Happy Birthday, Reprise

Day 22 (February 23, 2011)

Itinerary: 3 trains to Marseille, France

Today is the first of our two travel days to get back home to our respective countries. This of course means that I don't have many exciting stories to share with you. We had a very smooth series of train rides from Barcelona to Marseille. The two transfers were easy and before we knew it, we were back at the hotel in Marseille picking up the big, black action packer/care package I packed 3 weeks ago.

Tonight we opened up the care package so that Mark could finally open his birthday presents. Rather than carry around the weight on vacation, we left them here in the hotel in storage. Mark had fun trying to guess what was in each package before he opened it and I had fun trying to remember what was in there. He now has lots of books to read and some new toys to play with.

We tried to hook up with Wii for some evening gaming, but somewhere along the way the converter must have been fried somehow. We blew the fuse for the whole hotel room when we plugged it in. After restoring the power, we blew the fuse again trying again a second time. Haha, I'm sure the hotel staff wasn't too happy with us after that. Mark will see if the converter is the actual problem when he gets back to camp. Who knows. I don't think I'll plug the Wii into any important sockets right away either just in case it's that power supply. We used everything just fine in Barcelona, though on the last night none of the outlets were working in the room when we left. We must have left a wake of blown fuses.

Dinner at the hotel was pretty standard and we struggled with going back to French. I'm still stuck in Spanish mode and Mark says all the French he's learned over the past few months went poof out of his head. Gracias, I mean, Merci. Si, I mean, oui.

Tomorrow I need to be up early at 5am to catch my flight and we will have our sad goodbye. Leaving my husband in a hotel room to catch a flight to a different country is not really the best end to a vacation. We had an absolute blast together over the past 3 weeks. It was easy to forget about real life and just live in the moment, be it on the beach, or in an orbital hotel room in the sky.

We really had great weather on vacation. I can only think of one rainy day. For the most part it was only chilly in the evenings and even then only in Barcelona did it get down in the 40s. Many of our island days were sunny, 80 degrees and breezy.

Thank you Facebook, Dave, and Bobby especially for providing us with the idea to go to the Canary Islands. We probably would have never have thought of it on our own.

Flamenco

Day 21 (February 22, 2011)

Itinerary: Sleep in and play Wii, Purchase train tickets for tomorrow, Mirador Colom, Mark's haircut, Picasso walking tour through city and museum, window shopping, dinner and Flamenco show.

Today feels like our last real day of vacation. After this we will be traveling, first to Marseille via train and then home to our respective countries. So, to celebrate, we decided to stay in and play Wii all morning. The tv in our orbital hotel room is the largest we've had this trip and the bed was very comfortable as well. We won't be able to finish Kirby's Epic Yarn on this trip, but we've had fun trying.

We emerged from the hotel around lunch time and first went in search of rail tickets. A few days ago we tried to buy our rail tickets to Marseille at the Spanish Renfe ticket office but were told that they were unable to sell us the French portion of the trip. Tourist information was not very helpful and could not give us the name of a travel agency on the premises, so we went back to the ticket office to try again.

Today's ticket office attendant was incredibly helpful. He told us that we should buy our tickets at the next group of windows over. Our number was 297 and they were serving number 230! We were in for a bit of a wait, but we need to get this done, so we went to the cafeteria to find lunch/breakfast. After maybe 30-45 minutes we had our rail tickets in hand. I was able to ask for the tickets in Spanish, and answer the few preliminary questions, but when we finally purchased the tickets, our ticket guy went on and on about something. I didn't know what he wanted but it seemed as if I could not pay by credit card. I started putting everything he might want in front of him, cash, credit card, passports, etc. We were intrigued to see him take both credit card and cash, but we did get tickets in return, so it must have worked out. It turns out that we could pay by credit for the Spanish tickets, but only by cash for the French tickets.

