Somos cuatro, y abuelita hace cinco.

We are a family of four again, plus Grandma makes five. Arthur arrived Sunday morning. We dragged him out into the Gothic Quarter to explore, and captured some atmosphere shots, before we let him sleep.

Woke him up again later that night to go to, according to their Web site, "the oldest wine bar in Barcelona" (http://www.lavinateriadelcall.com/en/index.html). The kids hated it. I had to buy them off later with helado (ice cream) and, even later, grilled cheese sandwiches, so they didn't starve. Here are some photos of the food... and other "atmosphere shots."

Traditional tapas.

Lots of cured meats.

Goat-, sheep-, and cows-milk cheeses.

Sundays, in front of the Cathedral (200 yards from our house), locals come out to perform traditional Catalan dances.

Gramma Eloise near the Cathedral.

In the Barri Gotic, some of the buildings are so close together the neighbors don't need to go downstairs to share a cup of sugar.

Ummm... yeah. It is.

Not Starbucks, but a place we stopped for ridiculously overpriced cokes and terrible service (almost all the servers we have encountered here are grumpy). We also witnessed some random guy come up and snatch one of the blue-cushioned chairs and take off with it. Alex wondered if the waiter's English rose to the level of, "Dude, that guy jacked your chair." Maybe another dissatisfied customer? We spotted the chair down a tiny alley later, after we left without leaving a tip.

La Rambla, a major thoroughfare and shopping street.

Case in point: Anna shopping.

OK, this time we did stop at Starbucks---waiting for our "reserved" time in La Sagrada Familia. We felt pretty proud of ourselves for reserving our entrance time and waiting in air-conditioned Starbucks rather than a hot line.

Starbucks in Catalan.

Por fin---nuestra casa. Lastly: our house. This is the entrance to our building. We are on the "second floor," which is actually the fourth floor---first the garage, then the "principal floor," then the first floor, THEN the second floor!!

Next up: La Sagrada Familia. Truly, truly amazing. I was there in 1989, and I think enough work has now been done on it that it was not quite recognizable. So amazing. And tomorrow, we head out of the city for a guided tour of some mountain villages in the Pyranees.

Gaudi, Font Magica, and Nude Beaches

OK, not completely nude, but definitely some topless women. It was hard not to notice them, and it was hard not to notice my son noticing them. But the trip to Sitges, a beach town 30 minutes south of Barcelona by train, was a nice diversion from the heat and bustle of the big city. The Gothic Quarter, where our house is, and the city in general come alive after about 6:00 p.m. until quite late. We stayed out to watch the Font Magica, or Magic Fountain, one of the oldest (or the oldest?) light-music-water fountain shows in the world. I remember going to see it back in 1989 and being so impressed, so I wanted to take the kids, and it did not disappoint. The amount of water shooting into the air is impressive enough, but the changing water displays, and lights, set to music, is just fun. And when the music changed from some classical and patriotic-sounding fare to modern pop music, the crowd came alive. It was a blast.

And the trip to Gaudi's Parc Güell was also a hit, although jet lag and adjusting to the Barcelona heat played a roll in that outing.

Here are some pics so far:

Originally part of a commercially unsuccessful housing site, the idea of Count Eusebi Güell, Parc  Güell is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaudí,” as are Palau Güell, Casa Milà, and the Sagrada Família, which are on our list to see after Arthur gets here. 

The inner plaza is filled with 86 columns, and the exterior ones are all slightly tilted.

Above the plaza of columns is an undulating bench covered in mosaic.

The guard tower as you enter the park.

Looking down on the mosaic lizard that greets you as you climb up to the column-ed plaza.

The sloping columns plus the tree-shaped stalactites and caverns throughout the park, all man-made, create the sensation that the architecture is one with nature.

I can't help it---I love this fountain show and took a ton of pictures of it. The pictures don't do it justice, but it is really fun!

Dancing and partying at the Font Magica!

Even Anna got over her grumpy jet lag that night and started to party (man, was she grumpy!!!)

Body surfing in the Mediterranean.

We rented beach chairs and umbrella. Such a nice day!

