Wednesday, September 24

I have to get caught up – this is killing me that I’m this far behind. The nice thing is that I have my notes written down in my “Handy Dandy Notebook!!!”

I forgot to mention that we toured the Barcelona Mercado. This was utterly amazing. I think it was so cool because we walked in at the candy section. I don’t remember seeing a candy section in any of the other Mercado’s in Spain. This one was truly sweet!!! We got to see octopus, goat heads, gizzards galore, rabbit, fish that were still bubbling through their gills, tons of yummy vegetables and fruit.

We started off the day headed to Gaudi’s park, the Gruell Park. This was a community that Gruell had designed. It was going to have a center market area and park, with about 20 houses built all around. I think about five houses were completed and the project went bankrupt. The cool thing is that the market area was completed, as were Gaudi’s home and Gruell’s home. The walk to the park was strictly uphill. Jen and I had been on an exercise kick (what the heck were we thinking) and taking the stairs up everytime. Well, it was soooo uphill, that there were escalators on the city street. You couldn’t see the top – all you could see were never ending stairs. I pooped out and took the escalators – Jen walked and yeah for her!!! The park overlooked the whole city. You could see the cathedral that Gaudi was building and were he is entombed. The grounds were incredible. He truly thought of everything. The covered walkways had the elements used as canopies of plants and earth. I especially loved the market place with all of the mosaic tile. I thought the ribbed seating on the top looked like the tea cups from Disneyland. The ceiling was just exquisite – and the colors were so imaginary and awe inspiring.

We made a decision that with the limited time remaining, we would go see the Gruell apartment building – a must by Aunt Cold. So we headed on the long walk there. We found it without any circumstances and waited in a short line. I have to say, that you don’t appreciate Gaudi until you do the apartment building. It is now a museum/walking tour of the stables/basement, the attic, one complete floor/apartment, and the roof. He was so in tune with nature and human nature. He designed furniture, door knobs, doors, chimneys/exhaust fans, railings, etc, not to mention ways to heat, cool, and light apartments economically and efficiently. After that, I was Gaudi’ed out.

We then found lunch. Another fabulous choice from Jen’s book – Flash. It totally reminded me of a Liza Minelli or Audrey Hepburn establishment. The place was all white with only black silhouettes of girls taking pictures, and their flashes from their cameras was the lighting. They are known for their tortilla (an egg/potato like omelets). It was wonderful. Everyone in there were locals except for us and a couple from Japan. We looked over and saw them reading from a Japanese Spanish tour book – I wanted to take a picture of it – but didn’t have the guts.

After this we found the theater. This place was designed during the Gaudi period, very Gaudi, but by another designer. The stained glass ceiling was an hour worth of entertainment in itself. They had statues all over the place, mosaic ceilings, floors, walls, pillars – There was so much beauty that you seriously didn’t want to move very fast – because you would miss something.

We then checked out and had some time to kill – so why not hang out on Las Ramblas!!! Great decision. The same parade that we saw the night before was happening, except this time everyone was sober. We then sat down for some tappas. We ended up making friends with these crazy Australian girls. They told us where the Hard Rock Café was – on Las Ramblas. We were sooo close. So we crossed over the parade and made it to Hard Rock. We then decided that we needed some Cava as gifts and walked all of Las Ramblas trying to find a store open. We were successful here as well. Then we headed back to the train station to close this chapter.

Thursday, September 25th

We were successful here as well. Our train was a sleeper car. There were six bunks and Jen and I got the top two. This was not so great in that there were four other chicks in our car and they didn’t want talking or lights on. There wasn’t all that much room to even lay up and read. We got to Madrid without any incident. We took the metro and train home. I had Brent’s blackberry and had texted/emailed him throughout our journey. So he timed it where he and the girls met us at the train station. We then got to take Jocelyn and Bryce to school. Brent then loaded up all of the students and Aunt Jen to take them on a road trip to Valencia. I had enticed them that this was the place to go.

I got to stay home alone with the internet!!! Bryce had a field trip at school. They went to the Museum of Natural History. It is weird – we parent’s don’t even get a heads up that they are going. It is only if the child wishes to share what they did today that you get this information.

Friday, September 26

Bryce had a playdate with Pilar after school today. I don’t know if I have mentioned Pilar and her family – but Pilar was born at Chandler Regional while her parents were going to school at Arizona State!!!! Since Bryce had her playdate, Jocelyn and I were going to get chocolate and watch movies. We headed to the grocery store. As we were looking for chocolate, we met Richie and his mother. Richie is from the UK. His family just moved to Madrid from another part of Spain. Richie is in Jocelyn’s class. The best part of this story is when Richie’s mom stated that they had loaded all of the groceries into the car when Richie saw Jocelyn in the parking lot. He told his mother that they had to go back into the store so that he could see Jocelyn!!! Jocelyn’s face still gets red with embarrassment when I tell this story. We then headed to McDonald’s in Majadahonda to go pick up Bryce. When we finally got there, Brent and the gang had beat us. So we all got to pile into Chicken Little with groceries and head home. Aunt Jen then went home on Saturday. (insert sad face here)