Day 4: Parc Guell and the beach

Another day of walking ourselves to death! :) I don’t know why we do this when we travel but I think we should win an award for most steps taken during a 9 day vacation! Our destinations today included the Parc Guell and the beach (of course)! So we got up, got our delicious breakfast and ate at the technology school right next to our hotel. The grounds and buildings of the school are very beautiful so it was a great place for some breakfast! :)

One of the buildings at the Technology school

After breakfast it was back to the metro station to get over to the Parc Guell. This was suppose to be one of the best parks to visit in the city and again full of Gaudí’s works. I came prepared with water and snacks because the book said the park was on a hill that you had to walk up to get to the park. So we walked up and up and up and then finally got to the park where there was another hill to walk up and up and up! By the way, remember how I said it was HOT while we were traveling, well, even though it was only 11am we were dying by the time we got to the very top of the hill, but it was all worth it because the view was spectacular!!!!! We could see all of the city and the Mediterranean! Because it was so hot it was kind of hazy but we still knew what we were looking at. We continued to explore the park and got to see where Gaudí lived and more of his designs. We saw the famous iguana fountain made of mosaic and all the other buildings which was really cool. The park was absolutely beautiful and I think one of my favorite non-beach aspects of Barcelona!

After climbing up way too many hills we finally made it to the top and this was the view! Someone was nice enough to take a picture after Joe took one for him.

View of Barcelona and the Mediterranean and Me!

And Joe :)

See that hill in the distance, all the way up there, up that's where those
first few pictures were taken! What a walk!

The park


More park


Gaudí’s house

The buildings at the main entrance of the park

The famous Iguana Fountain

We headed back to the hotel, got some sandwiches and then got ready for the beach! We were able to spend 4 and a 1/2 hours there and it was wonderful! We managed to snag some chairs and an umbrella which made it a lot nicer for the afternoon. We swam several times and just enjoyed soaking up the sun! It was perfect!

We went back to the hotel, got ready and asked for some restaurant recommendations for dinner. By this point it was only 8:30 and the restaurant suggested to us wasn’t open. We had a difficult time finding anything open at all and ended up at a Pizza place that wasn’t the greatest but at that point we were so hungry we didn’t care. It was kind of frustrating but I guess because we weren’t in the tourist area they wouldn’t have the restaurants open earlier. It was a little disappointing but we managed. :)

Back to the hotel we went to get some sleep so we could enjoy our final day in Barcelona!

Day 3: Sight seeing like it's our job!

Day 3 of our Barcelona adventure found us sight seeing like it was our job! We decided that since we’d been in Barcelona for a day and a half and still hadn’t seen much it was time to get ourselves in the tourist mindset and see some cool sights in Barcelona....the hope was to make it to the beach in the afternoon but sadly it didn’t happen; however, we did get to see lots of cool stuff that day so it all worked out in the end!

We started with some breakfast at our favorite little cafe place again and this time tried some pastries. (No croissants today!) No fear though, the pastries were just as awesome. :) With full stomachs we headed to the metro for our first stop the Montjuic area. Our mission in this area was to see 3 things, the Magic fountain show which is suppose to be every 1/2 hour Thursday to Sunday during the day, the Olympic area and this place called Pablo Esponyol. We got off the metro and headed towards the fountain which sits in front of one of the art museums. But much to our (ok really my) dismay the fountain was closed for repairs so no Magic Fountain show for us! (I was really disappointed by this!) Instead we climbed up all the stairs to get to the top of the museum and got an amazing view of Barcelona (Ok, so we didn’t climb all the stairs, they did have escalators in some parts that we took advantage of!)

The art museum, we went all the way to the top of those stairs!

And this was the view we had at the top.

