The Journey to an Old World. -  Saturday/Sunday

Well, most of my fears about flying with Michael were totally unfounded.  He did absolutely amazing and has continued to stare down jet lag with a fierceness entirely unmatched by his mother.   This of course may be in part because he slept on me for about five hours in which I slept about 30 minutes.  Most of the trip was actually pretty uneventful.  At the end of it all Michael really wanted…to get on a plane…again.  Needless to say neither Jim nor I shared this same feeling but I figure it means that he managed okay.

Took a bit of finagling to get from the airport, to Barcelona proper, to our neighborhood and into the apartment.  Despite the fact that we managed to get everything into three “personal item” bags and three “carry on” bags we still had a lot of stuff to lug.  Note to self, just because catching the train is cheaper and you have some time to kill does not mean that it is in fact a better option than the cab.  Just sayin’.  Of course your suspicion is right.  If all else fails, a three year old will in fact LOVE churros and chocolate (as soon as I get more reliable internet the photos will go here).  Of course mostly Michael was interested in using the churros as a spoon for the chocolate and then gave mom and/or dad the churro when he was sure he had maximized the amount of chocolate he could get off of said churro.

Things I learned about Barcelona today:

1.       1.Most of Barcelona does in fact shut down on Sunday, particularly in cute little neighborhoods.  This will make finding a place for a cup of coffee and a snack really difficult when you are tired, hungry and lugging 50+ pounds of luggage.

2  Barcelona is in fact fiercely Catalan.  Not only do most people we met today speak very little English but my mish-mash of Spanish is not in fact their preferred mode of conversation.  Thankfully people seem very willing to work with me and I have decided it is definitely time for me to renew my Spanish skills.  

 3. The Sagrada Familia is HUGE.  I mean HUGE.  I had no idea.  Gotta make more time to see cathedrals because regardless of my religious feelings, that kind of immensity is truly humbling.  

All in all it could have been much worse.  We’re here.  The apartment is cute and about the degree off from the photos as we expected ;p 

Wandering the City - Sunday

So, I forgot to mention that as soon as we got here and met the “man of 1,000 keys” we were told that we would have to wait 1 ½ hours to actually stay in the apartment as it was still being cleaned.  No problem.  We’re resourceful people, we’d been caffeinated and fed.  Let’s go!

We wandered around.  Found a playground and made our way to the Sagrada Familia (see item #3 above) and another playground.  It was super crowded and we were all getting close to nap time so we moseyed on home.  Michael conked out about 2 blocks from home and we all crashed when we got here (Jim and I might have been helped along that path a glass of very cheap but tasty Spanish wine).

Now we’re trying to figure out how to shape an evening with three happy but still a bit slow moving/t

 moving/thinking folks and a city that is a. mostly shut and b. thinks “early dinner” is 8pm.  (In point of reference we leave ridiculously early on Friday so the rental guy suggested someone could come by Thursday night to check us out “early evening, say 10pm or 9pm?” !?!  We are so in a new place.

The internet is a bit spotty here but we’ll post as much as we can and things should get more regular once we get to leg two of our journey and Italia!