Nannie Judie comes to Barcelona!

Barcelona welcomed yet another Williams family member a few weeks back...Nannie Judie!!! (aka, Chris's mother).  We had been talking about her arrival with the children in the weeks leading up to her visit, so Evan was well aware that Nannie would be taking a "big plane to Spain" (his words), and said so every morning when he woke up.  Still, the look on his face when he came out of school and saw her standing there was priceless.  He stood grinning shyly, like it was Brad Pitt who came to pick him up.  Adorable. 

I'd say the week was a smashing success. Lots of down time with the kiddos punctuated by some great sighting, and even a day trip up to the south of France, in Collioure. There was a fabulous paella dinner with just the three of us down in the Olympic village, a nice quiet afternoon at Sagrada Familia, trips to the large Boqueria, and strolls through the Gothic labyrinth (with screaming child in tow, but still...). We drank lots of wine, ate lots of olives, and had a lot of great conversations...We miss you already, Judie, come back soon!!!

Walking hand-in-hand in Parc del Poblenou

Chris and his "Mummy" :)  Plaza Cataluyna

Enjoying some French mussels

Love

 

Overlooking Collioure from above

Summer is in the air...or did someone just light my hair on fire?

"You gotta just lay low and sweat it out." -- My Scottish hair-dresser on summers in Barcelona.

The train is approaching the station, and we are bracing ourselves for impact.  Our first summer in Barcelona.  It's fitting that Barcelona throws one of the biggest parties of the year on the summer solstice -- the celebration of St. Joan, set to kick off this Saturday night. An all out, all night, party till dawn rager that extends to every corner of the city and involves music, dancing, festivals, feasts, and fireworks. LOTS of fireworks. Often launched around, near, and even INTO crowds. Should be an interesting weekend, and while we won't be on the beach partying till dawn, we plan to take part with some low key sparklers for the kiddos and feast it out with the rest of them this Saturday...more blogging to come about this crazy Barcelona holiday.  For those interested, you can read all about it here

A beach snapshot from a previous year...

So, while summer hasn't officially arrived until the last firework has been launched this Saturday night, it feels as though we are already in the thick of it.  And, in a way, this is the moment I've been waiting for since we arrived here in Spain.  The time when we shall see what we pampered Americans are really made of.  While we are no strangers to heat (what, was it like 100 degrees in Mass yesterday???) -- we ARE strangers to a no A/C lifestyle.  Yes, we technically do have a version of A/C in our apartment here but, to be honest,  I do not consider the decorative "art cool" you-think-its-a-painting-but-really-its-an-air-conditioning-unit thingy in our kitchen to be actual A/C, more like a refreshing puff of air, and only if you sit directly under it. 

That is our air conditioner.  It says "Art Cool".

Generally, anything over 80 degrees used to make me a little grumpy, and back in Rowley Chris would insist on pre-cooling our bedroom before bed for a solid hour at 60 degrees before he would even consider going to sleep. When we found our apartment here, we were so wooed by the layout and the pool we rationalized our way through the lack of A/C... ("The walls are brick and stone, we will practically be freezing....right?")

While I wouldn't say it is freezing in here, I will say that we are surviving the heat so far.  I realized today that we are almost into July, and I haven't died of heat stroke yet and actually have been pretty comfortable all things considering.  Like my wise Scottish hairdresser said, you really just have to resign yourself to "sweating it out".  The roughest part of summer city living anywhere is all the walking.  Back home we would leave our air conditioned house, hop into your air conditioned car, and drive to another air conditioned place.  Here, not so much...we have to walk everywhere, and we have to take the metro full of other hot, and often smelly, folks...but it is comforting to know that we're all in it together! And honestly, a lot of the air conditioning we used at home really wasn't all that necessary...I think we waited until November to take it out of the bedroom window last year?!

So for now, we are embracing it.  Bring on the heat.  Bring on the sundresses, bikini (yikes), irresponsible firework use, and frizzy hair-- we are ready for summer!

