How to Interpret the Graph

The above graph is a fun little comparison of the overall happiness of us kids over the course of a day in the trip (August 3^rd). Technology was stubborn, and prevented us from being able to upload the graph until we got home. Each point corresponds to an event during the day.

A. Wake Up.

B. Morning Grumpies (we all get them).

C. Breakfast at the Hotel.

D. Take the Bus to the Parc Güell.

E. Attempting to enjoy the Parc Güell despite the sea of humanity that has descended upon it.

F. Walking along the beach at Barceloneta.

G. More walking….so tired…..

H. We finally arrive at a lunch place, exhausted and hungry.

I. Dad yells at me for failing to get the exact table he wanted, although he never gave me clear instructions. It’s his fault.

J. Great seafood lunch makes kids very happy.

K. We walk to Picasso Museum, wait in line.

L. Dad leaves the Picasso Museum to deal with work.

M. Mom begins moving at her museum pace, which is about 10X too slow for us.

N. We get back to the hotel after the museum.

O. Hotel Pool!

P. Nice hot showers and relaxing in the room.

Q. Watching TV (kids love Disney Channel, especially when it’s in English!).

R. Walk to the Ramblas to scope out a dinner place.

S. Another instance of the recurring theme of the unilateral debate over where we should eat dinner.

T. We sit down at the Spanish equivalent of a TGIF’s.

U. After a miserable first 10 minutes in the restaurant, Dad declares an executive order commanding our family’s evacuation of the restaurant.

V. A much better dinner at a café out on the Ramblas

W. We return to the hotel after another long day

5 bulkhead seats

Pros: legroom

Cons: 5 of us across in the middle, aisle-to-aisle, so we get to be part of 2 lavatory lines for the next 6 hrs.

An annoying American (one of those) just asked if the line is shorter on the other side. Listen, lady, I'm not playing lavatory line arbitrage with you. And don't cut between the bulkhead and me again or I will tell K to walk back to your seat and use your row for some playing/goof-off space. If you can use our row, we can use yours. Got it?

I hope they have good British ale on this flight.

...but we wanted McDonalds!!

All day, BMK has been craving good old American food. However when we landed at Heathrow--bumpily--we had to go thru many new checkins. The security man frisked B. Dad was temporarily bumped off the flight. When we reached the food court, bmk had one thing on our mind: McDonalds. We saw a sushi place, and I recommend never eating airport sushi before a 6 hour ride, btw. We ended up guzzling some Italian food and Mom bought gross rutabaga chips. We are heading to jfk now, and can't wait to see Tuffy have a heart attack when beloved Mommy comes home. Its been a great trip, even during the TGI Fridays fiasco and obese SpiderMans.

....The Costa del Magnifico, the cost of living's so low..

Rental car to the Costa Brava. Until last summer, the only Costa that I knew was featured in a Dire Straits song (quoted above).

Last year, Costa Brava. Rental car for my beloved and me to Palamos, the Best Beach Town Ever.

Can we recreate the magic. With 5 of us this year?

To start - I yell at K through 10 Barcelona city blocks this morning. "Hurry up - we gotta get the rental car." Magic gone by 9:15 am. Then, I yell at my trusty navigator wife, who swears she has her Dad's "bloodhound nose." Now, I love my wife with all my heart. She makes me a better person. I would be a mere shell without her. But, if she's the bloodhound, then Paul Newman gets away in "Cool Hand Luke." That's all I'm saying.

So, it's a bit of a zoo in our car as we careen 1.5 hrs outside BCN, with the rented GPS falling off the rented windshield every 6 minutes and a Costa Brava station playing US Top 40 Pop - Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, much to M's delight.

And then, we turn a corner, and there's the town of Begur, gleaming in the sun. Begur beats out Palamos like the Yankees beat out the Sox right now (six + games ahead of the Sox and not looking back). Like Angelina vs. Jennifer. You get the picture. http://begur.org/turisme/cat/index.php

Beach after beach. Cove after cove. Sand and surf. Germans diving off cliffs into 10 feet of water (just to show they can). Great waves. Great sun. Homemade salcichon and manchego sandwiches on crusty bread. Quite simply, one of the chillest days ever. Even if the kids wouldn't walk with us up the cliff pathway (and therefore didn't get to see the nude beach when we turned a corner one km up the path, overlooking the coast). And even if the strawberry ice cream was briefly melon ice cream as a crafty vendor sought to move some slow-moving melon ice cream inventory (until I put my foot down and declared, in Castillian, that we prefer our strawberry helado to be made from *strawberries* not melon, gracias). And even if the family wouldn't let me stay forever in the biggest wine store ever, Grau, on the outskirts of the Costa Brava (they carry at least 50 Spanish rosado wines, for starters, and a bunch of offerings from our cava guys, Raventos i Blanc, out in Penedes ... http://www.raventos.com/ ).

