Photo Monday – Barcelona Part 1

Photographing our family trips is sooo challenging. On one hand, I want to document our vacation. On the other hand, I want interesting images, not crappy versions of the ones you see in guide books. I mean, who else remembers looking through someone else’s travel pictures, bored out of their minds yet trying to sound fascinated? Just me? Okay, then. And then, there’s going through the hundreds (seriously, I took almost 1000) of pictures to choose not only the best ones but also the ones that tell the story of the trip. I usually end up mixing the timeline a little to put all the similar photographs together.

With that said, this year, we went to Catalonia. M told me to choose where we were going and I said Barcelona. So we did one week in Barcelona and one in a seaside town further North, Cadaqués. I have no clue how many weeks it’ll take me to get through the whole vacation but I’ll try to keep it nice and concise.

We arrived in Barcelona on a Sunday at noon. On our way from the airport, I saw such pretty colorful flowers. It was just beautiful, even in the less pretty parts of the ride. (I didn’t take these pictures on the ride but figured I’d put all my flower pictures together.)

We took a nap before heading out again in an attempt to get ourselves on Barcelona time, i.e. very late dinners. I said this on Instagram but I’ll say it again. I wore new sandals when we went out again because I thought we wouldn’t be walking a lot. Ha! M wanted to do a neighborhood walk to look at some admittedly gorgeous modernist architecture.

(Again, not everything is from that walk because I wanted to put the similar buildings together. There are so many like this in different neighborhoods!)

Then, for some reason, we walked down La Rambla and all around Barceloneta to get to the cable cars. Could we have taken the subway? Yes. But we didn’t. The cable car was my idea and the girls loved it (that and bottle feeding koi at the aquarium were their favorite activities in Barcelona). Great views of the sea.

I wanted to get up to Montjuïc, possibly walk around the castle to get views of the sea, get dinner, and see the magic fountain show. I knew it wasn’t quite compatible with the neighborhood walk so we ended up skipping the castle and just making our way toward the fountain.

My heels were absolutely killing me by then. I had band aids but they kept moving around. Shoulda used moleskin. Both heels were raw where the top of the shoe’s heel was rubbing (like, a layer of skin rubbed off) and I had a loonie sized blister. By the time we found a place to eat, all I could do was focus on getting through it. I folded the heel of the sandals down after dinner and we made our way to the fountain. Restaurant service being relaxed, we missed the beginning but the girls didn’t mind.

We did go back to the castle and walked around it to see the view on our last day. We took the cable cars again. Well, different ones. By then, the girls knew how to find where we were staying.

(We were by the Sagrada Familia so all they needed to do was find it. It’s big and tall and has cranes all around it, as seen in this crappy picture.

So, yeah, easy to figure out…)

There was a strike that meant we couldn’t visit the museums we wanted to see so we had a day to fill with other visits we might have skipped otherwise. But if I’m honest, I would have given up the castle walk to see the Miro museum and the Barcelona history one. Oh well.

Next week, I’m showing all my Gaudi and Gaudi-esque pictures. It’ll be a lot…