We arrived at the Airbnb place yesterday. When we left it was raining hard enough for the E4 trip to be an adventure of its own but the rest of the travel to Barcelona was not so exciting. Even the Ryanair landing was ok.

Since we messed up and finalized the check in before assigning our seats, Ryan Air placed us as far away as they could on the plane. Luckily the neighbour to Mihiri immediately realized the benefits of not being next to a potentially 3h wailing kid and therefore exchanged her seat with mine.

After walking around a bit in Barcelona we found the apartment we were supposed to be at. We were circling the wrong address for a while until we managed to get connected to Internet and figure out the right one.

Anyway, as a bit of a surprise to me (I'm allergic to cats) Mihiri had booked a room in an apartment where three cats already lived. The apartment is quite central and has a balcony. The balcony gives a good way of being outside the room which is preferred. Apparently the earlier guest (or possibly the cats) has been eating chocolate cookies all over the floor because Mihiriis socks became gray with black spots after walking a few minutes on the floor. The kitchen has a patina of grease all over everything, and as icing on the cake there's cat hair everywhere. But at least the view is nice. If you like building sites.

We need to watch Isak all the time in the flat; the wall outlets are not child safe (and guess who tried to poke the keys into one about five minutes after arrival?) and there's four floors to fall down from the balcony. So far the cats haven't freaked out and attacked, but they'll soon have reason too if I know Isak.  

Oh and there's no lock on the bathroom door (or the room door). Why would you need one? We're all friends here, right? The traffic on the street below will give a big city feeling which is nice (as long as you can sleep with it).

Thursday

The day started with breakfast at a small coffee shop. Continental breakfast consisted, in this case, of coffee (of course), bacon, egg and cut white bread. Butter is largely unknown in Barcelona and hence we got none.

Today we visited Sagrada Familia. This is basically a church construction that has gone wild, and the architects genius can possibly be measured in how insane the building looks at a first glance. We went there by means of Metro and did not have to spend any time in the queue since we had bought our tickets on-line (well, Mihiri the travel-Agent had done that, I just lolled along).

We took the audio tour and got a small digital play-box-thingy each (not Isak, he would have eaten it). You are then supposed to walk to each one of 7 numbered stations, enter the station number in the box and press play. Simple enough.

After wandering around gaping and staring at the ceiling we visited the museum and eventually emerged trough the exit on the front again. It was a crowded experience. After a bit of discussion (including the less known issue of how Old Patrik becomes Grumpy Old Patrik when hungry) we visited the world famous and popular restaurant that was amazingly close, BK, where we were served burgers and two buckets of coca cola. Huge buckets.

We now had enough energy to go and play a little at a playground (while Mihiri planned the rest of the day and wether we should spend it on a bus or not). Kamakazie-Isak soon figured out how to open the gate to the playground (from the inside), took aim and rushed towards the most trafficked street he could see. Luckily all that coca cola meant I could run just as fast and I cought up with him just before he was about to attack the cars coming at us at high speed. He then resolved to fill the slide on the playground with sand (evidentially inspiring other kids to do the same).

Mihiri came up with a plan to visit la rambla, so we took the tube again and ended up outside some kind of crowded marketplace which you could not clearly say were indoors or outdoors. They sold mostly juice and meat (odd combination but it seem to work for them). After some walking around we ended up on la rambla were Isak now insisted in that he should walk by himself (he mostly walk randomly and in circles but he is magnetically drawn to cars in high speed). The latter forced us to carry him (listening to wild protests).

Mihiri eventually got a bit tired of the flailing and screaming Isak so we set off to find a place to buy a coffee, at an angular direction to the most crowded street, using the less well known theory that the tourist traps are less frequent the farther away you get from the crowd. Since we didn't know the area we aimlessly walked around which got us to some abandoned alleyways where Mihiri correctly reminded me that we were in the wrong place and that it was not surprisingly my fault. We eventually found just the kind of cafe we were looking for but that was possibly down to pure luck. Well it was.

Now we went back to la rambla to have a family portrait done. Well we didn't include Isak. This was a caricature drawing. The painter smoked some suspicious stuff so possibly he didn't think it was anything strange with his drawings and perhaps was a bit mystified to why people had so much fun about them. He also admitted to have been married to a Norwegian and told us that since both Norwegian and Danish people talked about how funny Swedes were there must be some truth about it.

Friday

We had bought some bread-stuff from a nearby supermarket so this morning breakfast was tea and bread-stuff (some kind of cross-breed between candy and bread).

We walked to Gaudí's Casa Milà - La Pedrera. This was about half an hour walk (passing six lane roads! Wow). Anyway we got there eventually and went up to the roof as the tour started there. Again we had audio boxes around our necks, except Isak who made his own audio. For Isak it was a nice playground with lots of steps to crawl up and down and frighten people. It's a good viewpoint and the architecture is very unusual (and typical Gaudi). You get an impression that the whole roof has melted - there are hardly any sharp edges anywhere. The chimneys and ventilation shafts were artfully concealed (or at least they didn't look like boring pipes).

We continued trough the attic and then visited an apartment, preserved with some sample old furniture.

Then we went to a park (Park Güell), and arrived two hours before the tickets allowed entry. So we managed to almost get lost (kind of - we walked for a long time in the wrong direction), found a playground for Isak (he is happy as long as there is a swing) and then found the entry to the exhibition part of the park. Gaudi had been at work here too, or possibly the Hobbits, judging from the look of the buildings.

Aftwer we had been bumped around sufficiently by the crowd we escaped and navigated by bus to La rambla to eat (and drink Sangria). Then we went home.

Saturday

This was a bus day. All the way. We started the morning with breakfast at the balcony, then walked to Plaça de Catalunya to get on the hop-on-hop-off bus. The one day ticket cover two circuit (lines), green and orange. If you stop at a lot of places a two day ticket is recommended, but we just had one day so we spent most of it on the bus, trying to get the headphones to work (if they work Isak pulls them out so basically it's a lost cause anyway).

On the red line we jumped off at a viewpoint close to a fancy hotel (Mira Mar Hotel?). Isak wanted to swim in the fountain. Patrik did not think that was a good idea.

After completing the orange circuit we went on the green line and hopped off at a fish restaurant (the bus tour gave a discount). There we had a seafood paella + calamaris. Isak had baby food and also ate two balloon swords.

Sunday

Today was our last day and we spent most of it in a central park called Parc de la Ciutadella.