On the way to our next errand (Mark's haircut), we stopped at the Mirado de Colom or a tall pillar in a roundabout on the coast dedicated to Columbus. A tiny elevator inside that held about 3 people took us to the top. I was actually quite amazed to find out there was a view at the top since it looked no bigger than the Egyptian obelisks we've seen in France and Italy that were solid. The lighting at this time off day was not optimal for seeing the statue of Columbus at the top, but he was up there.

The tourist desk helpers here were baffled when we asked them where Mark could get a haircut. We won asking a question they'd never gotten before. At first they thought we might be asking for a hat, but a little "snip, snip" on my part got them on Google looking for a spot. They pulled in a 3rd person that used to live in the area and we had a destination to head towards. Even better it was right near our meeting spot for our 4pm Picasso tour.

Mark was happy with his Italian cut, and he's now happy with his Spanish cut as well. We realized we didn't get a photo of the cut, so you'll just have to imagine him with shorter hair. And now, with Mark's head feeling lighter than air, we met our walking tour at Plaza Catalunya.

Barcelona Walking Tours took us on a 2 hour tour through the old part of Barcelona to point out all the buildings that were important to Picasso's career, and then through the Picasso Museum here in town. The museum mostly has works from his early career and childhood as the biggest donation to the museum were all the paintings in his Barcelona home that his dad had saved. He painted on average 2 paintings a day from age 10 until age 93. It is really quite amazing. His father, also a painter and then an art teacher, felt from the time that Picasso was 9 that he would be a world-famous painter and worked hard to give him every opportunity possible to reach that goal. On the walking tour we saw several of the art galleries were Picasso had exhibits at age 16 and where several of his apartments were. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and we had a good experience on the tour.

At this point it was only 6pm and our dinner reservations were not until 9:15pm. So, we improvised. First we headed to the Museu de la Xocolata, or Chocolate Museum. Mmmmmm, Xocolata is their slogan. I tend to agree. Amazingly the museum had huge sculptures made of chocolate. I wouldn't believe that chocolate sculptures would last for very long, but they must have done something to keep them. We skipped the actual museum part since they were closing soon and instead first watched the end of a chocolate sculpture class. They made airplanes, trucks, and other figures out of chocolate and left them out. I was able to take photos through the glass and one student saw me taking photos and brought over more chocolate statues for me to take photos of. =)

We hung out in the chocolate shop to eat our candy bars and smell the free smells until they kicked us out at closing time. Now we can say that we closed down a chocolate shop. Mmmmm, chocolate.

Time to wander and kill time. The direction we picked to walk turned out to be a good one for window shopping. Also, Mark found another Dr. Pepper to enjoy as we walked. We were highly amused at an advertised Inca shop that seemed to be full of stereotypical Native American items. The streets were crowded at this hour by both tourists and locals. The weather was down in the low 50s, so there was a chill in the air, but while moving around we stayed warm. Store hours are very interesting around here. In the afternoon shops and stores are closed for the siesta/lunch hour from about 1:30-4 and now later in the evening everything was open for business. Some places decide to close whenever they want to, others pick a day to be closed, and some places are open all the time.

Eventually we took the metro and wandered up Montjuic hill towards Olympic Village where our flamenco restaurant was located. Our reservations provided us free entry into the Olympic Village, or Poble Espanyol de Barcelona. It was originally built in the early 1900s for a World's Exhibition and was kept and then later used as Olympic Village for the 1992 Olympics. One of the museums we would have visited if we had more time was the Olympic Museum here. At this time of night the Poble Espanyol was deserted. We felt alone in the world until a huge group of young travelers gathered and hung out near us for a while.

Entry to our restaurant was not until 9:15, but at 9 I was cold and ready to go inside. Luckily there was a little heated bar area to the side where we could wait. We had pre-ordered the tapas menu and had about 6 dishes of various tapas come to our table. There was a plate of Italian sausages, bread, cubes of very hard cheese, then some chilies that tasted very much like hatch chillies but were much much smaller, some battered and fried fish of some sort, and some french fries. With the crema de Catalonia (much like creme brulee) for dessert this was plenty of food. We were on the second level of Tablao de Carmen and had a great view of the flamenco show downstairs. Several singers, a guitar player, and several dancers entertained us for the evening. Overall, this was an excellent way to round out and end our vacation.

