Barcelona, day 5

Wednesday

Today we decided we wanted to go to Park Guell.  Gaudi designed most of the park and it is full of colorful mosaics.  The weather was still pretty crummy, but we got some decent pictures.

(The main entrance to the park.)

(One of the buildings near the entrance, with a neat roof.)

(Close up of the tile work along the entrance walls.)

(The famous Gaudi lizard.  Abbie and I got shirts with this on it.)

(This would be a perfect picture if Abbie had been looking.)

(Lots of people selling things inside the pavilion.)

(The seating area all along the terrace of the park.)

(Close up of the tile work.)

(View of Barcelona and the bay from the terrace.)

(Gaudi cut out those passageways out of the hill.)

(Bench areas all along the terrace overlooking Barcelona.)

(Abbie really wanted to touch the lizard and she talked about this thing all afternoon.)

We wanted to check out a labyrinth park, and passed these guys playing some ball game on our way.  We watched them for a while, since they were pretty interesting.

Mark really wanted to go explore the labyrinth in the Labyrinth Park of Horta, which is the oldest park in Barcelona.  The place is huge and has two main gardens, but we really only walked through the labyrinth park since Abbie and I weren’t feeling the best and we wanted to get back for Abbie’s nap.  We would have enjoyed it more if we could have leisurely strolled through the park, but we were rushed since Abbie was rapidly declining, health-wise.  It was pretty though, and there is now a gardening school in the mansion that is on the grounds.

By the time we got back to our apartment, Abbie was exhausted, and she ended up sleeping for over 4 hours.  I took a nap too since I still wasn’t feeling the best.  We didn’t end up doing anything after Abbie’s nap except get dinner and pack to get ready to go home.

Barcelona was a neat city, but I don’t feel like we really got to take advantage of our time there due to Abbie and I both being pretty sick, and it raining all day 4 out of the 5 days we were there.  I wasn’t a big fan of the food either.  Some of their tapas are good, but a lot of them involve seafood like squid and mussels, and I’m not a big fan of those.  And I don’t like paella and most places sold that.  I should probably be more adventurous in my eating, but I tend to stick with what I know I like.  Hopefully we’ll get to come back to Barcelona someday and enjoy the city a little more than we did this time.

Barcelona, Days 3 and 4

Monday

Today we woke up to Abbie, who had crawled out of the pack and play (she got one of the sides to collapse), onto the bed next to it.  She was having a grand time playing with her puppy and pony.

Today we decided to head to the L’Eixample area and follow one of the tours in the Frommer’s book we’ve been using.  There were 2 highlights to my day.  The first was on our way to the L’Eixample neighborhood via the metro.  I was carrying our camera around my neck, and spotted a few pick-pockets.  This time I saw them and Mark didn’t, which I was pretty excited about.  These guys are not discreet at ALL.  I saw 3 of them walking towards me, along with a BUNCH of other people, but for some reason these 3 stuck out.  And then I saw one of them eye my camera, point at it, and then turn to his 2 buddies and point at it.  They walked by, and I turned around when they were about 15 feet past us and watched all three of them do a 180 degree turn and follow us.  There are escalators next to all of the staircases in the metro, and one of the dudes tried his hardest to get right behind me on the escalator while the other 2 took the stairs.  I was busying pointing them all out to Mark, and he grabbed my arm and pulled us out of the escalator queue and made the one dude go up the escalator before us.  I pointed out the other 2 dudes to Mark and by that time, they all knew we were on to them, so by the time Mark and I got to the top of the escalator, all 3 of them were heading back down the staircase.  Obviously these guys aren’t professionals, because if they were, they’d never make it THAT obvious that they’d spotted something they wanted.  I mean, the guys eyes practically bugged out of his head when he saw my camera.  He lit up like a friggin Christmas tree and then not at all discreetly pointed it out to his friends.  Idiot.  Note to self: do not carry expensive camera around your neck while in the Barcelona metro system. 

So the second highlight of my day was this AMAZING fabric store we passed.  Well Mark tried to pass it, but I managed to drag him in.  I could have spent HOURS in this place.  But I limited myself and only bought 2 meters of quilting fabric to use as backing for a quilt I want to make Abbie.

(This isn’t even 1/4 of one of the levels.)

(Every wall was lined with shelves of fabric like this.)

The L’Eixample neighborhood was neat.  I loved the tree lined streets and looking at all the neat balconies on ALL the buildings.

