Snelfie: Self portrait with snail

After our pack-out, we have to get creative to keep ourselves entertained.

I started writing a hair care blog, Hair Scare 101.  Now that I am back in Austin, my interest in doing that has plummeted.

Winston said me taking selfies is silly, but what could be fun is a “Snelfie” with a snail.

 

 

Look at Tristan’s knee.  Those are 4 of his 7 wasp stings.  There was a nest on the balcony when he went out to clean.  Wyatt got stung twice by the ones that got into the house.  Cleaning was the main way we spent the days after pack-out.

Packing out, Day 2--Sneaking out

Tristan, fresh from the pool, is excited about all the survival rations that the packers would not pack.  Great!  MREs save me the trouble of cooking. 

The packers went through every box, bag, pouch and pocket, including Troy's various carefully-packet first-aid kits. My entire spice collection is going to my neighbor.  No food allowed.  And any camping tool that cuts has to go in our luggage.  That is a lot of weight. 

Troy skipped out on the heavy cleaning day to have lunch with the Brits and Aussies. We sent him this picture to say that he owed us. 

While the boys were distracted with MREs, we snuck out for sushi at my favorite rooftop terrace. You can see Madrid in the background. 

Childhood dreams

The boys went to buy bread with my 70's plastic change purse. 

Look Mom, here's your change!  It was a dead worm. They wanted 50 points for finding it because I offered Winston 50 points to find a grub and eat it. 

We need to keep them occupied while the packers are here. 

We have seaweed snacks on autoship and ended up with four huge boxes. Troy had the biggest grin on his face and said he was going to eat three whole packs by himself.  Miko will understand. It is always divided exactly and shared grudgingly and you never get all you want. Until now.  It was his childhood dream. 

Barcelona lightning-fast tour

I had an odd conversation with a man in the steam-room at the Hilton in Birmingham, England.  I know, what a great life I have.  I swam first in the glass covered pool while prom kids fluttered by in dresses of every color.  When he found out that we lived in Spain and I was visiting England for a writing class, he said, “So you guys must travel a lot.”  I said, “No, hardly ever.  We have only made two trips in Spain.”  He kindly let that go without comment.  We talked about other things, such as that this gym is his normal gym (lucky guy) and that he had two kids.  I said we were going to China next and then added that yes, I guess we do travel a lot.  Duh.

 So here we are in Barcelona because everyone says you HAVE to see Barcelona.  If it were up to me, I would stay home.  I prefer to LIVE in a foreign country, not travel in it.

Here is the more Gaudi that the tour guide promised.  This one does not have the characteristic tile work, like the one above, but they are worth seeing.  Gaudi’s first commission was for a magnate of a tile company, and Gaudi liked it so much he stuck with it for the rest of his career, decorating with brilliantly colored tile mosaics, that is.  The photos seem cartoonish, but the real thing is breath-taking.

 The overlook was a lot more interesting with a guide to explain it.  He pointed out the old part of town, the shipbuilder and the customs office.  Now they are a quarter mile inland, because the shoreline has been built up and a beach added.  It was all spiffed up for the olympics and both guides here and at the church credit the olympics with making Barcelona a world class tourist destination. 

 The present shipyard lies in the other direction.  Shipping is and always has been the source of Barcelona’s wealth.

 We stopped at the beach, but I was hungry and feeling pressured, so I forgot to take any pictures.  It was crowded and had no waves, but we went because that was Wyatt’s top priority.  With a private tour, the kids can have more say.  I thought the tour would take the pressure off of me, but the pressure was almost unbearable anyway.  Looking back, I can’t think why, but that’s how it always is.  

 

Photo credit: http://brightsidetours.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DSC005802.jpg

The highlight was our guide and cool van. A guy on a scooter drove alongside and hollered, “Que furgonetta mas chula!”  He thought it was awesome too. 

  

We finished up at the chocolate museum.  I’m thinking, “I can’t possibly send this picture out because I look ridiculous,” and you are thinking, “Who’s that cute guy?” and “Look at all that chocolate.”  He is our guide, Joa.  He set us up with a private class.  The cute girl is our teacher.

