Exploring Barcelona

Hey so I know I'm late... again, but I've been too busy doing stuff instead of writing them down, so I'll round up what I can but since I'm blogging in my phone there's possibly going to be more pictures than anything else.

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. 

(Next leg of the journey- much longer on the bus)

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. 

(Evening explorations)

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.

(City park)

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!

(Tasted better than it looked)

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. 

(National Art Museum of Catalunya)

 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

Moving on again

Hi everyone,
I know I´m late....again but things have been pretty busy here! For those of you who don´t already know I´m down near Pamplona for the third summer in a row visiting my favourite Spanish family! Since it´s the hight of summer we´ve been fairly run off our feet so I´ve only just had time to write.

Last week was actually fairly easy in terms of work for a change. After waking up to find a message saying I could definitely head to Pamplona at the weekend I waited around until Isa´s sister got her out of bed early then set about helping her get sorted to go out. Her friends who had visited at the weekend wanted her to come over so she was out of the house by just after 10.30am so I spent my morning reading, watching some old episodes of House MD on my computer and thinking up some new knitting ideas for when I got home.
In the afternoon Marie appeared home reasonably early and we went off to find the new shoes I so desperately needed. We had to take Isa along which meant I knew we´d never manage to get the shoes sorted - and I was right - but it was a reasonable trip out at least. In the end I couldn´t find what I needed and settled for buying the (to me) slightly expensive shoes I´d seen after class the following day.

Wednesday Isa didn´t want to get up out of bed since she wanted to watch her cartoons and when I finally decided enough was enough she sulked and wouldn´t talk to me for over an hour leaving me to sit around and colour in the ´difficult´ pictures she wasn´t going to do. By that point the grandparents had arrived and it was almost lunch time so I got myself some food, checked my Spanish homework and headed out around 3.30pm to go to class. It wasn´t too bad for my final lesson. My normal teacher was still on holiday but the new one was talking a bit slower and I wasn´t already in a grump which helped. We got through a fair amount of work and after getting my shoes and going for a final wander through my favourite part of Bilbao I caught the metro back to the house.

guggenheim

As promised by Marie we went to the Guggenheim museum after we´d both finished work on Thursday. Isa had been at a friend´s again so I´d had a fairly easy day and after getting a quick bite to eat we set off. We had Isa with us which I wasn´t entirely sure about but she seemed fairly excited to go and see the ´flower puppy´ outside the entrance so off we went.

There was a great video exhibit by Kimsooja &Shahzia Sikander which had some really impressive imagery and the music was like a mix of sounds I´d heard in both India and Peru. We only got to stay for 10 minutes cause someone got bored but I´m definitely going to check them out online soon! There was an impressive steal instalment which took up half the building with maze like structures but we got in trouble cause Isa decided out run back out of one of the mazes and if she´d gone off in a different direction we might not have seen where she´d gone. 

The two main art exhibits were by Jeff Koons and Jean-Michel Basquait. I think the first appealed more to Isa with his metal ballon animals and refashioned old toys but I think I preferred the Basquait exhibit with his graffiti art and messages about colonialism, racisms, class struggles and things like that - it was also pretty cool to see the collection he did alongside Andy Warhol - someone I remember studying in school!

Unfortunately Isa thought it would be fun to break free from her mum and touch an exhibition piece which almost got us chucked out and then spent the last half hour deliberately messing around, making too much noise knowing she had to be quiet and generally trying to make us leave.

Friday was a pretty busy day. The grandparents showed up for a bit in the morning, and everyone was sitting with Isa watching TV so I used that time to get my back packed and ready to go. The parents arrived in the afternoon but no one seemed interested in getting their own things packed until the evening after dinner. They were off to China early in the morning so they had to get themselves organised too. We had a final family meal and after I was given the money back that I´d paid for my new shoes - the family wanted them to be a present from them which was really sweet!

on the road again

On saturday morning the housekeeper came and took me to the bus station since she´d offered the day before. I got the bus from Bilbao to Pamplona which was a nice trip although there seemed to be a lot of holiday traffic on the road. I grabbed a coffee and a pintxo in the bus station then caught the next bus down to Olite - the closest I could get to San Martin de Unx on the bus as far as I knew. 

Knowing it was lunch time and it would be really busy I decided I would just start walking and hitch to my friends hostel/restaurant instead of waiting to see if they could come and collect me. A nice couple who were here on holiday picked me up in no time and dropped me right at the door.

The afternoon was spent doing little jobs around the hostel and settling back into life in San Martin. 

