July 31, 2011
Pretty pumped because after this Barcelona post comes SAGRADA FAMILIA. Prepare yourself. You seriously can’t even begin to imagine how crazy impressive it is in real life.
For now we continue on with some more normal Barcelona street shots.
This sign says, “WAYS TO KILL” and then underneath “There are many ways to kill someone. Then can stab a knife in your stomach, take away your bread, not cure your illness, put you in bad housing,” and then after that the guy is blocking the rest.
So many colors. Looking at these photos makes me ache to back and take more pictures.
Let me tell you about this day — the day that Seba and I walked ONE HUNDRED MILES. Slight exaggeration, but seriously, we walked SO far. We usually like to walk places when we’re touristing around, if possible, so we looked on a map, and even though the Botanic Gardens looked far-ish, it looked doable. What we didn’t realize was that they’re up on the top of a giant hill. And that I don’t really like botanic gardens so I have no idea why I wanted to go to one to begin with.
So we walked the way the map told us to walk. But, the thing that the map doesn’t show you is that on top of the hill it’s not all just open to walk straight through to the gardens. There are certain entrances, and the rest is private property. So we got way up there and then had to walk another 20 minutes to find an entrance. That was discouraging in the crazy heat.
I love this next photo so much.
These are still not the Botanic Gardens, these are some other random gardens or a park or something at the top of the hill.
The Botanic Gardens feature plants from some kind of sub tropical or something tropical climates and there are only a few in the world. Chile is one of them. Xile is how you say Chile in Catalan.
I honestly have no clue why I wanted to go there. I hate plants.
I don’t really hate plants. But I certainly don’t know/care much about them. It was boring to walk around and look at different kinds of trees. The whole time I kept thinking, “This is what we walked the past four hours in the sun for?!”
On the way back down we ended up passing one of the Olympic stadiums from when Barcelona was host. It was open to the public. When you went in there was a sort of exhibit with information on signs about the games as you walked around through the bleachers. I thought that was way more interesting than plants.
Let me end this post with a photo of a naked man’s butt. It’s not every day I can say that. Even if he’s made of stone.
Learn more about Majorca Holidays here.
July 28, 2011
I continue to be obsessed with Barcelona. I dream about going back there, about photographing a wedding there. And really, it’s lit a fire in me to go to other cities in Spain too. Contrary to a lot of people we loved Madrid too. And Santander. I’m starting to feel like in Spain, you just can’t go wrong!
All this travel is definitely the number one benefit of this job. Even if it’s not always the most glamorous lifestyle 
Seba and I are normally not very hardcore tourists. We see what we see and if we don’t get to something we don’t worry about it. But in Barcelona, there were so many things on my list that we went all out.
However, I may or may not have made a slight mistake in dragging Seba to the Museum of Modern Art. Let’s be honest — we’re not museum people. I didn’t even like the Louvre. I’m just not that cultured. But I saw pictures of Barcelona’s Museum of Modern Art and thought it looked cool. I convinced Seba that modern might mean awesome kinds of arts. Ha.
HAHAHAHA.
I know that some people can see the existential meaning behind these sorts of things, but one of the works of art was literally a pile of trash on the floor. I AM NOT KIDDING PEOPLE!!!! They called that art! I couldn’t take a picture of it though because photos weren’t allowed of the actual exhibits.
The building itself was pretty sweet though! The first five frames are pictures around the area where the museum is and then everything after that is the museum.
See what I mean about how cool Barcelona is? This is just a random building that happens to have a cool designed thingy on top of it. Love that.
That homeless guy has a nice little space set up for himself there.
This is the museum.
That was one of the art exhibits. I’m not sure what it symbolized.
Doesn’t Seba look happy to be at the museum with me?
Even though I didn’t particularly care for the art itself, I still had fun photographing the interior. The building was rad!
Find all the best information about Spain Holidays here.
July 26, 2011
I am in Miami. I was supposed to leave Monday night. I’m currently hoping to board a plane tomorrow at noon. We’ll see. Last night I gave up my seat on the flight in exchange for a voucher. However, today, I’m here involuntarily because there is some kind of mechanical problem with the plane. Scary. I don’t particularly want to go on a plane that they’ve been working on. But supposedly it will be fixed tomorrow and I have a flight out at noon. I’m currently staying at a hotel that American Airlines gave me a hotel voucher for. At this moment I actually have a random girl with me because she was sitting on the curb waiting for a hotel shuttle by me looking very sad. When we got to talking I found out that she was trying to get to Buenos Aires and is stuck here until Tuesday because of that damn volcanic ash. She was stressed because since hers is a “weather related” cancellation she gets no hotel voucher, nothing, and is expected to pay for her own hotel in Miami until Tuesday. So I took a fellow lost traveler in and told her she could stay with me at my free hotel. Conveniently enough, while I have no luggage, she had spare pajamas to loan me AND clean, brand new underwear to give me, so really this is just a win/win situation all around.
But that’s not the point of this post.
The point is that my life is pretty sweet. I’m lucky enough to be able to travel the world with my husband. Sometimes hotels give us free stays so we’ll blog about them. We meet all kinds of cool people on the road. I see my family more than most expats and for that I’m grateful.
Yet.
YET. It’s still not as glamorous a life as many people tend to think. Good life, yes. Glam life, not really.
Here’s my list of the dichotomy that is my life.
Glam: To go through the premium line at the airport and get to board first.
Not Glam: To get on a plane that smells like cat pee and/or old person.
Glam: Super beautiful hotels letting us stay free and giving us the VIP treatment.
Not Glam: Taking the taxi from said super beautiful hotels to whatever kind of cheap-o place we are paying for ourselves (usually somewhere in the ghetto).
Glam: A trip to England.
Not Glam: Having so much work to do that we don’t see much of London at all.
Glam: A trip to Scotland.
Not Glam: Only sleeping 1.5 hours before taking the train to Scotland in order to write blog posts to publish while we were gone.
Glam: Taking a weeks long trip to Europe.
Not Glam: Running out of clean underwear and wearing the same dresses over and over and over again.
Glam: Working from home
Not Glam: Having to sit forever in McDonald’s for the free wi-fi when the power goes out at my mom’s house, or spending hours at the Dunkin Donuts when my dad’s internet isn’t working.
Glam: Racking up the airline miles.
Not Glam: Seba’s junk getting manhandled during the opt out pat-down.
Glam: Visiting my family four times a year.
Not Glam: Sleeping on the futon in my mom’s basement.
Glam: Watching the U.S. v. Japan soccer game from the Admiral’s Club Lounge and getting tipsy off of all the free wine.
Not Glam: The U.S. losing. Wait. That has nothing to do with travel, you say? Don’t care. It’s still not glam.
By the way, I feel that the world should know, my mom called and said, “I cried because the U.S. lost but then I cried tears of joy for Japan winning after they’ve had such a hard year.”
I told her she was dead to me. Anyone would be cold hearted if they begrudged Japan their victory, but still…to celebrate it? NOT COOL MOM.
ANYWAYS.
Glam: Being upgraded to first class.
Not Glam: 8 hour layovers.
Glam: Wearing my Pradas for a night out on the town in Paris.
Not Glam: Getting blisters on my feet from walking around the Paris subway for what felt like hours, trying to figure out how to get to our hotel (with luggage in tow).
Glam: Staying at a really nice hotel on an airline voucher for free.
Not Glam: Staying at a really nice hotel because your flight was canceled and you have no way to get home that night.
Do you travel in any kind of contradictory ways? Say…fly first class and then stay in a hostel? Or sleep in five star hotels but live off of street food?
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