Rush to the Middle: Barcelona Day 1 (and our travel day)

Because I have a hard time reading the 24 hour clock, we left Doha at 1:50am instead of 1:50pm, so the boys fell right to sleep on our overnight Lufthansa flight from Doha to Frankfurt. When we landed in Frankfurt 40 mins late, we (thought) we had 40 minutes to get to our connection to Paris, but first we had to go through passport control and security again and head to the opposite side of the airport. On our way there, we made a bathroom stop and while the boys were gone, I decided to confirm our gate at a check-in desk. The attendant there said, "Yes, that's still your gate...but the flight has been moved up 10 minutes, so it will leave in 20 minutes and they are about to close the gate. You need to be there now!" I met the husband at the door, yelled at him to run to the gate and stop the plane, and the boys and I would run as fast as we could after him. Which we all did. And we made the plane! Huzzah!

Unfortunately, we arrived in Paris in the middle of an Air France air traffic controllers' strike, so we were delayed. We already had a long connection between arrival and our next flight to Barcelona, but we ended up being there a really long, long time. And we almost missed our plane because of erroneous information from an Air France agent! As it was, we spent two hours on the tarmac waiting for our plane to take off, during which time E crashed. He was just too tired to go on by that point! But it could have been worse: of the six flights between Paris and Barcelona Air France runs each day, four were canceled, so at least ours took off! Huzzah number 2!

We set up camp here by a vending machine while waiting because the
Air France terminal was covered in glass and hotter than a green house.
And yes, I did take a nap on that nice marble floor right there!

After we made our way to our apartment by train and metro and met our Airbnb host, we headed to the nearest restaurant for what turned out to be delightful food, including churros con xocolata, Spanish tortilla, meatballs, and calamari--yes, we let the boys order whatever they wanted!

Waiting for the train to Barcelona.

Some of us were happier than others at this point!

The next day was all Gaudi, all the time. We started with the Sagrada Familia, which the boys loved, mainly because of the excellent kids' audio guide narrated by Julie Andrews. And, well, because the Sagrada Familia is pretty awesome, and the kids could see that right away. They especially loved the stained glass, the organic fruit and vegetable shapes at the top of the towers, the spiral staircase with no center support, and the huge columns.

At the top of the Sagrada Familia (we had to fudge and say
E was 6 so they would allow us up here...shhhh!).

Spiral staircase anxiety...

...and delight.

Listening to Maria inside...

...and outside!

Look at the light!

So much light!

Look at the bugs in the vines on the doors, all out of Gaudi's imagination!

Next we passed by Casa Mila/La Pedrera and then headed into Casa Batllo, which was incredible. Gaudi was ahead of his time in so many, many ways and just so amazingly creative, it's hard to take it all in. I'm not even going to try and describe it! They boys were entranced but tired when we finished so we changed plans (which meant we skipped Park Guell, my only regret about our visit) and headed to La Boqueria, an outdoor market, for dinner. We had all sorts of things, fruit, smoothies, empanadas, ham, salami, and sausage, which we ate outside the market in a courtyard. Then we headed down La Rambla for some people watching and some pigeon chasing before heading home for a much needed night's sleep. Whew!