Seafood and Siestas!

During my trip to Spain, I was lucky enough to meet up with Linda and Kohei during their round-the-world travels. They’ve been in Europe for the last 3 months and are heading to South America next. This is at Parc Guell, which is filled with sculptures made by Gaudi. You can also visit their blog at travelingseeds.wordpress.com. We hope to meet up with them again in Asia next year.

Brian, Jung, and I had a great time traveling together. Among our more “travel worthy” stories is our attempt to fit 3 people on our King size bed. We weren’t actually planning to keep up the pillow barriers, but Jung and I fell asleep too quickly. Note: Brian’s “pod” is probably 1.5 times bigger than mine. Hilarious!

All of our time in Spain was spent either eating or walking. We had AMAZING food from pinoxtes (Basque tapas), seafood paella, and Spanish wines and beers (for them). This was at a cute restaurant called Quimet Y Quimet. The owner of the restaurant made his own creations in front of us and we enjoyed them right away at the bar.

My favorite dish is Spain is called “Arroz Negro”, which means black rice. I didn’t post a picture of it because it doesn’t look nearly as good as it tastes. It’s made with squid ink and is another version of paella. I also loved eating regular paella and tried many different types of tapas. We adapted to the Spanish schedule easily – lunch around 2, a siesta, and then dinner around 9.

We generally walked a few hours each day to the sites in Spain (museums, parks, churches). In Barcelona, Jung was our elected navigator. We always arrived at the expected destination and the rest of us followed. In Madrid, Brian was promoted to navigator as most know that I am direction-challenged. We had a nice “wandering” experience when it was just the two of us. No matter how hard we tried to stay on course, we seemed to go in circles…literally. On the upside, it was a good way to experience the small streets. This is El Retiro, which is a nice park in Madrid.

I am finally back in the US. I have an overnight visit in Dallas with the parents and then head to Alex/Kristin’s wedding in Hawaii. Jung is picking me up from the airport in our 12 hour time zone difference from Spain! It's been a whirlwind tour and will finish up in Cali before heading home.