The beach town of Sitges. It is friendly not only to topless sunbathers but also to the Spanish gay community. There were quite a few people in tight bikini bottoms -- and nothing else -- both men and women.

La vida sin Internet!

We arrived safely in Barcelona, took the aerobus to the correct stop in the city, walked two blocks and found a large garage door with a tiny person-door nested inside that seemed to correspond to the address we were given. I pushed a button and announced myself, in Spanish, as "Erin from the United States," and the little door buzzed open. We were here! Betty, the housekeeper who speaks no English, showed us around the house, which consisted of pointing out the rooms, showing us how a gas stove works, and then leaving. We still didn't know if there even was a washer and dryer, and no instructions on the much-needed air conditioning or THE INTERNET!!!

We continued to explore the house on our own, found the washer and dryer, opened all the doors and windows in the house to let in some air, and finally decided to call Betty back on her cell phone to ask about the Internet. She tried to explain in Spanish by phone, gave up and came back to the house to show us a router with a name and password printed on the bottom. The problem was that the name on the router didn't correspond to ANY of the many wireless connections that appeared on our various devices. There was nothing to do but ask her about the air conditioning, which she showed us (gracias a Dios!). We spent much of the day trying to decipher the wifi connection and trying to use the international phone we had purchased for just this purpose. Nothing worked!

We headed out to explore, eat, and grocery shop, all of which were successful. Came home and the kids tried desperately to find any TV in English, while I drank some champagne the Spanish family had left for us and promptly fell asleep at 4:00 p.m. Woke up four hours later to find both kids asleep and still NO INTERNET! Now that it was daytime back in California, I tried to call Arthur on the international phone, finally got it to work (dumb luck), who answered and said, "Oh, yes, they forgot to leave you the wifi information and felt very badly. I have it here." WHAT????!!!! At last, INTERNET!

Went back to bed knowing that the Internet was back in my life again, only to wake up this morning and discover that although all my devices were still connected to the local router, there was a problem with the external connection to the Internet.

And all of this is without Arthur to tell us what to do!!! We need an IT department!!

Mysteriously, the Internet was back up an hour later. Will it last? Will we survive our stay in Barcelona if it doesn't? This is now the great mystery of our adventure---not the fact of our limited Spanish, not pickpockets, but if we have Internet.

We are off to explore more of the city before it gets too hot and hopefully take pictures of something worth posting.

At it again...

We leave in a few short days for Barcelona. I can't believe the day is actually here; we planned this trip a year ago, to house swap with a family of five, but---at the time---July 2012 seemed like an eternity away. Now it is here!

I plan to post pics and doings here, as in the past.

Now, back to packing (and to cleaning my house for that family of five).

THREE WEEKS IN ENGLAND BLOG: Things I Don't Want to Forget

We're settled back into life at home: school is starting, back to work, back to doing all that normal stuff you do by rote. That's what I love about traveling: Everything is new and different, and one can be so aware and awake, rather than stumbling unawares through one's normal routine.

There are a few things I'd like to remember about the trip that weren't captured in other stories or in photos. Here goes:

• The price of petrol! Oh my god!!! We put 70 liters in the car to fill it up, and the price came to 99 pounds. We had to triple check our conversions there, but that seems to be $8.64 per gallon. Yikes! Makes what we spent on trains and buses seem much cheaper all of a sudden.


• Brown sauce: the British love their sauces -- maybe that's where they think the flavor is?? Repeatedly we were asked if we would like "brown sauce" with that: with pasties, sausages, breakfast sandwiches. Finally, at one place, I said they could throw in a couple "brown sauce" packets -- they were like the little ketchup packets that come with fast food, but they just said "brown sauce." Alex and I tasted it later, a little fingertip-worth, and I swear I thought it tasted like "brown." If brown had a flavor, that would be it. But a Google search revealed that it's just steak sauce, like A-1. A-1 Steak Sauce is "brown sauce." (Seriously: taste some A-1 and tell me it doesn't taste "brown.")


