A Note from NY about Spain...

I am using a computer that is not snail speed! I can hardly believe my luck. We are in New York right now, it is our last day and we return home this eve. I am going to try to talk about our trip, but since I was not able to deal with the "business center" at the hotel in Spain because they had email that was as slow as snail mail, I am way behind.
One thing I noticed about Spain is that a lot of things are really small. The small things that bothered me the most were the teeny coffees (and I don't give a rats behind what anyone says about how coffee is SO MUCH stronger in Spain, SO not true if you live in Seattle, it wasn't until New York that I got decent coffee!)
The TINY elevators, there were several times that I had to get off the elevator even when it wasn't my stop because people would try to get on. It says there was room for six, but only if you were to stand front to butt! It had a low ceiling too so it was like a coffin. People there are used to them, so they don't seem to mind. I avoided them as often as I could.
And lastly the soda. Jon and I drink a lot of Diet coke. We like our Diet coke, it is good stuff. No matter where you go in Barcelona, you can't find fountain soda to save your life! All they offer are tiny glass bottles of coca cola light, many times we ordered two for a meal and they were spendy. They one place with large sodas charged five Euros a glass!

Those were the little differences that bothered me, but those were few compared to the amazing things we did see!

We took a two hour train ride out to Figueres and went to the Dali museum. If you have never done this and you get the chance you must do this. We had time to read the history of Dali a bit and it was very interesting. The man was seriously obsessed with his wife Gala, and it would not surprise me if some day they went through that fun house of a museum and found there to be bodies entombed in the walls. (I mean outside of his of course) It was all pretty spectacular. Jon said it was probably his favorite sight seeing adventure of the trip. On our way there we were so engrossed in conversation we took the train one stop too far and had the chance to explore a small village before turning around. That was actually pretty cool too. We had a little snack and checked out a pretty cool cathedral in the time we had. In Figueres we had the best food of the trip, we went to this little pizza place and it was amazing. I know "pizza in Spain" but we were both convinced it was the best.

We went back to the Barcelona Cathedral two times we were so impressed with it. Neither of us were too impressed with the Gaudi cathedral. To me it seemed like a monument to someone insanity, it didn't really move me in a way that the cathedral in the square did. We actually ended up taking a few shots of the Gaudi one and moving on pretty quickly through it. Some people just love it, but it wasn't as striking to either of us as we had thought it might be.

We had a really nice time for the most part, it was hot and beautiful. We learned that everyone in Spain goes on holiday in August so a LOT of places are closed, NOTHING is open on Sunday or Monday, the Euro has made everything there super expensive in the last five years, so your Euro doesn't go far, and the cars drive really fast and REALLY close to one another!

That is my take on Spain for the morning. I will try to get on writing about New York next, which has been amazing! I almost wish we would have had more time in NY and less time in Spain to be honest, but the trip was great none the less. I think 6 days is the perfect amount of time to visit Barcelona.