Barcelona!

Can't fully put the five days I spent in Barcelona into words that do it justice yet, so I'll start with pictures and add more later:

Our entirely pink hotel room... loved it.

View from our balcony overlooking Las Ramblas, the main street with lots of wonderful people watching. Highlights: A rally of hundreds of soccer (futbol?) fans singing and setting off fireworks after Barcelona won a league championship game and a flash mob of dancers dressed entirely in green.

Casa Batllo, one of the houses designed by Gaudí. His architecture is all over the city and is absolutely breathtaking. It reminds me of a hybrid between Dr. Seuss and The Emerald City and mosaics all at once.

Ceiling of Casa Batllo--there are almost no straight lines anywhere in the building.

Rachael on the roof of Casa Batllo

My favorite Gaudí we saw by far--La Sagrada Familia, still under construction after he started work on it over a hundred years ago.

Ceilings of La Sagrada Familia

Place for prayer in La Sagrada Familia

View from our day hike up Montjuic.. so cool to get a daylight view of the beach we swam at the night before

Happy to be in Barca

Stopped here for a nap on our way down from the castle at the top of Montjuic. This park wins the award for best nap scenario of my life (and I am an avid napper)

So many reasons to be happy: People watching at Barceloneta,  swimming in the warmest ocean water I've ever been in, and the sun was out after a rainy night before

Coconut and a Mojito... Paradise!

Paella! I was a little scared of the heads but it was beyond worth it... so delicious.

Beachside restaurant and bar? Best view imaginable 

Loved the street art all over Barcelona, but especially these boulders jutting out all along the coast of the beach.

Last Days in Paris

It's a little strange writing about Paris because I'm already on day 2 of our stay in Barcelona and fully in a "Viva España" mentality, but I don't want to forget the things and people from my last couple days in Paris so I figured I had better write about it soon.

The highlights from the end of the Paris trip were definitely our night at the Eiffel Tower and the trip to the Musee D'Orsay on the last day we were there. No pictures from the D'Orsay of course, but I especially loved the Degas ballerina paintings and sculptures and all of Monet's paintings.

Wasn't sure what I would feel when I saw the Eiffel Tower because it's such an iconic image that I've seen hundreds of times in movies and pictures, but the real thing did not disappoint and was absolutely beautiful all lit up in the night time. We bought a bottle of cheap wine and some food for a picnic and actually met two American guys from New Jersey on the train who were backpacking across Europe and also headed for the Eiffel Tower. It's a huge comfort to hear people speaking English when you are in Paris and know basically no French, so it was great hanging out with them for the night.

Picnic time: toasts (no more fresh baguettes at night), olive tapenade, fromage, and the French version of 2 Buck Chuck

A little wet from more spontaneous sprinkling, but very happy to be in Paris

Some more pictures from Paris:

Hanging out under the bridge next to Notre Dame while we wait for the rain to stop and talking to the new friends we made--French jugglers!

Drinking under bridges is normal here, I promise

Arc de Triomphe

This whole bridge was covered in padlocks with people's names and dates they were here written on them. Especially loved this heart-shaped one.

Quickly became our favorite boulangerie.

Tarte de Chevre et Tomate and Quiche Aux Poireaux... Trés delicieux! (Googled that)

Versailles

Second full day in Paris and I already know leaving is going to be so difficult. The weather here is so unpredictable.. right when I thought I couldn't stand the muggy heat a second longer as Rachael and I wandered around to look for a supermarket to buy lunch at we get caught in a downpour of warm rain. Normally I do not do well in any kind of rainy weather but this came at the perfect time and felt amazing. We dashed into the market where we bought a baguette (freshly made and still warm!), a cheese spread, and some ripe nectarines and then ate our lunch at a boulangerie (learning about a word a day here... my foreign language learning curve leaves something to be desired) where we finished the meal with a chocolate croissant. My favorite part about the bakery was the rainbow of meringues on display in the window.

Too pretty to eat

After lunch we took the metro to Versailles... We're getting pretty good at figuring it out, which is a relief. It was ridiculously hot and crowded but I still loved every minute of it. Everything is so beautiful and intricately detailed from the corners of the ceilings to the furniture to the floorboards. 

Making new friends! The woman on the left loved us and insisted on shading us with her umbrella during the wait to get in the Palace.

Hall of Mirrors... the ceilings were amazing

Hall of Mirrors

King Louis XIV in his Study Council

Incredible!

Just hanging out in our hotel room! Just kidding, Marie Antoinette's bedchamber.

Gardens of Versailles

Never been so happy to have a Diet Coke in my life.. Bartered it down from 2 Euro to 1 in the sweltering heat

Almost forgot to write about last night! We met up with some people I knew from UCSB and drank wine on the bank of the Seine. There was a pretty good crowd of young people there and some musicians playing guitars and singing. At first most of the songs were in French but then a guy broke into some Beyonce and Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing"... he butchered the lyrics and I'm pretty sure he had no idea what the words meant, but it was hilarious. We ended our night by wandering around the Latin Quarter, meeting some students traveling from Holland and eating a delicious crepe beurre-sucre. It spontaneously poured rain for about ten minutes but that honestly just made the experience even more unforgettable. Can't wait to see what tonight has in store.

Too happy about the crepe to care that it was raining

Paris!

Bonjour! Rachael and I arrived in Paris yesterday afternoon after a very long flight that was delayed two hours. We got snack vouchers for 9 pounds for the delay and even though the staff said they were only for "light snacks," the chips looked gross so I talked the bartender at Heathrow into letting me trade mine in for a Gin and Tonic... I felt I deserved it.

Using the flight delay to our advantage

After a frantic journey to our hotel via the metro and using a lot of really bad Spanish (realizing knowing absolutely zero French is a bit of a problem) we finally found our hotel. The most surreal, "I can't believe this is real life," moment of the trip so far has been being so relieved to finally find the escalator exiting the metro station and coming up RIGHT in front of the Notre Dame.

We spent today wandering around the Latin Quarter and the Marais where we got hopelessly lost but had a delicious lunch of a Tomate Monsieur (without the jambon.. still haven't worked up the courage to give up being a veg yet) and a salad with goat cheese brie on little toasts. I'm anticipating that most of my blog posts will revolve around food.

So delicious

Also visited Notre Dame, which was beautiful. I was staring up at the stained glass and the amazing ceiling (and thinking about the Disney movie, too, if I'm being completely truthful) when I heard my name being yelled and turned around to see my friend Kelsey! Such a small world.

We need to work on our photography skills I think

In front of the Chapelle Sainte Madeleine!

Look who I found! Kelsey and me in Notre Dame

We're off in a little bit to meet up with some of Rachael's friends from school and check out the night scene near our hotel with them. I have to confess that I'm feeling very self-centered blogging and feeling a little bit like a jerk... I hope you are appreciative of this, mom!