiting area and watched a gaggle of teenagers from France get schooled in the history of Picasso.  None of them wanted to be there…and I wondered if that was how we looked in school the entire time some teacher was yammering on about some masterpiece. I sometimes wished I would have paid more attention. 

 

Out of the museum and we found our way back to la Rambla. I was amazed at how easy Barcelona was to get around. Their streets are all clearly marked, once you know where to look. The street names are all on the sides of the buildings. Once we figured that out, with a map in hand, we could find anything…and we did. 

 

 

 

We had seen these amazing sangrias being served on la Rambla and so decided it was time to stop and have one. Did I mention they were 32oz and served in a huge glass stein with one regular straw and one LONG straw? Janet ultimately broke her long straw and so had to resort to drinking like a normal person. Tapas accompanied our sangria. We wouldn't, after all, want to drink on an empty stomach. So we had Iberian jamon, the traditional bread wiped with a tomato, garlic shrimp and fried potatoes (reminded me of the cubed fried potatoes served every dinner at TASIS.) We ate. We drank. We drank some more. Then we tried to stand.

 

Oh boy…we were snookered. Walking back to the hotel was amusing - to say the least. We get there and Janet literally stumbles into the hotel and almost bites it. Thankfully the lobby was PACKED and everyone just looked at her. She said I abandoned her and just kept walking to the elevator - ignoring her…I don't remember that. I had been drinking after all. 

Barcelona - Day 1

Number of steps: over 20,000

Number of drinks consumed: 1 cava, 24oz of sangria, one fanta, water

Number of tapas consumed: 1- burger

On a scale of 1-10 how great was it? 10+

 

After what, I swear, was the longest flight ever, we touched down in Barcelona at 6:30 am. Now what? I thought our plane had us landing way later and  therefore I thought we had less time to waste before we could check in. Nope…now we had extra time.

 

We cabbed it to the hotel and left our luggage. It was grey and dreary outside, but it wouldn't rain on us, no way. Turns out…we were wrong. We stepped out into the alley way - that they call a street - and walked to the Columbus monument. In that time, we were drenched. And we didn't bring any coats - I mean what's a little rain to us Seattle-lites.

 

Back to the hotel…the desk guy was laughing at us…back to get our coats and then we were off. Not very many people on La Rambla at that time of the morning. It was peaceful and wet.

 

What's La Rambla?

 

La Rambla is this walking avenue lined with restaurants and vendors selling their stuff…lots of souveniers and what not. It’s a beautiful walk and starts at Placa Catalunya - the center of Catalonia - they say - and travels all the way down to the water front. Probably a good half of a mile walk. We ended up making that walk a number of times during the week.

 

It eventually got very crowded (especially on Saturday - but more on that later). The maddening crowd consisted of so many different types of people speaking a plethora of languages. It seemed extremely clean for as many people as there were. Turned out that every night a crew in bright green would clear the street of debris.

 

In fact, I found Barcelona quite clean all the way around. There was graffiti everywhere, like Rome, but you kinda begin to look past it - as if it's not even there or it blends into the building.

 

We walked up the way quite a bit and found La Boqueria. La Boqueria is an open air market. The moment you step inside you are met with so many smells, not all good I might add. The senses are overloaded with all there is to see and witness. It's clear it's actually a working market where the locals all buy their fresh fish, veggies and meats. In fact you could see them get a bit irritated with the tourists in their way. One old lady exclaimed, "Que Horror!" as we were all pressed together and she couldn't pass. It appears Spaniards eat anything and everything. Some of the things I saw there I wish I hadn't seen. And doubt I'll ever get out of my mind.

 

Anyhow, it's the kind of place that's a photographer's dream. So many textures. So many little goodies to shoot.  It was hard to not just keep the shutter button engaged non-stop.

 

 

 

 

Janet and I wandered through and experienced as much as we could. I'm thrilled we went in today as we discovered when we went back on Saturday just how busy and crazy that place could become.

