Barcelona Day 5 (but it's really 6,7, .. and 11 by now)

It's hard to keep up this blogging thing especially when you are having fun every single day and all you want is to come home, stick the kids to bed and read your book (I've read about 10 pages so far ..) ... 

Here is the account of what have we been up to as LoLo would be describing the experience ...

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We've been getting up late every morning because mom and dad can't really get us to bed at our usual 8pm bedtime. So, we wake up late, we eat late and by the time we get somewhere it's time for lunch. We went to La Boqueria market ... Lola wanted to wear her flower girl dress very much and mom has already given up explaining that there are no more family weddings that we can attend,  so she paraded through La Rambla street as if she was performing. (In case you are surprised why she is wearing her fancy dress on these photos).

We were excited to see the street performers like we were told we would, but there wasn's a single one out there. What there was though, is ice cream! Every corner had an ice cream shop with as many flavors as you can get at Uncle Lou's in Park Slope (but maybe they had even more).

I asked for the blue and London wanted the same right away. Mom just rolled her eyes and looked at dad who then said very quietly "Well, it's their vacation too! Let them have it!" ... Then mom rolled her eyes again and asked for two scoops of "helado azul" with cones and cups - just the way we like it ... We could tell mom was terrified of all that blue food coloring and flavoring ending up on our clothes (and stomachs), so she kept a close watch over us.

La Rambla was full of people and souvenir shops of all kind. We passed by the National Theater and went to La Boqueria, which is a big, no, a HUGE market in Barcelona.

As soon as Lola sew food, she said she was hungry (I knew she would say that when I sew the candy display ...). I like candy also, but I just ask for it like this .. "Mom, can I have candy?!" but Lola does it in a more confusing way, so sometimes we end up looking for "real" food, then we find it, buy it and then she says that's not what she had on mind, but rather some sort of sweet treat.

We were picking out candy for so long .. London can never make up his mind ...

The fruit stalls looked colorful and delicious.

Mom bought strawberries and dad bought mango and mango turned out to be a better choice, because it was sweet as honey and we love honey!

We liked so many stalls - the candy, the chocolates, the fruit, the spices and even the fish and seafood counter, but the meat counter was a little scary! There were things with eyes looking at us and things that even mom and dad would not eat - like stripe (I mean tripe)! Although, dad ate tripe soup once, because it's mom's cousin's husband's - Tibi's favorite dish and dad was scared to refuse. Seeing tripe up close behind the window made his dislike grow stronger ...

We agreed that it looked "yucky musch" and a little bit like beehive carpet.

We also sew a heart and tongue and can not believe how big they both were.

Cows must be super loving animals to have such a huge heart and must be able to eat all their food super fast with such a long tongue!

We were also curious about the spices display. Mom took a photo of a strangely neon colored pile of yellow not knowing what it is. All the rest of the names of the spices sounded somewhat familiar and romantic - like out of a famous cookbook, but this one was strange ... "colorant alimentari" said the label. Only a few days later, when she ordered paella in a restaurant and it tasted terrible (but was beautifully yellow) did she realize that this "spice" is in fact food colorant used in cheap paella across Barcelona. She is still upset about this .. what a spoiler to find out that yellow rice is yellow many times not because of the fragrant saffron, but because of some manmade color?!!)

At the exit we bought some "jamon" and bread on a stick and mom got an idea of doing the same for our next year's birthday, which is still far away, but it's good to have inspirations (she says).

Our next stop was a book store, where we bought Barcelona guide books for kids. One is in English and the other one in Spanish and it's all drawn like a cartoon. Mom and dad said they would buy books like that in every country where we visit, so that we will remember our trips.

We made a quick stop on Placa Reial and bought these light things that you can shoot up to the air.

We had a party with them at home after we came back and you can see how we can boogied HERE .

More adventures to come!!

Hola from Barcelona! The word of the day is "SORTIR" which means exit (we think :) 

LOLO

Barcelona Day 4 (Adventures in Home Exchange) by LoLo

Mom and dad wanted to do something cultural today, but we still insisted in the "toes in sand" and beach so they compromised. They said we would take a cable car ride, have lunch on the top of the hill, come back and play in the sand. They also promised to buy us sand toys, ice cream and pretty much anything we wanted as long as we can last through the day without drama ...

It all started really well because there was no line at the "teleferico" (as they call it here) ...

We took the elevator really high and looked around. We saw the beach from above with all the naked people sunbathing and the sail building on the other side, where we ran around yesterday. 

Above us were these huge yellow rings and mom said she thought they were part of the mechanism that makes the cable cars move along ... (Though she has no idea about anything mechanical we think she was correct this time .. I mean there were no hamsters around ... )

By the way, our exchange family friends told us that going on the teleferico was a very touristy thing to do and most barcelonins have never been or been maybe once in their lifetime as a part of a school trip. Mom said it must be like the Empire State Building for New Yorkers.

Then the red car arrived, we went inside the little cabin, doors closed and swiiiscchhhh it was like on a giant slide but down the rope. We enjoyed the view so much, we giggled all the way up.

We found out that the journey was 1330 meters long till it reached Monjuic.

