Epic European Tour, Part II: Spain

And now we continue!  We flew from JFK to Barcelona.  It was a long flight, but we made it, and were so happy to set foot in Europe at last.

Now, those who know me well know that when I was young I was in Spanish Immersion program during five of my elementary school years.  I later took some high school and college Spanish courses, and I always enjoyed the language, but when the time came to learn Hmong, my attention shifted completely to that, and ever thereafter whenever I tried to speak Spanish, it came out in some bizarre mixture of Spong, or maybe Hmanish.  In any case, our travel buddies kept telling me I better be brushing up on my Spanish for our time in Barcelona, and I didn't really, but I was really curious how it would work out when we were there.

How it worked out was great!  I wasn't perfectly fluent, but I was kind of amazed at how much I could understand and communicate!  The cabbie from the airport to the hotel was a perfect test run for the rest of our time there (he thought we were English, actually).  It was a little different than the Spanish I learned, since Spain and Mexico have very different dialects, but there are a lot of similarities so I could hold my own.  I even tried to actively engage him in conversation rather than just listening because I just wanted to see how I did.  It was nice to be at least fairly conversant.  I'm sure my teachers throughout the years would be very pleased with this result.

So then we had an evening and all the next morning so we did some sight-seeing!  (After a much-needed nap, of course.)  And I had a chance to speak the language more when we went to eat and shopping and here and there.  We didn't have a lot of time, but we were still able to get a good idea of the city and its architecture and some of its history, and of course the highly questionable material that you see in the subways (yikes).

First item of business:  the Sagrada Familia!  It's a cathedral that is famously unfinished and continually under construction.

See?  You can see the cranes and everything!  And that also accounts for the VERY many architectural styles.

I am a bit suspicious of Spain's architecture... (or something)

What a perfectly serviceable picture of us.

And then someone has to come along and photobomb it!  Nice one, Elise.

There were a lot of notable buildings, many designed by Gaudi, like this one.

This is another Gaudi building.  So ornate!

This one isn't Gaudi, but it's interesting.  There are interesting buildings all over the place in these European cities!

It's pronounced Tay-pass.

The menus have plenty of pictures, very convenient for language barrier purposes.

The menu turned magically to food!

This bread was so very delicious.

We were pretty hungry.

The rain!  It stays anywhere BUT the plain, apparently.

At first I couldn't even remember what this was a picture of, but it's me leaning out of our window taken by Elise leaning out of THEIR window.

Time for breakfast!

Yum.

Let's look around!  Jeff was a fantastic navigator.  Then I didn't have to do anything hardly at all, ha (except for be the language guide!).

We went into this aMAzing marketplace in which we wished we could have spent a lot more time.

Veg!

Cheese!

Assorted Foods!

Fishes!

Meats!

Fruits!

This is the map.  Just look at it!

A building with cool umbrella detail.

Even this lamppost is cool.

The birds in Barcelona are not nearly as amenable to being fed as the birds in London.

Wife on a street!

:D

If there's one thing this girl loves, it's an ancient wall.  EsPECially an ancient ROMAN wall.

And we found another church!  There are also always old churches in these European cities.

It makes you want to think.  And strike a careless Senior Pictures pose.

Peek-a-boo!

Arrrr.

OMG a playground!!!  (One of many, really.)

And on the other side, it has a face!

Ha ha, Elise is fatter.

Boo, now I'm fatter.

We saw many many buildings and the bay with all the cruise ships, and ate delicious tapas in a real Spanish tapas restaurant, where the waiter told us he also didn't drink alcohol because he was a Christian (?).  And THEN we learned the hard way that the rain in Spain does NOT stay mainly in the plain, it definitely makes its way right into the city.  We headed back to the hotel after dinner in the pouring rain!  It was amazing, and our shoes and jeans were very wet

Speaking of the hotel, the cruise deal we bought included a stay in a really great place with nice rooms and VERY comfy beds, which was quite important after such a long flight.  We thought if we ever come back to Barcelona, we'll have to stay there again.  It even included free WiFi (for which I had to call the front desk a few times and use my Spanish more, hee) and a great breakfast buffet.

The Wife looks grumpy because we went to great lengths to load and watch the episode of Project Runway we missed, which turned out to be a real cop-out, since they didn't even eliminate anyone that week.  LAME.

Keep your hands off the mini-bar!

