Barcelona - Part 1

Starting work in August was not something that thrilled me, though I should say that the shorter summer felt longer due to all that we had done in the shortness of a month. I am just now returning from my first (and likely my only) fall break, from a week spent in Barcelona. I thought I would be writing while we were there but I forgot to bring the adapter and took a week break from the computer, a liberating experience and I think the best way to go under the circumstances.

We loved Barcelona!

Barcelona is a very popular tourist destination, it is easy to see why; a beautiful city on the shores of the Mediterranean Barcelona offers plenty of sites to see and plenty of beach to relax on, it’s got it all. We saw plenty of tourist attractions, magnificent churches, remains of the Roman walls, columns from the temple of Augustus (Gus’s temple), Gaudi’s park, and of course Camp Nou home to one of football’s most celebrated clubs.

One can visit the beach in October anywhere there is a beach but the beach in Barcelona was still summer hot. We swam in the sea, played soccer, buried our children, worked on our tans, and fended off constant offers from entrepreneurs selling everything from temporary tattoos, to coconut, to beer, to massages.

Our second visit to the beach was on a beautiful day that had perhaps left the water too warm; there were a number of jellyfish swimming about too. They were small and few given the size of the sea so I went in for a dip, I had finally convinced Jesse that the jellyfish were too small and too few to worry about when I felt the first jolt on my arm, followed closely by a second. My first and second jellyfish stings were not the most pleasant seaside experience but I am thankful the fish were small as I assume the larger ones pack a bigger punch. Jesse offered to pee on me but I opted to ride it out and watched the hives swell and then shrink leaving only the faintest of reminders.

Part of what made this trip so great was meeting and re-connecting with an old friend. Leanne’s friend from Toronto lives in Barcelona with his partner and their 3.5-month-old. They assured us that the jellyfish are not a daily issue and they also let us in on some things we would never have known. The guy selling coconut for example is incomprehensible to Spanish and Catalan speakers as well, not just to us foreigners; his sales pitch became an often-revisited joke throughout the trip. We also learned through our friends that the Russian sounding voices on the beach were probably Russian voices as the economic crisis in Spain has led to an increase of Russians in the area because buying a house in Spain at a certain price comes with Spanish citizenship.

Sadly this year of vacationing in places the likes of Barcelona is going to leave us with nothing in the bank so we will have to keep saving for that seaside villa.