Life is Fun in Spain: Ray's 50th Birthday!

Barcelona...what a great place to turn 40! :) Oh, I mean...50! Ray is ageless to me...the same great person I met 26 years ago. Age doesn't matter anyway...birthdays are simply a good excuse to have more fun!

Having just come off our big trip to Italy 2 weeks prior, rather than a bigger birthday trip like we had originally thought about, we decided to do a quick excursion to a well-loved theme park near Barcelona. We had heard that Port Aventura is quite entertaining, and is embellished with Halloween decorations this time of year. (Side note: there is not actually a Halloween night for trick-or-treating here, but we understand they create their own "version" of the holiday.)

NICHOLAS'S REPORT ON PORT AVENTURA:
For Dad's birthday we took a one hour train ride to Port Adventura, and we rode the tallest roller coaster in all of Europe!!! After you flop off of it, your heart smacking around inside your rib cage, your hair blown back, trying feebly to win a losing battle to stay straight, it feels like nothing will ever scare you again!

Dad won a fluffy stuffed pac man that is bigger than my face by shooting 3 basketballs in a row in one of those game booths with games that you're not supposed to win.

I rode a mechanical bull that swung its behind in every direction possible and was thrashed around on the furious beast like a sack of beans (I don't know how I didn't become dizzy), as the man was shouting that the g's of centrical force would fling me off at any given moment. The ride suddenly came to a halt, and I swung out of the saddle and staggered to the bull controller. He presented me with a pin which I held gloriously in the sky and walked away as other little children's faces bit deep into the dirt colored pad under the bull. It was very joyous!!!

The Dragon Kahn, another intense roller coaster, which my mom was brave enough to go on twice, rolled our eye balls around in our heads with a sickening amount of loops and twists, but the biggest roller coaster in Spain sucks your stomach out your head with a total of 9 deathly blasts toward the ground (drops).

All in all the time zoomed by so fast we had to run to keep up with it, Dad had an amazing 50th birthday, and we all had a blast!

We stayed at a hotel in the park and made everything hassle free. One hassle free option was the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet---edible consumption heaven for the boys!

Jacob fills his plates and bowls particularly full these days.

Nicholas is holding up Nutella packets (very popular in Europe!), which they slather on anything edible...or eat straight up, of course!

Evidence of Halloween season...

Looking up at the loopity Dragon Kahn roller coaster

This was a minor (and rickety) roller coaster. Worth doing once, the boys say.

(Yes, I went on this one.)

More Halloween adornments...see the heads hanging from the trees?

Also, see the Drop Tower in the background? That was a favorite ride for the boys and Ray.
(more about the Drop Tower below)

Behind these leaping boys is the tallest roller coaster in Europe (called Shambala), speeding down through the water (you don't get wet).

Shambala roller coaster (white one)
(the U.S. has taller ones, says Ray)

Wait! Does Jacob look taller than me?! Well, he is...by about an inch, technically. Maybe I was standing on the lower part of the sloping ground to look this "short"...

Wow, Ray, you look so YOUNG! :)

Truth be told, I am NOT a roller coaster fan. I don't really even go to standard theme parks, as I usually just stand around while everyone goes on the rides. Well, being Ray's birthday weekend, and with the enthusiastic encouragement of my sweet boys (who played ro-sham-bo to choose who would sit with me...they both wanted to!), I did scrounge up my courage to do some roller coasters. What I do not care for most are the big drops. So, the first ride we went on was called the Furious Baco and didn't have any drops; it simply sped around VERY fast, going upside down once. I figured I could start with this one to get myself going. Within a second of the blast off on the ride, the word out of my mouth was S**T!!!!!!!!!! As a rule I don't swear, so I'm not exactly sure where that came from. The speed on this coaster was SHOCKING. I later found out that the ride is hydraulically launched and goes 84 mph, reaching that speed within 3.5 seconds. We happened to be in the front row of the coaster that first ride, and when we got off, our hair looked permanently blown back. My hair was in complete knots, and I could barely even put my fingers in it to "brush" it all out, which took plenty of time and patience as we walked around the park. Later that night, believe it or not, we all rode this coaster again in the DARK. That was enough for me, although the boys and Ray did it a couple more times the next day.

Ray and Nicholas before the launch on the Furious Baco ride

And Jacob...

Here are the boys, ready to go on the Drop Tower, which drops them almost 300 ft at over 70 mph.

I say, NO thanks!

They did this ride multiple times, and once they formed the words "MOM" with their hands, just as the automatic camera clicked at the top before they dropped. We saw it on the screen where they entice you to buy the photos.

At night the boys decided to go on coasters over and over again since there were small or no lines

...can you tell by their hair?

After riding Dragon Kahn five times, they rode Shambala (the tallest in Europe) over and over until the park closed; there were so few people at that point that the boys were able to ride continuously. All the while, Ray and I stood near the photo display area where we watched for those automatic photos of the boys on each ride.

Here is the one we bought.

Yes, Jacob is pretending to be sleeping as the coaster hurtles downward.

So Ray spent two days riding roller coasters, which he loves, with his sons (and sometimes his wife), feeling young (as always!) and carefree. Throughout the time at the park Ray told his childhood memories of season pass experiences at his favorite theme park in Houston.

One story was of his younger sister, Gina, who Ray accompanied on her first roller coaster ride. As the coaster started and they began to climb upward, she burst into screams and became hysterical, grabbing Ray and clawing at his face and arms. Ray tried to calm her to no avail and finally slapped her in the face to break her distress. It worked. Wide-eyed, she sat breathing deeply and made it through the rest of the ride without causing Ray any more physical injury.

One more story. To preface, Ray became very good at those "carnival" games that appear easy but then impossible to win once you actually try them. He was about 13 or 14, and he had won plenty of giant stuffed prizes at that point. He noticed one girl who really wanted a big prize and was highly disappointed, having failed to win after many attempts, and he told her he would win one for her. She paid him the game money, and he won the giant stuffed prize. She went crazy hugging him as if he had just saved her life!

We finished up our time at Port Aventura on Ray's birthday (Sunday, October 5) in the afternoon and made our way back to Barcelona. Ray is not one to celebrate himself, so we decided it was a great opportunity to celebrate our new friendships with a dinner for them. We went to a great Mexican restaurant we had discovered previously. Ray was able to play "host" and explain the food, as many of our new friends had never eaten Mexican food before! They all loved it.

This is Ray with Xavier, the owner of our language school, and his wife, Esther.

Estefania (Fani), one of our Spanish teachers, and Jacob

(bad lighting, sorry!)

Below, from left to right:

Julie, our Danish classmate (she took Spanish classes with us in August)

Trine, Julie's roommate and co-worker

Robert, our friend from church and host for two weeks before we found our permanent apartment

Alya, who overheard our plight at the bank and invited us strangers to her place for homemade Lebanese tacos (Alberto, her fiancé, was out of town this night...we missed him!)

Far left and far right, Susan (from England originally) and Pablo (native of Barcelona), married and our good friends from church who have shown us around Barcelona and give us great tips and info.

In the middle: Esther, Christine, Ray, Xavier

Jacob with our two Spanish language teachers, Christian (who is also national champion in Spain for ballroom dancing!) and Fani (not a ballroom dancer, but a fabulous person, too!) :)