There was a beautiful restaurant at the top of Montjuic with amazing views of the city. You could see the ocean on one side and the city with tall buildings sticking out on the other side. 

Mom looked at the menu and she could not believe her owns eyes! There was a different price for all items depending on where you sat. The ocean view was more expensive ... 

Then Lola threw a huge fit because .. because she was tired and she really wanted to play photographer with mom's I-phone but mom would not let her.  Look at Lola's huge smile ...  

The purple trees in the gardens had beautiful flowers ... they did not smell, but we took many photos of them anyway ...

Then it was finally back to the cable car 

to the beach and sand!!!

You must all know by now, that mom has this internal need to always do something and create. After a while we got bored filling our buckets with water and spilling them out so mom decided to do some painting with rocks (Barcelona beaches are rocky), which is very funny because the one thing she can not do is paint ... We did rather well though and "painted" a house, a car, a giant flower and a tree ...  (that's basically her entire repertoire in stone on sand people!) 

We barely made it home in a taxi. Mom and dad had to carry us into the elevator and we collectively collapsed in front of the TV and Peppa the pig!

Adios amigos! Adventures await manana! (We forgot a new word! Must find two tomorrow!) 

LO(lo)V(i)E, LV   

Adventures in home exchange (AIHE) Day 3

Hola hola Barcelona!
It's our third day and we are almost Barcelonins (people who live here) .. well not yet, but we are very comfortable and feeling right at home.

Today's wake up time: 10.30 am

LoLo seemed to inherit Geoffrey's vacation ideology, that feeling truly on vacation you need to have sand in between your toes ... that's exactly what LoLo wanted .. the beach! The benefit of staying a month at one place and staying at a home (among so many) is that we don't feel rushed to do anything. On a "regular" one week - ten days trip I'd have a plan for every single day and would constantly have a FOMO (just learnt this acronym from a travel magazine ... fear of missing out) if I did not fulfill my plan. This time, we do what we want to do. We surely want to see all the famous places but we also just want to do what we want to do and today it happened to be the beach.

We took a tram to the ZOO stop and walked to what was the
Olympic village built for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. 

We walked by the giant headless fish, a work of Frank Gehry and headed for the beach. 

We strolled on the beach and collected rocks to be painted. 

The beach was crowded with with topless bronze bodies and people relaxing in their beach chairs. 

We stumbled upon a Japanese festival, where people could try on a kimono, beat a watermelon while blindfolded and drink Japanese bear. (I am not sure about the watermelon beating event ... we will find out next time we exchange homes in Japan, I guess). 

And what about this crooked house on the beach ... 

The teleferico had an hour wait so we rather headed towards the impressive looking W hotel shaped as a sail boat and found these shadows on the W's terrace posing like it was fashion week ... 

 Exhausted, tired and hungry we headed to a taxi and the port to take a ferry back to where we started off the day. No photos of the ferry ride! Momma was busy gulping down Coca Cola and concentrating on keeping down that calamari she had for lunch ... 

Then a ball almost fell on our head ...

.. but it didn't so more adventures in LoLoLand tomorrow ... 

What I learnt today about the differences and similarities between New Yorkers and a Barcelonins:

1. There is no such thing as a "quick lunch" here even .. once you sit down you SIT DOWN ... 

2. Both are inpatient species when it comes to crossing a street.  Green on the crossing light is really  just one of the colors of the rainbow ... 

  

The word of the day is MELOCOTON, which means peach!

Buenas noches amigos, 

lo(lo)v(i)e, LV 

   

Adventures in home exchange NYC-Barcelona (Day 1-2)

The idea of exchanging apartments always excited me. I love traveling and knew that my beloved (and sometimes hated) b&b's just won't cut it once we have children. Kids are needy (and some adults are also, but that;s for another blog entry). They need breakfast the second they get up, they want to take closet full of toys with them on a vacation and they go through clean clothes like you wouldn't believe. No matter how amazing (or expensive) a hotel may be, these services are not part of their marketing plan. We needed to find another solution for a vacation that would be affordable and would encompass all our needs and so I figured, a home exchange with a family with similar age children would be just what we needed.

I went on homeexchange.com and within minutes found an apartment/family I liked. I signed up for a year long service, emailed the people .. aaand never heard from them :( Having been rejected, I abandoned the idea and did not return to it until 3 months later. This time I wrote a nice profile, managed to find impressive photos of our apartment and put together a profile describing what an amazing place we have. It felt a little bit like being a real estate broker and an online dater all in one ... I looked through profiles, studied photos, read descriptions of areas I've never heard of and finally found one that I felt connected to. The family emailed back within 20 minutes, we skyped the next day and now it's July and I am sitting behind their desk in Barcelona, while expecting them to arrive any minute to our homey digs in Brooklyn.

We are staying in Barcelona for the entire month of July and it is promising to be a real adventure for all of us. Our new apartment is in the are called Poblenou, which according to Wikipedia means "new people".  The closest big street to us is Avenida Diagonal, which has two bicycle lanes and a wide walking path in the middle with benches and people rollerblading, running and walking (or dancing like LoLo did today). We have a view of the Sagrada Familia, the cucumber building and Tibidabo from the glass walls of our 12th floor home.