So after checking out the view we wandered over to the Olympic area. It was really awesome to be in a place where they had the Olympics. Interesting side note, during all my visits to see Joe we’ve been in several places where they’ve had the Olympics or will be having them, London, Munich, Barcelona and Rome. Pretty cool in my opinion! Joe and I aren’t too sure how London is going to handle having the Olympics though, they’re so paranoid about EVERYTHING! So after enjoying the view, seeing the sights and getting a good look at the Torre de Calatrava (A communication tower designed by Santiago Calatrava) we headed over to the Pablo Esponyol. We didn’t actually go in because it didn’t seem to be worth the money and time (It’s suppose to be a place where there’s mini versions of the cities in Spain) so we kept moving on to our next adventures!

Olympic monument

Olympic Ring

Next up the Passeig de Gracia. This street has all kinds of designer shops which unfortunately because it was Sunday were closed but there’s two main attractions on this road including the Manzana de la Discordia or “Block of Discord” and the Casa Mila. The Manzana de la Discordia has three different houses designed by three different architects the Casa Lleó-Morera, degisned by Lluís Doménech i Montaner, the Casa Amatller, designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and the Casa Batlló designed by Antoni Gaudí. My favorite was the Casa Batlló. We actually got to see a lot of architecture done by Gaudí and I must admit that ever though some people say his work is in fact gaudy, I actually really liked it. I think his designs are very interesting and I think Joe used a good word to describe them by saying they’re organic. The houses were a very cool part of the street.

Casa Amatller

Casa Batlló

After that we walked a little farther up to see another Gaudí work. The Casa Mila. This building looks like it has ocean waves crashing along the sides of it, which is really cool. Again, since I enjoyed his work I really appreciated this building though maybe some of you won’t agree.

Casa Mila

The final Gaudí stop was the famous Sagrada Familia. This building was started by Gaudí in 1882 and is still not done! The book that we had describes it as looking like a drippy sand castle and I’d say that’s pretty accurate. It was really a beautiful building in its own interesting ways. We didn’t actually go into the building and I later over heard some girls at the beach say that a good bit of it was closed because of the continuing construction but we got a good view of it and were able to walk around and see most of the outside.

Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia

Our final stop for the afternoon was the St. Paul hospital. This is a very old hospital that I read had cool architecture so we decided to check it out. It was very beautiful and a cool thing to see.

St. Paul Hospital

We headed back to the hotel for a bit before adventuring out again in the evening. (Just when you thought we’d already done enough there’s still more!!!!) Our plan for the evening didn’t work out exactly as we hoped. We wanted to ride the sky cars over to the mountain and see the view of the city but they were closed due to the wind. Instead we happened upon the Tony Hawk and Friends skateboard event happening on the beach and watched for a few minutes. We then headed back to Las Ramblas area in search of some dinner.

Skating

As we walked along we noticed people getting ready for a big sailboat competition. I took a picture of the USA boat. The competition wasn’t starting until the 21st which was the day we were leaving so we didn’t get to see any of it but it was fun to see them getting ready.

Go USA!!!!!

We also saw the Monument a Colom which is the Columbus monument. It was pretty cool and I’m guessing he’s pointing to America. We also saw the Barcelona Cathedral which is very beautiful but like most of the things we saw on this trip under construction so the scaffolding was in the way. They did have some flamenco dancers outside the church which was fun to see. We wandered around the shops and I finally found a hat! YAY! (This would prove to be one of the best purchases from the trip since I used it almost every day for the rest of our travels) We grabbed a croissant for me because I was starving and kept searching for a good restaurant to have dinner.

Monument a Colom

We finally happened upon this tiny restaurant tucked way back on a little narrow street called Melicde Gothic. It was delicious. We noticed that while we were there the restaurant wasn’t very busy. That’s because in Spain people eat dinner around 9 or 10pm! That’s what you get for taking 3 hour siestas in the middle of the day! When we left around 9pm the restaurant was packed. Eating so late doesn’t work out so well for me since I typically need to eat every few hours, so I would have a hard time with that on a long term basis I think but we did manage to enjoy some good food in Barcelona! :) We got some ice cream for dessert and headed back to the hotel! It was an extremely busy day but lots of fun. It was great to see so many of the sights and enjoy

Day 2: Beach day!

