Day 30: Tuesday, February 22

Today was our travel day from Nimes to Barcelona. We bought breakfast and lunch food on the way to the train station, got there in plenty of time, and took the trains from Nimes to Figueres, Spain and then to Barcelona. Then, we took the subway to downtown to find our hotel. We walk out of the subway and find thousands of people and traffic from 6 directions! Luckily, we guessed the correct direction and had no trouble finding the hotel.

We went walking along the Ramblas, the main tourist strip in town and down to the wharf. We enjoyed just looking around at all the shops and people.

We came back to the hotel, did laundry, and waited until about 8:15pm to leave for dinner (most restaurants don't open until 8:00, and most locals don't start dinner until 9:00). We got dinner at this restaurant at the back of the farmers' market which was mostly empty, and the food was fantastic. We had mussels and salad for an appetizer and paella for dinner, and sangria to drink. The waiter (owner?) was really nice to us and gave us champagne when we arrived and some kind of after-dinner drink/shot after dinner. All for 30 euros total! We walked around the Plaza de Catalunya square and went back to the hotel for the night.

Day 31: Wednesday, February 23

The thermostat stopped working in the middle of the night, so it was 77 degrees halfway through the night, and neither of us slept that well. So, we slept in a bit, had the hotel buffet breakfast (included and HUGE), then went out for a day of touristing. We went to the Barcelona Maritime Museum, the Barcelona City Museum, the Picasso museum, and a couple cathedrals. At the Barcelona City Museum, you could get a sense for the history and culture of the area. We had noticed that all signs were in Catalan first, then Spanish. For much of its history, the Catalan culture and language was repressed by Spain, both by the old monarchy and the Francisco Franco dictatorship. Therefore, it was a really big deal when Catalonia regained self-rule a few decades ago. You get a feel for them feeling like a repressed people ... and it didn't help that they were at the crossroads between France and Spain, which were at war a number of times during history. During and after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), many people left / were exiled into France ... which was then conquered by the Nazis. Oops.

I also liked the Picasso museum, but unfortunately half the museum, with his early works, was closed for most of the week due to renovations. Afterwards, we went to the Church of Santa Maria Del Mar (sponsored by the sailors) and the Barcelona Cathedral. We took a break at the hotel, then headed out for dinner. Based on a recommendation from the book, we headed to the bottom of the Ramblas for some tapas places. We got there, and found bars/restaurants with nobody in them, places that were closed, and in general the whole area felt a little seedy. We eventually found 1 place in the book but didn't like the look of it, so we headed back to the Ramblas, then decided to go towards the 2nd area with recommended restaurants. By now it's 9pm (I think we left the hotel around 8:15pm). We eventually stopped at a bar/restaurant on that direction and ate there. It was edible but not that great, and the service was poor. Definitely forgettable.

Day 32: Thursday, February 24

Unfortunately, the maintenance people didn't fix the thermostat, so it was hot in the hotel room again. We called the front desk to complain, and the offered to switch us to a different room. We think the front desk submitted the request yesterday but the maintenance people didn't get around to it.

Today, we headed towards the Montjuïc ("Mount of the Jews") area in Barcelona. We took the subway several stops, then transferred to the funicular (cable-based rail) that took us partway up the mountain. We thought it might be really cool, but it was underwhelming. For there, we went to the Joan Miró museum. I remembered Miró from Spanish class in high school ‐ he was a surrealist painter who did all sorts of weird stuff. It's the kind of place where you're not sure if you understand it, but it doesn't matter. We were fascinated by this mercury-based fountain that his friend Alexander Calder created for the 1937 World's Fair.

After that, we wandered through some gardens and went to the National Catalan Art Museum. Their collection of romanesque through 1950s art was really impressive, kind of overwhelming. They had a lot of church art from medieval churches that were being sold off to unscrupulous speculators in the early 20th century. They also had examples of the coinage from each era from the Greeks & Romans to present day.

After then, we went around the back of the building to find the Olympic grounds from the 1992 Olympics. We saw the radio tower built for the Olympics which was designed by Calatrava, the same person who did the Milwaukee Art Museum. We also saw the main Olympic Stadium, from the outside. From there, we walked downhill into a large square and took the subway back to the hotel.

