Family Visits!!

We realized once again that we have neglected the blog. We are going to be more on top of it this summer :) So... we'll jump right into the beginning of May when Erin's mom, dad, and sister came to visit us for two weeks. If any of you know the how a Lakie vacation works, they fit as much into the amount of time as possible. Typically, you need an extended vacation after the vacation for recovery. We will try to recap as much as possible over their two week holiday with us. This is probably be a very long post :)

They finally arrived on Saturday evening after having a long layover in Rome. We did not do much considering they were tired and we had to be up early to board our European Cruise ship. Sunday afternoon, we boarded the Royal Carribbean ship "Liberty of the Seas" for a five day cruise making 3 stops in Europe along the way. The ship was amazing!!! This ship is the 3rd largest cruise ship in the world with about 4,000 passengers on board! If you have never been on a cruise ship, you basically have no idea that you are on a ship unless you are standing on the deck. Once inside, it feels more like a mall and hotel combined. Our ship was huge! It had 12 decks, an auditorium, several restaurants and bars, an ice rink, a rock climbing wall, basketball court, spa, workout facility (not sure why ha!), several pools and hot tubs, a night club, shopping stores, and even a casino. The trip began great with Erin's sister winning a $200 gift certificate for a spa treatment. Every night we ate extremely well at a 3 floor deck restaurant! We felt like we were dining with the rich people from Titanic! We had the same table right next to a window every night with the same waitressing staff who knew us all by our names by the end of the first night. Our table overlooked the sea so we got to see the sunset every night during dinner. They let you order as many starters, entrees, and desserts as you want, and yes we definitely did. I'm not sure any of us has ever eaten as much as we did at dinner those 4 nights on the ship. At the end of the blog, we will attach a link to Erin's flickr page which we have uploaded about 400 pictures showing everything we did on our cruise and vacation! (Yes, there are pictures of our delicious meals, too.)

We set sail for our first destination at 5pm. Leaving Barcelona at this time gave us a great opportunity to see the city from a unique angle. We enjoyed the night, but were ready for our first stop. Every morning we had to be up between 6 and 6:30 to be ready to meet for our excursions off of the boat. Our first stop was in Cannes, France. We had an extremely interesting morning considering we almost missed our meeting time. Apparently cell phone coverage is in and out on the sea and our phones changed times in the middle of night which messed up our alarm clocks. Luckily, we had room service which woke us up for breakfast and we barely made it on time. We had a guided tour throughout Cannes, Antibes, and Nice, in that order. This part of France runs along the Meditteranean Sea and is beautiful. Cannes is the location of the famous Cannes Film Festival. It has several 5 star hotels and the real estate in this area is extremely expensive. While Antibes and Nice were 'nice' there was not much to mention. We did pass John Wayne's summer home on the sea front. In our pictures, it's the house that has a cowboy hat on the chimney :) Our lunch in Nice was extremely disappointing because we had a fairly ignorant waitress. We wanted to split some of the portions, which is common in Spain, but I guess is not in France. 

Our second excursion was to Pisa and Florence, Italy. This trip made up for our disappointment in France. Pisa was very neat to see. It is about one hour from the sea and we had 1 hour there, which is basically all you need. In this time, we saw the Leaning Tower, the Bapistry, the Cathedral, and the cemetery. We also had a great tour guide named Luca, who was entertaining and informative the entire time. After Pisa, we had an hour trip further East to Florence. Florence is by far one of the most beautiful and interesting cities we have been to so far. We had four hours here, but could have easily spent 2 days. We began by getting an authentic Italian meal with bruschetta, homemade pasta, and delicious Italian wine. We ate in the Piazza Di Santa Croce, where the Basilica di Santa Croce is located. This is a beautiful basilica which also holds the graves of many famous Italians including Michelangelo, Galileo, and the author Dante. We then walked to the Duomo which has an impressive Dome (hence the name). The exterior is incredible and we were advised that the inside leaves you disappointed so we only admired it from the outside. Then, we went inside the Baptistry. It was so impressive on the inside because of its size. We walked up about 100 spiraling stairs to get to the top and once up there, we were fortunate enough to have someone who worked there sing hymns. He walked to a certain spot on the bottom of the Baptistry by the altar and echoed his voice. It was beautiful and spiritual.

