After over two and a half years of non-stop parenting, Justin and I finally got to take a break. A week's break, to be exact, and in another country.
Turns out, we still like each other.
I cried when we put the kids down for naps at Nana and Granddaddy's house on Saturday as we prepared to leave for the airport. I cried again when the plane took off.
"You miss the kids, don't you?" asked my darling husband.
"Yeah," I sniffed. "But I'm excited about our vacation." And I meant it.
We touched down in Spain on Sunday and wandered around the city for a while before heading to our hotel. Back home, we knew the kids would just be waking up. We called them on Skype, and that's when reality struck. They didn't miss us. In fact, quite the contrary, they were having a blast at Grandparent Camp and seemed a little annoyed at the interruption of an online overseas video call from mom and dad. We chatted long enough to remind me that the kids were in good hands and weren't falling apart in our absence, then hit the ground running for our whirlwind tour of Barcelona.
We walked miles and miles around the city. We toured famous parks and buildings designed by oddball artist Antoni Gaudi. We ate delicious breakfasts at quaint little patisseries around the town. We stayed at an awesome hotel, Praktik Rambla, overlooking the heart of the city. We hunted for, and eventually found, the world's most perfect cup of hot chocolate.
We rode the metro from one end of the city to the other, and stopped everywhere in between.
We visited the hostel Justin lived in during his study abroad trip back in 2003 and hit up Ugarit, a Syrian restaurant he frequented often during his time there.
We ate tapas in the city, paella by the Mediterranean, and won a free sandwich at Pans & Company, Barcelona's equivalent of Subway. I learned that sesame-seed encrusted fried brie is the best cheese stick ever. We dined on soup with shells in it and were served whole fish with the head on. We ordered things we couldn't pronounce and couldn't identify and loved most of it.
We rode a cable car to Montjuïc and toured the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. We took an incline train to the top of Tibidabo where we enjoyed spectacular views of the city from a mountainside Ferris wheel and climbed to an altitude of 568 meters at the top of the Temple de Sagrat Cor, which shamed the awesome view we thought we'd had previously.
Two of our days were spent hanging out at Hotel Rey Juan Carlos, a yuppy hotel that charged me $6 for a coke one day, while Justin attended the Black Hat conference and learned about "digital self defense." The up side of being at Black Hat was enjoying the free internet (the hotel charged over $20 a day for internet access). The down side, of course, is that being in a hotel full of computer hackers means nothing is secure. I enjoyed just relaxing, editing and uploading our 1,000+ pictures and reading my 600-page book while Justin was at the conference. Eight hours to myself with nothing to do and nowhere to be is a luxury I haven't enjoyed in a long time. And I loved it.
On Friday we headed over to a little coffee shop for some suis xocolate (hot chocolate with cream) which I'd been wanting to try since we arrived. Hot chocolate is prepared very differently in Barcelona, in a giant carafe instead of individually by the cup, and once a restaurant runs out, they're out for the day. I'll admit, I was getting a little nervous toward the end of the week when I still hadn't had any. We finally found some on our last day and it was worth the wait. Excellent! (And they gave me one of those little punch cards, so if I go back 5 more times, my seventh cup is free. Justin was not surprised to see that my love of frequent shopper cards transcends time zones and language barriers.)
My talented hubby did an excellent job communicating with the locals (and with some guy from Moscow who started speaking to him in Russian when he overheard him mention he was originally from Georgia...not that Georgia) and I was impressed with his confidence and ability in getting us where we need to go without giving away the fact that we were from the States right away. I, on the other hand, opened all my conversations with a question: Un poco ingles? ("A little English?") So our methods were different, but we both managed in our own way. Justin used his Spanish to find himself a pharmacy and drugs when some bad olives didn't agree with him, and I used my English to upgrade our room at the yuppy hotel. So I can see the benefit of both.
Two of our days were spent hanging out at Hotel Rey Juan Carlos, a yuppy hotel that charged me $6 for a coke one day, while Justin attended the Black Hat conference and learned about "digital self defense." The up side of being at Black Hat was enjoying the free internet (the hotel charged over $20 a day for internet access). The down side, of course, is that being in a hotel full of computer hackers means nothing is secure. I enjoyed just relaxing, editing and uploading our 1,000+ pictures and reading my 600-page book while Justin was at the conference. Eight hours to myself with nothing to do and nowhere to be is a luxury I haven't enjoyed in a long time. And I loved it.
On Friday we headed over to a little coffee shop for some suis xocolate (hot chocolate with cream) which I'd been wanting to try since we arrived. Hot chocolate is prepared very differently in Barcelona, in a giant carafe instead of individually by the cup, and once a restaurant runs out, they're out for the day. I'll admit, I was getting a little nervous toward the end of the week when I still hadn't had any. We finally found some on our last day and it was worth the wait. Excellent! (And they gave me one of those little punch cards, so if I go back 5 more times, my seventh cup is free. Justin was not surprised to see that my love of frequent shopper cards transcends time zones and language barriers.)
My talented hubby did an excellent job communicating with the locals (and with some guy from Moscow who started speaking to him in Russian when he overheard him mention he was originally from Georgia...not that Georgia) and I was impressed with his confidence and ability in getting us where we need to go without giving away the fact that we were from the States right away. I, on the other hand, opened all my conversations with a question: Un poco ingles? ("A little English?") So our methods were different, but we both managed in our own way. Justin used his Spanish to find himself a pharmacy and drugs when some bad olives didn't agree with him, and I used my English to upgrade our room at the yuppy hotel. So I can see the benefit of both.
We missed the kids. But to be honest, we were having a great time without them. We had a blast, just the two of us, being the us we were before there were little people relying on us for everything. We slept in until 10 a.m., we ate dinner after the sun went down and didn't go to bed till well after midnight most nights. We came home refreshed, renewed and only slightly jet-lagged. The week was, in a word, perfect.
Special thanks to the grandparents for making this week possible. If you're not too worn out, can we do this again next year?
How cool! Out of all the hotels in Spain, I think I stayed at that Hotel Rey Juan Carlos when I toured Barcelona in High School on a dance trip! And it WAS yuppy and beautiful! Sounds like you had a fun trip!
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear ya'll had a fun vacation and still like each other!! I often wonder if Zach and I would still like each other if we actually got to go on a vacation :) Having little ones make times like these such a luxury ... sounds like it was a blast -- very jealous ...
ReplyDelete