 

As we walked through experiencing the sights and smells, we decided we should stop for a bite. It was getting near 10am and we were hungry.  After all we hadn't eaten in like 3 hours. We plopped ourselves on two rickety corner stools at a bar and ordered two cavas and a ham and cheese to split.

 

 

Cava is as Barcelona as it gets. It's basically a sparkling white wine…that they drink at breakfast. I mean, what's not to like? Wine at breakfast? Yes please! The old guy sitting down from us had a glass of red wine with his tortilla…so we felt like we were "fitting in".

 

After the snack at La Boqueria bar we decided we'd better get on our way to La Sagrada Familia. We had a tour scheduled and had about 2 hours. Instead of hopping in a cab, we decided (I'll reserve my opinion about whether this was smart or not.) to walk from where we were to the church. It looked like it was a bit of a ways, but we'd see a lot of the city and, what the heck? We were somewhat fresh off the plane, so we did. Later the hotel staff would laugh and look at us in amazement when we told them we walked there.

 

Turns out, as we should have known, the church was farther than we thought. I was pooped.

 

Speaking of pooped…once there we were now early, so Janet and I found a park bench and sat for a moment. We hadn't been seated for 10 seconds when we heard this splat.  All on the front of Janet was a massive, and I mean massive, amount of bird poop. A pigeon seated directly above us had let loose. He had nothing left in him I'm sure.

 

I, naturally, giggled a bit, but did the best I could to help her clean up. Which really meant just handing her kleenex to wipe up with. It was everywhere. Gross.

 

Deciding that we had had enough of nature, we walked back to where our tour would begin. The wonderful Carlos was our tour guide. He had so much knowledge that it amazed me how he could answer just about any question about the basilica. He clearly had a passion for art history and loved his job. I love when we get lucky and get tour guides that I'll never forget.

 

La Sagrada Familia is the brain child of Antonio Gaudi. It started being built in 1882 and is still under construction. When we were there last year they said it would be done in 2021…now they were saying it is scheduled to be done for the 100 year celebration of Gaudi's death in 2026. I'll believe it when I see it. Gaudi realized that he'd not likely see the church finished - though I bet he meant living a natural life and not one ending tragically by being hit by a trolley.

 

The church is amazing. It sits in a none assuming neighborhood and is the symbol of Barcelona. The church is staggeringly beautiful. The Nativity façade - which is where we entered, looks a lot like melting sand to me. Carlos explained each scene to us and its significance. Then, just like last year, entering the church is jaw dropping.

 

Gaudi designed the inside to look like a forest, and it sure does. The gentle curves are all what you'd see in nature. There just aren't enough words to describe just how beautiful this place is.

 

After the church tour, we hopped in a cab back to la Rambla. No way in hell I was going to walk back. It was time to check in, so we found our room and took a little rest.

 

But before we did that we stopped off at a little tapas bar for some beer and a tapa or two. Luigi came out of hiding and had some beer too. The two bar tenders thought Luigi was funny and one even took a photo of him. We had a small burger tapa that was delicious, some yummy olives…and a huge glass of beer.

 

 

Feeling better, we walked down to our hotel.

 

Hotel Gaudi is where we stayed and it was quite the nice place. Just a couple yards off la Rambla and very centralized. In fact we commented a number of times just how perfect of a location it was. And we had a fantastic view of the Palau Guell - another Gaudi structure. The roof top had all sorts of fascinating arrow topped sculptures.

 

We then decided that we should go check out the rooftop terrace. Beautiful up there. We sat for a minute and just looked at the skyline. A waitress eventually came by and asked if we wanted any Sangria. Sure. Why not? So we drank the first of many pitchers of Sangria.

 

After a little rest, and well into the evening, because it turns out Spaniards eat really late, we walked down to a restaurant recommended by the hotel called 7 Portas. Once there they had an hour wait and we were just too hungry. On our way there, however, we had passed several restaurants. So we picked one called Sailor restaurant. I ordered chicken paella and Janet got adventurous and ordered Valencia Paella - which had chicken, rabbit and snails…though the waiter called them fish.

