Barcelona, Spain!

So this is Part 2 or our trip and our biggest stop. Barcelona, Spain!

I think one of the first things we did when we arrived in Spain was drink sangria. A good decision, maybe not a great decision for lunchtime, but a good one. There was so much cut up fruit, it was almost like an alcoholic snack. Here is a view of Barcelona form the top of the Gaudi Park. There were so many people crowded around this guy it took us awhile to figure out what everyone was staring at. It looked pretty cool, he's not moving at all, but it looks like he's riding his bike on a very windy day. There were tons of street performers out at night. Most insisted on being lame and not performing unless tons of money was donated, but some were really cool.

I had never heard of Gaudi before I arrived in Barcelona. Apparently he's a pretty famous arcitect and almost everything in Barcelona was designed by him or reflects his style. This is us in Gaudí's "Park Güell", he actually lived in the park and we took a tour of his house. 

(Do you like how I am clearly rolling 2 cameras deep? And that I don't hand over the nice camera to strangers?)

Yummy tapas! Kind of a nightmare to find a restaurant at 11pm that we could afford that served tapas. But it ended up being well worth it. We sat right next to a curb where I got to watch people trip who didn't see the curb in time. I was up to 16 people before someone bit the dirt really good, and it wasn't funny anymore and I stopped counting. 

So our tapas were: seafood salad, tomatoes and mozzarella, egg tortilla, and meatballs. Along with more sangria. (Tapas are a variety of different things but basically appetizer/snacks.)

And one of the coolest parts of our dinner was chatting with Lars and Anne of Norway!

We got to talking, and I told them I work as a photographer, turns out Lars has had his photograph published in tons of different newspapers! While camping with his daughter a few years ago, Lars spotted this car hanging from a cliff and quickly snapped a picture. The driver had gotten out safely. After sharing the photo with several friends, someone suggested that Lars send the photo to some newspapers and see if anyone was interested in publishing it. They were extremely interested! Several newspapers picked up on the picture and Lars made some serious cash. Many of the online newspapers had readers commenting "Looks fake." "Probably photoshop."

This is a picture of Gaudi's masterpiece,  Sagrada Familia. It was described to us "...like no cathedral you've ever seen before." It's still not finished and it is not predicted to be finished for another 20 years. It is set to be finished around the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death.

All I knew about Spain before arriving was that I wanted to see mosaic stuff, and I was right, we saw a ton, see the facebook album for more pictures.

It was a fight to get a semi-decent picture with the Gaudi Gecko, its like the most popular souvenir to buy in Barcelona. 

I copied this straight from wikipedia about Gaudi's death:

On 7 June 1926^[11] Gaudí was run over by a tram. Because of his ragged attire and empty pockets, many cab drivers refused to pick him up for fear that he would be unable to pay the fare. He was eventually taken to a paupers' hospital in Barcelona. Nobody recognized the injured artist until his friends found him the next day. When they tried to move him into a nicer hospital, Gaudí refused, reportedly saying "I belong here among the poor." He died three days later on 10 June 1926, at age 73, half of Barcelona mourning his death. He was buried in the midst of La Sagrada Família.

Our last stop was to the Chocolate Museum. This is a traditional cup of hot chocolate, not powder mixed with hot water, but literally a cup of hot thick rich chocolate for drinking. Eric loved it, I preferred taking pictures of it. 

Click here for pictures

--or copy paste--

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2373344&id=12604326&l=a5b02101b3

Last stop...Andorra! I know, I had never heard of it either....

3 part blog: Part 1 Toulouse & Carcassonne

The next 3 blogs or so are going to be related to each other. Eric and I took a 6 day trip that took us through Toulouse France, Carcassonne France, Barcelona Spain, Andorra & back to Limoges France. 

The first blog will be about Toulouse & Carcassonne. This map will give you a quick overview of how the trip went down. It was about 14 hours of driving round trip. The three countries involved are France, Spain, and Andorra.

I think I have said this before but the number one thing I've noticed about the 

South of France is Sunflowers.

Europe is pretty far ahead of us on the whole "green energy" thing. 

Nothing like a good wind farm on a clear day.

We stopped in Toulouse for a little bit on our way to Carcassonne. Overall, we didn't find too much to do in Toulouse. 

This is the first thing we saw in Toulouse: Dangerous little toys for kids.

We visited a pretty massive toy store and marveled at a few of our favorite games that had been french-ified. I will post pictures from the whole trip, including this toy store, in a later blog.

Now we don't have this game in America, but we should. 

We ran across these entrepreneurs in Toulouse. There were about 14 children and a few adults staring mesmerized at this display of ingenuity. I just have to say it makes me physically ill that people earn money doing this:

Somewhere between Toulouse and Carcassonne we stopped to pick tons of blackberries and let me take pictures of random things I thought were interesting, such as these snail trees, I've always wondered where snails come from.

And grapes, grapes, GRAPES!

Before I move on to Carcassonne, I just wanted to mention a few things I learned about

Toulouse. Toulouse is famous for producing violet. We even got to eat violet ice cream.

Sadly it was white in color and not purple. It was pretty tasty, it did not taste like soap 

as I had thought it would.

Secondly, I would love to tell you about the zodiac symbols and how they started in Toulouse, 

but that would be a lie, just like the lie my brother told me right before I took this picture.

I was excited to have my picture taken with my symbol because Eric told me it started here. 

Eric was of course lying and it took me way too long to figure it out.

We finally arrive in Carcassonne. Eric had one goal in mind: See a medieval knight show. I think this was mostly to show up our friend Tobias. Eric and Tobias once went to great lengths to go see a medieval reenactment and it turned out to be 4 middle age guys sword fighting each other. And they had to pay to watch. 

We didn't get a video of the jousting stick/thingy exploding as they hit each other, 

but here ya go.

This is the best picture of the castle/fortified city that I can show you. I had to snap it as we were driving away. It was hectic traffic and we couldn't turn around due to the frustration of driving a manual car and an entire continent that loves round-abouts.

Finally we arrive to our awesome camp ground. 

Listen at the beginning of the video for some familiar music.

Next stop is Barcelona!