This is Passatge de Permanyer, which is a small street tucked in along all the tall buildings that was lined with townhouses and English gardens.  It looked REALLY out of place in this neighborhood, but it was neat to see and fun to imagine who lives in these places.

Most of the buildings are either ornately decorated with paintings or have decorative balconies all over them.

Abbie’s been a trooper on this trip.  She’s quite the little traveler, which is good considering she’s not even 22 months old and she’s been in 8 different countries.  She’s pretty observant and she’s getting more involved in what’s going on around her now, instead of just being a passenger.  She’s always pointing stuff out to us and often asks “EE Zaht?!”  (What’s that?)  And when Mark is wearing her in the Ergo and I get too far ahead of them she’ll say “That way daddy.”  Or “Hurry up daddy” or “come on daddy”.  It’s pretty funny and she’s definitely good at bossing him around.

I noticed some of the major streets have these areas for the motorcycles and scooters to stop ahead of all the other traffic.  I guess that’s so they can get a head start??

We passed this little courtyard that was connected to a church.  It was really pretty and I got a lot of good pictures in here.  And Abbie enjoyed looking at the chickens.

We went by this church and stopped in it to check it out.  However, it was REALLY dark in there and you pretty much couldn’t see anything, let alone all the details.  I took this picture after messing around with the settings on my camera for a while (no flash) and we were surprised at how ornate the church was.  We couldn’t see that when we were in it.

This park was neat, but it was raining pretty good when we went by it.

Every time we come home and take Abbie’s shoes off, she takes her socks off, goes and finds Mark’s shoes and puts one shoe on either side of Mark’s shoes and then stuffs her socks in her shoes.  She’s done it about 6 times since we’ve been here.

Tuesday

So I wish I could tell you all the fun things we saw today, but unfortunately we didn’t leave the apartment for more than 30 minutes…  I feel like absolute crap.  I am ALL congested, my ears hurt, my head hurts, my eyes are starting to get congested and they burn and hurt.  I can’t hear very well, I can’t taste anything, and I just feel gross.  Abbie had a fever of 103.8 last night, and her temp as been over 101 all day today, so she’s obviously fighting something too.  She’s been acting completely normal and is playing and having a good time running around, but she’s coughing, her nose is running and she’s definitely not healthy.  And now she has a small rash.

So I tried to sleep off whatever I have today (didn’t work), and Mark and Abbie played.  Here’s a fort they built together.  Abbie LOVED it.

This evening we went out to find something to eat, but ended up just going to a pharmacy to get me some meds and then came home and Mark made us dinner with stuff we’d gotten at the grocery store the other day.

I’m bummed that we didn’t get out and about today because there’s still a lot we want to see, but it stormed and rained all day today anyway, so it wasn’t exactly a great day for site seeing.  I’m really hoping we can get out and see a few more things tomorrow before we head home.  Unfortunately I think I’ll remember Barcelona as the city I felt like crap in, even though this really is a great place.

Barcelona, Spain, day 1 and 2

Saturday

We left our house around 7am to head to the airport at Treviso.  We flew on Ryanair to Barcelona, which was about an hour and a half flight.  Abbie did pretty well, except for the last 10 minutes where she COMPLETELY lost it.  She didn’t have her own seat and we were all cramped and tired of being on the plane by that point.  My ears were killing me, yet again, just like the did on the way to and from Amsterdam in December.  I’m not sure why I always get congested right before flights, but I do, and it makes them miserable.  Anyone know how to prevent/fix really bad ear pain during flights?  The flight here made me very nervous for the 12.5 hour flight back to the States with Abbie, when I’ll be by myself.  She’s a good traveler, but that’s a REALLY long time for an almost 2 year old to stay in an area the size of a plane seat.  Oh well.  We’ll make it.  I hope. =)

(Abbie playing with her toys before our flight.)

We got to Barcelona around 12:30pm and it took us until almost 3pm to get to our apartment via a train and then the metro system.  We were looking to put Abbie down for her nap (an hour late), but of course, the apartment didn’t have the crib here that they promised us.  BIG grrr!!  I wasn’t happy, to say the least.  So Mark and I jimmy rigged 3 single bed mattresses to make a crib for her, and that worked okay.

It was raining when we got here, but we still wanted to get out and about and see some of the city, so we walked a few block to the Gaudi cathedral to check it out and to find a place that sold a map.  (I didn’t take pictures then because I didn’t want to get either of my cameras wet.)  Then we hopped on the metro and headed over to the Montjuic area to check out the Font Magica.  It’s a big fountain that plays music along with a water and light show in front of this castle looking thing.  (I have to do more research on that because I’m not sure what it was.)  It was still raining a lot, but the water and light show was pretty neat.

