Merry Christmas!

Reporting live from Starbucks in Barcelona, where we are celebrating our holiday amid mocha praline lattes, familiar red Starbucks holiday cups, and American Christmas music (currently Elvis, Blue Christmas).

Thinking of and missing you all - hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Adios from Barcelona

Lu again. We have just returned from our final dinner here in Spain with Marisa & Ed and we could not bring ourselves to leave the restaurant or return to the hotel because it would be the end of the trip. Obviously, we could not sleep on the street so we did finally come back to the hotel when we realized none of the stores were open so late on a Sunday night. One thing that must be said about my blogs is that I am a person of visual identification. I could get you from your desk chair to the Parc Guell here in Barcelona without missing a turn by describing construction zones, restaurants, buildings, or piles of dog poop you would see on your way and would mark turns. Marisa offered to provide the names of each of the museums/monuments/places we visited and posted about, but this is my blog and I do not function in such a way.

 

So, we left off with our departure to The Four Cats on Friday evening which was another delicious feast. This is the restaurant where Picasso designed the menu and completed many of his works. I ate veal. Veal. The reason is because even the mixed green salad at this restaurant had fish. I ordered the veal and I ate it all, quite a surprise! I really did enjoy it as it was juicy, thick, and melted in my mouth. It may become one of my new favorites, but probably not. I'm just on a food high right now I believe. Dad's fish came on a plate as though they had just taken it from the water and placed it on some rice. He OKed the filet then they removed the scales, eyes, and other parts one would not wish to consume and finally served it rather regularly. We were all a bit worried at first though. This was another 3-4 course meal that was enjoyed by all. A cute old man was playing the a combination of beatles and holiday music on a small piano as entertainment with dinner. The restaurant was beautiful and the front bar was all the original wood. We must admit that this restaurant, although delicious, was a lot of hype and not as good as was expected for the price. We would all suggest that if you plan to visit Barcelona that you definitely go to Le Quatre Gats but go for lunch or for a bar experience.

 

On Saturday, yesterday, we hiked hundreds of miles at about a 90 degree angle up hill. What was at the top? Gaudi. He created a weird park that reminded us of Dr. Suess and is where the famous mosaic spanish lizard lives. Apparently, this park was supposed to be a traditional english garden but we can assure you things went a bit wrong in that plan. Parc Guell is a definite visit though so I am very glad we went. We also bought some souvenirs on the way which made the trip up a bit easier! Instead of walking the hundreds of miles back, we took the metro to Barceloneta where we had been earlier in the week to visit some shops highlighted in our travel guide. Before walking until our legs became jelly, so earlier in the morning, we visited the Barcelona Cathedral and went to the top to take pictures of the city and ourselves. It was a very extravagant and they had a walk-through creche set up in the cloisters which we visited and Marisa used the bathroom which also appeared to be set up during Jesus' birth as well. The creche is very big here and the tree is not. The Christmas trees here are super tiny and skinny but the creches are huge. Almost the entire Christmas bazarre is filled with small and large objects that may be used in one's cresche. The scenes are very detailed including running water fountains, people going to the bathroom, bugs, stars, hay, elderly people in rocking chairs that are motorized, etc. It's very weird, but fun.  After walking around for the entire day we were all exhausted and came back to the hotel for our siesta. My favorite. I napped, of course, and Marisa and Ed made their plans for the following 5 days before they leave for Italy. They have decided to stay here as there is still so much to do and it will be somewhat familiar to them for their holiday. We went to a restaurant in our book but it was really just a bar including rolling papers, so we decided to find somewhere else. After passing on many restaurants and tapas bars, we ended up at this two story restaurant which has become one of our favorites (not surprisingly). We had a waitor from Florida whose Mom is British and his Dad is Cuban so he has all kinds of passports. He has been in Spain for a year and a half but he hopes to return to the states in the next few years. We liked him a lot and he only enhanced our already great experience. We ate LOTS of food and left feeling slightly sick, but it was worth it and I'd do it again.