Ya no estoy gordo -- Molly's Story

"Gordita".  Little fatty.  This is what everyone here is calling my poor Boo (our nickname for Molly).  Don't get me wrong, everyone is in love with her.  Kids, adults, elderly folks -- everyone stops to pet her, hug her, and declare her cute...and fat.  Is it true?   Periodically, Chris and I would step back and stare at our Gordita long and hard.  'Did she just need a good brushing?', we would ask each other.  There is no way she has gained that much weight...or has she?  Finally, after several weeks of noticing shocked looks by strangers we passed, Chris scooped up our yellow beast and stood on the scale with her.  84 lbs???!!!  How is it possible she has gained almost 7 lbs. since we have arrived in Spain?!

Now, let me back up.  Molly has never been the most svelte pooch to begin with.  She was the biggest, fattest puppy of her litter.  A giant, cuddly fluff ball that just kept growing after we brought her home. 

She is an English lab, short and stout, with plenty of padding to keep her warm in the icy Canadian waters where they were bred to retrieve lobster traps and return them to the boats.  Except...she is not so much swimming in icy waters, but rather catching rays belly up in the Mediterranean sun.  We knew the breed was intended to be hefty, but I always was sure to ask our vet in the US if she was too fat.  He would assure me she was within normal weight limits, but to keep an eye on her and start to cut back on food if we noticed her waist disappearing.  Once our kids were born, her exercise did get cut back a bit...she didn't get a ton of long walks, but did get a fair amount of play out in our yard, and trips to the beach during off season.  She had a good life, maybe a little extra padding, but nothing excessive or worrisome. 

When we first talked about moving abroad, the only part that really gave me reservation was Molly.  What would we do with Molly?  I had assumed most countries required months of quarantine once we arrived, and I wasn't sure I wanted to put her through that...plus, we had no idea how dog friendly a city Barcelona was, and assumed that we would be living in a fairly small apartment, landlocked and relying on elevators and long walks to find green outdoor space.  Not the kind of life we wanted for our big yellow lab, but it made my chest ache to think about leaving her behind for two years.  I know most dog owners feel their dog is unique and share a bond, but I think labs are just special.  Hearts of gold, with a soul so pure you can see it through their human-like eyes.  Molly's our girl, and it was heart wrenching to think we would miss two years out of her already very short life. 

Luckily, we found a place to live here in BCN that blew these worries out of the water.  Our apartment is close to the beach, on street level, and has a back yard.  I don't want to say we picked this apartment for the dog...but...we picked this apartment for the dog.

We truly felt we were giving our dog an even better life than she had at home in Rowley -- at least once weekly visits to the beach, leisurely naps outside on the patio, and at least four 10-minute walks per day, with added fetch sessions in the evening and occasional longer walks in the morning with the kids. 

Molly's first day in Barcelona

Then there is the food...Back when Molly was just a puppy, I had taken her to Plum Island for a swim, and was stopped by an old salt of a man sitting on the back of his truck with his elderly lab mix. He smiled when he saw Molly, and said in his gruff voice, "Best dogs on earth. The time will go fast, so enjoy every day with her." We talked awhile after that, he said his dog was now almost 12, and still going strong.  He warned me: "You need to feed her good dog food, none of the crap you find at most stores. Get her the good stuff, and she will live a long life."  Maybe true, maybe not, but this struck a cord, and from that point forward, I only got the good stuff.  Although Spain has some great fresh food, and overall eating here is much healthier than in the US, the dog food ain't great.  Perhaps the US takes it a little overboard with "holistic" this, and "nature-made" that, but Spain goes the opposite way.  The dog food here is terrible.  It took me a month online research, and trial and error, until I found the best dog food made here in Spain, and only found in one store in the entire city that sold it.  We started her on the food, cut out the treats, and kept up the walks and fetching daily.  Good.  Molly is taken care of, she is with in Spain, we have done our duty and we are good doggie parents.  Exhale.

