Day 10 (May 11th)
I cheated a little bit because a large portion of this day was actually spent in Cairo. We enjoyed sleeping in and one last amazing buffet breakfast. Afterwards, we leisurely packed and just rested – as it turns out touring the world is sort of tiring. I actually worked out for the first (and last) time on the trip. Around noon, our driver friend from the day before came and took us to the airport.
We were semi worried about our ability to get to Barcelona because the cloud of ash from the volcano was wafting into Spain/Portugal. After the full day it took us to mobilize and determine where to go with the Athens situation, I did not think we had it in us to have to figure out another new place to go (we aren’t that creative…nor were there as many drink options in our hotel in Cairo). Luckily it didn’t come to this. We flew to Geneva where we had a short layover. I would not have been disappointed about getting stuck here. The airport alone was enough visual interest for a solid day.
Our flight to Barcelona took off without a problem and we made it into the city late at night- around 10:30 or 11. (That’s late considering we’d been calling it a night around 8:00). Caddy distributed our passports, thinking we’d have to go through customs like everywhere else we’d been. Somehow we escaped waiting through a customs line and found ourselves outside haggling with taxi drivers. My dad’s highschool Spanish was not enough for us to secure a vehicle large enough for 5 (surprisingly “hatchback” does not translate directly… even if you use hand gestures) so we set off in our 2 separate vehicles.
When we got to the hotel, we handed over our passports to the front desk as we had everywhere else… this time with one very important difference – Matt did not have his. That is correct- somehow between the airport and our hotel (approximately 35 minutes) it had been misplaced. We surmised it must have fallen out of his pocked in the cab fiasco. We tried calling the cab company but didn’t have a cab number or anything to help track it down.
At this point with no other options, we decided to go to bed. There are no pictures from this day… this is a blessing in disguise, actually. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, on Day 10, they would have all been 4 letters.
Day 11 (May 12th)
I would like to go ahead and preface this whole day with the disclaimer that this was the day we were THE worst tourists. We were all worn out, Julie was sick, I was starting to get sick, Matt couldn’t focus on anything but keeping track of his passport… all around- we were not in excellent shape. Enough excuse-making, I know. Don’t say you weren’t warned though…
The day started out with some good news – a kind taxi cab driver called our hotel in the middle of the night and returned Matt’s passport! I have no idea who this man was nor could I pick him out of a line up but I feel confident that the 1,097 good kharma points he earned himself for this good deed are paying dividends for him. In order to celebrate that Matt wasn’t going to be the star of a mini-series on young adult males left in foreign countries by their families, we headed to a restaurant next door for some breakfast. Note to those travelling- coffee in Spain was MUCH better than coffee everywhere else we went. I’m sure you’re writing this all down, right?
The weather in Barcelona was kind of subpar. In order to combat the drizzle, and maybe to pay homage to our first family Euro trip, we decided to purchase tickets for one of Barcelona’s hop-on city bus tours. (Flashback to Boarman Eurotrip circa 1997: in every city we went to we “got to know the city” by taking one of these hop-on tours… On every one of those tours Julie and I slept. The whole time. Awkwardly and usually in the front seat on the top deck. I guess
history moving vehicles put us to sleep.)
We grabbed the orange route (there were 2 routes) bus in the square at the end of the street our hotel was on. Personally I was determined to rise above my 1997 self and pay some serious attention to the audio guide. That aspiration and determination dissipated in 30 seconds when I realized the “English” channel (with an American Flag, I might add) had a tour guide with a thick British accent. Okay- I know we speak the same language… but I can barely understand the people at Starbucks most days. Once you start adding accents in there- it’s game over. In addition, our headphone audio sound would fade in and out every few minutes. So here are some pictures of things we saw. I really have no idea what they are. If you do, feel free to enlighten me. In the meantime I will add my own commentary. (And yes, I did wind up falling asleep again)
It is very hard to say what I'm taking a picture of here. Notice a lot of people exited the bus though. That's usually a sign it's something famous.
Different angle of the previous landmark?
Boats. In a port. In Barcelona.
Boats in Barcelona. This time with a mountain!
Pretty Beach.
Looked important. May be a shopping mall. Noooot sure.
This looks like it should be NASA headquarters. I don't think it is though.
La Sagrada Familia. Look, I got one!
I wonder if they'll ever finish this Cathedral.
After we all got through the orange route we decided we needed coffee. So we set out in search of some Starbucks to wake us up. We were unsuccessful in that quest but we did find a place called Happys to eat some tapas. The food was delicious and there was no British narration. Two thumbs up.
Once our bellys were full, we were feeling rejuvenated and decided we wanted to attempt one more time to conquer the tour bus. Round two: the green route (or maybe it was blue?). We hopped back on the bus and set out to embrace some history and see some Barcelona. Epic fail. The headphones on this one were even worse than the first one. Once again, please enjoy some pictures of things I saw but could not identify.
A famous statue. As proved in Kiev - I'm not good at these.
They definitely tell you NOT to do this.
Going up a mountain! (not the same one from the harbor)
View from going up the mountain.
Olympics happened here.
A lot of people got off the bus here too.
After all of this touring and not learning- we were pretty exhausted. We headed back to our hotel for some nap time… or in my case, some quality time with Julie’s iTouch. Have you ever played flood-it? It is not conducive to napping. Especially if you are as awful as me and keep telling yourself you’ll go to sleep after you win. After everyone else napped and I successfully drove Julie’s win percentage into the ground, we set out for dinner.
