Barcelona, Spain; Vacation 2012 part 14

Barcelona is the city of both our arrival and now departure, so in some ways it hasn't had a fair chance to be appreciated. We didn't stay long upon arriving, but went straight to Lleida. As a departure city we got to explore it a bit more, but were just tired of traveling by this part of the trip. However, we did see some cool things like:

Walking down a side street to a middle eastern food place (which had the best food I had the entire time I was in Spain, ironically) we passed all sorts of ordinary buildings and then *bam* there was a castle.


Ben checked out the American school  in Barcelona (for future reference of course.)

We went through the huge market on Las Ramblas, the most famous part of the city. Wow... introvert overload, but amazing amount of variety of just about anything!

One of the many fountains on Las Ramblas had a ton of pigeons. Talia seriously wanted to take one home, but I'm sure customs wouldn't have appreciated that.

In Barcelona the leaves were already changing colors and starting to fall. It made me wonder if the leaves were changing in Texas yet.

The plane rides back to Abu Dhabi went well and were, thankfully, boring and uneventful. Abu Dhabi is, seemingly, just as hot and muggy and full of wonderful people as we left it. We are glad to be back.

Barcelona to Lleida, Spain; Vacation 2012 part 2

Ben laughs at me because I think Spain is like a combination of all of the places we've been so far: palm trees like Abu Dhabi, pine trees like Texas, mountains and painted ads on walls like Mexico... and a few other details. It is wonderful to hear the Spanish language again!

After seven hours in the Istanbul airport, we were very glad to make it to Spain. Talia was so tired she fell asleep on the plane curled up in her seatbelt. Barcelona has the most tranquil airport I've ever visited! It wasn't that there weren't people, just that the same amount of people in any other airport I've been in would've made a lot more noise.

We rented a car in Barcelona and drove to Lleida, pronounced different ways: "yay-duh" or "yeh-di-duh." I found it interesting that stop signs in Spain say "Stop" instead of the Spanish equivalent.

Lleida is a small but busy little town. It has some interesting sculptures and lots of little shops. A huge church in the Plaza de San Joan is opposite the hotel: Hostal Mundial, which was simple but with very nice people. We ended up buying a kettle, (I guess you call it. You pour water in it and turn it on and it boils in less than a minute for the amount we need.) It's cheaper to make our own coffee than to buy the amount we would consume. (By "we" I mean Ben!)

The fruit here is amazing! We bought fresh peaches, pears, strawberries and apples at the shop down the road and they disappeared very quickly!

Some interesting things for sale at the market included snails, rows of cured ham hocks, and a frozen fruit with cream in it that I couldn't figure out the fruit. There was also an interesting Spanish chess set with campesinos for pawns, bulls for knights and other things.

Our next stop on the way to Portugal will be in Iregua, close to Logroño.