Day 1: 
Having just arrived, we decided to take a walk to a supermarket, which is also part of a shopping mall. We are located in the middle of the Avenida Diagonal, which also has a mall on both sides.
Around the corner is a little playground, where we stopped and picked up wilted tree flowers and tossed them around ... so little is enough to have so much fun ...

The food store was just like any giant food store in the US, with a difference that their seafood section takes up an entire isle and it is so fresh, it actually moves around the display table (not kidding).

We stocked up on all necessary groceries and brought it home in a taxi. The one item we did not buy was toilet paper - having previously assessed the tp situation as "no need, have enough". This situation rapidly changed, as I found three rolls in one of the bathrooms all soaking wet, but carefully placed back to their place of origin. I cross examined the entire family about the event, but  there was no admission of the deed by anyone (though Lola has been smirking ever since. I am not sure if it's because of the TP or the chewy candy gone missing from my nightstand). 

We had three dinners. One at 5 pm, another one at 9 pm and yet another one at 1 am. We sat around the table eating Spanish bread and butter with tomatoes and loved it. LoLo thinks it's New Year's Eve all over again because of the late bedtime and the fireworks sew from our window. 

Day 2. 

Wake up time: 11 am! We are getting better at this! That's an hour earlier than the previous day! Decided to stay local, as we wanted to come back for an afternoon nap and were worried about meltdowns, crankiness and general unpleasant behavior due to jetlag of all parties involved. Glories is the other shopping mall on the opposite side of Avenida Diagonal and a few blocks away is Barcelona's most famous flea market ... Now, I love flea markets, but Geoffrey is repulsed by the idea of buying something old, used or smelly for that matter. I love the idea of old, used and non-smelly, so we went and did not find much beyond a bunch of men waving their hands at me not to take photos .. ooops I already did ... bad, bad tourist!!! (I can't help my impulses ... ) 

I could spend the entire day here! Watching people haggle, rummaging through photos, books, memories that once may have been somebody's treasures. I would want to interview all the items .. where they came from, who used them, what happened to the owner, why are they on the unwanted pile? Who would they want their next owner to be? How long have they been lying around this dusty market? It's a shame items can't talk ... (that reminds me of LoLo's baby clothes quilt that I should finish when I get back to NYC ... they will tell a story ... ). Anyway, I wasn't impressed by the goods, but still loved the atmosphere, as I always do at any market wether flea or fruit or flower any other ...

LoLo got Spanish fans that they kept fanning the world with them for the rest of the day .. You know, just so we "blend in" and don't look like tourists ...

We took a short nap for about three hours and headed out for dinner. What else to do on vacation besides scheduling your day around food? We are on our third round on octopus, second paella, numerous glasses of sangria and wine, bread with tomatoes and for those prosciutto friendly vegetarians (just like myself) there is always JAMON ... 

Walking through the old part of Poblenou we found this amazing balcony full of flowers ... 

... and a wall painted with strips of different color and these people hanging around ... 

We are learning one Spanish word a day and today's word is CANITA and means "straw"

(popote in Mexico, pitillo in Colombia and sorbeto en Puerto Rico) ...
no wonder my Spanish is so pobre :)))

That's all for two days ... we are LOLOving it here!

Adios, LV

Teacher's gift

Surprisingly (not) I like the idea of home made gifts. I don't always have time (or enthusiasm) to make them, but other times my mission becomes to surprise someone with a thoughtful and meaningful gift. LoLo's teachers were great all year around. LoLo loves the entire class including children and teachers (dress up corner, car tracks and worms from the garden - as for Lola - very much) and so I thought it would be nice to make a gift for the teachers from the entire class.

Recently, I've been productively using and getting addicted to Pinterest. Considering I didn't even understand the reason why one would want to have a Pinterest account at first, I turned 360 on the issue. I now have my lifelong craft plan cut out and I just fulfilled one ambition from the list.

I stumbled upon sharpie projects on porcelain. "Just draw on the plate/mug/vase with a sharpie marker, stick it in the oven at 350 F for 30 minutes and it will be done" were the instructions on most sites. Among many talents I seem to have, drawing is not one of them though, hence I like handprints, fingerprints and any other form of art where I do not actually have to use a brush. The idea was born! Fingerprints on a mug for the last day of school from the entire class!

We made three mugs - red, purple and a green one for the three wonderful teachers: Beth, Daisy and Nicole.

Besides the fact that they are just wonderful, any teacher who sends out this note below deserves a caterpillar mug :))))

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Hi Families,

Just a quick note.  If the children mention a flood or water in the classroom, this morning (Monday) water came into the classroom from the street. The children did not get wet and we quickly got it under control.  We pretended we were on a submarine and a boat.  We ate our snack on the dry rug pretending it was a picnic.

Best,

Beth

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The children in the class loved the idea of a "secret" project .. although I am not sure how long it took for someone to make it "not so secret" :)))

And here is me playing still life photographer ... 

It was so much fun making the mugs.

This could also be a great father's/mother's day gift. 

Night night, Lo(lo)V(i)e from us all, 

LV xox