We walked home and arrived just before the doors closed at midnight. Tonight we pack and tomorrow we take about 3 trains back to Marseille. Happy Vacation indeed!

Arriving home

Day 23 (February 24, 2011)

Itinerary:  Joanna has a 6:40am flight too Amsterdam, then a 10:40am flight to Houston arriving at 2pm, CST.  Mark has a 9:00am fliight to Annaba arriving at 10:25am, CET.

We had a very sad morning today when I woke at 5am to say goodbye to Mark.  We have such an incredible time together that it's hard to remember that we were apart for 8 weeks before this.  And now, we shall spend another 8 weeks going our own way.  But we shall be together again in April. 

After traveling with Mark for the past 3 weeks it is now strange going to the airport without him.  But, I must catch my 6:40am flight to Amsterdam where I will connect to a flight to Houston.  The  check in line for luggage was long and I picked the longest line of course out of 3 choices.  I much prefer the airlines that have just one long line and multiple desks rather than the Marseille airport where you have to pick a line for each attendant.  I went through security behind several airport workers who were scanning bags of food through the xray machine.  I didn't even connect the fact that if I was following the food into the terminal, there would be no food for me to buy once inside.  No breakfast before the plane for me. 

We boarded the plane on time, but then had to sit at the gate for about 30 minutes as the pilot informed us that the weather was terrible in Amsterdam with lots of mist and temperatures at 3 degrees C.  So, we sat.  Finally we took off and I slept most of the way just waking up for breakfast.

I thought they were handing out wrapped muffins, but the breakfast was actually an egg and cheese omlet in a little bread sandwich.  This trip is the first time I've flown KLM, and I have to say that other than Singapore Airlines, this airline has some of the best food.  I've been very happy with my KLM experiences.

En-route to Amsterdam the pilot once again informed us that the weather was terrible and we'd have to circle in a holding area for a while.  He listed a bunch of connecting flights that passengers would not make.  According to the pilot, I could still make my connection, but I'd have to run.  While we circled, I saw other planes up in the air circling as well.  This is the first time I really remember looking out the window of a plane and seeing more than one other plane in the sky with us. 

It felt as if we must be very high off the ground as there was a blanket of clouds beneath us, but the pilot told us we were finally landing and the landing gear came out.  The  next second I knew, the plane was on the ground!  I looked outside to see the terrible Amsterdam weather.  We landed in a fog of pea soup.  From my seat in the plane I could just barely make out the ground and I was amazed that we made it to the  runway.  The airport was no where in sight of course.

We touched ground around 9:30 and I was off the plane and in the bus to the airport after 9:40am.  My boarding time was 9:40 and my flight was at 10:40.  The Amsterdam airport is very large and I still had to go through passport control! 

Our bus finally arrived at the gate and we all burst out running to the computers where I could see that my Houston flight was boarding and a 20 minute walk away.  It's neat here because the computer screens give information on how long the walk is to each flight listed.  I love data!

I ran and ran and found a horde of people trying to push through passport control.  I was relieved to see them open another line.  My flight was still listed as boarding.  Now it's after 10am and I'm still 17 minutes from my gate.  And the line is creeping by.  I couldn't believe that my Houston flight was going to take off on time in this fog. 

I stood hopping from foot to foot as passport control asked me about my trip to Spain and if I had fun.  Then I ran to gate E24.  Security check was right at the gate.  Once through security people were just starting to get on board.   Phew, I made it!  I can only imagine that "boarding" meant going through the security right before the gate as it's been blinking "boarding" ever since my first flight landed.

Boarding the aircraft was very efficient.  There was a tarmac going to the back of the plane and one towards the front.  I have a whole row of 4 seats in the middle of the plane to myself.  I like to sit in the back of the plane as there is a higher probablility of getting a row to myself.  Goal achieved.

