Home / Europe / Three Weeks in Spain

Somos cuatro, y abuelita hace cinco.

We are a family of four again, plus Grandma makes five. Arthur arrived Sunday morning. We dragged him out into the Gothic Quarter to explore, and captured some atmosphere shots, before we let him sleep.

Woke him up again later that night to go to, according to their Web site, “the oldest wine bar in Barcelona” (http://www.lavinateriadelcall.com/en/index.html). The kids hated it. I had to buy them off later with helado (ice cream) and, even later, grilled cheese sandwiches, so they didn’t starve. Here are some photos of the food… and other “atmosphere shots.”

Traditional tapas.

 

Lots of cured meats.

 

Goat-, sheep-, and cows-milk cheeses.

 

Sundays, in front of the Cathedral (200 yards from our house), locals come out to perform traditional Catalan dances.

 

 

Gramma Eloise near the Cathedral.

 

In the Barri Gotic, some of the buildings are so close together the neighbors don’t need to go downstairs to share a cup of sugar.

 

Ummm… yeah. It is.

Not Starbucks, but a place we stopped for ridiculously overpriced cokes and terrible service (almost all the servers we have encountered here are grumpy). We also witnessed some random guy come up and snatch one of the blue-cushioned chairs and take off with it. Alex wondered if the waiter’s English rose to the level of, “Dude, that guy jacked your chair.” Maybe another dissatisfied customer? We spotted the chair down a tiny alley later, after we left without leaving a tip.

 

La Rambla, a major thoroughfare and shopping street.

 

Case in point: Anna shopping.

 

OK, this time we did stop at Starbucks—waiting for our “reserved” time in La Sagrada Familia. We felt pretty proud of ourselves for reserving our entrance time and waiting in air-conditioned Starbucks rather than a hot line.

 

Starbucks in Catalan.

Por fin—nuestra casa. Lastly: our house. This is the entrance to our building. We are on the “second floor,” which is actually the fourth floor—first the garage, then the “principal floor,” then the first floor, THEN the second floor!!

Next up: La Sagrada Familia. Truly, truly amazing. I was there in 1989, and I think enough work has now been done on it that it was not quite recognizable. So amazing. And tomorrow, we head out of the city for a guided tour of some mountain villages in the Pyranees.