Hola Barcelona!

I've been wanting to visit Barcelona for awhile, so when we found super-cheap tickets back in January, we jumped on them and went at the beginning of May. It was a fun trip, especially since my sister, Lisa, met us there and my neighbor, Chantal and her friend, Frederic, joined us.

Our first night there, we ate at a hole-in-the-wall around the corner from our apartment. The food was excellent and even we picky girls were satisfied (Lisa is a vegetarian, Chantal doesn't like seafood, and I didn't ever know what I was going to like :). We had a pica-pica meaning just a little bit of a lot of dishes. It was a good way to sample a lot of the cuisine. The desserts were the best in my opinion - cinnamon ice cream, orange-chocolate cake and Catalan cream crème brûlée - yum! And just so you know, if you get paella negra (a black rice dish), it is black because of squid ink, no wonder it tasted so fishy...

Yay, Lisa made it! She had a 3-leg plane trip a 10 hour layover in Paris before arriving in Barcelona. Our first full day there, we took it easy and had a relaxed beach day. The water was freezing, but the weather was perfect for sitting on the hot sand. Lisa and I got our feet wet wading in the surf while looking for sea glass and cool rocks. What we realized later is that we'd unintentionally found one of Barcelona's nude beaches - whoops! All part of the Spanish experience, I guess... Fortunately, Lisa's head is blocking the topless woman behind her :)

There were special seats for me everywhere! I felt loved. We laughed when we saw this sign, though. She is the strangest looking pregnant woman I've ever seen!

We took the funicular up to the top of Tibidabo - a mountain that looks over the city. We had a great view and got there right at sunset. So pretty!

The mountain-top church all lit up at sunset. There was also an amusement park up here, but we didn't have time to explore it before it closed down for the night.

Barcelona's famous Sagrada Família. Construction on it started in 1882 and they plan to finish in 2026 or so (they were working on it while we were there as evidenced by all the cranes). It's original plans were drawn up by Gaudí and he worked on it for much of his life. It was unlike any other church I've ever seen - very intricate and detailed. Maybe I'll get to see it one day in when it is completed.

Cool little alley way that we walked down on our way to dinner one night. We had tapas that night - a meal consisting basically of appetizers. They were very rich and very good.

Gaudí's House of Bones (though I prefer the unofficial name - The Dragon House). It's called the house of bones because the columns in front look like bones when you're up close. Tom and I toured this house one morning and it was impressive. The inside is even more unusual that the outside. To me, the funny thing was that people actually live there. Tons of tourists tromp through the first floor and then up the steps to the roof, but all the other floors contained occupied apartments. Wonder what the residents think of all the tourists.

Yet another Gaudí attraction - Park Güell. Our only group picture on the twisty mosaic bench. We girls are all sporting our shopping finds from the day before.

I'd heard about the bench, but it was a lot longer than I realized. Here you can see about half of it twisting around the raised courtyard.

Lisa liked the lamp posts, so got a picture with one of them.

In the apartment showing off my burgeoning belly :)