 

Both plates were delicious and we were glad, in a weird way, that the other restaurant was full.

 

Back to the hotel and we crashed. We'd been up for a very long time and we were pooped. We walked over 20,000 steps that day and even Janet -the energizer bunny - said we may have over did it.

 

Tapas...Sangria...Paella

It's been a crazy couple of days here in Barcelona. I've been meaning to blog but, well, there hasn't been time. And I've not gone through my photos, and blogging without photos is a sin. I checked. And the church person I asked said yes it's a sin. Now granted he spoke Catalan and I was speaking "Spanish" so he could have just as easily been calling me a sinner. Either way...no photos...no blogging.

I will say tonight is our last night in the beautiful Barcelona. If you like adventure and history and food and drink and more food and more drink, then you should put Barcelona on your destination list. Such a beautiful place.

SSIL and I have managed to drink/eat and walk our way through this historic town.

Tomorrow we hop on the Norwegian Spirit for our 10 day cruise. It seems like we've been gone forever that it's hard to believe we still have 10 more days and 5 more glorious destinations. We have some sea days on the boat so I'll catch up then. Until then, todos son en mi Corazon.

Que le vayan bien!!!

Meet Luigi

You all are well familiar with Puck, Daisy, PDot and the Pucklettes...and familiar with my need to have some "creature" with me on trips to take random photos of.  I've lost some of my mojo with this when I lost Puck. It slowly came back when I got the Pucklettes. 

Turns out that I have a new travel companion for this trip.

Meet Luigi.

Luigi came to me from a couple of my crazy colleagues ... the Queen and Luigi's mother decided that Luigi needed to help find his long lost love. So today, the dropped of Luigi with this super special note.

Can you not read the note? Let me post it here for you.

Dear Jenn,

My name is Louie (henceforth known as Luigi). I need your help…last summer, when I was visiting my gret-granduck in Spain, NI fell in love. Her name was Quackita [pause for dramatic emphasis]. We met over sangrias, it was love at first sight!

Sadly, her padre did not approve. And now, 11 months, 5 days, 2 hours, and 42 minutes after our first sip of sangria, I want to bring my dear Quackita home to los Estados Unidos. I’d love to see more of Spain while we search for Quackita, but please, no running with the bulls. I’m already packed, I eat very little, and I’m travel size for you convenience.  Please don’t let me search and heart sickness interfere with your own adventures – and drink a lot, don’t worry I float.

Tengo ganas de nuestras adventuras juntos!

Luigi

I am not sure the Queen and LM (Luigi's Mom) understand just how seriously I take this job.  But since they now have been made aware of this blog (Hey Guys!) they most likely now know.

So, I've added Luigi to my travel scavenger list...any of you want to readjust the number of photos you guessed?

Stress is an interesting bird

I used to pride myself on not being a very stressed person. Oh sure, there'd be times when I'd get stressed, but by and large, I just didn't stress out that much. I happen to love my life and I'm 100% convinced I control the stress levels.

I know I'm a stress eater. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who isn't these days it seems. When stress comes knocking on my door, my first thought is, "What can I eat to make me feel better?" Big shock, but eating never alleviates the stress.

Yesterday I had one of the most stressful days at the killer new job.  It was two days before I leave on vacation. I had all my ducks in a nice, pretty row - behaving.  Then, as often happens, a risk you did not mitigate comes to life.  TWICE. Two different ducks. Who can plan for that?

The first duck misbehaving was relatively fixable. A sick voice talent means I had to adjust an already tight schedule even tighter...almost down to the hour. AND it meant that I'd be leaving something for the Queen (one of my new favorite colleagues at work) to do with my project. I was hoping I could leave without leaving much on my plate for others to do.

Anyhow, the Queen happily stepped up to take care of it for me next week.