I think we walked the entire length of La Rambla in the rain in search of a restaurant. There were plenty but apparently none struck Dad or Matt’s fancy. Finally, we settled on a cute place with an orange awning. I can’t remember the name. We had a fabulous authentic Spanish meal. We all ordered paella and sangria.
We love sangria
JJ, paella & Caddy
I guess the day could be summed up by two words: naps and sangria. We may have been awful tourists… but we were excellent locals!
Day 12 (May 13)
This day started with me waking up sweating and feeling like I was going to die. I’m probably being pretty melodramatic, but I did NOT feel good. Apparently sharing breathing space with Julie long enough got me sick. (Thanks JulieBee!) The fam went to McDonald’s to grab breakfast while I laid in bed and tried to shake my sickness. I didn’t see an Egg McMuffin being a viable cure for whatever variety of bird flu Julie had given me.
We had planned to spend our last day on vacation doing a wine/champagne tour in the Spanish countryside. Even bird flu will not keep me from enjoying some wine and/or champagne. So after McD’s, the fam came to retrieve me and we went over to grab our tour bus.
After about an hour long bus ride we arrived at Jean Leon, a small winery started by a man named, wait for it… Jean Leon. Jean Leon was a guy with a pretty cool story. He was born in Spain and moved to Hollywood as soon as he could. People suspect that he was trying to be an actor, but since he never made it, he wouldn’t own up to it. He worked as a waiter at upscale restaurants and became friends with lots of famous actors and actresses from the period. Eventually, he started a restaurant with his friend James Dean called La Scala. If you read the celeb gossip blogs, you’ve probably heard of it because it still exists in Beverly Hills. After years in the business, Jean Leon learned what kinds of wines his customers liked and decided to start a winery himself. Great wine and a fun story.
Gorgeous.
The Jean Leon cellar
Jules & Me (with bird flu)
The Cellar
Matt being jealous of Julie's wine
Our guide.
Mamacita & Jules
Our next stop on the wine tour was at Torres. It was probably a 30 minute drive or so over to the Torres winery. This place was INCREDIBLE. It was basically DisneyLand for adults. After we got there we were lead to a theater type room where they explained to us how our “experience” would go. Next we were lead into a long narrow tunnel room with a screen on one side. We were treated to a montage of pictures of the vineyards over the course of the year – from burning the vines for the new crop to harvesting them. This portion of the experience was not only visual… but aromatic. Somehow they added smells to the entire experience. It was awesome.
Entrace to adult DisneyLand
After watching the video, the side of this tunnel room opened up and a little trolley type thing came and picked us up to take us around the vineyard grounds. The grounds were, of course, gorgeous and all of the different areas we saw – the cellar, etc, were incredibly pristine. It was very easy to see why this winery had won so many awards.
Trolley
GINORMOUS vats of wine.
Watching video in the cellar.
Lots of bottles of vino.
My future house.
Baby grapes!
After our tour we were treated to a wine/cheese pairing lesson. I kept pawning my cheese off on the rest of the family, so I think they doubly enjoyed the experience. I wish I hadn’t felt so sick, but the 3 types of wine we tried were FANTASTIC. I even liked a Merlot, which is not my favorite. If you ever find yourself at a wine store and don’t know what to pick- see if you can find some Torres wine. It is incredible.
Wine & Cheese pairing set up
Satisfied customers.
We all piled back into the bus. The next stop was Freixenet, a “cava” production facility. “Cava” is sparkling wine, better known to us as champagne (or the reason Amy had such a rough NYE 2009). I can’t recall why they call it cava, but I want to say it had something to do with the French not wanting to share their word. At least they didn’t blow the nose off of any Spanish monuments.
If only this had been an option when I turned 16.
At this point in the day I was feeling pretty awful, so I don’t think I retained as much knowledge about how champagne is made as I could have. It was very interesting though- you would think that it was basically the same way as wine but it isn’t. My favorite part of the process is that they bottle the wine and let it ferment in the bottle. While this process is taking place, the bottle is laid on its belly, so all of the sediment falls to the bottom. Then slowly, a machine tilts the bottle a few degrees each day until all of the sediment is capture at the top of the bottle. The bottle is then frozen and uncapped. Once the cap is removed, the frozen sediment-sicle at the top shoots out from the pressure. Ta-da: clean champagne. :c) If you want to know more about the process, let me know and I can probably conjure up more of it.
Barrels
Fancy barrels.
Tilting the sediment
Some more trolley action.
After our tour we got fed some snacks and got to sample their most famous champagnes, one of which was a blush champagne and one of which was Cordon Negro. They were both delicious.
Cava enthusiasts
Following our Freixenet tour, we got on the bus and headed back to town. By the time we arrived back in town, it was nearly dinner time. We decided to eat dinner at Hard Rock café. I am not sure if this is more because we were homesick or because of its proximity to where we got off the bus- but it really tasted faaaantastic.
Once we finished dinner, we headed back to our hotel to figure out how to get all of our souvenirs, clothes and electronic equipment packed up. Nothing like a good family vacation to make you a luggage jenga expert! We intended to break open a bottle of wine and reminisce about our vacation… but we were all exhausted and accidentally crashed before that could happen. Not a very glamorous way to go out- but if you aren’t tired, you probably should’ve tried harder, right?
This basically concludes Boarman Eurofrica Adventure 2k10. I don’t know how to sum it up except to say that it was incredible. I genuinely have the most wonderful family in the world and I’m so thankful to have gotten to experience it all with them. I rode a camel. I met people more heel-crazed than me. I learned how to make cava. I slept on public transportation. I wrote close to 15 pages in word. If you read it all, you deserve a medal. Thank you, fam, for everything – I love you guys!