• My favorite television commercial: A commercial for Soda-Stream, that do-it-yourself sparkling water system. A little boy's voice comes on, in a thick British accent, and says: "We've only got one bottle of fizz at home, with 32 flavors!!!" I couldn't help it: that one bottle of fizz made me laugh every time.


• Hanging our laundry to dry: Apparently this is a custom in Britain. Even if they have a dryer, the Brits hang their laundry out to dry. The flat where we stayed had one of those tiny front-loading washing machines that was under the counter in the kitchen. But it also doubled as a dryer if you were in a pinch. But everyone in the complex of flats, and in the town in general, and in the country in general, hung their laundry out to dry. At first I thought I was being so ecological. But do you know how much work it is to hang the laundry for a family of four??? Especially if you can only hang it on a small drying rack on a small balcony. And what if you want to wash and dry towels and sheets? I am happy to have my dryer back.


• The scale of things: everything is just on a smaller scale in Britain. The cars are small, the roads are small, homes are small, the refridgerator is small, so all the food packaging is small (forget about getting a gallon of milk, or even a half gallon! We once even got a four-egg carton of eggs). We were quite cramped in that 2-bedroom flat, but I'm not sure a house would have felt that much bigger.

It was a really great trip. We had such a good time, we are already thinking about where to go next: Italy? Spain? Ahhh, the possibilities....

Final days

We all so enjoyed the National English Sheepdog Trials. It was just 30 minutes from our flat, and it was the first time we didn't feel that we were having every tourist dollar sucked out of us. We felt more like locals! Free parking, kids free. Loved it. Arthur's pictures are far superior to mine, so I'll direct you to his: https://picasaweb.google.com/107594137102369752950/SheepdogTrials?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPyrw-yz06-F_QE&feat=directlink

We then walked around the nearby town, Dorking (Arthur kept calling it "Dorkville;" was it his usual sarcasm, or did he really keep forgetting the actual name? Another fun neighborhood name: Cockfosters, the last stop on one of the tube lines---nothing quite like hearing the loudspeaker announce "This is the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters." Alex could barely contain himself). There was a beautiful cathedral in Dorking, but also lots of regular folk out on a Saturday afternoon. I love to soak up the normal life of a place, to see how similar we all are, the world over: spoiled kids crying, parents pulling their hair out, teens hanging with their friends. In fact, one day I went to the Shepperton Library to ask about printing something, and one of the older employees was a bit short and rude, I thought, saying, without me ever having said where I was from or where I was staying, "Don't you have internet in your hotel room." I thought that was a bit presumptuous, and I was telling the story to Arthur and the kids when Anna said, "Well, old ladies who work at libraries are always rude." Yes, that has been my experience as well. And now I know it is not just American old ladies who work at libraries.

To top off our last day of soaking up "normal life" in Britain, the kids and I went to the movies. Many movies already open in the U.S. hadn't reached the UK yet. Cowboys & Aliens wasn't opening until August 17. Super 8 opened while we were there, even though it's been in the U.S. for a couple months. But "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" had just opened, so we went to that. Many years ago, I had gone to a movie in Ireland, and the tickets gave assigned seats, so I wondered if it would be the same in Staines, the nearby town with a large cineplex. Although there wasn't assigned seating, there was "VIP" seating, premium seating in leather seats in the more desirable sections of the theater. The regular seats were in the front and way in the back (no leather, but rather large, comfortable seats). We had barely gotten to the theater in time, so when we saw all these vacant seats in the center of the theater, we thought this was our lucky day. Nope. I asked if the seats were taken, and the woman politely said they were the VIP seats and I had to pay extra. Had I? No, I hadn't. I asked how I could tell the difference, and she noted the leather seat thing. Still, we found fine seats and enjoyed the show (well, I mean, I liked the night out; the movie left a lot to be desired).

I really enjoyed being less of a tourist and feeling at least the teeniest bit more like a local, doing what local people do, feeling that we could navigate the roads and go to movies, etc.

Our last day before cleaning and packing we spent at the Royal Airforce Museum. The kids learned about the Battle of Britain and saw a lot of airplanes from all eras. It was free and quite well done.