Once for Reflections I wrote a song about how much I like Spanish and how I hoped to go to Spain one day.  It was kind of a pie-in-the-sky idea then, I don't know if I ever really thought I would go to Spain, but now I have!  It's kind of crazy to think that I have finally been to that country.

And the next morning after we ate at the buffet and walked around for a little while longer we joined a bunch of older couples in the lobby and took the shuttle to the ship!!!  More on that later...

A picture of all four of us!  We didn't even have to find a poor unsuspecting soul.

Elise was great at chronicling our adventures in her little journal all along the way.

Shuttlllllle...

Epic European Tour, Part I: Washington, D.C. Prelude

I must blog about the cruise before it gets too far past!  So here we go.

First things first, we knew that since we were flying out of JFK we should take advantage of being back east, so we planned a day or two on either end of our vacation to see some of the sights, and finally visit Emily at her house!  Where I have never been!  We had a pretty okay flight (besides that whole rush-to-the-airport-and-make-it-just-in-time-to-catch-our-flight thing that we're making way too regular an occurrence...), and we were so glad to make it to Emily and Elise's house at last!  After all these years I finally have seen their place!  It was so very very wonderful to spend time with Penny and the triplets and get reacquainted (it's kind of a fear of mine that my nieces and nephews elsewhere from where I live will grown up not knowing me).  We had a nice evening visiting with Emily and KC and Alex and Bennett and Ruby (I would probably jump off a cliff for that girl's face) and Jeff and Elise and Penny (she acted shy of me, but it only took reading her one book for her to warm up to me).  Emily was a great hostess and provided a very comfortable private room for us, and dinner and everything.

Little ones love jumping on me for whatever reason.

Ruby was helping Julie brush her teeth.

The next morning we jumped on the very nice metro with Elise and Penny and Grandma Ribeira and headed to D.C.!  Julie had never been, and it's been several years for me too, so it was really great to see everything.

We saw the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial (which would have been nice to have realized that it was right next to the Lincoln Memorial before walking all the way back to the mall) and then spent many lovely hours in museums galore!  We went to the Museum of American History (Kermit!  Dumbo!  The Star-Spangled Banner!) and the Museum of Natural History (where we met Jeff for lunch in the cafe and saw the Hope Diamond), and then spent a good couple of hours in the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, then swung by the National Archives to see the very old Documents in the rotunda (where I was called Captain America by a security guard, who certainly earned the salute he received in return), and THEN hurried our way through the National Gallery of Art (which was a bummer because it closed so early and without so much as a warning or a chance to go through the gift shop, not to mention a very unfriendly staff).  We also walked by the Library of Congress and the Capitol Building and saw the White House and it was so crazy that all of these things are all so big and real and close by each other!  It's really cool to see things that are not only such famous sites in movies and American culture, but also, well, American history of course.  It would have been great to have had more time to soak it all in.

It's so tall.

There it is!  I don't much care for the current tenants, so we didn't bother taking a tour.

WM 4eva.

Who has two thumbs and comes from MO?  This girl!

It's like a family picture!  Penneh is the best.

Not too crowded!

Top pop!

These Chinese schoolkids were just enthralled by Penny!  Their teacher came to shoo them along, but then she was likewise enthralled and whipped out her camera too.  She is pretty cute and stylish.

       

Julie really liked the local wildlife.

A huge dollhouse!  It even had toilets.  I am standing there for scale.

Dumboooo.

They had blank walls for people to create their own superheroes.  Elise came prepared.

Supes' costumes used to be a little less fancy.

HARRY.

The lovely kitchen of the one and only Julia Child!

I love this frog.

They even had a little display about those wacky Mormons.

She likes the T-Rex.

          

'Twas closed, but it was nice to see it.

A librarian!  At a (closed) library.

Shh.

We were a little bummed that we ran out of time, but for one day we thought we did pretty darn good.  Next time we'll hopefully spend a little more time and a couple more days seeing things before they close up.  By the end of the day our feet and eyes and faces were pretty worn out, so we headed home, where we visited some more and had a delicious dinner and Survivor of course and those kids are hilarious and then we went to bed so we could wake up nice and early to catch our bus to New York City.

So the next morning we woke up nice and early to catch our bus to New York City!  It was incredibly bumpy and the WiFi did NOT work as advertised, but we were glad to make it the city in just a few hours, and we had a nice long afternoon before we had to catch our flight across the ocean, so we walked through Central Park and had lunch Bethesda Terrace (walking around NYC isn't quite as exciting when you're lugging suitcases, especially when they keep breaking and stuff).  Julie had also never been to New York, so although we didn't have a lot of time there, it was nice to get a taste of the bigness and the tallness and the coolness and everything.