Today we spent the day at the beach!!!! What a perfect day we had. Honestly there’s not much to write about with regards to today and only one pictures of us ready to go to the beach but nothing else; however, this was one of the best days of vacation!

Today’s the day I realized how much I love Barcelona and Spain! The day started with us finding a place for breakfast. We found a little cafe called Dino Pan just down the street from our house and decided to check it out. We had this ham and cheese croissants which were delicious with the ham and cheese baked in, Joe got some coffee and I got some fresh squeezed orange juice. They had this cool juicer machine that made the best orange juice ever! YUMMY! And the best part the whole breakfast only cost 5 euros. (Compared to the 12 euros PER PERSON the hotel wanted to charge us for breakfast if we wanted it.) So with food in our stomachs we set out for the mall in search of flip flops for Joe and a hat for me. (Side note: Joe has flip flops but they’re back in Baltimore, I forgot to bring them for him when I came in May!) We found a huge grocery store, got some cheap flip flops, some more sunscreen and headed back to the hotel to get ready for the beach. No go on the hat though so I went without another day! On the way back to the hotel we stopped at our friends at Dino Pan for some sandwiches for lunch! (again delicious!) We ended up eating breakfast here every day and lunch (7 euros for 2 huge chicken finger sandwiches) several times as well! You can’t beat cheap, good food!)

So we got ready, headed to the beach and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon basking in the sun. Oh, the sand and sun felt so good! It was just perfect at the beach!!!! I loved thinking about how we were swimming in the Mediterranean! How many people can say they’ve done that?! I guess we can check that off any kind of bucket list we might have! We went in the water several times and enjoyed the sun for the rest of the time. To make things easy we just had some Burger King for dinner (oh thank you fast food restaurants for making life easy when traveling in a different country and providing consistent inexpensive options for meals!) Then we walked back along the boardwalk, got some delicious ice cream (which again, I swear is on every corner in Europe!) and headed back to the hotel.


We still haven’t done much sight seeing at this point but that’s fine with us. We still have 3 more days to enjoy Barcelona and decided to sight see in the morning and beach it up in the afternoon. What a perfect way to spend a vacation!

Holiday 2: Day 1: Barcelona Spain; Beach, Las Ramblas and getting settled

Hello everyone!

Joe and I just got back today from our second Holiday trip so I’m going to try to get blog posts and pictures up a little faster this time. To quote a “Sound of Music” song....“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.....”

BARCELONA (I fell in love with this city!)

Vacations are not suppose to begin at the crack of dawn but this one did! We were up and out the door early enough to catch the 6:40am bus to the Billund airport. Now to be perfectly honest I don’t remember what time we actually walked out the door but even though it was early, it wasn’t the earliest we had to be up to travel (more on that later!) So off to the airport we go, get our bag checked in and we’re ready for our adventures to start.
Our travel time was several hours including the hour bus ride to the Billund airport and 1 hour and 15 minute bus ride from the Barcelona Girona airport to actual Barcelona but we finally made it and found our hotel. We stayed at a nice little hotel, slightly out of the way but close enough to the Metro that it made things pretty easy to get to where we wanted to go.

Getting off the plane. I love the mountains in the background! :)

We decided that after getting some lunch we would head down to the beach to check it out. Joe and I were both very excited to be at the beach this vacation and took full advantage of it. We didn’t change into our suits or anything but just had the idea of walking around, seeing what we could see and deciding where the best place to enjoy the beach would be when we came on Saturday (which was the plan). So we get off at the Barceloneta stop on the metro and headed towards the water.