Next, if I may, I'll try to sum up and note some of the random things I'd like to remember but that didn't merit mention already.

Struck down by a head cold.

I started coming down with something Tuesday and now, Saturday, am only starting to feel a bit better. But I'm afraid Anna may be getting it next! And if not that, then both kids have a sickness of another kind: homesickness. They are homesick for their friends, their beds, and all things familiar.

I am not at all homesick, however! That's the bonus of having all your dear ones travel with you. I wish we had more time, especially with the lost days from being sick. I spent nearly my whole birthday in bed -- didn't get up until 1:00 p.m. Of course, we hadn't gotten to bed until 1:00 a.m. the night before. We went into London to see Warhorse, and the long train ride back to Shepperton got us in late. But we all loved it! I sucked on throat lozenges and restricted nose blowing to the loud moments on stage, so hopefully I did not disturb my fellow audience members too much. Alex, in particular, loved it, but who wouldn't love a story about a boy and his horse and war.

We wondered if, going into London on Wednesday night, we might notice the increased police presence promised by David Cameron and Boris Johnson. (Have you ever seen the mayor of London, usually just called Boris? He's quite a character.) Arthur and the kids had gone to Thorpe Park (big amusement park near Shepperton) on Tuesday, and I stayed home to work and nurse the beginnings of my cold. Since the worst of the riots had taken place Monday night, I kept BBC and Sky News on all day and listened to all the outraged shopkeepers and all the pontificating about disaffected youth, but mostly I heard about the need for a more "robust" police response. I thought "robust" was usually used to describe red wine. Over, and over, and over again: the need for a more robust police response. So, 16,000 police on the streets Tuesday and Wednesday night. But in the center of London, in the theater district, with tons of pubs and shops and restaurants and tourists, we didn't really notice any police, nor on the train ride in or out of London, even though we pass through one of the neighborhoods where there was rioting, Clapham. No police that we could see. Of course, Wednesday night was when the rioting had broken out in Manchester, a city that had contributed extra police to London.

So, our own disaffected youth, ages 10 and 14, have just stayed home and moped and skyped and chatted with their friends, and watched bad television -- hey, just like back home! I insisted on going sightseeing Friday, despite this lingering cold, because we're running out of time! There a couple towns in southeast England I wanted to see: cute villages with important historical significance. I got the family up Friday morning, but the kids wouldn't budge. So, we agreed to leave them at home. We left them with the key to the flat and 20 pounds, and Arthur and I set off. We discovered for the first time that the car we've been driving has GPS navigation, which greatly helped with navigating the motorways and roundabouts, and we visited Rye and Battle (pics below). We arrived back home by 6:30, thinking the kids might be worried, but they were exactly as we had left them: watching TV and on the computers.

Today I'm hoping to get Anna up and go to the last day of the National English Sheepdog Trials: you know, just like in the movie Babe? The dogs have to round up the sheep and be rated on their performance? I thought Anna would love it, but I'll have to see how she's feeling and how the weather holds up. Then maybe one more day in London, then we have to clean the flat, pack, and head home. I could easily stay another week!

The village of Rye. Actually, the official name is "The Ancient Town of Rye." Parts of it date from about 900 years ago.

The view from the Church tower.

The Church tower.

The ancient steps up to the tower. As Arthur said, these are so ancient and unsafe, there's no way the public would be allowed on them in the states: risk of lawsuits.

The clockworks in the tower: a turret clock, dating from 1561, the oldest of its kind in England.

More cobblestone streets in Rye.

The 14th-century entrance gates to Rye.

Part of the abbey in Battle, a village named for the infamous Battle of Hastings, the only successful invasion of England, in 1066, by William of Normandy, ever after known as William the Conqueror. He ordered the abbey built on the site.

The battlefield, preserved for posterity.

Inside part of the abbey buildings. This section dates from only about 500 years ago.

Older sections were started in 1070, and parts were destroyed during the Reformation, when Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.

The ice house: This is the entrance to a deep, insulated cavern. Ice was harvested in winter and then stored over the summer.