Barthelona - Day 2

I just pounded on the keyboard for 5 minutes like this:
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Because I'm bored with this travel writing.  But here goes nothin'.

On Day 2 of our Barthelona trip, Friday, we hit up the 'North side'.  And by North side, I mean...anything north of Plaza Catalunya at the top of Las Ramblas.  This was basically our Gaudi day.  In case you don't know who this kook is, Antoni Gaudi was a modernista architect whose works punctuate a lot of Barcelona's most famous buildings.  His major focuses were "architecture, nature, and religion" and he often combined all three.  He died in 1926 when he was hit by a trolley car (yikes) and never saw his masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia, completed.  And homeboy would STILL be waiting because it's STILL not done for some reason.  (Really?  Even with today's building technology?)  Anyways...he was evidently a genius, and I just like looking at his fun stuff.

First stop: a healthy breakfast at Dulcinea in el Barri Gotic.  A croissant covered in chocolate with a cup of the thickest chocolate you've ever seen.  

And we had to hit up the market on Las Ramblas again.  This huge market is a food lover's paradise!  Tons of fresh fruit and veg, meat, seafood - really anything you could ever want.  I wish Dublin had something like this, I'd go every day.

This is a cow's tongue in the center, surrounded by intestines and stomachs and I think brains.  Sick me out.  But cool textures I guess.

Then we walked off the chocolate and went to see Gaudi's 'Casa Batllo' - or 'House of Bones'.  It's covered in mosaics and bone/skeleton-like structures and it was a private house built originally built for a wealthy family.  Nice.

Then on to Casa Mila or 'La Pedrera", built for another wealthy couple.  It's humongous!  And it has really pretty dragon scale covered towers on the top that are beautiful at night with the lights.  (We did this in college.  It was awesome.)  We didn't go in but took lots of pics on the outside.

Next: La Sagrada Familia - Gaudi's famous mega church.  It's tall, huge, and gorgeous.  We didn't go in last time so we did this time and boy I'm glad we did.  Gaudi became involved with this project in 1883 and like I said...it's STILL not done.  They're still adding towers and it seems like it will forever have siding and cranes circling it.  It's still pretty exquisite to behold though, and the inside is even better.

These block-like Bibical stories are pretty fascinating.  

The inside!  The towers/columns are supposed to look like towering trees with branches extending into the ceiling.  I'd say he NAILED IT.  

I've never seen anything like it!  Pretty damn breath-taking if you ask me.

It looked like something from Lord of the Rings.

And for our last stop on the Gaudi Fun Tour, we cabbed it Parc Guell, a huge park up on a high hill overlooking the city.  I guess this was supposed to be a housing development that never reached fruition, so Gaudi stepped in with his pal Mr. Guell and turned it into a mosaic masterpiece!

Hansel and Gretel house!  Loves it.

Looking out on the city and sea.

I love this tunnel.

Couple more solo photo shoots.

Selfies!

We strolled back to the city centre and had more tapas and beers at a DELICIOUS place, Ciudad Condal (where I had the most amazing black rice/paella stuff I've ever had), and then...napped.  Because we're old now, evidently, and can't get through a day of walking without one.  

We stumbled upon a quirky little bar during our Barri Gotic tour yesterday, Alcoba Azul, and we weren't disappointed!  They're known for their Gin & Tonics and they served them in big glasses filled with juniper berries.  There was antique furniture and knick-knacks hanging from the walls and candles filled the tiny space.  Delightful!

We finished up our day with another meal of tapas at Xaloc, a Rich Steves recommendation, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.  The place had ham legs hanging all over the walls - which scared me when studying abroad, but now I love it.  

Another successful day in Barthelona!

Barcelona Day 1 - Happy Birthday Drew!

It was Drew's birthday last week and we decided to take a birthday trip to Barcelona!  I'd been before in college, and it was an amazing, magical time, and I hoped this trip would live up to the last one.  It did!  But in a very different way, of course.  Drew had never been so he was in for a real treat!

Barcelona is...a really cool city.  I absolutely love it and absolutely loved it even more this time and I actually kind of want to live there.  (I've asked Drew about business opportunities there - outlook uncertain.)  It's Spain, but it's also...French-ish, and it feels like a clean, Spanish Paris.  