And on the way home, Catalan Public Radio - who knew there was such a thing? http://www.icatfm.cat/ - playing Wilco and the Specials ("Message to you Rudy") for a salty family inside the Avis rental car. No navigation fights. No fights in the back seat. A sweet day. Even if I still don't get Lady Gaga.

Go to Begur. Someday. It's great, and is the "Best Place Ever", right now, this summer, just like Chatham, Nantucket, Chilmark and 100 other beach towns...

:)

The KD Theory

So last night, we encountered quite a fiasco while choosing a dinner restaurant. First, our reservation was cancelled because the restaurant is closed for the entire month of August (the Spaniards take all of August off in some places, and that includes the “best wine bar in Barcelona" that my Dad wanted to go to... http://www.monvinic.com/ )

So, we started wandering around looking for a restaurant. I saw the first one, liked the menu, and said “Hey! Let’s eat here!” Mom, however, had a different opinion. “We’ll keep walking.”

So we walked 4 or 5 blocks down the road, and there it was. A place that wasn’t packed to the roof with people. The hostess woman spoke into a walkie talkie and suddenly we all got the feeling we were in some sort of Spanish T. G .I. Fridays or Chilly’s. We sat down at a table right next to a man smoking a cigar, and there was some sort of high pitched beep, like a dog whistle. The menu appeared as if everything on there was freeze dried and pre cooked, and the restaurant seemed to scream “CHEAP!”

We dashed and walked back to the beginning of the trail of restaurants we had visited. We wound up eating at the first one we had seen. This brings up the K D Theory. It basically is “One of the first few restaurants you see will be the one you will wind up eating at, and you’ll probably walk back and forth between a bunch of them before you realize that the first was the best choice.”

Adios! - K

Tidbits of the Day-Barcelona

Today we walked, rode buses, and took metros to our various destinations. Here are the places that outshone the rest.

• the Parc Guell, where Dad took pics of B and me with buildings growing out of our heads
• the breakfast buffet at the hotel, which included mango mousse, tasty tortilla, and—hold your applause—FLAN!
  
• a little Spanish boutique, where I finally found a top: a ruffly turquoise one to match my jeans
• the Picasso Museum, where they exhibit Picasso's interpretations of Velasquez's "Las Meninas" from the Prado - he sat for months in the Prado and did, like, 30 different Las Meninas interpretations (google it.)
  
• the seaside restaurant for lunch, where we ate delightful paellas and even more delightful tomato spread on bread
  
• the beach near Barceloneta where K took some time to frolic about
• Mom panicking as she realized the maids had taken the towels that she had carefully hijacked for our trip tomorrow to the Costa Brava
• me making 2 euros for scarfing down a NASTY black olive in, like, 4 seconds

Overall, a good day, and we head out to dinner now. Tomorrow is Costa Brava Day!!! We’re wicked psyched. Adios! xo M

Matadores 3, Toros 0

Great trip to the Plaza de Toros in Madrid, a few days after the legislature down in Catalunya voted to abolish bullfighting in a few years.

The crowd at Sunday’s corrida del toros was feisty (ie, angry). A manifesto of solidarity with Catalunyan aficionados of bullfighting was read out loud, and there was a moment of silence. But, we were most surprised by the fact that the Madrilenos view this move as a cynical, political move by the Catalunyan legislature, and not an animal rights move. In the view of the central Spaniards (based on some polls in the newspapers here), the Catalunyans actually adopted this legislation to spite the rest of Spain by abolishing a central part of Spanish culture. (The best analogy I can come up with is this - what if Ohio abolished baseball, effective 2012?).

Moreover, the bullfight fans view this as a personal liberties/personal choice issue – fans were chanting “libertad” at the bullfight Sunday night, to our surprise. Lastly, the news papers view this as a ploy to distract the public from the real problems facing Spain, like 20% unemployment.
As for the bullfight – it’s the summer, and rookie bullfighters fight in the summer, just like preseason football. The hotshots seem to be on the beach in Mallorca and points south, leaving the newbies to fight to bulls. Our bullfighters won, of course, but weren’t the most graceful or athletic doing so.

As far as I can tell, the spectrum of judging goes like this, from “worst” to best.
· Silencio
· Applauso
· Ovacion
· Forte ovacion
· Oreja (the matador gets the ear of the bull, by order of the president of the evening)

The night we were at the plaza del toros, most of the matadors got silencio because they needed more than one try to plunge the sword in. The most promising guy, who initially got the crowd roaring by kneeling as he swept his cape around, flailed at the last minute and needed 3 tries with the sword. Silencio indeed for him. Of course, silence for the bull, too, in the end.

And so, we ended our stay in Madrid – on to Barcelona….