Then the second duck, also a voice talent. Also a very tight schedule. Also gets sick. This particular duck is sensitive and demanding and is on a tight deadline. Because of unforeseen issues on their end the schedule got compacted drastically and another duck on the team leaving the team REALLY meant that this had to get done before that duck left. The voice talent getting sick rocked the project boat a lot. Her sickness coupled with the other duck leaving, me leaving, and then the voice talent having holiday in a week really caused an issue. And again, I'll be leaving something for another colleague to handle in my absence. Ugh.

Finally, an unhappy duck. Try as I might, sometimes you have unhappy ducks. Sometimes you can see it coming, and sometimes you can't. In this case I couldn't. The unhappy duck raised her unhappiness up the food chain and some executives got involved.  Thankfully, the best company in the world doesn't play the blame game, and is always more interested in making the duck happy first. Then figure out how to fix what might have went wrong in the process.

I was beside myself with worry yesterday. I just get full time and THIS happens. Ugh.

Again, thankfully, experience teaches me to not take it personally. I know I did my best. I know I'll learn something here. And I know the one's who are now responsible - namely the Queen - will make sure the duck is extremely happy. All will be good in the end.

All that combined with trying to get everything ready for the vacation - work related anyhow - caused some stress yesterday. I decided to try not to eat my way through it. So instead I stopped and bought some beer.  What? I only had one.

So this weekend, while trying to not worry about work, I need to hit the ground running. Barcelona / Cruise trip is just days away. Last year, when planning for Rome I wasn't working overly hard. This year is an entirely different beast. I feel like I'm behind and that just gets me more stressed.

On the bright side, in three sleeps I'll be on a plain with my SIL and we may or may not be drinking at 7am...but guaranteed we'll be having some drinks and tapas when in Spain...

7 days and counting...

A week from tomorrow SIL and I will be on a plane heading to Barcelona and our cruise.  Its during this period right before a trip that I usually kick into ubber planning mode. And for some reason this year, I have not. I feel a bit frantic because I haven't and yet, there's a small part of me that wants to just "go with it".

This past weekend was spent running errands for the trip, helping some friends, and visiting with the Nieces - and it didn't leave much time for helping the frantic planning side. Even with running all the errands, I still have a laundry list of things to do before the trip.

And I released the "Jenn Photo Scavenger Hunt" on Facebook. Last year I asked my friends to guess how many photos I would take on the trip. The numbers were all over the place, and some were complete outrageous - I mean I take a lot of photos...but the guess of 10,005 was a bit over the top. AND last year, for whatever reason, I didn't take nearly as many photos as I had in previous years. Last year I focused - pardon the pun - on taking GOOD photos and not just taking photos. That shift in my head really made a difference in how I approached the trip and how I wanted to capture it.

In 2007 I visited the UK. And prior to the trip I asked friends for a list of things to take photos of - random things.  It was fun to try to capture some of the items while wondering London. I didn't do a great job documenting it and can't really remember what, if any, were good photos.

THIS year is a whole new thing. I've combined the two. I've asked my friends not only for how many photos I'll take, but an idea of something interesting to take. And they have not disappointed. Some of them crack me up. Others will be interesting to try to take. But what I love about all of it is they aren't "normal" touristy things. Like no one said, "take a picture of a church". Well dah. I'll be in Europe...churchs there are like Starbucks here...one on every corner.

So here's the list so far.

995	A pickpocketer
1650	Selfies w/ Janet
1976	Café's and desserts
2560	nature within the city, like trees on a street, flower pots on a stoop, man carrying a bouquet
3421	Travel companion in a compromising position
	Jamon
2433	Someone in a hat sipping a coca cola
1433	An interesting doorway
1895	Picture of myself in a disco, dancing
1745	Picture of someone named heather
1645	Starbucks Sign Spanish version of Lucy and Linus
2499	Chains
2000	Picture of a purple flower
2222	A noteworthy mustache
2796	An old padlock with a key
2400
1875	A crab
3864	a pretty or an interesting bug perched on a bridge railing
2356	An obviously American Tourist
4229	a picture of a very pregnant women on a Vespa or in a bikini onboard.