In the map below, we mostly hung around the dark blue section of Ciutat Veila/Gotic (the older city centre, with the famous street Las Rambles running between there and El Raval), then over to El Born for museums and drinks, then the Eixample later in the trip, and Montjuic on the last day.  Each neighborhood has a different personality type and we loved them all.

We had a ridiculously early flight, bussed it to the city centre, checked in to the hotel, and hit the ground running.

First stop: tapas and wine at Taverna Basca Irati, a cute little place where you stand at the bar and select delicious tapas from multiple plates and the bartender counts the number of toothpicks you have left at the end to charge you!

Then we whipped out our Rick Steves Spain book for a couple of self-guided walking tours, as per usual on a lot of our trips.  He always delivers!  We started at Plaza Catalunya and walked all the way down Las Ramblas, the busy main shopping/tourist street, to the water.

Escriba!  I talked about this place non-stop because Eleanor, Meredith, Stephanie and I ate here every day, multiple times a day on our trip.  Such a cute bakery.

The tree-lined Ramblas.

We briefly stopped in a huge food market that I'll talk more about later.  Lots of fresh food everywhere!

Coolllllllllloorrss!

The harbor where we sat on some steps and enjoyed the sun for awhile.

Then we took Rick's walking tour through Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter), which is the older part of the city centre with Medieval and old Roman buildings.  Beauts.

A tall church tower in the courtyard of an old palace.  I don't have my Rick Steves book with me right now to tell me what it is, but you don't care,  do you?  We can all agree its a pretty picture.

The Roman Temple of Augustus.  REAL old school.

The CATEDRAL!  Gorgeous.  And right by our hotel!

Before we fell asleep, we went to the Picasso Museum.  It's a pretty cool place in a hip and trendy neighborhood (El Born) that mostly touches on his early life and the time he spent here.  Lots of drawings and a couple famous paintings, but it was mostly seeing him try out different techniques and get into his groove.  After a quick cat nap at the hotel to rejuvenate, we were back out on the town to hit up some wine bars and have Drew's birthday dinner!

El Quatre Gats, a quaint cafe where Picasso himself used to hang out!  Picture a 1920s/ Midnight in Paris feel.   I loved it.

We had wine and serrano ham and tomato bread!  Yummm.
Then we stopped by a popular wine bar, Senor Parellyada, for a glass or two of red, but I didn't take any pictures.  Dangit.

And then the birthday dinner was at Cafe de l'Academie, a place recommended by Rick and Trip Advisor!
Side note: this looks like a plate of pasta, right?  It was actually a plate full of calamari ribbons, covering an amazing sauce!  Pretty unique and incredibly delicious.

When Drew ran to the bathroom, I quickly got up and told the waiter in Spanish that it was my husband's birthday and asked if they could just put a tiny candle in his dessert.  They smiled and said no problem.  Imagine my surprise when, while waiting for dessert to come, all the lights in the restaurant go off and it's pitch black, save a candle-lit pastry being followed by a freakin saxophone playing 'Happy Birthday'.  Drew was so confused as to what was happening and I put my face in my hands and said "Umm this is for you.  Holy crap, this is for you and I didn't even realize this was going to happen..."  We were incredibly embarrassed but it was kinda silly and special at the same time.  

Thus ends Day 1, and Drew's 29th birthday.  Happy birthday to my boo, the love of my life and my best friend! I'm happy to be on this adventure with him.  

More next time!

Non Travel Related

I was looking over my blog and realizing that I haven't written a non-travel related post since Julyish, which is upsetting.  I used to write about real things.  I used to have thoughts and insecurities with being a new small fish in a huge foreign pond and write about my days and the interesting (or non-interesting) ways I'd fill my time and I used to cook new and exciting things and post about it.  And now...it's just work work work and travel and go go go all the time and life got in the way of my random blogging.  And now I just...don't.  Ugh.

There's this one particular blogger I follow online and on Instagram and she always infuriates me because she has a wildly popular travel type blog and has made a cool career out of traveling and writing about it.  And I travel and kind-of sort-of write about it but not really.  She also made an effort to put her blog out there in the public blogosphere while I remain hidden by not posting it anywhere for anyone to see because I don't feel strong enough about it to do anything with it.  And that's my own fault.

This situation and many others in my life have left me thinking about this particular quote from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert:

“There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, "Dear saint- please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery." This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, "My son- please, please, please...buy a ticket."

