Let the Adventure Begin

Hola from Barcelona!
We left our house at 4:00 am Pacific time on Tuesday morning. We had three flights and they were almost completely smooth, aside from the EXTREMELY bumpy take-off in Seattle and some storms over southern France. We all loved the huge airbus from New York to Helsinki, Finland.After approximately 33 hours give or take an hour we arrived at our hotel in Barcelona at 9:30 in the evening on Wednesday. Because of all the time zone changes we only experienced 2 hours of night.

We had an eight hour layover in Helsinki so decided to go explore the downtown area. It's a great city. We were so tired and sleep deprived that we may not have had the best experience, especially since we all took a turn being too tired or too grumpy to function. We still were a mostly pleasant crew.  We are fortunate enough to have another layover there on the way back,  this time 24 hours, so we can see more of the city and hopefully be more attentive the next time around. Don't get me wrong, we were mostly happy though dazed for sure.
I am going to try to post some pix on here.


In Finland almost everyone speaks English and quite well. Here in Barcelona the experience has been different. Our taxi driver was a fantastic lady in her 50s or 60s who yelled, honked her horn and then dropped us off by an alley which turned out to be the closest she could get us to the hotel. She just couldn't communicate that with us, since all the Spanish I know I learned from Sesame Street in the late 70s. Agua, Caliente, mucho gracias amigos. We checked into our hotel and lugged our bags up four flight of stairs, totally worth it, though (well for me anyone the hotel manager carried my bags).We walked around the alley where our hotel is, where there are several restaurants. We settled on  La Taberna del Cobre where we struggled to try to get out a few Spanish words. The owner spoke no English (not that he should have to), our kids who have taken Spanish for a long time totally froze and we relied almost completely on body language to order. Dinner was delicious any way. Maddee and I tried calamari for the first time, which was extremely, extremely buttery. We didn't love it, but Mike did.

We finally got to bed around midnight and are now enjoying pastries chocolate for breakfast, which are beyond rich and delicious. I feel like if I were wearing jeans my button would have involuntarily popped open by now. Fortunately, I have a stretchy skirt on. Mike is drinking a shot of espresso, since once again I botched my communication skills. I ordered Café. She asked Café espresso?  I replied with a confident Si. Then I saw her pouring a shot into a to go container. Mike doesn't care, he's energetically packing our bags.

We check out of here in 40 minutes and then walk around for a bit. Our cruise starts this evening! Can't wait.

I have some pix on FB and will figure out how to get them on here as well. But not right now. The streets of Spain are calling us!

Adios.