Barons Come to Visit, Barcelona and Cruise

Our May began with a visit from Tyler's parents.  It was great to see more family.  Almost as soon as they arrived in this crazy city, we were off on a new adventure.  We rented a car and drove out to the Cotswolds to see what the English countryside had to offer.  The bed & breakfast we stayed at had a gorgeous view of the green hills and blossoming trees and the birds were singing all around us.  Poor Joyce was understandably motion sick after being transported around for a straight 24 hours.  Some of the highlights of our overnight excursion included stops at Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon to see the Shakespeare sites, Lower & Upper Slaughter (where we popped our tire- but luckily had a spare! -and enjoyed a great lunch at a lovely little cafe situated at an old mill), and Bath (where we arrived 15 minutes too late to show Clark and Joyce the Roman bath house- so sat in on a meeting inside the incredible Bath Abbey church instead).  We returned to London Monday evening vowing to never rent a car again.  Poor Tyler, our fearless driver, did an amazing job navigating us all around in a stick shift car through the roads and highways- but we all were relieved to get back to the comfort of home and be rid of a vehicle.  I'd say we did alright- with only a flat tire and a traffic violation from driving in the bus lane.  

Before we knew it, Clark and Joyce were on a plane again, headed off to Madrid for a few days. We met them again on Saturday in Barcelona to set sail on a Mediterranean cruise with none other than the infamous Costa cruise line.  We tried to convince ourselves that OUR captain wouldn't crash US into the shore, sink OUR ship and run for the hills.

It was a 5 night, 6 day cruise: *Barcelona, Spain-  *Palma de Mallorca-  *Ajaccio, Corsica-  *Marseille, France *Savona, Italy-  *Barcelona.  I know I am sounding like a broken record by now- but the weather was a bit chilly.  We saw many great and beautiful sites.  Savona, Italy was especially exciting and quite the experience.  Upon a nice woman's recommendation, we ate at the oldest restaurant in town.  There were stone fired ovens and the people there did not speak a drop of English, or so they said.  When they brought out the fish, it was literally the whole fish on a plate, head and all.  The server spent the next 10 minutes performing the show of extracting the meat from the fish.  Since I can't eat something that is looking at me, I had the chicken- which was equally flavorful and great.  The food tasted delicious and we left with some good memories.

Once back in Barcelona, we spent a couple days seeing the city and enjoying the Gaudi sites.  Here are the highlights.  A quick note:  Unfortunately, we absent-mindedly left our backpack and our camera on the train- and lost all our pictures!!  Although the camera and pictures we took are lost for good, we were lucky that Clark and Joyce were there and have shared their pictures with us.  Most of the following pictures are from various websites- but capture the sites we saw.

The music on the train:

 The Casa Mila Apartments (click the link for more info)

Parc Guell  (Click for more info)

Sagrada Familia (Click for more info)  *This was the most AMAZING!!! and memorable man-made structure I have ever seen.  If ever I belonged to a church, I think this might be a fitting site for worship.  Gaudi, the architect, was inspired by nature- honeycomb, trees, flowers, etc. and it was beautiful beyond compare to any other building we have visited.
To see more pics, click here

Montserrat (Click for more info)
Montserrat Monastery (Click for info)

We had a great time in Barcelona.  The weather was good there, the food was amazing, and the sites were exceptionally beautiful!  Spanish style shwarmas will live in my mind forever.  The tapas were memorable too.   Before we knew it, it was time to return back to London- so we said goodbye to Clark and Joyce and headed for home.  We would see them again soon...