It was very early, did I mention?

A timely pit stop!

The city!  We made it!  (Bleargh, bus ride.)

Central Park is big.

Thanks for the great sandwiches, Elise!

For love.

Sassy!  We had to fit in with the New Yorkers.

Um.

Elise just loves to be the center of attention.

A trio of jet-setters.  So cosmopolitan!

And then we made it to the airport in plenty of time to sit around for a few hours (much better than hurrying to barely get there in time, though a happy medium would still be preferable), and then we caught our flight and we were on our way!

Let's try this one again...  We're a little punchy at this point.

That's a little more like it.

We sat all in a row and watched movies (Moonrise Kingdom... um) and read books and ate so-so food and tried to sleep and then finally we landed in Barcelona!  Spain!!!  To be continued...

A Wee Halloween Interruption

I will post more about the Epic European Tour, but before it gets too far past the festivities, a word about some Halloween goings-on:

First things first, there's this:

XD

It didn't last long, as expected, but it was a nice surprise anyway.

Then we had a race:

Go Mom!

Go Dad!

Go me!  I made it!!! *dies*

We have done the Hale Center Theater's annual Highway To Hale race for several years, since we like it so.  It's a little expensive, but they have good prizes, nice shirts, and are pretty fun, especially to see all the costumes.  This year I wore all gray and, um, went as some kind of gray ghost/elephant thing.  It was just what I had on hand.  Mom and Dad joined us, and Julie sat this one out, as she was recovering from a little bug she caught at the tail end of the cruise (right, Elise??) and hadn't been able to get back in the running routine yet.  I decided to do the 10K again this year, in an attempt to make up for last year's food poisoning fiasco.  I met my goal (under 45 without walking!!!) and came in at 44:17, 4th in my division (missed 3rd by 20 seconds, eurgh), and 22nd overall.  It was some kind of something at the time though, it was pretty hard at some points, there are a lot of hills on that course, and I kept saying, I know I said I wouldn't walk, but I'll just run to the top of this hill and then walk for a block...  And then by the time I made it up the hill I just decided to keep running, and thought, I don't have to walk, I can just run a little slower for a break instead.  And it worked!  And I was able to make my goal.  Mom and Dad did the 5K and both placed 1st in their divisions.  And it wasn't until days later that I realized we didn't even take our traditional group photo.  Well, we've had one before at this race, that will do, and luckily The Wife was ready on hand to take pictures of us crossing the finish line.  Dad's just taking his time.

Then we had Halloween!  We had a Groupon deal for a fun little Halloween cruise on the Provo river, which was fun, though a little short, and we were glad we had a 2-for-1 deal for it.  We might even do the same thing for Christmas if we find a similar deal.  We didn't have a big party or anything to host or attend on Halloween, but our ward DID have trunk-or-treat, and we had a sort of last-minute costume idea, so here we are:

The Boy With the Bread

The Girl on Fire (and with bread also)

We were Katniss and Peeta!  It was fun watching who caught on.  Lots of moms did, though some of the younger ones took a minute to figure it out, if they did at all (even tweens I thought would surly know!).  Some people thought I was just a baker (the idea!) but once I sat closer to Julie and dropped some hints people figured it out (see here for reference).  We didn't have a bow-and-arrow on hand, but Julie pulled off the look with her jacket and Mockingjay pin and boots anyway.  We were a big hit.  It made us wish we had a party or something to go to so we could be seen somewhere else, especially since we ran out of candy to hand out pretty quickly.  So we went to the mall to get some really awesome SubZero ice cream and walked around a bit to check out the scene there.

The artfully placed baking supplies on my clothes make all the difference.

Angst.

And that's about it!  Festivities.  It was a subdued Halloween, but it was fun.  And now it's time to start filtering in Christmas music and looking forward to a wonderful Thanksgiving and stop being distressed when people pronounce Halloween like Hollow-een.*

And then this happened:

 

My wife is ever so creative sometimes when it comes to cooking, especially when it comes to one of our favorites, gourmet grilled cheese.  So resourceful!

And soon I will post pictures from the cruise.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled Epic European Tour anticipation programming

*  I know, I know, I'm sorry, but it's just one of my favorite annual pet peeves, I can't let October go by without mentioning it.