Let me tell you, the Mediterranean is BEAUTIFUL!!!!! I really loved the whole beach area. The sand was nice and soft and after a while we took our shoes off and walked along the water. The water felt amazing. Now’s a good time to point out that while we were gone this week I’m pretty sure the temperatures were in the 90s but I don’t know for sure, needless to say it was HOT! So we walked along the water and checked out the beaches for a good chunk of time.

One of the beaches with the boardwalk in the background

In the Mediterranean!


The only picture of Joe actually in the water, but I swear his feet
are in there and we got lots of swimming in! :)

And the only picture of me in the water

I only have 1 other beach to compare this beach to and that’s Virginia Beach. So I thought there were a few things missing from this beach area. I love all the little shops around the VA Beach area and they didn’t have any of those really around this beach. Plenty of restaurants but no place to buy t-shirts or other souvenirs. I missed that a little. Plus my mission in Barcelona was to find a cute hat and buy one of the fans everyone was using, kind of hard when there’s no good places to buy them.

The other thing I noticed, well something I knew going into it all, was that obviously the beach rules are a little different here. Europeans are more relaxed and it’s perfectly normal to see women go topless at the beach. Now I guess if that’s what you’re used to and you’re comfortable with it by all means go for it, but when we got to the unofficial “nude” beach the story was a little different. It’s one thing to notice someone topless at the beach but a whole different thing to see someone with nothing on at all. Joe and I didn’t really know what to do when we got to this beach except keep walking along and not draw attention to ourselves. We felt a little overdressed in our shorts and shirts. But all in all it was a great start to the beach and the only time I was able to take any pictures of the beach. We never brought the camera back because I read to much about bags being taken or items taken from bags that I was not about to risk having my camera stolen on the beach! But at least I have several pictures from the beach!

After we walked along the beach and got hungry we decided to head over to Las Ramblas area and look for some dinner. Joe was in the mood for some Paella which is a traditional Spanish dish with rice, sauce and meats. We found a little restaurant and ordered some mixed Paella. It was delicious! I think I might need to learn how to make it now because it was really good. After dinner we headed back towards the hotel, stopped at the gas station on the corner and got some supplies for our day at the beach on Saturday. It was an excellent start to our second holiday!

Las Ramblas area

Happy Anniversary

Yesterday Joe and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary of dating. I can’t believe it’s been six years already! Our lives have gone through a lot of changes during that time but it's been awesome to share the last 6 years together! :)

We had thought about going out to dinner but realizing that we would be eating out for the next several days so we decided to make some dinner at home. We’ve a new found love for Greek food so I found a recipe for Chicken Souvalaki with Tzatziki sauce. We went over to Føtex to get the ingredients and take advantage of the pre-made Tzatziki sauce but discovered that because it was on sale they didn’t have anymore. So we were now at a loss for what to eat. We thought stir fry might be nice but couldn’t decide if we should use chicken or beef. We picked chicken and on our way out I notice a case with chicken nuggets. They looked really good to me so I suggested nuggets and fries for dinner. Joe thought it was a great idea so we grabbed a bag and headed home.

For our anniversary we ate 10 year old food. We did have a grown-up tomato mozzarella salad though! :) It was kind of fun to have such a simple meal and really what difference does it make what you’re eating when it’s the company that’s the best part. After dinner we went for a long walk because it was beautiful out. I love walking around the lake area and seeing all the baby ducks and swans! It’s so much fun!



When we came back we enjoyed this delicious cake that Joe picked out. It had yellow cake, some kind of custard, whipping cream and chocolate filling with the chocolate frosting and whipped cream on top! Delicious!!!! It was a great anniversary treat!


We enjoyed celebrating our anniversary and are now looking forward to our second trip! We will be up nice and early tomorrow to head to the airport (bus leaves at 6:40am!) I’ll post all about our adventures when we get home but until then have a safe week and enjoy the summer!

Love from Amanda

Thunder and Lightening and Shaking...Oh My!