At this point we just sat here on the tarmac waiting for the plane to be fueled.  Then the pilot came on the air and mentioned that due to the fog, we'd be sitting here at least another 45 minutes.  So why did we board the plane?  I could be sitting in the terminal using the free wifi the Amsterdam airport provides.  I don't think we took off until after 11:30.  The flight attendants were very nice while we sat here.  We got drinks and snacks at least. 

The flight went smoothly after take off.  I didn't get as much sleep as I would have hoped, but I'll sleep tonight.  The next week will be pretty busy for me as I catch back up with regular life.  Thanks for reading my blog/journal.  I keep the journal mainly for myself to keep track of what we  do and where we've been, but it's nice to share it with others.

I've made it to the Houston airport and soon I'll be home.  Mark says he made it home fine as well.

Until the next vacation....signing off.

Umbrella Tour

Day 20 (February 21, 2011)

Itinerary: 9am Gaudi Tour including Park Guell and Temple de La Sagrada Familia, buffet lunch, Museu Musica, siesta in hotel room, dinner at Xaica Petit

I'm not sure what made us think that booking a 9am Gaudi tour after a late futbol game last night was a good idea. We had to be up earlier than we wanted to meet our group at Plaza Catalunya for our Gaudi tour. After seeing so many, what we called "umbrella tours" in Italy, we are finally on one. Our tour guide had a bright orange umbrella which she held up so we could find her. We had a whole coach bus for the tour, but only about 10 of us were on the tour, so it felt more private.

The bus drove us along Carrer Gran de Gracia, one of the more expensive streets in Barcelona, and also one of the longest. We passed by two Gaudi apartment buildings. Casa Batllo was our first real introduction to the architecture of Gaudi and we were impressed at his style. Gaudi uses nature as his inspiration for architecture and therefore his buildings do not have many straight lines. Instead the buildings look as if they've grown out of the ground and sprouted windows and doors. Pillars are not always vertical and very often look like branches or trees. We moved on to Casa Mila (La Pedrera) where we learned that Gaudi was not appreciated in his time. His architecture style was considered to different and weird until probably the 1990s when people started to flock to see his buildings.

I fell in love with Gaudi's work when we stopped at Park Guell. Here was a little mountian than Guell purchased with the intent of selling hundreds of plots. He commissioned Gaudi as the architect for his home and the park areas. Well, no one was interested in moving this far from the city, nor were they interested in living near Gaudi's work, so only 3 plots were sold. Guell lived in one, Gaudi in another, and Guell's lawyer in one more. The park itself is very interesting. The roads were built so that the walkway was beneath the elevated road for carriages. With the Gaudi architecture, the park looked more like a fairy land almost. Certainly the walkways seemed to grow out of the ground like trees. Gaudi was considered ahead of his time because he used somewhat environmental concepts when building the park. Most of the stone was taken from that very mountain. Also, large areas would collect rain and store the water inside of pillars and tanks underground. Gaudi used a lot of mosaics in his work as well. Many of the materials in the mosaics were recycled broken bottles or dishes and glassware.

The main entrace to the park held two houses that looked like they belonged to the story Hansel and Gretel. The lighting was all wrong for my photos, but I did pick up a postcard that depicted the houses in the right light.

Our last stop was at the Temple de La Sagrada Familia. Honestly, Mark and I hadn't even put this tourist stop on our radar when we looked at things to do in Barcelona, but here we were and we were impressed. Firstly, and probably most impressive is that the church is still under construction. Work started in the 1880s and most likely will not be completed until 2026. Today all the money going towards the construction is from donations and ticket sales, so the finish date adjusts according to visitor projections. If you are ever in Barcelona, I would recommend visiting this monument to Gaudi. Gaudi was the second architect and main architect on the project. He worked on it from the 1880s until 1926 when he was killed in a tram accident. (We found it ironic that at this point in his life he decided to dislike and never use public transportation and that's what killed him.)

