Destination: Spain

One of the biggest reasons we were excited about moving to London were the opportunities to travel around Europe given the easy accessibility.  Geoff's Europe experience basically consisted of Berlin, Germany and mine was none before we arrived here.  So we quickly complied a "must-go to" list of countries we want to visit during the couple years we are over here.  The list includes, in no particular order:

• Ireland
• Scotland
• Italy
• France
• Switzerland
• Portugal
• Greece
• Germany
• Spain
• Croatia (we heard the beaches are amazing there)

Traveling with a toddler and infant will present its challenges in getting to these places and I'm sure will involve a lot of planning.  But we are determined to experience as much as we can while we're here so we'll make it happen somehow!  So anyways, before the holidays arrive in force and before it's too late for me to travel out of the country due to being late in my pregnancy, we decided to scratch our first country off the list last weekend - Spain!  We packed our bags and headed to Barcelona.

We had some excitement just trying to get there.  Right as we were about to hop on the train to the airport (at 6:00 AM no less), Geoff received a text from the airline saying our flight from London to Geneva, Switzerland, where we had to fly through to our our way to Barcelona, had been cancelled.  He quickly called Swiss Air and fortunately, they were able to schedule us on another flight, but at a different airport.  So three different trains later, we were at the airport.  There was pretty bad fog in Geneva, which is why our original flight was cancelled.  While it didn't cancel our rescheduled flight, it did delay it significantly and provided reason for us to worry that we wouldn't make it our connection flight to Barcelona. Sure enough, we were going through immigrations at the Geneva airport when we heard the flight calling our names for last call.  From there, we started running as fast as we could.  It never seems to fail that when you are running late for a flight, it's almost always at the gate farthest away.  Geoff estimates we ran at least a quarter-mile to our gate.  I'm sure we looked crazy.  But thankfully, we made it!  The consolation for our drama getting to and out of Geneva is that we got to see the Swiss Alps from the plane.  Amazing!  We can't wait to go back sometime in the future for a real visit!

Our first tourist stop in Barcelona was the famed Sagrada Familia, or Church of the Sacred Family.  This is the #1 tourist stop in Barcelona and it's easy to see why.  The cathedral was beautiful and jaw dropping.  Construction on it became in the late 1800's and it still isn't finished!  It's currently scheduled to be completed by 2030.

What the finished product is suppose to look like

The doors to the front entrance contain all the words to the Gospels of Matthew and John.

The inside was quite incredible.  Given the relatively young age of the cathedral, in my opinion, the interior had a much more modern look to it than the cathedrals that are hundreds of years old.  Nevertheless, the attention to detail and the ornateness of it was breathtaking.

As expected, Olivia does not yet have a fine appreciation for the arts and preferred to spend her time in the cathedral running around and playing with Monkey.

We later walked around different neighborhoods and shopping areas until we arrived at the Port.  Olivia loved seeing the water, boats and birds flying around.

The next day involved more walking around and exploring.  We found Parc de la Ciutadella, a quiet park in the city. 

Olivia's eyes got so big when she saw this Mammoth! 

Olivia has proven that she has quickly adjusted to the European lifestyle, preferring a motorcycle to get around!

After leaving the park, we headed to the beach.  We wanted to see the actual Mediterranean Sea rather than just the Port that we had seen the night before.  While the weather certainly wasn't beach weather, the water was pretty.  I'm sure the beaches are packed and it's just beautiful there during the summer months. 

That evening, we headed into a different part of the city for dinner.  Along the way, we stopped for some great views of the city and watched a water show at a nearby fountain. 

The Magic Fountain - it was a nice show, almost thirty minutes long, featuring dancing water,  changing lights and music.

In true Olivia fashion, she quickly got bored with the water, lights and music and decided it was much more fun to crawl around on the dirty ground.

Buzzing around

Halloween is a litte different in London.  It's not that big of a deal. Or at least not in the area of town where we're living.  In the US, the grocery stores stock isles of big bags of candy weeks and weeks in advance of Halloween.  At the local grocery store here, there was maybe 1/3 of an isle dedicated to Halloween.  Of that, less than half of it was candy (and not good candy like Snickers or M&Ms) and the remainder was little Halloween decorations.  There was no trick-or-treating for us this year.  However, we did met up with a group of American moms and other toddlers/babies for a Halloween party.  Olivia enjoyed putting on her bee costume (she got plenty of looks from people on the subway as we went to and from the party) and I'm grateful I was able to meet some other moms, most of whom had just moved to London recently too.  The lady hosting (a fellow Texan!) did an amazing job of creating fun little Halloween related activities for all the children.

Olivia and I also had some pumpkin craft time together at home.  We had purchased a little pumpkin at the grocery store that she was so excited about.  I let her get out her paints and paint to her little heart's desire all over that pumpkin.  It certainly wasn't the prettiest creation.  It was basically painted brown with all the various colors mixed together by the end, but we had a lot of fun doing it.