Back to Barcelona

We came home to Barcelona on September 19th.  That evening began an amazing week of festivities leading up to El Día de La Mercè (The Day of Mercy), always September 24, a holiday celebrated in Barcelona.  In 1687 when Barcelona was overcome with locusts, the local government at that time appealed to the Virgin of Grace for help and was delivered from the insects.  Thus, they made her the patron saint of Barcelona, and have had annual celebrations in her honor since 1871 (after the Pope officially recognized her patron status in 1868).

Every day for 5 days there was an entire schedule of events in Barcelona...performances, activities, parades, fireworks, etc. happening throughout the city.  On Saturday night after dinner at a restaurant, we heard fireworks, found where they were coming from, and watched them from afar through the Arc de Triomf.  We thought it was a fabulous display!  We also saw another fireworks display in the same place the following night...just as great!

Below, the boys do tricks with their skateboards over the benches at a Youth Center, right next to where we were living temporarily, until we found a permanent apartment.  

Jacob spotted this photo opportunity...

And Nicholas spotted this one!  :)

And Ray spotted this MEXICAN restaurant, which we went back to that night for dinner.  They had scrumptious nachos, perfectly made guacamole, and tasty tacos.  Definitely promised to go back.

We found that Mexican food is not popular here in Spain (the Spanish definition of a "tortilla" is what we would think of as a thick egg & potato fritatta), and we all had a desire to eat great Mexican food.  We had only found one place that was a cheap rendition of Mexican to appeal to the desperate tourist with a hankering for Mexican food.  So we were super happy to find this place, where the owners came from Mexico!

 Dinner at Susan and Pablo's...so many new friends!  

And Pablo served the traditional Spanish "tortilla" of eggs and potatoes.

On El Día de La Mercè, we went to see a hip hop performance featuring various dance groups.  This group did some break dancing, too.

 

Then, we were told by Pablo (a native of Barcelona), that the fireworks we had seen the previous weekend were nothing compared to the main fireworks on El Día de La Mercè.  We ended up finding a great spot to watch those fireworks (at Plaça Espanya), viewing them from a bit farther away which was not in the middle of the crowd craziness.  Pablo was right...these fireworks were unbelievable.  They reminded Ray and me of the fireworks display in San Francisco for the millennium.  These were like a continual grand finale like you've never seen before...  

Wow.  Oh my.  Worth every moment.

 We had dinner with our Spanish language classmate and new good friend, Julie, and her parents who were visiting from Denmark, as well as Julie's Barcelona roommate, Trine.  (Julie is behind Nicholas, and Trine is next to her; parents are on the opposite side of Ray from them.)

Here is Jacob's dish.  We are eating again at Ray's and my favorite restaurant, Teresa Carles... vegetarian, gourmet, spectacular combinations and flavors.

VERY HAPPY NEWS!  

We picked up our Spain residency cards (September 30), and we are now truly official!  Here is our lawyer, Adnan, who helped us through the process in Spain, which I described in a previous blog.  He is a wonderful man.  He is originally from Lebanon, and we are planning to eat great Lebanese food together one of these days...

Well, I have to reveal that our family occasionally patronizes the American food spots that are dotted around the city.  There is really only one that the three boys in the family have frequented... Starbucks...for the chocolate frappuccino.  (None of us drink coffee!)  One of the Starbucks was advertising "American Pancakes".

What we found amusing was that the pancakes were stacked beside the donuts in the display case.

One Starbucks employee saw us take the photo, and she told us NO PHOTOS ALLOWED.  Bizarre! 

Happy Slurping!