The main entrance isn't even built yet and the interior was just finished in November of 2010. The Pope came and the scaffolding inside was taken down. Today we were in awe. We entered through the side entrance which depicted the birth of Jesus through it's very ornate entry. On the opposite side was an entrance depicting the story of the death of Jesus. The distinct differences in not only birth versus death, but also sculpture and artistic styles on either side were dramatic and hard to describe.

Inside the church, the pillars seemed to be modeled after trees and rose 45 meters high. When the structure is completed, the highest point inside will be 75 meters tall, the tallest interior. Since the interior was essentially just completed, it looked more modern and new. The stained glass especially looked very new and very different from the Italian churches we've been to where most buildings have been restored. Really the only way to describe it is to tell you to come visit. Photos will never show the grandeur of the place.

Our tour essentially ended here and afterwards we ascended up the elevator into one of the 8 towers. There will be 18 towers when the church is finished, but only 8 stand now. From the top we had an incredible view of Barcelona, the tops of the Sangrada Familia and it's fruit sculptures, as well as the construction work in progress. Certainly we paid almost equal attention to all 3 views, but probably a little more attention to the construction than a normal visitor. The fruit bunches at the top here are certainly very different from any Italian churches we've been to. In order to descend, there was a series of spiral staircases. In fact, I would call it a maze of staircases since many times we had options to either continue down the stairs or to cross to a new tower and continue down those stairs. We may not have taken the only route down, but just going down was an adventure in and of itself. There were lots of very tiny and narrow viewpoints along the way.

We found a very decent buffet place for lunch outside where we could get a salad and several servings of vegetables. It always seems to be harder to keep up with our vegetable intake while on vacation. Then, we headed off in the direction of the Museu Musica, or Music Museum. This museum is not very popular, or at least not on a day like today in the off-season. We felt as if we had the whole museum to ourselves. The layout was done very well. Glass cases from floor to ceiling created walls for many rooms in which the music of the instruments on display were playing. This allowed us to listen to many different pieces of music throughout our visit. There were several hundred instruments on display showing a general history of evolution of the instruments used for music. The names were only listed in Spanish, so some of the more obscure instruments are still unknown to us. It was indeed very interesting to see so many types of instruments, however.

The last exhibit in the museum was supposed to be a room full of instruments for us to try. However, the room was mostly empty. We did each get to play the harp, an electric guitar, and a very small and manual operated organ. It was still fun. Throughout the exhibits we were trying to guess what instruments might be in the last room since we've both played a variety already.

At this point it was early evening and being Monday, many other museums in the area were closed or closing, so we went back to the hotel for a little siesta before dinner. During our break we did some research and found both a place to eat tonight and a flamenco dinner show for tomorrow night.

Tonight we headed towards Xaica Petite where we had a long almost 2 hour dinner. I had their pollo asado after a very different shrimp cocktail starter than I've ever had before. Mark ate a steak after an avocado salad starter. We both enjoyed dessert as well as part of the menu.

Tomorrow is our last day in Barcelona and we'll see how much we are able to see.

Park Guell

Hansel and Gretal house in Park Guell

Example of saucers used in mosaics in Park Guell

Inside Sangrada Familia

Side of Sangrada Familia

Goooooooooooooooool

Day 19 (February 20, 2011)

Itinerary: Mercat Boqueria, lunch on La Rambla, purchase tickets for Picasso tour and Gaudi tour, unable to get tickets at Palau de la Musica Catalana, DHUB, find a Dr. Pepper, prepare for futbol game, FC Barcelona futbol match

There is a lot to do in Barcelona! The bed was strewn with tourist brochures and information this morning while we made lists and figured out what we most wanted to see and do and what days and hours these places were open. Not everything is open on Sunday, many places are closed on Mondays, and Tuesdays, most, but not all places are open. The trick was to see if we could fill Sunday and Monday with museums and activities so Tuesday was not jam-packed with everything. Luckily, it didn't take too long to come up with a decent plan of action.

