Have Kids Still Travel

Here’s some great pictures of our wonderful day at the zoo.  Barcelona has the best zoo that we’ve ever been to and we only got to see about 1/3rd of it. (We may just hafta go back before we leave.)

If the slideshow above doesn’t show up for you - just click on “View Show” and it should launch the show.

Enjoy!

A&H

For some reason — the blog and photobucket aren’t working together anymore.

Just click “VIEW SHOW” above to get some more pictures.

A&H

This week something was missing at our usual breakfast after dropping the kids off….Merlin was missing. Merlin went back home to Colorado on Tuesday and so our morning ritual was a little less than perfect. For a week the three of us would order our “cafe con leches” and some sort of pastry, sit outside at a table on the Rambla and decide what we would do that day. Oh and of course we would have our usual banter, teasing and laughs. We miss you Merlin!

So if your wondering what we do with the kids all day and how are we going out to dinner for tapas and drinks without the kids?  Do they go everywhere we go?  Oh don´t be crazy!  A big part of planning this trip was what will the kids do - you can´t just stick em´in a stroller for days on end. 

Every day they go to a Pre-school (Kinder Barcelona) from 9am - 2pm The school is very small (as are a lot of things here), Mckenna and Hudson are in the morning english group with an english teacher (Lucie, from England) and there are 7 students total.  Other groups at the school are taught in Catalan or Spanish.  They eat breakfast and lunch there and it is all organic food, very healthy.  Mckenna doesn´t care for it much, but Hudson eats like a horse.  I have definatly noticed their “organic diapers” both in smell, size and frequency!

While they are at school we have a few hours to see the city, museums, and shop with out the kiddies.  Then we pick them up and head home or sometimes get lunch (depending on their moods). 

We also contacted a Nanny service and have a babysitter come 3 nights so we can explore the city at night and get dinner.  Our babysitter is actually american, her name is Gabby.  She is from New York but has lived in Barcelona for 5 years.  This was such a sweet bonus for us!  She is able to recommend things and answer any questions about Barcelona, she has been a great help.

So without these things I´m sure I would be pulling my hair out and wanting to go home by now. 

So far the only thing that is a real pain in the ass is taking the subway with a stroller.  There are a lot of stairs and most stations do not have elevator access.   So while our two kids sit in our double stroller Harris and I each take a side and carry them. However, Harris did discover the metro line that does have an elevator so we began using that one, but the traade off is that it is a bit more of a walk to get to and the elevator usually smells like urine.   Then we transfer trains at a very popular station and in the morning it is rush hour so squeezing onto the train at our transfer station is a bit tight and we do get some looks.   But we’ve got it all worked out now and it really isn’t all that bad, besides I have to get my workout in sometime.

These pictures are from an area called Barri Gotic,  just off the main tourist square called Passieg Gracia.  The streets are very narrow and filled with cafes, restuarants, and shops.  This was by far one of our favorite afternoons, getting lost and having no real destination and it just kept getting cuter and more quaint at each corner.  We stopped for a beer at Bliss cafe and relaxed in our own hidden, pocket of the world.  We found so many photo opportunities but the 3 photos above sum it up nicely.

Hola mi Amigos y mi Familia!

These are pictures of some of the places we’ve visited on our first few days in Barcelona. The Casa Mila & La Sagrada Familia both designed by Antoni Gaudi.

La Sagrada Familia is one of the great symbols of Barcelona and has been under construction for over 80 years. It’s a church with so much detail that it’s truly impossible to capture it on a camera (or even video). 

The Casa Milla is an apartment building with people living in it today. It has incredible wavy designs and three distinctly different types of sculptures on the roof top. You could just about get lost walking around up there and certainly get a twinge of vertigo when you take a look down.

The fountain we’re standing in front of is near the National Art Museum and has a cool light show at night time. (We forget the name of it right now — but I think it was nicknamed “The Magic Fountain”.)

We’ve got lots more pictures in our camera — but Harris and I are having to share a laptop since Hudson broke his by dropping it to the ground on the first day of our stay.

Adios!

Andrea & the Fam

So I must admit I was a little nervous when we first got here, but I didn’t let it show, I kept my cool.  I mean the last time I was in Europe I was without kids and well, I never needed to find chocolate milk, diapers and crayons.  The nervousness happened at the grocery store after fiquiring out that in order to use a cart you needed to insert 50euro and pull this key to get one, and then once you return the cart at the end of your shopping trip you got your 50euro back. 

We started with a pretty simple list, but once we started down the isle it was not so simple.  Everything was different, no Kemps, Kraft, or Jenni-o.  We had to really look at the labels and break out the high school spanish just ot get the basics, Milk-Leche, Ham-Jambon, and which one looks the most like american cheese? 

We headed for the checkout and paid for our groceries.  Next to us was a man bagging his groceries but he also looked as if he worked at the store. so we paid and stepped away from the register and waited…..waited for our groceries to be bagged of course.  But instead the lady at the register threw plastic bags on our groceries, gave us a dirty look and said something in spanish.  I’m pretty sure it was something like “Bag your own groceries you spoiled americans”

We laughed our way all the way home.

Andrea