A Very Eventful Weekend

Our Barcelona adventure was quite spectacular, but certainly had a few misfortunes along the way. 

The beautiful Barcelona coastline

This trip was actually a last minute decision. A few weeks ago, we realized that Mike had a day off and we were going to make the most out it. We pulled up a map and looked to see what was within reasonable driving distance. When our eyes fell on Barcelona we were thrilled about the prospect of adding another country to our list for this trip. According to Google maps the distance is only an 8-hour drive, and that is nothing to our road-trip seasoned minds. 

We gathered a couple of intern friends and decided to carpool to Spain. Unfortunately, we were not able to snag the same Mercedes rental car for this trip, instead got a little Ford Focus hatchback.  The trip was easy and event free… for the first hour anyway and it all went downhill from there.

The unfinished La Sagrada Familia, perhaps the most
incredible cathedral I've ever seen!

Out of nowhere, Luke, who is an expert road tripper and has never shown any symptoms of inheriting his parents comically severe motion sickness issues, became a fountain of vomit (sorry for the those that have sensitive stomachs). At that moment, the whole car froze; the poor interns were sitting next to Luke in the back with motionless looks crossed between disgust and utter bewilderment. The vomit kept coming and there was nothing any of us could do. Mike couldn’t pull over immediately as the shoulder was to narrow so we kept driving, Luke kept spewing, the interns were frozen and I ran through every single scenario on how we could remedy this situation.

Oh the charm of each little street

We were able to find a safe place to pull over and clean up. Poor Luke was so confused at what had just happened, he had never thrown up before this trip, only small spit ups when he was little. We got back into the slightly sickeningly sweet smelling car and began to drive until we quickly realized we had left one of Luke’s books on the roof of the car, and our friend had left her phone on the car. They ran back to see if the items were salvageable, but sadly the phone and the book were sacrificed to the great open road. 

The trip continued at a slow pace as we hit traffic every few hours. We finally arrived, 3 hours later than expected, but that was no matter… We had arrived in beautiful Barcelona!

We checked into our hotel and quickly realized we didn’t have our camera. We guessed it had fallen out of the car during the terrible vomiting event of the morning and we didn’t notice until it was too late. Luckily, we live in the technology golden age and had our iPhones readily available to take pictures.

Luke enjoying a nice glass of horchata

Enjoying the beautiful parks of Barcelona

 The first night in Barcelona, we came across a Texas BBQ joint. Now normally when traveling, Mike and I are all about diving into the culture and experiencing the local cuisine, but after being away from home for 6 weeks, this restaurant was heaven sent! I was nearly in tears eating fairly authentic Texan nachos and a burger. Although, the takeaway packaging was quite interesting. The bags in the picture below actually contain my burger and Mike's ribs... very strange but oh so good!

Luke enjoying the Big Bus Tour

Arc de Triomf in Spain 

Cathedral de Santa Eulalia

Magic fountains and the Art Museum

Casa Battlo

Christopher Columbus memorial 

Fabulous Paella

Enjoying the Barcelona beach

Mike's happy place! 

In one weekend we managed to destroy 2 phones (Mike went swimming with the other one), lose a camera, shred a book, and permanently alter the smell of a rental car, but in the end it was all worth it! Barcelona is a city that deserves much more time than a quick weekend and I am quite certain Mike and I will return.