Spain - Summer 2013

This was a long time ago, but I thought I would post some of the pictures from the Spain trip that Rebecca and I made a couple of summers ago. I guess it was all the way back in 2013, seems like it was more recent than that. We were there for a conference that I presented at; however, we extended the trip and did travelling through Barcelona, Madrid, and Toledo.


We dropped the kids off with our parents in Washington before heading out. If I remember right we were gone for a total of 14 days. Rather than asking one set of parents to take them all for the whole time, we split them up so Julia and Ethan stayed together and Christian and Elliott stayed together. They had one week with one set of grandparents and then they switched.

Us on the airplane

The first part of our trip was in Barcelona. Barcelona had a really interesting feel to it. It seemed more like a party city to me. We had fun there and the things we saw were amazing, but it was probably my least favorite of the three cities we visited.

At the beach. I think we were both kind of disappointed with the beach. First, the water was really cold so we didn't get to go in at all. And then it was also hard to find a part of the beach that was PG-13 or less.

 Some paella. It was fun to try, but a little too over the top with all of the whole sea animals in it.

We did a day trip to Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey. This was amazing. I guess a while back someone found a really old wooden statue of Mary with the Christ child in a cave in the mountains here so they built an entire monastery up in the mountains. In addition to being able to see the statue, which we had to wait in a 2 hour line for, we got to walk around the monastery and caves some, and even hear a boys choir perform.

 We had to take a gondola cable car to get up to it.

We spent another few days just wondering around the streets of Barcelona. It seemed like there were just so many things to see everywhere. If I remember right they built this whole part of Barcelona for a World's fair.

They did a water show at night with music and lights. There were thousands of people there. During the show you couldn't move at all because there were so many people.

Throughout Spain there were so many amazing churches everywhere. We probably have 300+ pictures of just the churches. The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona was by far the best of them. It was originally designed by Antoni Gaudi and everything about it is way over the top. They have been working on it for over 130 years, but it is still not finished. Since new architects have had to take over throughout the years, it is really interesting to see that each of the four sides of the outside has a different style. The inside though is pretty consistent. By the time we left the building both of our necks hurt from looking up so much. Here are a few pictures, but they don't really do it justice. There are a lot of better pictures online if you want to see more of it.

They really liked Gaudi in Barcelona. There are a few houses that he designed throughout the city that are all really strange. I guess he liked to model his designs after architecture that you find in nature (mushrooms, trees, leaves, things like that). For me though, I would describe him as the Salvador Dali of architecture - all of his buildings seemed kind of dream like.

He even designed a full independently functioning village in the city. I think people didn't end up buying homes in it though so now it is just a park/tourist site.

In Barcelona we just stayed in a hostel. Our room opened up the a little square opening in the middle of the building (I think that type of design is common in Spain). The room was super tiny and run down, but we made it work. In the middle of one of the nights we woke up and somehow this cat had pushed open the window and was in our room rummaging through our stuff.

These pictures are of Queen Isabella's castle/palace. This is where Columbus asked her for ships and then where he brought back all of the animals and goods to report back to her.

 In part of the city there were some underground roman ruins that dated back to the 1st century AD.

This statue of Columbus marks the spot where he departed. Somehow they put a FC Barcelona soccer jersey on it.

They had a lot of street performers in this area. They just stood there like statues and let people take pictures with them.

The second city we went to was Madrid. This city had the palace and a huge garden/park that used to only be open to the royal family.

In our travel book it said that this abbey had the best cookies, but you had to follow very specific instructions in order to get them. We practiced a few times and then Rebecca went for it (you had to order in Spanish). We ended up making it to the room where we saw the cookies, but they were super expensive. We didn't order any and I think the nun who was helping us (we couldn't see her because you aren't allowed to see the nuns in this place) got irritated with us.

We had some great pastires at this bakery. We ended up going back to it a few times.

The palace spanned an entire block. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but it was definitely the fanciest home I have ever been in.

These Egyptian buildings were given to Spain when they allied with them during a conflict. It was neat to see the ancient hieroglyphics.

The last city we visited was Toledo. It was probably my favorite. The place we stayed in there was the nicest of our hotels so that probably helped. The city is built up on a mountain/hill and is surrounded by a castle wall. The streets were all a maze and we got lost a few times, but it is a smaller city so we just made our way to the outer walls and followed them around until we figured out where we were. The weather was also nice and warm in this city, so that was really nice.

They were well known for their marzipan in this city. Each shop had a display of different things they had sculpted out of the marzipan.

On our way home. We were excited to get back and see the kids after being away for so long. We have been thinking about and planning our next big trip ever since.