After a lot of late meals, we decided to get an early dinner ... and since nothing looked any better in the area, we went to Burger King. The Whopper pretty much tasted the same as the US, which surprised me. But, the lemonade was fizzy, so I guess there was something different. ;-)

Day 33: Friday, February 25

We spent the day looking at Modernista architecture sights, particularly for Antoni Gaudí. We went through the Eixample ("Expansion"), which was created in the 1850s when Barcelona needed to expand past its original Medieval-era limits. We saw several Gaudí apartment buildings from the outside, and we went inside the Casa Milà, which we really liked. The apartments were designed to let in a lot of natural light, and the view from the roof was really cool.

From there, we went to the Sagrada Família cathedral, originally designed by Gaudí in the early 1900s and is still being built, much like medieval-era cathedrals which were not completed in the architect's lifetime. We would have gone inside, but the line to get in was around the block, and we didn't want to wait that long. We started walking towards the Parc Güell, also designed by Gaudí in the late 1800s as a city garden for a luxury home subdivision with never appeared. On the way, we ate lunch at a local bakery, where I successfully ordered sandwiches in Spanish, and then we took these great lemon-flavored donuts to go. Using the free map from the tourist information desk (sponsored by McDonalds), we successfully navigated to Parc Güell. The park was really cool, a combination of nature and architecture. We spent at least half an hour on this terrace listening to some local musicians and a guy with a big bubble-maker who produced bubbles that the kids ran after. There were also a lot of sidewalk sellers of counterfeit (?) goods, and all of sudden they all ran out of the park — I think somebody official was coming by.

We walked back to the hotel, which turned out to be a LONG walk (over an hour). We walked through neighborhoods where "average people" live. Ken claims that it's my fault that we walked home, but it was his idea. ;-) We had a nice break when I bought 2 clementines at a local fruit stand for 15 cents and ate them.

For our final night, we went to a chain-type restaurant recommended by our guidebook that opened at 7pm for dinner. We got there around 7:45pm, and we probably wouldn't have gotten a table 15 minutes later. The food was pretty good, and we had a nice bottle of cava, a local type of sparkling wine that kind of tastes like champagne. We got home so we could pack for our 10am flight out the next day.

Day 34: Saturday, February 26

It's time to travel home to Minnesota ... it's always feels a little odd to be heading home. We checked out of the hotel, walked a couple blocks to Plaza de Catalunya, and took the extremely convenient Aerobus to the airport. We checked into the self-service Delta devices without too much incident, except they moved our seats so we weren't sitting together anymore. Since we booked separately, this wasn't too surprising. We were able to change our seats to sit together for Barcelona-Amsterdam but not Amsterdam-Minneapolis. Then, we looked for the baggage drop line. The only thing we could find was this HUGE line of people that was hardly moving ... I finally asked somebody, and she said we had to get in that line to drop off the bags. Great. Luckily, we had arrived at the airport in plenty of time! We eventually discovered part of the problem - the person who checked us in was very nice and helpful, but it took probably 3 times longer than necessary. If we had been running late, I guess we would have carried all of our luggage on the plane and rearranged the toiletries so we could bring them onboard. All in all, it took 45 minutes to check in. At least the security was a breeze (well, for me - one of Ken's shoes tripped the metal detector so it took longer).

Then, we waited about 20 minutes to get through passport control in Amsterdam. I'm really glad we had a 2 hour layover. We grabbed sandwiches at the airport and went through security again to get on the plane. The plane ride itself was uneventful. I watched the movie "Salt" and played "Bejeweled" on the personal entertainment system. The bad news was that it was 7 degrees when we arrived! And, since the taxi rates increased lately, it now costs $65 to get home from the airport. But, it's still cheaper than parking at the airport for 2 weeks. I would take the light rail home, but there's almost no bus service to our house except during commuting hours.

We got home to find that someone had snowplowed the ~20 inches of snow of our driveway, no squirrels in the house, no water leaks. That's a relief! We took it easy for the evening and managed to stay awake until about 9pm.