I want to have a successful blog and I want to go back to school for writing, not because I am a good writer but because I want to be a decent writer and do something with it.  But I don't devote any time to writing, ever.  I want to take cool pictures with my cool camera for my cool travel blog but I don't devote any time to learning anything about my damn camera.  I want to work out and change my diet but I don't like the gym and somehow still think living over here entitles me to eat like I'm on a vacation even though this is real life.  I want a lot of other things that I can't even articulate but I don't do anything about it and figure I just need to buy the metaphorical lottery ticket and make things happen.

Anyways.

What have we been up to besides working and traveling some?  Not a lot.  Work is still the same for me.  That's all I have to say about my job and if you want more details then talk to me at Christmas.  Drew's work is more of the same.  He's still on the same client and is working later every day and this was NOT part of the deal we'd made before we came to Ireland.  Grrr.  We've lost 2 sets of friends that have moved back to the States but we've met some new ones that just moved over here, so that's good.  One of my best friend's exit date in February is fast approaching and that makes me nervous and sad.  I just turned to Drew and said "What else have we been up to besides work and traveling?" and he said "Well...that's pretty much it really.  What else would there be?"  So that doesn't help.  But also verifies that things are pretty low key over here aside from the fun trips once a month.

People have also been asking us about Thanksgiving over here and how we celebrated.  We unfortunately/stupidly didn't take the 2 days off like we did last year and had to work on Thanksgiving!  Woof.  I found a catering company to make us a custom Thanksgiving meal and brought it to work and made my Irish guys celebrate with me.  I tried to make them go around and say what they were thankful for but they weren't having it.  But they really enjoyed it overall!  Then Thursday night we went to my friend Autumn's house and she had an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner for about 10 people, complete with special Thanksgiving cocktails and amazing desserts.  Oooh baby.  Even though we had to work and missed being home with our families and friends, we did have a good night and really focused on the blessing of having friends.  So that's nice.

We come home 3 weeks from this past Friday, and with a trip to Copenhagen for Christmas markets and a couple of Christmas parties and concerts in between, the time should fly by!

I'll post some Barcelona blogs this week, but for now...I had to do something un-travel related.  Goodnight!

Blarney Castle

Last weekend we decided on a whim to drive to Cork with Tom and Missy to check out the city and see the Blarney Castle.  It's only a 2.5 hour drive from Dublin and Tom has a car so we were happy to jump in and check it off the list!

Cork was...nice.  Bustling Irish city with a small towny feel.  Lots of pubs and bars and restaurants and good food, and a pretty river runs right through town.  Several people have told me that they absolutely LOVE Cork and I...didn't.  I mean it was fine and I'm glad I went.  But I don't think it's the most charming place I've ever been.  But it served it's purpose for a fun weekend and here are some pics from the Blarney Castle!

The Blarney Castle was built in the 1400s by Cormac MacCarthy, a cheiftan leader in the old days.  The legend has it that ol' Cormac was on his way to talk to the queen about having his land taken away, and an old woman told him to kiss this particular stone in Blarney Castle.  He did, received the "gift of gab", and won back the rights to his land.  The "gift of gab" basically means great eloquence or skill at flattery - and it's been a big deal ever since.  

The grounds are really gorgeous - tons of greenery, small creeks, caves, gardens, lakes, etc.  It was drizzling pretty much the whole time we were there so we couldn't see as MUCH as we wanted, but we still saw some beauty.  

The place was all decked out from Halloween and this huge Grim Reaper greeted us in the main hall.

So...you ascend this tiny ass winding staircase all the way to the very top of the castle and then...lie down and lean back.

It's scary.  I made Drew go first.  

I talked a big game, like I wasn't scared, but then you're leaning over this precipice with nothing under you except 2 thin steel bars, it's unsettling.  

Nostril shot.

That's....the ground.  From way up.   Ahhh!

Pretty mansion on the grounds.

Missy and I

Inner courtyard

Irish fall foliage

Engagement pics!  Or that's what it felt like the rest of the day for both of us!  

Creepy caves under the castle!  

We ate brunch at a delicious place and had a lovely dinner, and went to a seaside town called Cobh for some seafood chowder, and drove back by Sunday afternoon.  It was a fun weekend with friends and now I evidently have the gift of gab and flattery.  Cheers!