Now, imagine our surprise when after three months of our "healthy doggie lifestyle" our dog is now 7 lbs heavier!  That is a 10% body weight gain, obviously terrible for her health, especially her joints.  We have suspicions that this new fancy pants food is the culprit, which is kind of ironic...healthy food, turning her into an unhealthy obsese dog.  It seems it is higher in calories, and I have failed to measure it out properly.  Plus, it doesn't help that Molly has stolen her fair share of baguettes out of unsuspecting strangers hands and shopping bags (always a good time). 

So it has begun!  With her 5th birthday approaching in just one week, it is time to take action.  I have named myself Molly's new personal trainer, and we are determined to get her down to a healthy weight again.  Our plan of attack includes daily morning runs together along the beach, carefully portioned diet food, and more frequent, longer pee walks.  This morning was our first run together, and she did...OK.  We made it about 15 minutes running, until I started to feel really bad for her and had to slow it down to a power walk.  She is just so out of shape, jiggling along after me trying to walk fast to avoid running.  She started panting just looking at the leash.  This is going to be a long road for her, but we'll get there.  For now, we are posting her "before" picture, with updates to come on her progress...Our little Gordita will get her body back.  :)

Weekend in Valencia

With three and a half months under our belt, we have realized just how fast two years is going to fly by.  Initially I had given myself permission to use the first six months as a "settling in" period, giving us some slack if we didn't travel as often as we would have liked, with the perspective that anything we did manage to see would be a bonus.   Now, looking ahead towards a very busy summer, I realized it's time to start being a little more proactive in our approach.  What do they say? If you don't have a plan, you plan to fail...Though, Chris and I never seem to have plan...we figure it is never too late to start.  So last week we decided to sit down and "map out" what we wanted our travel plans to look like over the next 6-12 months.  It was a blast! 

Mia being cute. 

Once we DID start to plan, that's when we realized -- summer is BUSY.  Business trips, trainings, little weekend getaways, and visitors...all capped off with a two week trip home for the whole family to the US in August!  It feels like the whole summer is planned already, but definitely not in a bad way...it's all good stuff!  We have our first wave of visitors (hooray!!!) coming almost back to back.  Chris' father, John, and Lynne (aka Granddad and Meemah) were the first to arrive-- pulling into port (literally) at the end of a two week long trans-Atlantic cruise earlier this month.  It was so wonderful to see some familiar faces and to share our day to day excursions and adventures with family.  Sadly, the kiddos had a stomach bug for a chunk of the week they were here, making it a little challenging to do a lot of the bigger excursions outside the city we had planned to do together as a group, but our guests were understanding and had a great week regardless.  They saw a huge chunk of the Barcelona city sites, and were happy to spend some time staying local, strolling the streets of Poblenou enjoying the bocadillos, pastries, and local charm. 

Next up is Chris's mother, Judie, set to arrive in one week!  And just three weeks after that, my mother will be here for the first half of July...we are beyond excited for all these visitors.  

Then there are the things you do not plan...As I sat at the dining table drinking coffee after breakfast one morning last week, I saw a new groupon email pop up for a discounted hotel stay in Valencia.  I get groupon emails daily, and read them mostly for a daily Spanish lesson to see if I can understand what they say, but lately have been seeing some great deals on hotels in various places we are looking to go.  I already passed up one offer for a super cheap hotel in Budapest which I should have grabbed, so when I saw this offer for Valencia -- a place we had talked about wanting to travel-- I thought, NOW is the time.  It's time to stop talking and start doing.

"You wanna go to Valencia this weekend?  It's 32 euros for a night with this Groupon..."  I asked Chris, knowing full well what his answer would be. 

"Yeah, man." 

And that was that. 

Within one hour we had a rental car booked, the hotel booked, Molly's doggie sitters booked, and a weekend trip to look forward to. 

We had one night of hotel, so we decided to drive down to Valencia Friday night after Chris got out of work, then spend all day Saturday in the city and come home Saturday night.  It is about 3.5 hours south of Barcelona, right on the coast...there is something about having a car that just feels "normal" again.  I can't really explain it. 

One night, and we still can't travel light

"We're in a CAR!"

