Jenn and I have wanted to move to Europe for a long time. We talked about it years ago, but it had always been one of those vague goals that we would accomplish someday.

When Jenn’s employer offered her a contract that would relocate her to Ireland, we thought the perfect opportunity had arrived. We immediately sold our motor home- (we owned it for exactly eight weeks).  It was hard. The RV had been one of our alternative goals. When we bought the RV in August, it didn’t look like we’d move overseas soon, so we bought one for Walnut and I to travel around.  We planned to pick Jenn up from the nearest airport and see the great sights in the States.

After the relocation offer, we started working on downsizing, selling our things. Over the next few fall months, I sold both of my motorcycles. We sold many things that had been important to us. A few months pass and contract negotiations break down. We were devastated at first. Here was our opportunity -and we sold our things- and it fell apart. We had made a lot of progress getting rid of our stuff and it seemed crazy to change course at this point.

We pushed forward in spite of no longer having a specific job offer. We sold our house, our car, just about everything. My sister generously agreed to store some things for us, so we moved some crates of pictures and Jenn’s diplomas to Iowa. We needed to decide where we would go and how to do it. We’d been researching visas in Europe for awhile and couldn’t decide which was easiest or which country would be the most dog friendly. In the end, we said screw it and chose Spain. (We had visited Barcelona two years prior and loved it)

I spent about a month getting the required paperwork together. We would be applying through the Chicago consulate so we followed their instructions. I got a lot of guidance from twobadtourists.com and bucking-the-trend.com. June 10 was our appointment and we received our visas in five weeks. We applied for the non lucrative visa and we will not work for an employer in Spain.

The visa process is pretty straight forward. Everything we needed was listed on the Chicago Spain Consulate website. The hardest part was getting the police reports from the state police. Our local police helped us fill out the history request, which required fingerprints. The history report took 6-8 weeks. Then we had to get the reports stamped with an apostille. The easiest way to get this done is in the Secretary of State office in downtown Chicago. So long as your document has been notarized, they will apostille it for $2.

Most of the documents had to be translated into Spanish. For this, we used an online translation service. There may have been a cheaper method, but the company we used was fast and they included stamps and signatures (I read that Spanish bureaucracy loves stamps and signatures).

The apartment we rented from vrbo.com for our first month sent us a lease agreement for our visa application. We bought health insurance from worldnomads.

All told, it was a little stressful because I set up our visa appointment with about 7 weeks notice, then tried to get our criminal history reports. I got mine in the mail a week before our appointment but Jenn’s (which was sent off in the same envelope) had not arrived. When calling to follow up, we discovered it hadn’t been completed but the state police offered to finish it and we could drive to Joliet-30 min away- and pick it up. (This was done the day before our visa appt). All the apostilles were completed the morning of our appointment with no time to spare.

We took the train back to Barcelona early so that we could try once more for La Segrada Familia.  It was worth it.  We did the audio tour and they give you a player and a headset.  I would recommend it, it goes into a lot of detail and helps to make sure you see everything inside and outside the building.

Later that evening we went to Tablao Cordoba for dinner and a flamenco show.  The food was ok and the show was pretty good, even though it felt a little stiff.  The performers were great.  There were four women and one man dancing at different points in the show.  When it was over and everyone was clapping for the performers, Jenn remarked how the one guy got so much more applause even though he danced a lot less (and with with somewhat less ‘show’).  The ladies that had performed also noticed this and made a face to one another during his applause.  It was pretty funny.  I had to fly home the next morning while Jenn stayed and worked for a week in Barcelona.

Today we took a full day tour of Toledo.  It was great!  I know it was a super touristy town, but it was old and beautiful.

We started by touring the Mosque of Cristo de La Luz.  200 or so years after it was built it was re-purposed as a chapel and the apse was built.

We went on to the Catedral de Toledo.  Lots of gold decorations and even a treasure room.  The Transparente reminded me of Bernini’s work in Italy.  They built a window or skylight in the wall so that sunlight shines directly through onto the sculptures.  During morning mass, the shafts of sunlight move across the piece making it appear as if it were ascending to heaven.

Next we headed to Santa Maria la Blanca, which had been a synagogue before it was used as a church.

On to San Juan de Reyes monastery.  They had all kinds of crazy stuff on the walls here.  Monkeys, dragons, two legged winged opossum, Donkey from Shrek (before he was famous)- weird stuff.

On the outside of the monastery hung chains from the Christian prisoners that were liberated from Granada.

