Instead of renting hotel rooms or suites everywhere, we did something different on this trip. In the places we stayed more than 2 days – Madrid, San Sebastian, and Barcelona, we rented apartments. More work, more variability, but definitely more room. In Barcelona we have a 110 square meter (almost 1200 sqft) 3-bedroom palace. It’s nicely furnished and has everything we needed for a lovely stay. Except for the wifi connection. Access and bandwidth seem to change at random with the hotspots moving around the place …

Got to Barcelona on Saturday evening. Sunday, we hopped on the hop-on-hop-off bus, which is something of a ritual we’ve adopted. While a little touristy-tacky, it’s a neat and easy way to get an overview of a city.  Some people actually use it to get around and stop at each of the designated sites; we tend to ride the loop in its entirety to get a feel for where we want to stroll later.  I’ve made the mistake of taking these bus tours in the middle of the day …

Growing up in Brooklyn, we called places like this “pork stores” although the official Italian name for them is “Salumeria.”  I may have said it before, but Spain is big on pig, and you can’t turn around without someone selling you something made from pork.  I thought this store was quite nice looking, even if it did remind me of the climax sequence in Clint Eastwood’s “High Plains Drifter.”

Ken Follett’s novel, Pillars of the Earth, is the story of vision and devotion, and the construction of a great cathedral over the course of about 200 years.  Throughout Spain there are examples of these great works of faith.  In Barcelona there is actually one in progress: Antonio Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia.  This incredible cathedral has been under construction since 1882. It is scheduled to be finished around 2025.  Of course, you can never tell about these things.  I sat this morning in a cafe across the way from the great …

After two weeks of gallivanting around Spain, we decided to chill for a few days before heading off to a week in Barcelona.  Problem was we needed a hotel room soon (like the next day) and weren’t sure where to go that would be easy and low-stress.  Rick Steve’s guidebook said something good about Sitges – that it was the best beach within a day of Barcelona.  Since that was to be our next destination we decided to try there.  Of course, then there’s the laborious google, expedia, booking.com, trip-advisor, …