Category: Tourism

Barcelona / Tourism

Barcelona 3.2: Gettin’ Sagrada

During our third visit to Barcelona, we finally saw one of the most iconic symbols of the city: La Sagrada Familia. Although we also discovered the works of another master architect during our April trip, we just couldn’t let a visit go by without seeing something created by our favorite Catalan modernist, Antoni Gaudí. And boy, was it something – many people (probably most) consider La Sagrada Familia his unfinished masterpiece. Construction of La Sagrada Familia, or The Church of the Holy Family, began in 1882, and Gaudí took over the project a year later. Even though he was completely devoted to

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Barcelona / Tourism

Barcelona 3.1: Scaling the modernist Montaner

A flimsy pretense was all we needed to schedule a return trip to Barcelona for the first weekend of April. We’re game pretty much any time, but when Dreamer found out a friend was performing comedy there the coming Saturday evening, the decision was easy. Our first two trips of Barcelona were quite heavy on the works of Antoni Gaudí, the most famous person associated with Catalan Modernism. While we did devote some time to our favorite whimsical architect (which we’ll tell you all about in our next post), we also discovered another master, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, who designed two modernist gems eventually designated

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Tourism

Local Woman overly excited she wore shirt of place she going to see

We had so much fun in Alicante last time, we figured we were due for a return trip to the southern Valencia province any weekend now. It’s an easy trip – just three and a half hours south by car or by train. Plus, Doer had wanted a salt boat since he’d seen one in the Sardine Museum in Murcia, but more on that in a bit. So, not even a week after the all-consuming Fallas festival had ended, and with visions of pink lakes, salt piles, and palm groves in our heads, we rented a car and headed down to Torrevieja.

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Las Fallas / Tourism / Valencia

Ninot takes a break: Valencia walking tour

We spent a very long, fun-filled day taking part in the Fallas in Valencia last month, and we will tell you more about that next time (finally… we promise!). Although the festival really does overtake the city, we still managed to have a few non-Fallas experiences while we were there for a very long day. For example, not all of the street performers we saw were dressed in traditional costumes – some were quite unique. Dreamer gave this guy a shiny nickel. Because we’ve enjoyed the experience so much in other cities, we decided to go on a free walking tour. And wouldn’t

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Central Spain / Madrid / Tourism

Toledo: Strange, beautiful mix of cultures

As American spring break approached, Dreamer’s Dad and his wife, Deb, who are teachers, took advantage of this time off to come see us. We planned to meet them at the airport in Madrid and have a fun weekend in Toledo before returning to Valencia to see the start of Las Fallas, our region’s biggest holiday (more about that in coming posts!). We began this journey as many before it: with a commuter train into Valencia. Despite the tardy train, everything worked out fine. We made our high-speed train connection with some time to spare, which is good, because our train car was waaaaaay

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Castellón / Tourism / Valencia

Where good Banjo Boys and Girls come from

We spent the first weekend of March doing some fun activities at home, too, and we managed to stayed just as busy as our previous weekend at home. This time around, we filled our days and nights with a quirky museum, a spa, a parade, rice, pyrotechnics, porcelain figurines, and horchata (sounds like a lot, but to be fair, our weekends are three days – yes, our life is rough).   Saturday: Spa, playing card museum, and a surprise parade Playing card games are quite possibly an even more popular pastime in Spain than in America, and that’s saying something because we

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