After the monastery we headed off for lunch.  I suggested we walk into the nearest store and ask where THEY go to eat lunch.  It happened to be a store selling handmade leather purses.  Two hundred euros later we had a suggestion for lunch!  It was a beautiful city.

We purchased a few damascene jewelry pieces and headed back to Madrid.  We got back and still wanted to see the Rene Sofia so we hurried over there.  Housed in this museum is Picasso’s Guernica.  Standing in front of that painting I really got a sense of pain and suffering.  It was interesting to me because it is one of the strongest emotional responses I’ve had from a painting.

They also had a few Dali pieces that I enjoyed.  You saw a different painting if you moved and viewed the Dali from a different spot.

After arriving in Madrid, we took a taxi to our hotel a few miles away.  Hotel Europa was right off Plaza Puerta del Sol and was a great spot for walking to most of the places we wanted to see.  We slept in, got some food and wandered the plazas before getting a hop on- hop off bus tour of the city.  Sadly, we didn’t take any photos today!  The bus was nice in that we could sit for a while but the audio is always off pace from the bus and it was very difficult to find the landmarks being described.

There were two loops for the bus and we rode them both.  It was a day of riding around and just soaking in the feel of Madrid.  It was a nice day for it and we saw a lot, even if it wasn’t too memorable.

Later, we took a guided tour of the Prado museum.  The guide for Prado was very fast but we zoomed through the museum and saw all the highlights.  That included Francisco de Goya’s Black Paintings which I found particularly poignant.  After the tour, we explored the parts of the museum we missed.  While viewing El Lavatorio I was asked to be in a promotional video for the Prado, because I was tall (I’m not that tall).  

The Goya paintings are from wikipedia and are listed as public domain.

That night, we took a walking tapas tour around Madrid with Andres.  We met with a small group, about 8 of us, and walked to 4 or 5 different bars.  At each location we had several large plates of tapas in which that particular bar excelled.  We had a few kinds of chorizo, iberico ham, serrano ham, manchego cheese, and several other items.  It was really good food and we were quite full when the night was over.  Andres had left several bottles of wine at each bar in advance- I think the group drank ten bottles!  That’s probably my blurry hand trying to get more chorizo.

 

Jenn had been wanting to do a wine tour in Spain but the tours we tried to book didn’t run on the days we had available.  We managed to find a tour last night and booked it but never got confirmation on the booking.  We had to find the office out of which the tour ran and convince them to honor our booking.  this turned out to be pretty easy and we caught the bus for our tour.

We went to Jean Leon winery first.  They explained how phylloxera destroyed most of Europe’s vineyards in the late 1800s to early 1900s.  To combat this insect, they learned to graft grape vines to hardier root stock.  The winery had a small lot of different grape vines as their canary in the coal mine.

We went to Torres next.  They had a wine and cheese pairing for us.  This was great because I don’t really drink wine, but I am a fan of cheese!  The pairings really did change the flavor of the wine, and it was interesting to compare how the flavors worked with (or against) one another.

After Torres, we went to Freixenet.  This was a huge operation and their tour had projection screens and a tram we rode for much of it.  Quite a production.  Jenn might have been most impressed with their tasting room sign and looked for one in the gift shop.

After the wine tour, we were back in Barcelona.  We got some lunch then picked up the fast train to Madrid.  The train was fast, smooth and quiet.  I really think America could benefit from high speed rail.

We got up early and took a regional train to Figueres.  While we were trying to figure out whether we were in the right place or correct platform, a teenage kid presumably asked us (in French?) whether he was on the right platform for Figueres.  He and his friend sat several seats in front of us and they spoke English the entire trip- I think they were Canadian.  I think it’s sad that so few of us Americans are multilingual.

We were heading to Figueres for the Dali Museum.  Once in town, we meandered through a Renaissance festival and looked through the vendor’s stalls.  It was then we had decided we should bring back a suitcase full of chorizo. (turns out customs won’t allow that)  The Dali museum was surreal.  I like Dali’s famous works but there was almost none of that style in his museum.  I was a little disappointed.

After we left the Dali museum we went back through the festival and Jenn bought a necklace made of dried, varnished bananas.  I bought chorizo filled bread.  We needed to make our way back to the train station quickly if we wanted to make the next train but we got a little turned around.  My pigeon Spanish finally paid off.  I saw a family walking down the street and asked “Donde esta el train?”  They tried to explain how to get there but I couldn’t understand.  In the end, they said that was where they were headed so we could just follow them.  When we got back to Barcelona we made another attempt at the Picasso Museum.  We got there too late and they were going to close in an hour so we wouldn’t have time.  Instead, we picked a walking tour from our guidebook and followed it in reverse.  We saw more remnants of Roman wall and walked through more neighborhoods.  