Then we walked passed the Eufizi, a famous art museum, to the Ponte Vecchio. This is a famous bridge in Florence which was first constructed by the Roman Empire and was the only bridge saved in Florence during World War II. Now it has tons of small shops specializing in selling gold and silver. Basically our tour guide described this area as being "Man's Hell" because of all the shopping that can be done. After making our way through the endless shops, we made it to the old Florence Royal Palace, but were not able to go inside because we were running short on time and still had to get some authentic gelado. Two scoops for all of us! Overall, Florence was amazing and if we are able to, Erin and Rob plan on going back and spending a few days there.

Excursion number three was to Rome. Needless to say, we were extremely tired from the late nights and early mornings, but luckily it was about an hour and half bus ride to Rome, so we were all able to fit in a quick nap. In Rome, we had two major sites to see. The first was the Collesium. Erin and Rob have both been here before, but seeing it again was just as amazing as the first time. We enjoyed both learning the history and seeing its impressive skeleton makes it fun to imagine what it once would have looked like. Going inside is truly breathtaking. After the Collesium, we stopped for lunch in which we learned first hand that Italians and Spaniards eat very differently. While tapas (small portions, but lots of them) are common in Spain, Italians go big with their portions. We began with some more wine, of course, and a large plate of pasta and bread. We were all starving and thinking this was the only part of our meal finished all of it. Once our plates were cleared, we were then brought another giant plate of food. This plate had cooked meat, potatoes, and creamed spinach. I guess in Italy, pasta can be an appetizer! If that wasn't enough, we were brought a large portion of dessert. It was delicious!! We all loved eating the food in Italy!

With full bellies, we made our way to the Vatican. The Vatican was crazy overcrowded with tourists! It was a Wednesday afternoon and apparently on Wednesday, the Pope has a prayer service which brings in thousands of people to view this. It was a bit frustrating, but we made our way through the Vatican museum and into the Sistine Chapel. In our previous visit to this chapel, which has Michelangelo's incredible ceiling, as well as his 'The Last Judgment', it was extremely holy and spiritual. This is also the same place a few months earlier that the Cardinals voted on the new Pope. On this visit, it seemed to lose this feeling because there was a lot of noise due to the amount of visitors. It is supposed to be quite and no pictures are allowed, but this did not stop people from trying to take some. These people were promptly taken aside by guards and their cameras were checked. It was disappointing, but the art work was still a must see. Our tour then took us into the Vatican, which was interesting, but again overcrowded and lacked the spiritualness we had expected. We did see Michelangelo's Pieta, but unfortunately could only view from about 20 feet away, because several years ago a man took a hammer to it breaking off a piece. It was flawlessly restored and still looks amazing. Even though we had our disappointments, Rome was worth seeing. It is amazing to visit a city so full of it's past. There are ruins from thousands of years ago all over the city.

All three excursions had their highlights, but I think we all would say that Florence was our favorite, with Rome being second and France a far third. Our last day on the cruise was a day at sea. We spent this day really enjoying the ship. We spent time on the basketball court, at the spa, enjoyed some drinks at the bars, and had our last proper meal with Belle, our waiter, and Catalina, our waitress who loved to bring us bread all week. Some highlights from being on the cruise were winning and then quickly losing money at the casino. Rob beating Rick in both H-O-R-S-E and the longest drive competition at the Golf Simulator. He out drove Rick by about 10 yards. We are forgetting the fact that he sliced it off of the screen and probably landed in a parking lot, but the rules were not established before we began. In the auditorium, we saw two shows. The first was a sort of Cirque du Soleil and then on our last night saw "Saturday Night Fever". Both were pretty cool. We also took tons of pictures at sunset. Each night on the cruise had a theme, which we tried to follow. Made each night more fun on the ship seeing everyone dressed up for Formal Dinner Night, White Night, 70s Disco Fever. There were 4,000 people on board the ship, but you would have never been able to tell. There were so many rooms and activities to do at night that everyone was never in the same place.

By Friday we were all starting to feel pretty exhausted, but we had much more planned. We got off of the ship on Friday morning at 10 and made it back to the apartment by 12. We took a mini seista before making our way to one of Barcelona's most impressive sites, La Sagrada Familia. Erin and Rob have been to the outside of the basilica before, but have not been inside. The outside is amazing itself and without being over dramatic, the inside is absolutely breathtaking. It is by far one of the coolest things that we have ever seen. We can't wait for more visitors so that we can take them here. And honestly, pictures do not do it justice. After this awesome and holy experience, which made up for the our visit to the Vatican, we went and got some traditional Catalan food and had an enjoyable walk back to the apartment. We promptly passed out because we had an early morning.

