We made it!

Well, we left our beloved home town of Truckee and all our friends and family on July 28 and traveled 24 hours until we arrived at our apartment in Barcelona.  (Not a bad little place...clean, quiet, simple, and a private pool and basketball court in the center of the complex square.)  With a 3-hour delay in Frankfurt, Germany because of lighting storms, we arrived in Barcelona late at night.  We made our way to rows of restaurants along the Mediterranean Sea and had a 12:30am dinner...paella! On the walk back, lots of dance clubs were in action along the beach, and we heard many familiar dance songs, including Thrift Shop.  As we walked by, Jacob and Nicholas could not help feeling the rhythm and responding, which caught the attention of many an eye, including the bouncers standing outside the clubs.

With minimal sleep on planes and in airports, and getting to bed very, very late, we awoke the next day at 1:30pm, made our way to a little cafe around the corner from our apartment for breakfast/lunch, shopped for some breakfast items for future mornings at a little grocery store, and dropped off our load back at the apartment.

Then, off we went to explore...not to come home for 9 hours.

We took the metro to our first stop (above)...the Apple store!  However, not much help there to figure out how to get our phones on an international and cheaper calling and cellular data plan.  While in another nearby store sorting out calling plan options, a shelf near where the boys were standing broke off the wall, and the sales guy all but chased us out of there (even with our apologies and trying to help fix it).  Oh my!  Maybe we'll do the phone thing another day...

From there on out we walked...all over.  We made our way to the famous main street, Las Ramblas...went by cathedrals (and in one), saw the famous Liceu theater (where Les Miserables is playing right now), found the new location of Ray's and my favorite juice and smoothie shop, Juicy Jones (from our trip over a year ago).  I got a nice healthy green juice drink (refreshing!), while all the guys got chocolate shakes of some kind.

Cool Building on Las Ramblas

Funky "Juicy Jones"

La Boqueria was our next visit...the biggest market in Barcelona.  Wow...so many colorful and tasty foods!  I want to live near that place!!!

The street performers and artists on Las Ramblas were amusing and creative.  The "performers" are people who dress up and stand very still in their unique and original costumes until someone drops some money in their tip jar...then they allow that person to take photos with them, and they do a little character movement.  Jacob had done some research on Las Ramblas before we came, and he even recognized one of the performers as "famous".  I got a shot with him and the boys.

Below are the boys sitting on a lion at the base of the statue of Christopher Columbus.  

Day 2 to be posted soon...