I spent the bet part of last week catching up with my favourite Spanish family in Navarra and helping them out in the restaurant and with their hostel rooms. It was a really busy week for us but with two of us working in the kitchen it went pretty smoothly most days. I spent a little of my free time chilling out by the pool, playing with the dogs and catching up on some more reading.
I also got to see the family friends I met there two years ago and finally speak some Spanish to one of the family friends who is pretty much part of the furniture but who can't speak English.
So all in all it was a great week and I'm already pondering over plans for my next visit.
On Friday afternoon I caught the bus down to Zaragoza then onto Barcelona before hoping straight on the airport bus to spend the night waiting for Courtney's arrival the following morning.
After a long wait in the airport Courtney arrived a bit after 10am and we headed out to find our hostel.after arriving and depositing all our stuff in the room it was off to look for foot and explore the local area, we're based near the beach but in a quiet neighbourhood without many tourists which is perfect for working on our Spanish. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and finding a Local for the week.
Sunday dawned bright and warm so we sent off for some more serious exploration. We found the huge city park, the Arc de Triomph (Spanish version), and a few other impressive sites. We grabbed burgers (my first since arriving in Spain) in a great little place then went to explore the chocolate Museum. We planned on visiting the Picasso museum after since it's free on Sunday afternoons but the queue was about four blocks long so we're saving it for another day. After that we took a long, slow walk back to the hostel, covering at least 8 miles by the time we get back.
In the evening we got tapas from our Local we didn't really get what we ordered but our surprise tapas were still good.
The weather seemed a bit undecided on Monday so we decided to head back to the city park and visit the zoo. They were actually in the process of rebuilding the enclosures a few at a time and while the old ones weren't too bad it was nice to see the new ones had more space and better suited environments for the different species.
We ended up with another surprise meal when the risotto we ordered changed to black squid paella but the food was great so no complaints here!
Yesterday got off to a pretty wet start but once the rain stopped we headed across to Montjuic to go check out the castle and the gardens. We got a great view over the city and the gardens smelt amazing after all the rain. Although we took the cable car up there we walked down in search of the botanical gardens. Although they were closing as we arrived it did lead us to the National art museum of Catalunya which was an impressive site. We grabbed some not-so-great tapas while waiting fir the magic fountain show but found out later it wasn't on that night so instead took the bus back to the hostel and crashed out.
Now I probably won't be writing my next blog until I get back to the UK in about 10-11 days because phone blogging isn't as fun as using an actual computer but then i can give you a full round up of the rest of my trip.
So I'll speak to you all soon,
Ciao