Before we travel to new places, we try to read books set in those places or about those places.  We read the cemetery of forgotten books series and I read Homage to Catalonia, which was about the Spanish civil war.  One of the churches on our walking tour had been bombarded during that war and you could see pock marks from the bombs exploding nearby.

For dinner that night, we went to Els Quatre Gats.  This pub was visited by a lot of artists in it’s early life and was mentioned in some of the books we read prior to our arrival.  We had tapas and most of the food was very good.  Especially chorizo.  Spanish chorizo is the best.

 

We got up fairly early and took the subway to go see Parc Guell.  The subway system in Barcelona is clean, fast and cheap.  We tried to use it any chance we could.  To get to the entrance to the park we ascended something like a dozen outdoor escalators bringing you to the gates with a lovely bit of graffiti to greet the tourist. (I am disappointed I don’t have a picture, but this ‘motto’ was one I repeated to Jenn all over Spain)

After entering the park, we walked down quite a way to reach the ticket office and gate that leads into the inner park.

Gaudi had two gate houses built and they remind me of gingerbread houses.

The park was well groomed and seemed like a nice place to sit around and enjoy the weather.  You could see the Balearic Sea from the upper platform.

After we left Parc Guell, we walked to La Sagrada Familia and tried to get in (we tried yesterday but they were closing).  Again, they had no tickets so I said screw it but Jenn insisted we come back another day. (good thing, too)

La Sagrada Familia is a church that Gaudi started in the 1800’s and it has continuously been under construction since.  They are still working on it today and have a lot left to do.  It is a huge, impressive structure.  I especially liked the statues on the Passion facade done by Subirachs.

 

Since we couldn’t get tickets we wandered into the nearby park where about 100 senior ladies were knitting lace.  That was something I’d never seen before.  Afterwards, we continued wandering around Barcelona and we saw a man with a homemade carousel.  It was powered by a foot pedal that turned a large wheel.  I love stuff like that and was trying to ask him questions about it but there was a language barrier.  I really need to work on my Spanish!

We had lunch, went back to the hotel for a short siesta and headed off for a futbol game.  The game was unlike an american sporting event in many ways.  We were less than 5 minutes late but the outside of the stadium was a ghost town.  We bought some Barca hats and climbed up to the top where our seats were.  The stadium was packed- there were very few seats left unfilled.  There was no obnoxious beer guy walking around.  Once during the second half a guy with a water tray walked up the stairs showed off his wares but he never yelled because he didn’t want to disrupt anyone’s enjoyment of the game.

After we got back to the hotel we asked Oliva (the owner) what we should do with the evening.  She suggested we go to the fountain, so we did.  Near the fountain we sat at a bench with a couple old fellas.  We tried hard to converse with them but I think they spoke Catalan so they didn’t even really understand much of my Spanish.  We were hoping to have dinner in the area but it turns out there were almost no options, so we ended up having sandwiches from a little trailer in the park.  The food everywhere in Barcelona was surprisingly good.  You almost couldn’t go wrong, every place we went had at minimum pretty good food.

The fountain turns on at 2100 with lights and music.  We sat in the park and had hot chocolate while watching the blasting water.  It was a striking display of light and water jets.

 

 

We arrived in Barcelona in the morning but we were pretty tired from flying.  We did a little walking and saw parts of the old Roman wall in the Gothic Quarter before wandering into Santa Maria del Mar.

The church was a prime example of what you’d think of when you thought of a Gothic church.  There was a fire in 1936 that burned much of the interior.  I don’t think they ever redecorated.

We wandered down some neighborhood streets and had lunch before heading back for a nap.  We were trying to get to the Picasso Museum but we never made it.

That night we had a tour of Gaudi’s La Predrera.  That was very cool and I think that doing the tour at night made it that much better.  Much of the building was hand made (on site even).  Door frames, handles, railings and even the bricks often had handprints of their maker in them.

After the tour, we walked back to our hotel and took a few pictures of Casa Batllo.

Our hotel (Hostal Oliva) was in a great location and the owner was nice and always tried to be super helpful.  Her English was pretty much non existent and my Spanish is awful so it was comical trying to communicate.  The only bummer about our accommodations was the smell of sewer gas from the shower.  If we kept the windows open all the time it would clear out, so it was something we could handle.  We were on the fourth floor of the building and had to take a small wooden elevator to get up.