Easter never felt suited for New England. Frilly pastel dresses, short sleeves, blooming flowers, outdoor egg hunts...all in weather that was typically grey and freezing with snow still on the ground. As children we all usually had pained looks on our faces in our Easter pictures, trying to bear the cold as we gripped our daffodils outside of church.
This year I had anticipated a truly special Easter. Sunny weather, church bells all around us, and more ham than you know what to do with. However, the weekend didn't quite play out that way. For starters, this spring in Barcelona has been unusually cold and rainy. Someone once told me Barcelona has about 30 days of rain per year, and if that is the case we should be due for straight sun until December. This spring has felt like non-stop rain with temps unusually cold, but still -- I'll take it. We didn't have any freezing weather or snow and for that I'm thankful.
Easter is a bit different here -- as usual, MUCH less commercialized. No Easter Bunny (that I saw), Easter baskets, or peeps. The children here typically get a huge football sized hollow chocolate egg on Easter, and that about wraps it up. It was up to us to hunt out some baskets and Easter candy, which normally I would have just forgone all together, but the kids are finally at an age where they are very into the fantasy of the Easter Bunny and it is too cute to skip. After a trip to the Chinese dollar store for some baskets, and the American Grocery store for some Cadbury creme eggs, we had pieced together an Easter basket of jelly beans, chocolate Cadbury eggs, new beach toys, and bubbles. We hid the baskets, and they had a ball finding them in the morning.
The day after Easter we had planned to drive up to Montseny with Dario and Delphine -- a beautiful mountain range just north of Barcelona with several walking paths, a castle, and some restaurants at the top. Let me back up a minute here back to Easter evening...We had rented a dapper electric blue Ford Focus for the occasion, and decided to take full advantage of having some wheels for the weekend by capping off Easter day with a drive up Tibidabo, a mountain overlooking Barcelona. Now, we have made sort of a shocking discovery while here in Barcelona. Our little Mia does not do well on winding mountain roads in the car. Straight roads, boats, planes - no problem. But once we start the winding, curvy hills in the car...no good comes of this. We discovered this on our trip to Andorra during a particularly winding decent down the mountain when she very suddenly projectile vomited all over herself in the car. Assuming it was a fluke, we didn't think much of it...until Easter evening as we were heading back down Tibidabo. Mia started to incessantly whine..."take my shoes off....take my socks off...take my pants off..." I had a sudden fleeting thought that she might throw up which was almost immediately followed by her
actually throwing up all over the place. We pulled over the next off-shoot we could find, and of course, as I'm cleaning up a vomit covered car seat and child with baby wipes...my husband is off in the brush taking pictures of the city views and flowers. *Sigh*
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| Loving the colorful wheels |
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| Poor Mia, now wearing my scarf as her shirt |
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| Chris's shots of the city...I was behind him cleaning vomit |
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| Yeah, he was legit taking still life photos while I was cleaning vomit |
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| Clearly capturing the local cactus was what was most pressing at that moment |
Anyway, on to Montseny. The morning after Easter, we woke up ready for a little adventure north. Unfortunately, the morning we were due to head out, it was...of
course...raining. Since we already rented the car, and had the day off
with nothing else planned, we all decided to brave the "cold" (again, I
use this term lightly, as it was probably around 50 degrees F) and rain
and head up the mountain anyway. We figured we could stand a little
drizzle with some boots and umbrellas. The mountain itself was gorgeous, but we were a little sad we couldn't see the view from the top with all the clouds and rain. You could tell it would have been amazing. It took us about an hour to wind our way to the top of the mountain road (I had now wised up and had a bucket ready for Mia, who thankfully slept the entire way up and down the mountain), and when we arrived at the summit, almost as if on cue, the rain stopped and we were able to take our nature walk all together.
**Thank you to Dario for sharing all these great pictures he took with us!!!
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| Mia's favorite seat :) I think we have a pic of her on Dario's shoulders from all our trips together |
After our walk, we popped into the local restaurant at the mountain summit for a traditional Catalan lunch. I could honestly say, it was one of the best lunches I've had since we arrived in Spain. They had a lot of hearty Catalan dishes like a wild boar stew, grilled rabbit, and fresh local fish. And of course, pan con tomate (bread with tomato) which they served do-it-yourself style with a bowl of whole fresh tomatoes, garlic cloves, and olive oil for you to rub onto the bread yourself. And Iberian ham, of course. I opted for the grilled fish, and Chris had the rabbit. Evan loved the bread mostly, but Mia did branch out as usual and had cannelloni -- a flat pasta wrapped around meat served in a white sauce. It was all incredibly delicious.
The day wrapped up and we wound our way back down the mountain home to Barcelona. It wasn't the long awaited sunny "New England"-style Easter I had envisioned, but ultimately that's what I ended up liking the most about it. Yet another holiday that didn't play out as we expected, but was memorable and one we will likely talk about in years to come..."Remember that rainy Easter in Spain we went up to Montseny..."