Saturday morning, we were up early and made our way to Budget rental to pick up the car that we were going to drive to Madrid. Luckily, traffic was not too bad on Saturday morning and we made our way out Barcelona with only a few stressful experiences through roundabouts. It was also a good thing that manual driving came back pretty quickly considering 90% of the cars in Europe are stick shifts. Our trip to Madrid went extremely smoothly. It is about a 5 and half hour car ride with several amazing views of old castles, churches, and vineyards. We had a good experience in a small town half way called Calatayud. We stopped around 4 pm for lunch. We did not realize until after we ate that no one else in the outdoor restaurants was eating and that the kitchen was closed when we had ordered. The waiter did us a favor by allowing us to order and we made sure to tip him which is uncommon in Spain.

Saturday night we were craving food that was a little more familiar, so instead of heading for Spanish food, we went to a local pizzaria and enjoyed some delicious pizza where we were allowed to split our dishes..(remember there was absolutely no splitting in France). On Sunday, we visited the Palacio de Real Madrid or the Royal Palace of Madrid. This was very cool. We took about a two hour tour and got so see many interesting rooms. We then enjoyed the streets of Madrid before heading to our main reasons for driving to Madrid... The Atletico Madrid vs. FC Barcelona match. Atletico is Madrid's second team, but there are still a very good club. They are currently third in La Liga with Barcelona having won it and Real Madrid being second. Atletico's stadium is considerably smaller than both Barcelona's and Real Madrid's. It fits just a little more than half the seats compared to the other two clubs. Nevertheless, the game was sold out and extremely exciting with Barcelona winning 2-1. They came back from being down 1 and scored both of their goals with one man down. They had made all of their subs before Messi re-injured himself and had to leave the pitch. After the game, we stopped by a local restaurant to eat some light sandwiches and have a few beers before heading back to the hotel. It was about 11:30 pm and we were leaving Madrid at 4am so that Erin and Rob could make it back to work on Monday afternoon...we were exhausted!!!

The remaining days of Erin's family trip were fairly relaxed. They were able to enjoy some of Barcelona's sites while we worked. However, on Tuesday night we took them out to enjoy an Argentinian steak dinner. This steakhouse is very close to our apartment in Barceloneta and we have been told by many people that we must go. It was amazing! The steak was probably the best steak either of us have had in quite a long time. It also is extremely affordable. It was about 8 euros for a large steak and 5.50 for a bottle of wine...yes that is 5.50 for a bottle!! After dinner, we took them out to a local Irish pub that we go to with one of our friends and had such a fun night out!

Overall, we had a fantastic time. We visited 8 cities in 7 days. And while we were extremely tired and excited to get some sleep, it made both us very homesick. It was a very hard goodbye, not only because we had such an amazingly fun two weeks together, but also knowing that we will not see each other for quite a while. Summer is almost here which means that Rob will not have work in his school and will need to find some private students. Erin has also finished two classes at her school that will not start again until September. We hope to find some more work, but will have to be extremely frugal to make it through until September. We are enjoying our lives here and many different aspects of it. However, we do miss many things in the U.S. and some days we find ourselves really wanting to begin our careers in the profession that we studied. We know that this is a once in a lifetime adventure and do not want to take it for granted, but just like everything, some days are harder than others. We feel so lucky to be able to have both our families come visit us! We are really looking forward to Rob's parents coming out in the beginning of July and Erin's best friend Kelsey coming out at the end of July for her birthday! Bring on the summer!!


AND FINALLY... you made it to the PICTURES! We took over 1,200 pictures, but here's the best 373 of them :) Here's the link: CRUISE 2013

Update on Living Life in Barcelona :)

Wow, time has really been flying this past month. Things are going very well for us in Barcelona. We have both settled in to a good routine with our jobs and we are both very comfortable here. It has taken a little while to get settled, but it feels good to be at this point. We love the lifestyle here and are certainty absorbing as much of the culture as we can. We have been making traditional Spanish and Catalan tapas almost nightly. We are working "full time," Spanish full time that is, which is about 25 hours a week. Love that work week. Much more manageable. We are a starting to fear being able to go home and transition to real 40+ hour work weeks. Rob really loves teaching English! He has 5 classes that he teaches and 3 private lessons with students. So he is very busy Monday-Thursday. Erin currently has 4 classes. English classes are created monthly and our schedules slowly keep adding on another class. Erin likes teaching English, but misses the English classroom in the states a lot. She also got a full time nannying job Monday-Friday babysitting a 3 and a half year old Catalan/Spanish boy and is teaching him English. She is also learning more Spanish. Our goal for this summer is to take Spanish lessons so we can become more fluent in the language.

