The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Well, definitely a rough morning. Far too much cheap cava last night and an early rise from Penny – not a good combination. I struggled through the morning a bit while Eleanor slept in, and then we swapped off and she very kindly let me get a much needed nap. [Read more →]

Well, Eleanor was kind enough to let me sleep in after my absurdly late draft (Thank You!), so while the girls went to the zoo in the park across the street, I slept, caught up on the trip blogging and had a nice long shower.

After they returned, we headed out to grab some lunch at Pim Pam Burger, a very hip looking little burger shop a few blocks away that we’d walked by (lauded as the best burger in barcelona by Time Out Magazine). Figured penny would eat some french fries at least, and as we’re planning to do a tapas crawl tonight, maybe tapas for lunch doesn’t make the most sense. [Read more →]

Well, not such a late morning for penny (9am) but we managed to up and get ourselves some coffee (eventually, as they take Sunday way too seriously here, with most shops closed), as we headed out to an artists market Eleanor had read about (pintorspibarcelona.com).

After browsing for a bit, we were both drawn to one artist (annafont.es) who did somewhat whimsical, colorful paintings on silk. A number of which were interesting renditions of the Gaudi structures. We picked up a few pieces for ourselves and Penny (art makes a good memory – and silk rolls up for luggage packing nicely to boot!) and headed on our way to check out Passage de Gracia today as a family. [Read more →]

Today we decided to remember that Barcelona in addition to being a great cosmopolitan city is also a beach town, and conveniently enough our apartment was about a 10 minute walk from the beach district, called Barcelonetta. [Read more →]

An earlier rise for penny today, although still a civilized 9:30. We decided that rather than tourist around to the sights we’d spend the day wandering the Born shopping. First thing first, we headed out for some coffee, returning to the coffee shop we hit when we landed on day 1. On the way there, we wandered down a different path (due to seeing some construction workers drop a load of wood from a rig…yikes!) and passed by a number of great looking shops as well as a patisserie (Hoffmann…as it turns out the patisserie of the local cooking school, think L’Ecole in NY). We almost passed it by, but the golden croissant award in the window along with the great looking pastries dragged me in. [Read more →]

Well, apparently Penny was ready to catch up on some sleep. She may not have gone to bed before 11:30, but she didn’t wake up before 12:30 the next day either. A bit of a late start I suppose, but a good nights sleep for all of us was well warranted.

We quickly wandered out to grab some coffee and breakfast (a quick word of warning, if you’re a “third wave” drip coffee nut like me, you’re best off packing your own beans… [Read more →]

Photos to be inputted later today/tomorrow.

Before I start in with the bitching, let me preface this by saying Day 1 ends on a fantastic note. That said…

WTF is it with airlines?! So you plan a direct flight to Barcelona that’s an overnight 7 hour flight. Leaves at 7pm (ok, we were delayed an hour and a half, so 8:30pm…even better) and arrives at 9:30am (thanks to the time change). That should hit Penny’s sweet spot and give her a slightly short full night’s rest. But no, instead the airline in their wisdom decides to spend the first 3 hours of the flight (I checked) doing snack service followed by beverage service followed by dinner service followed by dinner cleanup followed by second beverage service. But they did finish around 11:30pm and actually turned out the lights. Wouldn’t you think a bunch of people would like to maybe get some sleep? (Of course really, the problem is penny just missed her window to fall asleep because there was too much going on, and ended up getting about 3 hours of sleep instead of 5-6). [Read more →]