Moment by Moment: Catch-up...

So I realize I haven't really posted anything in a long time. And I have done some interesting things since my birthday. So I will break them down into a few different posts.

I will start with my trip to Barcelona, Spain in April:

7 women, 1 week, no plan. That pretty much sums up the trip. Every other year my aunt and some of her friends go on an international trip no husbands and no kids. Two years ago was the first time I went and it was a trip to France. This year it was to Barcelona. There is never any real itinerary just an arrival date, a departure date, and a list of things we would like to do while we are there.

This year we all flew stand-by on Delta buddy passes, which also meant we were eligible for business class upgrades on the trans-continental flight...which we got! Yep, I got to fly first class from JFK to Barcelona. Check one more thing off my bucket list. Thank you Lisa!

The place we stayed for the week, found on homeaway.com was amazing. It was a loft that belonged to an artist. He lives in Barcelona part time, and New York part time, but also has home's in Mexico and Germany. Crazy!! The loft itself was awesome, pulling into the neighborhood and seeing our door, a little scary:

Yep, that's the door to get into our place. It also was on the top floor, which was not mentioned online anywhere. So we all had to carry our bags up 54 stairs, no elevator. Such is the European way though. We were about 10 minute walk from the Mediterranean Sea and 15 minute walk from downtown Barcelona, so location wise was pretty good. And although there was graffiti everywhere we learned that in Barcelona it is an accepted form of artwork and many business allow it on their doors and such.

Barcelona was a beautiful city. And while it is a city, you can walk to most places because it is very compact, at least downtown Barcelona is.

The major market, La Boqueria, was quite an adventure, and so colorful!! This particular picture shows candies and nuts and gummi treats. There were other booths that sold fruit, or meat, or bread. And it was insanely packed!! Better watch your belongings walking through here (Barcelona is one of the worst places to get pick-pocketed). Luckily none of us had anything taken the entire week we were there. But we were all very vigilant and had bought purses with zippers before we left.

One day we went to Freixenet, a "winery" where they make sparking wine, aka chapagne, but in Barcelona it is called "cava". We had a great time. Our group did the tour with a load of wine buyers from Hong Kong. It was quite interesting hearing their translator.

One thing we were going to try and do while we were there was go to a Barcelona soccer game. There was one on the night we arrived but after only getting 4 hours of sleep and the time change and the traveling none of us felt like going. Not to mention that soccer games in Europe don't start to like 10 pm! Everything is just done a little different. We did however go out to the stadium and take a tour. It was pretty cool. I'm not a huge soccer fan but since my husband and one of my brother's plays it was kinda interesting, and I got to tell them all about when I came home.