Spain- Part 3 (Barcelona)

 (Part 1 here and Part 2 here)

Day seven:

We started the day at the Arc de Triomf.

We had 10:30 tickets to the Palau de la Musica. I think this is pretty popular but it wasn't too busy when we were there.  The audioguide is great (uses your own phone) and the performance hall is beautiful. The pillars on the upstairs balcony are so picturesque. We got lucky that the organ played for a couple of minutes while we were in there.

After the Palau de la Musica, we spent some time walking around the city.  We found a shop (with several locations) that sells a wide variety of these pooping figures. I am so hilariously confused by this tradition, but apparently people place these figures in nativity scenes at Christmas time. There is a traditional figure for these but this shop also had characters from movies/TV/books, as well as popular and political figures. Brandon's favorite was R2-D2 pooping a screw.

Eventually we made it to the Mercado de la Boqueria for lunch.  This food market was big and busy and a little overwhelming, but we found some good food and lots of delicious fruit juices.

Next up was Guell Palace.  This had so many amazing features, and it's incredible how they could fit so much into a small city plot!  We especially loved the chimney turned into art pieces.  

More wandering and exploring! We saw the bridge of sighs (Pont del Bisbe), the Cathedral, and did some souvenir shopping, and ended up with more churros con chocolate. 

Day eight:

Easter! We figured not much would be open on Easter Sunday so we spent the day at Parc Guell.  (Get tickets ahead of time, they sell out.) The layout of this park doesn't have a whole lot of logic to it, but Gaudi's work impressed us again. We certainly got our steps in!  It was originally supposed to be a housing community, but only 2 of the 60 planned homes were ever built.

On our way back to the metro from the Parc Guell, it started to rain so we stopped for Tapas (and pasta for the kids). Yum.

Day nine:

Sagrada Familia was the big event of the day. We have seen a lot (like a LOT) of churches and cathedrals since moving to Europe nearly 7 years ago, so I wasn't expecting to be as impressed as I was by this one. Seriously every detail of this place is a work of art. The nativity facade was especially beautiful, and the sun coming in through the stained glass was just amazing.

Quick stops at Casa Mila and Casa Batllo before hunting down some espadrilles.

Dinner at a local Spanish restaurant, and then after the little kids went to bed, Andrew and I went out to get some night photos at Sagrada Familia. Love having a kid who is old enough to stay up for things like this every once in a while!

Day ten:

Travel day! We packed up and headed over to the airport, and made our way home.

Spain- Part 2 (Valencia)

 (See here for Part 1)

Day four:

We took a train from Madrid to Valencia in the morning.  It had a delay, but we got there in the early afternoon.  We dropped off our bags at the apartment and headed to the beach! We knew the water would be cold so we didn't even bring swimsuits, just clothes we could get sandy and wet.  What we didn't expect was the wind!  But even with the sand blowing all over, we had a blast just relaxing and playing at the beach. 

We found an Italian restaurant on Calle de Ribera (part of the pedestrian zone) for dinner and the kid's pizzas were fine but Aaron and I were not impressed by our meals.  Do not recommend.

Day five:

Valencia is beautiful! We found some really pretty buildings along our way.  Our first stop was La Lonja/Llotya de la Seda.  It has had several uses over the years but it is most known for its years as a silk exchange. It has a courtyard full of citrus trees and a very impressive hall with large columns.

We found some street art in El Carmen.

We popped into a church which happened to be having a service (it was Holy Week) and I was pleasantly surprised to discover their mass being sung with a guitar accompaniment instead of an organ.

We went to the Serranos Tower but ultimately decided not to go up.

And then we went to the Mercat Central for lunch! We found some horchata, saw fish on ice, and ended up getting empanadas. There's no seating at this market so we found some benches outside and ate in the sun.

The kids were excited when they realized I had planned to take them to the playground for the afternoon! This isn't just a normal playground though.  It's called Gulliver Park, so named because the playground is built on a massive figure of Gulliver (from Gulliver's Travels) laying on the beach in Lilliput. We had to wait in a bit of a line when we arrived because they were at capacity so they were only letting people in as others left, but the line moved quickly.  It's a large play structure so I told the boys to stick together and Aaron went around with Mackenzie while I hung out with our stroller and bags.  This was the warmest day of our whole trip so it was really pleasant to just enjoy being outside!

We did a little shopping and saw the bull fighting ring (which looked like the Colisseum in brick) before heading to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.  I know we were in Spain but we enjoy some classic American food sometimes!

Day six:

Our train to Barcelona was in the late afternoon, so we decided to drop our bags in a luggage locker near the train station and explore some more before it was time to go. We started at the Valencia Cathedral to see the Holy Grail! While there is no way to confirm that this is the real deal, there is some historical evidence that supports the claim.

We stopped by the Porta de la Mar on our way to the Mercat de Colon.  It wasn't the kind of food market we were expecting so we went to a nearby restaurant instead.  The waiter didn't speak any English so my limited and very out-of-practice Spanish skills came in handy!

There was a cute church across the street so some of us popped in to check it out while some people took a potty break.

Even though we were close to it when we went to Gulliver Park, we didn't see the City of Arts and Sciences buildings to we decided to go over there as our last stop of the day before heading to the train station. It's a whole complex of different museums (art, science, aquarium, plants) and they're pretty neat.  We didn't go inside any of them- if we had another day in the city we would have, but we were out of time!

We picked up our bags, grabbed some food at the train station, and headed off to Barcelona!

Part 3 here!