We’ve been back two weeks and I’m slowly coming to terms
with the fact. It’s taken a lot longer
this trip than normally. Usually at the end of a trip I start to look forward
to returning home, sleeping in my own bed and having my things around. But not this time. I can honestly say that at no time did I want
to come back and definitely resented having to do so. Ok, I did miss our cat
and the fact that you can flush the toilet paper down the toilet (one of the
less than charming aspects of Greek plumbing is that it can’t handle toilet
paper which must go into an, inevitably, smelly bin).
Our family is on a two-year cycle of European holidays.
We have the good year, followed by the lean
year of accruing all our holidays and getting by on the odd long weekend away.
These overseas trips are mainly to visit R’s
family in Ireland but we always finish off with a couple of weeks at my parent’s
house in Zakynthos, Greece.
Scarily
enough Alex, who is eight, has been to Europe five times already. Five
times!
I didn’t even get on a plane till
I was a teenager.
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| 2013 |
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| 2011 |
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| 2009 |
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| 2005 |
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| 2007 |
Anyway, we’re back and it was the best holiday yet.
I imagine the main reason is that the boys
are older so, theoretically,
each future holiday should be better than the last. Now that’s something to look
forward to.
If I thought that them going
to the toilet alone and feeding themselves was liberating imagine when they are
old enough to navigate when R is driving and I can have nanna naps in the back
seat.
One of the main reasons for the awesomeness of this trip was
that rather than just the usual Ireland/Greece combo we added in 10 days in
Spanish Catalonia and the French Pyrenees.
We thought the boys were old enough and they were. Of course we had to adjust our pace and there
were many things that we didn’t do because we didn’t think the kids would enjoy/handle
it very well, but I think we managed to find the right balance for all.
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| Gorgeous old stairs to our apartment |
First stop was Barcelona.
We stayed in the El Born district of the old town within walking
distance to pretty much everything.
We
booked our apartment through airbnb and it was a perfect for our needs.
The old town is enchanting, especially the
less touristy bit that we stayed in.
I
the evenings local kids would be kicking footballs around dusty playgrounds
while the adults enjoyed a drink in the cafes.
On our first evening we can across a local wine tasting festival which
of course we participated.
Ok, so the
boys weren’t too happy about this, mainly because the fussy little *&^%‘s wouldn’t
eat any of the delicious tapas on offer.
We placated them afterwards with a pizza.
In fact for pretty much every meal (except
breakfast) we placated them with pizza or pasta.
Every now and then they went crazy and had a
bocadillo or tortilla instead, but really, that was only out of necessity.
Our kids are going to have a very unusual
memory of Spanish food.
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| Born, with Santa Maria del Mar in the background |
On our first morning we headed south through the Born
towards the Picasso Museum. Luckily, we were in town on the once a month free entry
Sunday so we’d get off to a good start on our holiday budget by saving a few euro. We wandered through the lovely old
narrow streets, past the austere but beautiful Santa Maria del Mar and ….. to
the end of the very, very, very long line to get into the Picasso Museum. Apparently this free Sunday thing is very
popular. There was no way we could make
the boys wait in line for 45mins and then make them traipse around a crowded
art museum. I mean we could, but that
just wouldn’t be fair to them. The
museum is closed on Mondays and we were leaving on Tuesday morning so it was goodbye
to Picasso…
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| At La Ciutadella |
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| Kick-ass fountain.. |
Instead we went to La Ciutadella park where there happened
to be a kids festival going on.
Mayhem.
Extremely, noisy mayhem. We explored the amazing
fountain and went boating on the lake.
The
boys had a go.
From the photos it looks
like they were doing it themselves, but what you can’t see is me bending
precariously (and painfully) and trying, most successfully, to avoid
collisions.
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| Just before he ran over a family of ducks (just joking!) |
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We did lots of other touristy things are well : modernista architecture, La Sagrada Familia, La Rambla, Placa Reial, the Cathedral and of course a visit to Zara, Desigual and Mango.
Barcelona in a nutshell. Next stop L'Avenc de Tavertet.
Cheers
Tina