After the water show we took the metro back to La Sagrada Familia (the Gaudi cathedral) and ate dinner at a KFC right across the street.  Not exactly what we wanted but it was quick and easy since it was after 8pm by then and we needed to get Abbie home and in bed.

(Here’s a pictures of the Gaudi cathedral taken from the doorway of KFC.)

On our way back on the metro Mark noticed a few suspicious people following us.  He said they followed us for a while on the metro and there were 3 guys at different parts of the car on the metro but they were communicating with each other.  They got off the metro when we did and then followed us to the next metro we were getting on, but I guess he made it clear to them he was on to them so they didn’t get on the second one.  As soon as the doors closed on the 2nd metro this older lady came up and warned us (in Spanish) of pick-pockets.  I had no clue what she was saying, but Mark understood her because he’d already seen them anyway.  I thought that was nice of her to tell us.  He also noticed guys following us today in the metro system again.  Both times I’ve been completely clueless, but today he apparently slowed us down while this guy was walking right behind him to the side a little bit, and the guy slowed down, but then realized he looked suspicious and then pulled out his phone.  At that point we turned and went down a staircase and this guy did a circle and followed us down to the metro stop.  He kept eyeing Mark, which Mark obviously saw, and then went back up the staircase, and then came back down the staircase, but didn’t get on the train when it came.  We definitely look like tourists, especially today because we had the big camera out and I was wearing Abbie and Mark was wearing the backpack and the camera.  But we have all our valuables in inside pockets and Mark clasps the backpack straps over the camera strap so there’s no way someone could try to grab it and run.  There are quite a few police monitoring the metro system, and most of them have big dogs along with them, so pick-pockets are a big problem here.  Having Mark with me, and so in-tuned to what’s going on around us makes me feel safe though.  I told him to tell me next time he notices one so I can see them too.

(Metro police with their dog.)

(Me carrying Abbie through the metro tunnels.)

Sunday

I think today might be our only really nice day (not raining) while we’re here, so we tried to get pictures of quite a few places while the weather was nice.

(La Sagrada Familia)

(I think I took pictures of 4-5 different groups in front of the church and one of them returned the favor for us.)

(This guy and his little dog were entertaining the crowds)

Next we headed down to the waterfront area.  There were quite a few marinas there and we saw many HUGE yachts.  There were also TONS of runners and people walking dogs and people riding bikes.  The waterfront area seemed to be full of activity, but it was still a relaxing atmosphere.

As we were walking along the waterfront by the marinas, we started to hear drums, so we followed the sound and came across a parade.  I have no clue what it was for, but it was a bunch of drum and bugle groups along with people in crazy costumes.  Abbie enjoyed watching all the commotion.

Barcelona has a really nice boardwalk along the beach.  Again, it was full of runners and dogs.  There seems to be an abundance of dogs in Barcelona, and it was fun to watch them playing on the beach and walking or running with their owners.

(I really want to rent one of these bikes since these rental stations are all over the place, but we’re not sure how safe it would be for Abbie to ride while strapped to one of us.  But it looks fun!)

(I think this is supposed to be a sculpture of a fish.)

(There were lots of little acts along the boardwalk and this guy was making this skeleton puppet dance.  We saw this little dog come up and he was really eyeing the puppet from a distance and slowly got closer and closer.  He sniffed it a few times and then ran to catch up with his owners.  It was pretty funny!)

(I was intrigued by this couple.  They seemed to really be enjoying each others company.  I wonder what Mark and I will be like when we’re their age?)

(Abbie had fun “jumping” from bench to bench.  That was definitely my work out for the day.  There are a LOT of benches along that boardwalk!)

After Abbie’s nap we decided to check out the “La Rambla” area.  It’s a big pedestrian street with lots of little shops selling souvenirs and street performers.

(There were many live statues sitting along the street.  This was our favorite, but it was really awkward when he decided to take a break when we were walking by…  He got up and took those pants off and put “real” pants on.. Weird.)

 

We both really like Barcelona.  Spain is definitely more westernized than Italy is, so this is a nice change.  People seem very friendly here.  Lots of people come up and touch Abbie or smile at her when we walk by.  We’re hoping to find some good restaurants to eat at because so far we’ve just eaten at chains.  There are a few places in our travel books that we’d like to try to find, and now that we have our bearings some, we should be able to do that.