The first place we visited was the Mercat Boqueria, which was actually closed now, but the street, La Rambla was full of markets as well. Most markets here were selling flowers and plants including some adorable little cacti. We realized we weren't interested in spending too much time here, so we grabbed a quick lunch and headed up to the Plaza Catalunya to purchase tickets to various tours over the next couple days. We grabbed a Gaudi tour for tomorrow and a Picasso tour for Tuesday.

We struck out on our trip to Palau de la Musica Catalana. No more tickets were available for today and tomorrow didn't look good either. In fact, there was only one ticket for a noon tour and then one ticket for the 2pm tour. So, we'll skip this attraction for this trip. Photos in the gift shop were enough to satisfy us for the time being.

Next stop on our list was the DHUB or design museum. It was much harder to find that I would have hoped as it was buried around several corners of very small streets. Our tourist map was not that detailed and we walked up and down the street several times looking for the right turn. Luckily, we stumbled across it with plenty of time for a visit.

There were 3 exhibitions today. One was a very interesting exhibition on 3D printing techniques. It's actually really hard to describe except to say with a computer program you can draw a 3D shape and then it will be printed with a special material at whatever size you want. We saw some intriguing forms that had been printed on a 3D printer. There are many different kinds of 3D printing. One video told us of research going into 3D tissue printing so one day doctors can simply print someone a new organ. Wow, now that's more advanced than I can comprehend. =) Technology is amazing. Another exhibition took us through some 3D gemotrical shapes and sculptures from several design contests of college-aged kids. And the last exhibition was not very memorable, because now I can't even think of what it was. In any case, we enjoyed our time at DHUB.

On the way back to our hotel room, we saw someone walking down the street holding a can of Dr. Pepper! I had been planning to bring Mark a bottle of Dr. Pepper, but in the end I was unable to fit it in the luggage. So, now we went in search of a shop that carried Mark's favorite soda, usually only available in the US and Texas. We found one! A little shop had cans of Dr. Pepper bottled in the UK. Mark and I both agreed that it tasted just like the US Dr. Pepper.

Both Mark and I were very excited about our planned evening watching FC Barcelona futbol. We headed out towards the stadium with the intent of finding dinner along the way. Well, for some reason we couldn't find any open places to eat. Finally we grabbed some quick sandiches. I guess the Barcelona crowd doesn't eat around the stadium.

The stadium and the game were amazing! First off, in order to purchase the tickets online, we had to order through a 3rd party vendor several days ago on La Palma island. The tickets were delivered to our hotel room for us to pick up. At the time of purchase, the game was nearly sold out and there were no 2 seats next to each other. Mark and I each had a single ticket a few rows away from each other. The place was packed! Official attendance was over 83,300 people at the game and boy did it sound like it. At the start of the gave, ever single fan stood up and sang their team song. There was a big cheering section behind our team's goal that stood the entire game and lead the cheers. One guy even had a bass drum. Many fans had those plastic horn vuvuzelas as well. Mark and I are used to a more apethetic Rice crowd at sporting events. Here, there was not one apathetic person in the place. The fans were yelling, cheering, singing, and the resulting atmosphere was absolutely amazing. I didn't see an empty seat in the house. When FC Barcelona scored their first Gooooooooollllllll, everyone went wild.

Barca, as they are known, won the game and we left knowing many of the Barca cheers. Some cheers are very similar world-wide apparently, with the same starting beat and just different chants. This was a fun night to remember.

Leaving the stands was a spectacle as well. First, we stayed high looking down below as hordes of thousands of people streamed out of the stadium. This was the definition of a sea of people for sure. When we joined the thousands, we found that the people had the right of way here and the 6-lane street was all people walking as the sidewalks were too full to contain all of us. We felt like we were in a march of some sort as we stormed through the streets towards the metro. The metro of course had a line a block long just to go down to the station, so we opted to walk back to our hotel as it wasn't all that far away anyway.