You would be surprised how necessary the gear is.  Winston had chocolate everywhere, including the hat.

Look through the window into the courtyard.  The building used to be a monastery.

Troy has been tormenting the ladies at the embassy with descriptions of all-you-can-eat chocolate.

Her:  How was your trip?

Him:  Great.  You have to go to the Chocolate museum.

Her:  No, I can’t.  It would be too dangerous.

Him:  Bags of chocolate, bars of chocolate, a fountain of chocolate, spilling-down chocolate…top quality dark chocolate...

Her:  OK!  I’ll go.

Why does melted chocolate turn chalky even though I use a thermometer?  Because you have to heat it to one temperature and then cool it to the working temperature, while mixing it.

And last of all, here we are filling truffles.  Behind Wyatt’s head is the machine that keeps the chocolate at the proper temperature while mixing it.  We took a break while the truffle filling cooled to go to the museum part of the chocolate museum.  Our teacher explained the whole process.  Cocoa pods are the size of a small papaya.  I had no idea.  Plus there were whole scenarios carved in chocolate from Legoland and Asterix.  We left with plenty of chocolate for the rest of the trip.  Maybe traveling isn’t so bad after all.

Barcelona: Thoughts on choosing where to stay

Our place in Barcelona had a disco ball and a dance floor.  It was described on AirBnB as a ‘Loft.”  The kids loved it and grudgingly I did too.

AirBnB, if you don’t know, is a way to rent apartments from people who have space to rent.  It used to be a cheap way to have more space as a family, plus a kitchen.  But it is a lot more expensive as they have added more fees, to the point that we may go back to staying in hotels.

 I say grudgingly because this is what it looked like out front.  We got there early, so we had a while to wonder if we had the right place.  City apartments on AirBnB rarely have parking, so Troy dropped us off in the street with our luggage and left.  The mirrored glass upstairs was our flat.  We had a whole slice of the building all the way to the back.  That orange sign has a painter’s pallet and says, “Open Space, Artist Studio.”  I don’t know how it works, but I suppose you can go there to paint.

 What a dump.

 But then we got inside.  The old doors add wonderful character.

 Troy is reading in the lovely modern kitchen.  We didn’t actually cook here, as there was an Ethiopian restaurant 5 blocks away.  We weren’t going to pass that up.

There was definitely a college crash pad feel to the place.  The beds were on the floor or on packing pallets.

Our host (the guy who rents the place out and lists it on AirBnB) was a 28-ish Russian guy.  There was a connecting door to the next building over:  this old brick one.  He said that was where he would be.  At night there were twinkling multicolored lights leaking out of the shutters and what appeared to be another dance floor.  There was music, and one group came in whooping and hollering.  Then they started singing.  I mean choir practice with a piano and a do-re-mi warm-up.  It was a lovely thing to fall asleep to, and how would you ever get something so unique at the Hilton?

 

Barcelona: Thoughts on visiting Churches

The first thing we saw in Barcelona was the Sagrada Familia church.  You pop up out of the metro and there it is!  It is so close you can’t even get a good picture of it.  It was started 100 years ago and the city has grown up around it.  The entrance they use at one side is not even the proper entrance because now there is a major street where it should have been.

 

Trumpets against the sky.  Note the girl with the bassoon to the right.

Every inch is encrusted with artwork.  The work stopped during the Spanish Civil War and the post-war years of poverty.  But work is moving right along now.  It is the most-visited attraction in Spain and all the ticket money is going towards finishing it.  The Alhambra in Granada is second.  We got to go up in the towers.  You can see the catwalks connecting them.

The afternoon side above has warm afternoon colors and the morning side below has cool morning colors.

You can tell when we were there by the dazzling orange glow.  The organ was playing when we first went in, but shortly after it was replaced by loud power tools.  There is net and scaffolding up everywhere, but it doesn’t detract much.

