August 5, 2009 - Barcelona

(note: I've been writing this blog/uploading pictures since Monday morning!)

We arrived back in Kenya very late on Sunday (or early on Monday in Kristoffer's case) after a wonderful week in Barcelona with Kirsten and Hans. The trip back alone with Grace for me was long and tiring, but was at least a little bit smoother than our trip there. We are in Nairobi now for two months with visitors to look forward to (Jean and Jen come on Wednesday! Christian in September!) and no travel until October.

Kristoffer had four good days of a management workshop (okay, maybe 3 good days and 1 average day) and Kirsten, Hans, Grace and I found lots to do when he was at work. But we also saved lots of good stuff for the evenings, and the three days when he wasn't working were certainly action-packed. We took something like 500 pictures during the week, but here is how to best summarize our week in Barcelona:

1. Art & Architecture

Outside the Miro museum

My good friend Pablo:

An old fashioned food market:

Some of the work of Antoni Gaudi, who I totally fell in love with. He was a brilliant architect:

His still unfinished church, the Sagrada Familia, was maybe my favorite thing that we saw. It will be completely in 2040 so maybe we will be taking Grace to Mass there for her 31st birthday. It was very cool to see the process of building a cathedral and check out the beautiful stained glass windows:

2. Water

This is one of the Olympic pools - the far pool was for the diving competition:

This was Grace's 2nd time at the beach. Her first time was in Plymouth but she was sick that day and didn't really enjoy it too much. She liked to look at the water with Farmor:

But when a wave came too fast she got a little scared:

Hans took some beautiful pictures of the sun setting over the harbor:

This was one of the coolest things! A few times at the Montjuic Park and fountain they have a water-music-lights show. The water was incredible. We loved it - even Grace's attention was captured:

This was Grace's first time drinking water...she LOVED it and she LOVES water bottles even more now:

This was the day after when she drank water again. She couldn't get enough...it was very cute:

3. Eating

Here are some beautiful cherries that we ate from the old fashioned market:

As usual for her, Grace ate in all kinds of places, including this sidewalk bench, inside the Barcelona cathedral, outside and inside the Miro museum (first time we went there it was closing!), inside the Picasso Museum, on the beach, etc:

We didn't eat here, but I'm sure the food and sangria would have been excellent:

Needless to say, there was a LOT of ice cream eating throughout our week. Luckily for me, Hans likes ice cream as much as I do!

There was a Dunkin Donuts in Barcelona! I have never seen one outside of New England so this was a shock (and a joy I might add) for me!

I bought Kirsten and Hans our favorite donut - the Boston Creme - and some coolattas for their first DD experience (ok, I bought some munchkins too)!

4. Grace - as usual

Finally, with a little help from her father Grace took her first picture with our digital camera inside one of the Gaudi museums. Not too bad for a baby:

Thank you to Kirsten and Hans for coming on vacation with us. Grace obviously loved all the time she got to spend with you (me and Kristoffer too!). We look forward to seeing you again for Christmas!

LMW