We will remember this night for a long time. Mark is already making plans to find a soccer game up in the UK for us to attend as well.

Hot Chocolate and churros

Mark in his FC Barcelona jersey

Full stadium at the futbol game

Planes, Trains, and Buses

Day 18 (February 19, 2011)

Itinerary: Public Transportation to Barcelona, find dinner in train station

We have reached that point in our 3 week vacation where we can't believe that we still have more vacation time. We are completely spoiled by Mark's rotation schedule now.

Today is a travel day. Bus, plane, and train to get to our hotel in Barcelona. It was a cloudy morning and one of the first cloudy mornings we've seen on the islands. Breakfast was a similar buffet style to yesterday and we had time to spare before our big bus adventure. Here we are on the south side of Tenerife, the most popular area of the islands and we couldn't find a non-stop flight to Barcelona leaving from the south airport.

So, we trekked up to the bus station to spend about 2 hours taking the bus to the north airport. Getting on the bus turned into an adventure. The bus was already full when it pulled up, and not everyone in the line of people at the bus stop was getting on the bus. In front of me, about 4 people got off the bus, but I hammered on and argued with the bus driver to let us stay on. We had a flight to catch after all. =) I didn't really know what he was saying to me, but he took my money and with Mark sitting on the entry steps to the bus and me crammed next to the driver, we took off.

Mark and I both agreed that if we had been in Peru, the bus would have been half as small and held double the people. The bus driver turned away the folks at the next 2 bus stops and eventually we reached the first main stop, the south airport where many people got off. We were able to scoot back to about the halfway point in the bus where we spend the remainder of the 1.5 hour ride standing in the aisle trying not to elbow anyone in the face.

After being crammed in the bus, I expected to have more stories to tell about the ride, but it was actually pretty dull. We all piled out at the Santa Cruz bus station and end of the line to transfer to the bus that would take us to the north airport. The bus pulled up and the driver got out to take his smoke break. Unfortunately, he didn't come back by the time the bus was supposed to leave. It was a good thing we built in time for long bus transfers because we left about 20 minutes late by the time the driver finally came back.

Everything turned out fine since our flight was delayed about 30 minutes anyway. The north airport to Tenerife is small-medium sized so there was no security line. Oh, and no check in line either. We breezed to our gate and waited to hop on the flight.

We are sitting on the plane near a single mom with 2 kids. She has a baby that must only be a month old and a 2-3 year old active little girl as well. We played the game of how many flight attendants does it take to help out when Mom needed to use the bathroom. One flight attendant was handed the baby while she went in. The kid stayed in her seat for about 4 seconds before she hopped out to look for Mom. Just then we hit a bunch of turbulence and the flight attendants tried to get everyone to their seats and seat-belted in. 3 flight attendants tried to coerce the little girl to get back in her seat, while the other stood by with the baby. These Spanair attendants do seem more helpful over all than some US ones I've seen.

Back in Barcelona, we were here early enough to take our time and check out the tourist information stations of maps and ideas for our visit. At this point, we really had no idea what there was to do in the area, so we will be spontaneous while we are here. All we know so far is that we have tickets to Sunday night's futbol match starring the very popular FC Barcelona team.

We came back to the same Barcelo Sants hotel located on top of the main train station, Barcelona Sants. We were happy with our room last time and are equally happy this time around. The hotel is very new and is modeled after rooms that you might have on a space craft. Our room was called the orbital room in which several fake bubble windows depicted what might be outside our space craft and gaves us the atmospheric compositions. The shower and bathroom were both bright white with sliding doors and more like compartments on a submarine or spacecraft as well. The furniture was all very modern and the hallways were dark with colored lights. Probably the best part was the prox card hotel room key that we only had to touch to our door in order to unlock it. No messing around with inserting a credit card-like hotel room key in a slot and waiting for the green light before removing it.

Tonight we'll get some sleep and tomorrow we'll figure out what we are doing for the next several days.

