Barcelona

Thank y'all so much for your sweet words on my update yesterday- if y'all can believe it Beau's bug had been lingering so we went back to the pediatrician yesterday and he has an ear infection. Can't catch a break here!! At least this means something he can have medicine for! 

I'm about to knock out our last two big vacation posts from this summer! It's taken me way too long which is ridiculous. They're always my favorites to look back on.. and my favorite place we visited (Iceland) is last so that's something fun to look forward to! :) 

My little travel trooper! Beau really does so incredibly well and when we travel with him I'm so proud. This trip alone had six flights and a few long trains and car rides. He really enjoyed the quick flight from Malaga to Barcelona. :) 

Arriving in Barcelona we felt like it had an incredibly different and interesting vibe. I would call it different than any other city we've visited. The city felt very youthful to us. 

After we dropped off our bags at our wonderful hotel, we set off to try the "best nutella filled croissant" as proclaimed by an article I found on Pinterest when doing research for our trip. I can't say I was disappointed! :) SO YUMMY! 

I sure could take one of these about now! :) We were tired so after our snacks we headed back to the room to nap before dinner. 

We had all these high aspirations of visiting some of the "top tapas" places but many of them were smaller restaurants, some had tall barstool seating, etc. With baby in tow, we ended up on a different side of town discouraged that the place we had a reservation at was not going to be stroller friendly. We walked down the street a little bit and found a big open place and went for it. Honestly I think this might have been a chain (hard to tell!) but it was AMAZING! 

As you can tell, Beau was enjoying himself! 

The help was amazing and sweet. Our waitress insisted on giving Beau a hug and a kiss before we left, which we thought was adorable! 

Just look at our feast!! Yummy chicken, yummy shrimp, a quinoa salad, potatoes with an egg on top.. I think we got bread too. All of these were plenty for the three of us and were so amazing! 

Walking home we saw this place and I couldn't believe my eyes! The fruit juices in Barcelona were incredible. I will note, that the big market's were all watered down and not near as good. I ended up throwing mine away. One of the best I had was actually at a local grocery store we went to a few times to pick up some essentials. 

One of the places top on the list for us was the trendy Brunch & Cake. Some reviews said it was overrated but I wanted to see for ourselves. 

We had to wait a few minutes, which we expected knowing this place has such a following. The wait wasn't bad at all though, and we ended up being seated in a window seat which is exactly what we wanted and thought would work perfectly with Beau's stroller! 

we started with a coffee for Ben and a juice for me.. I miss these juices! 

We got an acai bowl.. 

and an egg sandwich! See how crazy these are! SO yummy too. So fresh. I wish I could have tried one of everything on the menu. It was also fun being somewhere where everyone was taking photos of their food. We arrived just before a big rush, too! 

We then went to Park Guell and realized that we for sure needed advance tickets, and that they were sold out for the day. We were sad, knowing we'd be leaving tomorrow afternoon. We asked about tickets for opening the next morning and grabbed some of the very last ones! I'm so glad, as this ended up being one of our favorite places. 

After our Park Guell fail, we decided to walk to La Sagrada Familia, even though it was quite a way. I'm so glad we did, because we ended up popping in a local empanada shop to get Beau a very Spanish snack and had one of our favorite experiences on this trip. 

The man who owned the shop was so helpful, got me ice for my water without asking (a HUGE deal in Europe!!) and we enjoyed three yummy empanadas. I wanted to tell everyone on the streets to come visit our new friend. Ben loved practicing his Spanish with him. 

This was it, in case you find yourself in Barcelona needing a snack. :) 

Some random photos on our walk! 

Love these people!

Chaos around La Sagrada Familia, such an interesting place. We chose not to tour it, and didn't stay around long bc it just felt like pick pocket central. SO many people!

Speaking of pick pocket central... HA!! After our naps we headed out to the market, which was really close to where we were staying. It was chaos. Fun to see for sure, but we couldn't have easily brought the stroller and I know for sure we were targeted at one point. We had ordered a savory crepe and a guy who was clearly local came over and started asking Ben questions about where the line was, etc etc and we exchanged a knowing glance at the man behind us who was waiting for us to be distracted. Not our first rodeo, homies!! :) I don't share this to be scary, it's just important to be aware of your surroundings in touristy places like this. We took our yummy crepe and fled. It was too hot and just not fun in there. The photos of us walking around are sweet, but it's hard for me to not remember being sweaty, stressed about someone trying to take our money/child (I know that's dramatic!) and just ready to leave. The things no one tells you about some places you visit! 

Our crepe was delicious though! 

So we went back to my grocery store juices. :) One euro more for actual quality juice!!

The next morning we were SO excited to visit Park Guell! 

This is the difference between a photo someone else takes and one that we take.. Beau is a ham but if someone he doesn't know is taking the photo, he is blissfully unaware! Haha! 

We had SO much fun here looking at the city, snapping photos, and loving our boy! 

My hair was so short from my fresh haircut! It's crazy to me how much it's already grown! 

One of my favorite sweet photos of Beau from the trip. He doesn't look this much like a "baby" to me anymore. Cue the heartbreak! 

When we got back to our room, we had a weird situation. We had a late checkout of 1pm, but our flight to Reykjavik wasn't until 10:45 that night. This is how you travel cheap, people! We decided to do this crazy flight because it was going to get us to see Iceland, and we figured it was only one night. So we had a few precious hours left in our room to try and relax before a long night ahead. Ben went down and got me a ton of food because he knew I was hungry. It made me laugh because he was like "look I put those chia seeds you like in your yogurt" haha! It was really nice having access to such yummy, healthy food in Barcelona. Honestly I'd take this meal right now, yum! 

We hung out in the hotel lobby for a few hours before heading out to get a few snacks at a close by tapas place while they held our luggage. Basically our goal was to stretch as much time as possible before getting to the airport. 

Once we got to the airport, things were honestly mayhem. We've never had a weirder or worse airport experience than Barcelona. We were one of two late flights, it ended up delayed and we left a little bit after midnight. The only food place was a Burger King. Not glam. But we survived. The photo below hurts my heart so much because it was 11:30 at night and look at my precious darling, happy as a clam. I can't remember why but I actually think he might have just been in a diaper with a blanket, haha! Seriously though, I hesitate to share this because it's extremely alarming but we walked ourselves through airport security. There was literally no one there. The metal detector beeped for Ben's belt and so he took it off and went through again totally on his own accord. It was so bizarre and we have never been so happy for a plane to take off! 

ARRIVED IN ICELAND! 3am and look at our happy boy. For the record, he was sleeping on and off during this whole process and was such a champ. Ben's face is saying, why is my wife so crazy. It was nuts because we had been in such a warm country and Iceland left us immediately cold! I can't wait to share the last bit of our trip now! :) 

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