Just a quick little update for those of you needing something to read. Last night in Kolding we had some crazy weather. Joe got home around 5pm and we decided to go for a walk and get some groceries for the week before it started to rain. Good thing because shortly after we got in and started making dinner the sky opened up and we had a crazy thunderstorm! The rain was coming down so hard and across the street it was even coming out of the drain pipes because there was so much of it coming down! Joe and I were watching from the living room window and I saw a HUGE bolt of lightening actually hit a building down the street. I saw a little spark and then nothing else. I couldn’t believe I actually saw it hit something though, the whole sky got bright!

After about 10 minutes the rain slowed and so we went back to doing our own things. I was sitting on the couch doing some stuff on the computer and Joe was at his desk. The couch started to shake back and forth and I thought Joe might have been doing it somehow because his foot was on the back of the couch right behind me. When the shaking stopped after a few seconds I turned to Joe and asked if he had done that, he said no. We just looked at each other completely confused! Now as this was happening a train was going down the tracks but we’ve NEVER felt the apartment move when the trains go by, and believe me, enough of them do go by. So we thought maybe it was a little earthquake or something. I used the power of the internet and discovered that yesterday around 4pm there was an earthquake (2.6 magnitude) in Germany just slightly south of the Hamburg area so I’m thinking we may have experiences a little aftershock or something, needless to say it was pretty crazy! And if it was in fact a little earthquake now like all my NY people I can say I survived one too! :)

So after the rain subsided and we were able to open the windows again we went back to our activities. I could smell something burning outside and was wondering who on earth could have a fire going right now with everything being wet and the rain. Turns out the building that was hit by lightening had caught fire and they were trying to put it out! I knew it had hit something! So today I tried to figure out what building it was but from the street level I couldn’t tell since the lightening hit the roof.

Anyway, it was a crazy night of weather but also kind of fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a good thunderstorm like that and from higher up in the building it was fun to watch!

On a side note we’re preparing for our second Holiday trip starting on Friday. We have an early flight out to Barcelona and will spend 5 nights there and many hours at the beach! :) On the 21st we’ll head over to Rome for 4 nights and take a side day trip to Naples and Pompei! (I’m the most excited about seeing Pompei!) so we’re looking forward to some more adventures and some new places Joe hasn’t been! :)

There may or may not be more posts before we leave but if not then I’ll post as soon as possible when we return on July 25th. Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and a special shout out to the VA Beach clan as they enjoy their vacation and get togethers! (We miss you, as well as everyone else!)

Love from Amanda

Strawberries

It’s strawberry season in Denmark and the one thing we’ve been told about Denmark strawberries is that they’re the best strawberries and delicious! Considering that I love strawberries we decided to get some this week.

We went shopping on Monday since we had no food at all, but sadly there were no strawberries left. So we went back on Wednesday and purchased two packages for 32 DKK (about $5). Just the smell of them was intoxicating! I’ve never smelled strawberries that good!


We decided that we would use Joe’s mixer thing to make some flurry type drinks. We bought some vanilla ice cream and mixed up 5 scoops of ice cream, a bunch of strawberries and some dark chocolate pieces and ended up with some strawberry chocolate milkshakes. YUMMY!!!!!!!


On a kick for more strawberry desserts I headed to the store yesterday in search of stuff to make strawberry shortcake. I found some light yellow cake and whipped cream and was ready to make more treats.

After going to the lake to listen to what was described as the worst band in Denmark we came back and I made us some shortcake. The cake I bought was cut into 3 layers so I started with a layer, added some whipped cream, strawberries, and then more cake, and repeated until all three layers were done and we had a nice little dessert.




Our conclusion is that Danish strawberries are in fact the most amazing strawberries and I’m sure we’ll be eating them all season long. If anyone has any easy strawberry recipes I’d love for you to share. :)

Hope you’re enjoying your delicious summer treats as well. I miss corn on the cob and salt potatoes!!!!!!

Love from Amanda