I definitely had a crick in my neck, but you just can’t stop looking!  None of my pictures go anywhere near the top.  It goes up and up.

We had a little tour. That’s our guide standing in black.  She focused on the progress of the work, the religious significance of various details and the architect Gaudi who took over the planning in 1929.  It was his life’s work.  Downstairs are lots of photos and architectural tools and models.  Gaudi was a math genius and figured out a new way have vaulted ceilings without all the flying buttresses.  For that reason (I think, no one said this) the city can come in so close.  The whole thing soars up at the top and not out at the bottom.

Resting while we wait for our time slot to go up the towers.  Note the cute Korean guy showing something to his (girl) friend on the next bench.  The tour was only an hour but it seemed longer.  I joked to the kids, “We have three more churches to visit tomorrow.”  They groaned.  We were all pooped.  Then the next morning, our tour guide said, “We aren’t going to see any more churches, but more Gaudi, yes." 

 The towers are awesome, magical, worth the extra money.  The stairwells dart up, down, across, around.  To have the run of the place without the workers and minders would be amazing.  Though some doors opened onto two foot ledges over a 30 ft drop with no railing.  They were locked, but had clear glass panes to look through.

Those massive lights pointing up into the towers made me REALLY want to see the church at night.  We didn’t get to, though because where we stayed was in another part of town.

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Tristan thought the church must be 1000 years old because of all the different styles.  Some parts were simple because they aren’t finished yet.  I suppose you could sponsor a stained glass window if you wanted to, unless you have to be catholic.  This part seemed simple by design.  Those star-shaped things are supposedly part of Gaudi’s revolutionary vault design.

 Here we are back where we started.

 

Camping in Devil Grass

We went camping way back when and I never posted the pictures.  Troy assured me that this was a very nice campsite, suitable for first-time campers.  Famous last words.

Tristan slept under the stars.  We went with the Akeys, scouts and experienced campers.  Another family was supposed to meet us the next day, and in fact, this whole trip came about because they asked us to take them camping.  Of course we are evangelical about camping and got right on it.  The walls and old roads run everywhere.  Someone built a flagstone terrace here way back when.  That did not stop it from being overgrown with this grass that was the bane of this trip.

That is the car to the right, with hayfields behind.  The campsite is to the left, which meant we had to go down the gorge, across a rivulet overgrown with more vicious weeds, and back up the other side.  

Troy was here in WINTER before, with a scout group and it was perfect.

Ah, how beautiful, how peaceful.

Really, really beautiful and peaceful.

We do it right whenever possible, with bacon and eggs.

 Troy was trying out a new alcohol burner.  It is the size of an espresso cup inside the thing with holes.

He sent ME off to find 90% alcohol at the liquor store.  I was scolded by not one but two twenty-somethings about how only young people drink that to forget everything about what they are doing.  First the clerk at the store told me, and then when I forgot it at the cafe, the waiter, who had kept it for me on the counter, tsk-tsked, shook his head and said, “Es gasolina.”  I said, “Exactly so.”  The stove worked great, by the way.

Thunder, Australian Cattle Dog, my favorite dog that is not my own, is 100% at home on the prairie.

This is why the grass is so awful.  It has a barbed point like an arrowhead and a twisted tail that works it’s way into everything.  They poke you through your clothes and you have to reach inside to get them out.  The tails twisted into Cuddles’ fur and drove the heads into his skin.  I had to shave him and pick the heads out with tweezers.

Weird wall in the middle of nowhere that I think was natural.  

Troy saw a deer bounding away and I said, Let’s go look for traces.  He is a lucky man.  Patches of earth were completely dug up, which he recognized instantly as the work of pigs.  I was busy trying to think why people might do such a thing, just wantonly tearing up the hillside.

Troy had a massive allergy attack, the kind where you sneeze so much your chest hurts.  So, after a nice morning cooling off in the river, we called it quits and cancelled with the other friends.

But we couldn’t let those s’mores go to waste.

I’m not coming out even for s’mores.