 

Today, our final day, was very relaxed. We went to a few final landmarks and then spent the rest of the day shopping and buying Christmas gifts for family and friends. Much to our dismay, it was extremely hard to find "spanish" souvenirs or really anything that one would want to own in their life. Finding a simple shirt that says "Barcelona" was one of the toughest jobs all day! It was nice to walk around without a map as we have become very familiar with the city and it was fun to recognize places. We finally found churros which we thought would be easy as they are the "most popular breakfast food", but nobody we have encountered from Barcelona has even heard of them nor sold them. Of course, after we found them we saw them all over the place but ours were probably the best. We ate them by the water/harbor as today was a gorgeous sunny day. After shopping some more and stopping for pints of beer and coca-lights, we returned to the hotel for our shortest siesta by far. It was a mere forty minutes and I was unable to take a nap, how unfortunate. We were very hungry though since we shopped through lunch minus the beer and churros. We returned to Taller de Tapas which is where we ate the first night, but this time we knew how to order. 10 plates. 2 for Dad and Ed and 3 for Maris and I each. The best. If you visit Barcelona  you must visit Taller de Tapas which is a chain but the specific one we went to has the best service in the city, we think. For dessert this evening I had "chocolate sin" and I would never go to confession for it. I would repeat this sin till death without hesitation. We are sad that our trip has come to an end but are fortunate for the experience and look forward to seeing Marisa & Ed back in the States!

 

Some random observations of our trip:

-- When climbing the 3 flights of stairs to our room at least 3 times a day, we all file up in the exact same order. When we realized this about half way through our trip we made a point to climb them in the same manor though it wasn't hard since for some reason it was usually in order anyway! Lauryn, Marisa, Ed, Dad. This is sort of a bad order since Ed and Dad always carry the room keys which leaves Marisa and I waiting at the end of the hall for them to finish the climb.

-- Everyone speaks English if you give them the "I'm dumb" look when they say something in another language. Even when we sort of understood the language we would just sit and stare until they repeated it in English. Sometimes we would just say no or nevermind when ordering something that was not clear instead of going through the process of translation.

-- Spain does not serve Mexican food. Spanish food does not include salsa, burritos, "case-a-dee-as", tacos, or chimichangas.

-- People in Barcelona do not use their cell phones in restaurants or on the streets. We only saw a handfull of people on their cell phones during our trip, remarkable. I really liked that aspect and have actually survived without mine.

-- Americans are the only people who wear jeans and sneakers on a daily basis. Europeans, at least in Spain, get dressed every day.

-- Pattern black stockings are very popular, especially among the short old ladies in the city.

-- If you do not bring your own watch, you will never know the time as there are no clocks to be found in the city. There are over a million watch shops, but no clocks. Not even in our hotel room. Time does not seem to matter in Spain.

-- Even if pastries are on an open platter and are definitely the leftovers of breakfast, THEY ARE NOT FREE. We found this out after having "stolen" many pastries as a light snack and now there is a 24 hour guard in front of the platter. I have to admit that we did continue to take pastries even after being told twice that they are not free, but they are stale and nobody is going to pay for them anyway. They are simply wasting food and we see it as helping them out by eating them, regardless of their price. We made a comment about the pastries at the bar on our comment card, do not worry. If you come here hopefully the pastries will be free!

-- In order to work the lights and other power outlets in your hotel room, you must insert one of your room keys into a little doodle thing which turns on the electricity for your room. This is odd and since our heat does not work very well in this refurbished palace, we do not appreciate the maids taking our card out of the doodle everyday. We made a comment about this too.

 

Well, our cab will be here (it is going to drive right up pedestrian way since there are no "streets" near our hotel) very early in the morning to take us away. If you have the priviledge to visit Barcelona, I am sure you will enjoy it just as much as we have. We have not run out of things to do and are leaving wishing we had many more days to wander and experience the city. This is a city I will be sure to visit again. Be sure to check the pictures because we have now loaded almost all of them.

 

We love you Barcelona!

 

Farewell Spain and Marisa & Ed's blog.

 

Lu

 

 

(and Dad)