Football Sunday in Barcelona

The weather was gorgeous. After drinking two lovely cafe con leches we walked down to Plaça de Catalunya, a big city square where the open topped tour buses operate. Barcelona is bigger than I expected so we decided to get a two-day pass which would allow us to move around the city and enjoy the nice weather. The guy who sold us our tickets gave us some explicit instructions. Get back to this place by 6-ish because all public transport will stop around then since Barcelona would be playing Villareal in the Spanish football title match and they would be having a celebration at Plaça de Catalunya that would bring all transportation to a halt. In his mind, there was no IF we win, they were going to win. Big screens were being put up in the square as well as stages for the band.

As we sat in a traffic jam trying to get back to our final destination at the end of the day we saw riot cops ready for action as well as this young boy celebrating each Barcelona goal with what looks like his grandfather. The game ended in a tie and the party was cancelled. We were disappointed not to see the craziness. All day we had been discussing what we thought the celebration might be like. The woman at the front desk of our hotel said that party would last until the sun came up. Seeing the riot police, one of our group said, "If they set a car ablaze, I'm coming back to the hotel room". Hahaha.

Market and Birthday Dinner

We walked down to the market on Saturday and picked up some wine, bread, and cheese to snack on since dinner in Spain is so late. Later that night we went to a seafood restaurant recommended by the hotel. The waiter had a birthday treat planned for Meg and we got a bottle of cava (Catalan sparkling wine) to celebrate. We talked to two women at the table next to us. One of them was Spanish and the other was from the Dominican Republic. She had come to Spain to study and met the Spanish woman’s brother and married him. They were having a night out away from their families. Not ready to call it a night, we ended up in an Irish pub listening to a band. When they played “Sweet Home Alabama” the crowd went wild.

Barcelona Weekend

In celebration of my friend Meg’s 30th birthday I met her and two of her friends in Barcelona for a long weekend last Saturday. It was too short of a visit. This is now my third visit to Spain, visiting very different places for different purposes each time and I absolutely loved it. Even though I can only count (thank you Sesame Street!), say thank you, and tell people I don’t speak Spanish in Spanish, it still feels very welcoming.

This is the first time basically since we lived apart last year that I have travelled sans family, something I used to do every month for work when we lived in the U.S. However, I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from that long separation because when I called home the day before I was set to fly back I started crying on the phone telling H how much I missed them even though I’d only been gone two days. All he kept saying was “Go have fun!”

The girls were great to travel with and the experience was different than it would have been without them. I met Meg when we were enrolled in the same graduate program in St. Louis. She is very social and we started chatting in class. So I was not surprised that we met people, locals or other tourists, throughout the vacation because of her social nature. Instead of having a structured schedule, we took it moment by moment. When I got back and I was talking to my boss about it, she said that is the great thing about Barcelona, there is so much to see that you can just ramble through the city and see things along the way. I also had a new camera for this trip so I was testing that out.

Oh, the only place we HAD to visit was the U.S. Consulate on Monday. Before arriving in Barcelona, Meg and her friends landed in Madrid which was a change in plans due to weather. While having dinner at an outdoor café, Meg’s purse was stolen so she had nothing for the rest of the trip, no cash, no credit cards, no passport. We had to go and get a temporary passport so she could fly home on Tuesday. Because of the Formula One racing that took place over the weekend in Barcelona, the pickpockets were in full force so she was not alone at the Consulate, in fact we talked for quite a while with a dad from Kansas City. He was there spending time with his son who had spent the last semester studying in Barcelona and was now heading home. As we stood there and chatted, his father told us with a smile that he heard there was a place in Kansas City that could remove the pierced loop in his son’s bottom lip, a new addition since he’d been away from home. I couldn’t help but tell the kid that it looked like he’d been involved in a fishing accident and there was a hook in his bottom lip to prove it. I am now officially old! In spite of the stress of losing everything on the trip we had a lot of laughs along the way.

What to See When You Travel

I have been doing a little research preparing to meet my friend Meg and two of her friends in Barcelona to celebrate one of her milestone birthdays. We had no agenda but all promised to do some research ahead of time. I was searching for some travel podcasts about Spain and also downloaded Rick Steves interviewing Patricia Schultz, the author of 1000 Places to See Before You Die. While I don’t own a copy of this book my friend Mel does and it’s always on her coffee table when we visit. Every time I’m there we end up talking about it as we flip through various locations. The interview was really good, and it has made me interested in getting my own copy as well as her latest which focuses on places in the U.S. and Canada.

A few interesting points in the interview:

1.Don’t avoid an experience because it’s a cliché. It could be your only time ever in a place so take advantage of it. If it’s a cliché it’s probably because it’s worth seeing or experiencing.

2.There are great things to see all around you. She said that when she was writing the book about the U.S. and Canada Americans would joke that she was going to have a hard time finding 1000 things to see. That is so not the case.

Cinco de Mayo in the UK

Well, I did my part to spread the joy of the holiday, but since you can't bring a pitcher of margaritas to work, it was a limited effort. I came home for lunch yesterday and put together some homemade guacamole and took it in for an afternoon snack. It was a big hit.

Bluebells in Ashridge

When I think bluebells, I think Austin, Texas, which I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting. So when I heard that bluebells are particularly prevalent here I wanted to see them for myself. Ashridge Estate is a huge stretch of woodland on the border of two counties and I have wanted to visit it to see a tree where some American soldiers carved their names in 1944 while stationed close by. The film The Dirty Dozen was also filmed here. I was afraid this weekend I might be too late to see the bluebells, but without a map I stumbled upon a secluded patch in a beautiful section of wood. I don’t think my pictures do it justice. From a distance they looked like a purple mist covering the bottom of the trees. Because there was no one around, I sat down in a clear patch among them and enjoyed the quiet and the beauty.

I didn’t see another soul until I was close to my car. A group of four with some professional looking photography equipment stopped me and asked me if I could point them in the right direction to see the bluebells. I was tempted to give them my business card and ask them to email me any good pictures they took, but didn’t think about it until I’d gotten back to the car.

P.S. I'll have to go back to search for the tree.

Spring

Having now experienced it in full in the UK, spring has become my favorite season. I’ve always loved autumn but it doesn’t have the same punch here. Everywhere we’ve lived in the U.S. you have such sweltering summer days so not only is the autumn color beautiful, but the break in the heat is a welcome change. Because summer just doesn’t get that intense here, it is much more dramatic to see the beautiful flowers and the almost unbelievable early spring green emerging from the depressive and gray winter.