I love some of these and can't wait to have some fun with them. This time, instead of relying on my memory (dumb I know) I'll print this off before I go and carry it in my camera bag.

7 days....just 7 days...I cannot wait.

A little bit of this...

Things have been, well, interesting of late. Linus boy has had me quite busy.

Last week about this time, the poor little guy starting having issues peeing. Turned out he has Feline Urinary Track Disease...which is pretty common. The At Home Vet came by last Wednesday and said "Watch him".

So I watched.

I came home on Thursday and watched him spend 1 1/2 hours sitting in the litter box and doing nothing. There were some very frustrated and painful yowls. I called the V.E.T. She said, "Bring him in."

So Bubba Boy and I left during rush hour traffic to the V.E.T. They immediately checked for any blockage, cuz with that we would have had to go to the emergency V.E.T. Boy am I glad it wasn't that.

They wanted to keep him over night to "watch him". So they did.

Then they kept him another night (Friday).

Then another night (Saturday)

And finally on Sunday I got to bring him home.

We get to go through the torture of feeding him a pill three times a day (uretha relaxer - sounds fun right? Not!) and antibotics in the morning via a syringe (it's liquid).  He was acting all calm and easy for a day or two. Then this morning, Ninja Cat came out. I could have sworn he had 6 legs.

Meanwhile, Lucy LOVED being the only cat in the house. She elevated herself from Princess to Queen in no time.  She barely noticed he was gone. She sat, worried about him, next to the litter box - then when he was gone, she took over.

THEN...when Linus came home all Lucy did was hiss at him. And hiss some more.

Finally today she seems to recognize him. Crazy cat.

In other news, Barcelona is just days away. Like two weeks from today! yay. I can't wait.

Now if you'll excuse me...I gotta go give a cat a pill. Wish me luck.

Memories...

Its funny how memories come to you. And memories are a funny thing to me.  Some things I can remember as if they happened yesterday - good and bad. Other things, I struggle to even recall.

Case in point. This Monday while at dinner club, Blueberry and I started talking about a place we lived in the past and she said something like, "remember the cats?"

And I was like, "Cats?"

And she went into great detail about these cats, their names, their habits, what they looked like etc.

All the while, there's a small, very small, memory of them. Why they don't stand out is anybody's guess.

Then there are those horrid memories that you will never forget. Those I go back and forth on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think it's mostly good, but I could have done without the horrid experience.

This morning I had a memory that drew a big wide smile on my face.

It's 2008 and BigBro, Blueberry and I are on day 3 of the 3 day. I was exhausted, cranky, hungry, and exhausted. Did I mention I was exhausted?

We were just outside of Greenlake at the crazy stop light by Kidd Valley.  There were hot, tired walkers on every corner. Then it started.

One side of the street yelled, "We've got spirit, yes we do. We've got spirit how 'bout you?"

They pointed to our direction and we responded in kind. "Our spirit is SKY HIGH"...

This went on for the duration of the light and we all walked on.

It certainly lifted my spirit and I'm certain it lifted other walkers spirits too. It was one of those memories I'll have forever.

The other thing that fascinates me about memories are the one's we chose to keep.  The MomUnit recently hooked back up with an old friend from high school. These two, apparently, pal'ed around together and got into all shades of trouble back then.

As they reminisced, the old friend said, "Remember when we did XYZ?" And the MomUnit hadn't remembered.  Surely they had done it, but the MomUnit didn't have a memory of it. The same was true for the MomUnit's memories versus the old friend's. It all sounded like something they'd do, but time had erased some of those memories.

I've often wondered if some of my old friends remember some of the things that I clearly think were important enough to remember. Then I wonder if I am remembering them correctly, or did I somehow make it up. It's hard to say.

They say the memory is the first thing to go as you age, and boy don't I believe it. I think one of the many reasons I blog is so I can remember. I KNOW it's one of the many reasons I'm a photo bug.  Photos trigger memories for me...that way I don't have to keep them locked up in the safe filing cabinet called my brain.

How about you? Got any random memories that you keep?