We got on the road around 7pm Friday night, and flew through the city...shocked by how little traffic there was.  Here we are, it is rush hour and we are heading south on a Friday before a long weekend (Monday was a holiday here in Spain too).  I had to wonder what 93 in Boston would look like heading south to the Cape at rush hour before Memorial Day weekend....not the same, I would imagine. 

Leaving Barcelona

Yet, as soon as my haughty-little "isn't Barcelona so great" remark came out of my mouth, the traffic stopped dead.  And I mean, DEAD.  Like, not moving in 45 minutes dead.  Yet, in typical BCN fashion, everyone got out of their cars and started milling around the highway chatting it up with other people and catching some rays.  Me?  Not super happy, and I didn't take a picture of that, as it was an hour of my life I'd rather not remember.

We made it to our hotel around 11:30pm, and checked in, got some sleep, and were up and out around 9am the next day.  I have to say, we were pleased with our groupon hotel.  When we arrived, I could see why it was so cheap.  We were about a 5-10 minute drive outside the city, and our check-in involved someone checking off our name from a penciled in list of "guests" and then handing over one card key with the room number and a remote for the TV, not a word said.  OK, nothing fancy, but it was clean and cheap and we were in Valencia.  Plus, breaky the next AM was free and really, REALLY good.  Also important to note, the restaurant inside the hotel was decorated with huge, life size photographs of nude people in yoga poses.  Boobs.  Butts.  It was all out there.  Have your OJ, and enjoy some nudes.  Chris suggested we take a picture, but I had to refuse that one...the American tourists with the loud crazy kids running around are snapping photos of the nudie pictures on the wall...not the look I'm going for :)

So, Valencia. 

Valencia is a beautiful city, the third largest behind Madrid and Barcelona...and surprisingly not as touristy as I would expect on a holiday weekend in May.  While we do do our research before we travel, I'm not one to write a ton of facts and history on the places we will travel -- I'll leave wikipedia to that.  I will say that it is a gorgeous city, full of a mix of old and new architecture that was the most impressive I've seen in my life so far.

There is a lot to see and do there, but we decided to focus our efforts this time on the Arts and Sciences section of the city, home to the Aquarium - known as the best in Europe.  We had planned to spend the morning walking around there, then head over to the "old town" for some famed Paella (invented in Valencia) for lunch and do some wandering around the market until early evening (or until the kids started to lose it --which ever came first) then head home.

The Aquarium was beautiful -- huge, with lots of outdoor spaces and, shockingly, not crowded at all!  The kids loved it.

My little Mia surrounded!

They loved this -- Evan especially. A little child-sized tunnel into a little room. Every minute or so a wave would break over the glass, Evan was in there for at least 30 mins.

We spent about 4 hours walking around the Aquarium, then headed down the rest of the strip to see all the architecture and let the kids nap a bit in the stroller...The Arts and Sciences area is about a mile long, lined with incredible sci-fi looking buildings (I'm sure there are lots of architects names I should be dropping).  Some of the most awe inspiring buildings I've ever seen. 

We stopped to sample some horchata - a Valencian drink made from Tiger nuts, unique to this area.  It tasted a lot like iced chai, delicious super refreshing on a hot day...

Tiger nuts

We ended our day in the old town...wandering the streets around the huge fresh market.  There were live street performers, and plenty of street vendors with huge pans of paella serving folks sitting at street side counters with cold draft beers and fresh olives.  We peaked inside the fresh market, then settled into a outdoor table to enjoy some paella for lunch and take in as much as we could before heading out. 
An electric guitarists came by, playing some Hendrix, and wooing our kids out of their seats and onto the street for some dancing. 
Sadly, my picture taking had slowed at this point, as I was more concerned with my fork getting to my mouth, then capturing everything on film (something I need to work on), but here are a few from our afternoon stroll in old town.

All in all, a great visit -- a place we'd love to come again.  Spain itself has so much to offer, so it felt good to "keep it local" for this one, and have a little family adventure close to home yet a world away from the everyday.