Sunday was the busiest I´ve ever seen it here with every table full of families and groups wanting lunch. We spent most of the late afternoon recovering from such a busy session and chatted about the other people who´d come to stay, how their English course summer camp had gone and how our families were getting on before having an early night. 

gorgeous new dog

Yesterday I spent the morning out shopping with Pedro and his grandson which was an interesting experience - had to laugh at the fact he decided he wanted ice cream near the start of the trip and was still asking for it two hours later! We had quite a few people for lunch and there was less of us working in the kitchen but between me and Linda I think we actually worked through the orders and the service faster than we had the day before with more people! I guess it was just easier with less people getting under each others feet. 

This morning I helped clean the pool and prep some things for dinner then I set about writing this. We´ve got a couple of hours until people start coming for lunch but we have rooms to make up so I´m off to help with the laundry. 

I should be in Barcelona by the time I write my next piece but I don´t know how easy it will be for me to post off my tablet (now it´s getting old and slow) when I don´t have a computer or laptop to borrow!

Chat to you all again soon either way,

Ciao!

Animal Rescue

Hi everyone,
I know I´m late in posting but I didn´t get chance to get on the computer over the weekend to write. Think this will just be a short one since it´s been a busy day but I can tell you that I´ll be writing from somewhere different next time because my job ends on Friday. I´m planning on heading down towards the Pyrenees where it´s quieter and where I can do some walking anyway from the noisey towns and cities around here.

So after I finished writing on Sunday Adam (the older son) took me gokarting with his cousin and some friends. It´s not something I´ve actually done before so I was a little nervous to begin with but it was a lot of fun - even if I did get beat by a 12 year old,

DIdn´t crash too often

It was back to the usual routine on Monday with nothing particularly exciting happening although I did get to learn a little about the German health insurance system from my classmates which is always a handy thing to know a little something about.

After work on Tuesday I tried playing Paddleball with the dad but considering I´d only played tennis and badminton before and it was much hotter than I was used to I think I lost quite spectacularly.
After a quick shower I joined the mum in taking Isa and her visiting cousin to the fun fair in the next town. Luckily Isa managed to get her cousin to go on most rides with her cause she wouldn´t go herself and I certainly wasn´t going to get myself stuck in one of the kids rides - I did that years ago and have no intention of repeating it!

Animal rescue

On wednesday I got a bit of a surprise in the morning when I found a hedgehog in a box in the kitchen! It turned out the dogs had tried to get it in the night and Marie had rescued it so I could release it when Isa was awake. The release went well although Isa stayed inside cause it was raining.
 I got into Bilbao for class a little early and bumped into a fellow classmate but it turned out he was having to cut his trip short and the lesson that day would be his last.
It also turned out the other two girls who´d joined the class were finishing that day too so we spent half the class translating a song and got a couple of class photos at the end.

Thursday was just the standard - work followed by reading/studying/seista until dinner so nothing really exciting there.

On friday Marie´s sister arrived with her husband to spend some time here before taking her son (Isa´s visiting cousin) back home. We had a nice meal together before I headed off for an early night. As far as I´m aware there was no pintxos night so I stayed home.

Not a whole lot happened on saturday. I was supposed to go with Marie to get some new shoes sorted out after my ´prefect´email pair was the complete wrong size (supposed to be an 8, the shoes say they´re a 7 but they´re definitely no bigger than a 6). I´ve been stuck sewing up my old shoes in the meantime but now they have holes in the soles which I can´t really fix. Unfortunately we ended up not going to the shops - not too sure why - so as of this post I´m still stuck with holey boots.

Good as new....

Sunday was a gorgeous sunny day - if a bit windy - so I decided to get out and spend some time just sitting out in the sun with a good book. Working my way through Lord of the Rings so its some good reading.
Isa´s friends came round for lunch so we spent a good deal of time getting the kids to all eat their food and after such a tiring day (or  not) I spent most the the rest of the day holed up in my room out of the way.

On to today. It´s not been the best of days today with tantrums and violent outbursts from the niña all morning (broken up by periods of just refusing to talk/play with me), followed by a new teacher for my Spanish class. Now there´s nothign actually wrong with the new teacher and it´s always good to learn from different people however I can´t quite understand why you´d give a beginner class to someone who only speaks a little bit of English; all made more difficult because her accent (from SE Spain) was so strong I could hardly understand anything - even when I knew the words she was saying.
On top of all this I seem unable to find any HelpX projects for my free week between work and my holiday with Courtney. I know it´s late in the game to be asking but the stream of ´no´s´and no replies has been a bit disheartening.

Just before everyone left!

On that note I need to get on with planning something different for that week so I´d best finish and post this.
Talk to you all soon though,
Ciao!