BaRcELoNa

(Tob looking at a map outside the city, leading us to Melissa's twin street)

After the futbol game we headed to Barcelona, a city of 1.5 million people give or take. Tob has a family childhood friend, Melissa who happens to live there and offered us a place to stay while we were in the area. The first email we received from her gave us her neighborhood, street address, and cross street. I told Tob to email her and ask her for exit numbers and what not because Barcelona's not smallish so much, but he thought better to google search her house and honestly it looked fairly straight forward in a nice area right outside of the city. So we followed our own directions and ended up finding the street but not the cross street or any reason to believe it was in the neighborhood of Gracia. We stopped a nice woman who tried to help us find the house and then had to give us the bad news that we were in the wrong spot and send us deep into the middle of the city. She was very friendly and we were happy to have someone who knew where to send us though.

(Nojah with the tile lizard in front of park Guell)

Within an hour or so we found her house and a parking garage and an email from her giving us directions :0) and that her housekeeper would let us in about 4:30. When her housekeeper got there she left her key at home and had to run back and get it. We felt so bad for her, but we sat and had coffee and Popsicle until she returned to let us in. Tob called Melissa and she recommended park Guell so we headed there for the afternoon until she got home. This is a famous park that started being built in the early 1900's by someone who went bankrupt and then eventually the city bought it. Anyway, it was pretty cool to walk around although it got dark. Lots of tile and neat architecture to look at and open space for the kids to kick around the soccer ball. A couple days later we returned in the daytime to check it out as well.

(a little too much time spent together makes one go crazy)

We went and had dinner with Melissa about 9 that night and she gave us the lowdown on how Spain works which was nice. We had a lot of questions she was able to answer for us. The most important thing is you only have pastries or something small for breakfast (Spaniards don't eat much breakfast and of course we do, most important meal of the day right?) Cafeteria's and bars may open about 10ish along with shopping stores and then everything closes EXCEPT Restaurants from 1400-1600 and if you don't eat during that time she said you don't have a prayer of getting a decent meal until 8pm. Wow, we thought everything closed during those hours but we were wrong. Everything does close but the restaurants open. We kept trying to find food before 1400. Yikes we had it all backwards. I think we have eaten well, despite our lack of knowledge though.

(Nojah checking out the Olympic Museum)
Our second day in Barcelona we headed to La Ramba (a famous street) where they have street performers, animals for sale, art, flowers of all kinds, and markets with meats, veggies, fruits, and dead full skinned rabbits. Then we spent the rest of the day wandering around the Olympic grounds and checking out the museum.

(Tob and I making out in front of the stadium)

Anyway, everyone is ready to go out for the day and here I sit blogging in my jammies, so I had better wrap things up. We spent 2 nights with Melissa and then headed to Stiges on the Mediterranean coast where we have been playing at the beach for 2 days. We will stay here one more day and night and then make the big push back to Madrid. It's been an amazing trip and Lex just said to me this morning it feels like we have been gone only a couple days. I think it has gone by fast and we have all had a wonderful time but will be ready for our own beds, our own food, to see our family, friends and animals and get back to regular life.
I also hear we are coming home to some snow. :-)