Two short finned pilot whales from yesterday

Sunset last night in Los Cristianos

Elevator lobby of our hotel in the sky

Pilot Whales

Day 17 (February 18, 2011)

Itinerary: Breakfast in the hotel, get caught up on journal entries, whale watching cruise, continue to catch up on journal entries, walk along the shore for sunset and find dinner

Today is our last full day in the Canary Islands. Tomorrow we are off to Barcelona for a few days, then to Marseille for a day before I go back to the US and Mark goes back to Algeria. We plan on catching a soccer game in Barcelona while we are there and I hear their team is one of the most popular teams in the world.

Breakfast in the hotel similar to how a cruise ship breakfast must be like. There was a huge buffet and it felt like hordes of people were busy grabbing as much food as possible. We are by far the youngest guests at this hotel by at least 30 years. We both brought our wifi-enabled devices down to breakfast to use the free wifi available only on the first floor.

The morning was rather lazy. We packed up the computer and walked along the shore line to find a sunny bench to sit on. The people watching here is excellent, but I was most concerned with getting caught up with my journal. At this point I hadn't typed up an entry since Feb. 14th and it was hard to remember what all we did way back then.

The hotel was very helpful and booked us a 1pm whale watching cruise out of the port a short walk away, so we grabbed some ice cream to snack on as we waited for our cruise. I had probably the best mango ice cream I've ever had. Mmmm, yummy.

The 2 hour cruise was just long enough. Apparently the waters between Tenerife and La Gomera (only separated by 25 nautical miles) are home to the short finned pilot whales year round. These pilot whales are small and can reach up to 6 meters in length. We found quite a few and very quickly. They sat on the surface and watched us while we watched them. From the parts we could see, they almost looked like large, black, dolphins. The boat's two catamarans were glass-lined to make viewing under the ocean easy. We could go downstairs and sit to watch the whales under the surface of the water when they were next to the boat. I haven't seen this model of glass-bottomed boat before.

When we got tired of the pilot whales, we motored off in search of dolphins and found some near some sea bass farms located off several cliffs. The dolphins were very playful and even did a few leaps in the air to show off.

Our boat traveled fairly slowly since we didn't have to go very far off shore to find the mammals, so we had a very pleasant and calm ride. The sun was out and with the breeze the weather was about perfect.

After lunch on the boardwalk, we took our afternoon siesta on our porch back at the hotel in the sun. Mark and I both draped towels over our face to keep the sun out and we looked rather silly. But it made for a more pleasant napping experience out in the sun.

After a while, it was time to be productive and I finally caught up on the journal entries. Tonight we'll go downstairs and post them. Our sunset walk was crowded with people. The kids were out digging holes in the sand, several people were zooming around on comfort bikes, and everyone else was out walking. We went down to the water's edge and found that the beach was completely clear of shells and seaweed and jellyfish. There was only sand and water. The waves were making tiny rivelets in the sand as the tide went out creating interesting patterns and the sunset was casting colorful reflections in the water and the wet sand. We just stood and watched the waves for a bit.

We found a peaceful location for dinner and then realized that just next door was a Mexican food place with fajitas and everything. Maybe we'll find a spot in Barcelona. On our walk back to the hotel I remembered several things I meant to blog about last night.

Several beach-side entrepreneurs were making sand sculptures of mermaids, sharks, and dragons that looked pretty neat. The dragon even had a candle placed in it's mouth to breathe fire. We also found our first sand castle ghost. There was a sand castle made of cardboard with a man covered in a white sheet inside. He said, "OooooooOOOO, I am the ghost of Canaria." His ghost-like sounds sounded more like a wolf's howl than a ghost at some points, but we were amused to the point of laughter.

Tomorrow is a travel day as we take the bus to the North Tenerife airport and then fly back to Barcelona. We are staying in that same "hotel in the sky" on top of the train station we were in before.

I'm posting quickly again, so no photos. They are still on the memory card.