Over the last month we have also been able to explore more of Barcelona! We went to Montjuic, which is a hill/mountain located on the south end of Barcelona that over looks the entire city along with the Mediterranean Sea. Erin's best friend's sister from home came out to Barcelona during her spring break and we got to have our first visitor stay with us for a couple days! It was quite a hike up the hill but it was a beautiful, sunny day which made for a nice walk. The view at the very top is very beautiful and definitely worth the energy. There is a cable car that can take you up there as well and we plan on doing that this summer. At the top, there is the Castel of Montjuic built around the 17th century. This is also where the main Olympic Stadium is when the Olympics were held in Barcelona in 1992. We did not see it when we visited it the first time, but this past Sunday, we ran a 10K race that went up Montjuic and much to our surprise, the route went through the Olympic Stadium! The race started at one of Barcelona's main plazas, called  Plaza Catalunya. Then, it wrapped up the mountain and up to the Olympic track and field stadium. There were over 72,000 runners in this race, which was absolutely crazy! We almost missed going into the stadium because there were so many people. Being competitive runners, it was a very cool experience for us to run a lap on a track where Olympic runners have. Despite the crazy amount of people running the race, it was a really fun run. Here are some pictures below of Montjuic and the race!

                                 Cable car going up to Montjuic

                                  Rachel and I down in Barceloneta

                                             Castell de Montjuic

                             top of the castle that overlooks the city

                                            top of the castle that overlooks the sea

                   
                     Here are some pictures from the race

      went through Placa Espanya before heading up Montjuic

 

Erin attempting to run between mass crowds of people

 

Olympic stadium entrance - Beate and Erin walking in

 

Erin running her lap around the Olympic track stadium

Rob running his lap around the stadium

The crazy finish! Everyone is walking through it.

 we did it!

 


Rob has been able to see the area of Sant Cugat on a regular basis since that is where his school is located. Sant Cugat is a little town just west of Barcelona that takes about an hour to get to from Barceloneta. It is located just on the other side of Parc de Collserola which is the largest natural metropolitan park in the world and is also on our list of things to see while we are here. The train to get to Sant Cugat cuts through this park so the view is amazing. Last weekend, he took Erin there to see the area. It is such a cute, beautiful, Catalan town. We did not go to the park so that is still on our list to see, but we went to one of the churches in town and saw a very elaborate, expensive, traditional Catalan wedding party congregating before the ceremony. It was all very beautiful until it started to rain! 


Easter weekend was also a nice weekend! In the morning, we went to Easter mass at a beautiful church called La Iglesia Maria del Mar. It was a very old and beautiful cathedral. The mass was in Catalan, which was difficult to understand, but a very nice mass. Then, we went to our friend Beate's house for Easter brunch/dinner. We both were a little sad we could not be home with our families, but happy to have good friends to spend it with here. Erin was determined to cook a traditional "American" style ham. It was very hard to find a jamon americano in spain to say the least, but she finally managed to find one at a supermarket! She cooked all day. We had traditional pan con tomate y aceite for an appetizer that our friend Katie made along with a super delicious salad that our friend Beate made. Then, Erin made a ham with a chipotle orange glaze, cheesy hash brown potatoes, brussel sprouts with blue cheese and walnuts, and a chicken broccoli casserole. We had way too much food (and wine) but it was a really nice Easter spent with friends.

Traditional Catalan appetizer- pan con tomate y aceite

Erin's Easter brunch that she made :)








                              the front of La Iglesia Maria del Mar
                                 

                                  Side of Maria del Mar church


                                                  
                                          inside of the church

The weather here is starting to be beach weather. It's been consistently in the upper 60s, hitting 70. The sun is always shining and is so much warmer than the sun at home in Chicago. We are getting really excited for Erin's parents and sister to come visit in less than a month! We are all taking a cruise to Cannes France, and Pisa, Florence, and Rome in Italy. Then, when we get back to Barcelona from the cruise, we are renting a car to take a road trip to Madrid for the weekend and to see FC Barcelona play Atletico Madrid!! Then, back to Barcelona for a week :) Should be a crazy busy and tiring two weeks, but hopefully an amazing one! We are so lucky and grateful to be able to travel with them and have them visit, as well as when Rob's parents visit in July! It is perfect timing for our families to come out - not only because of Barcelona's beautiful summer but because we miss them and can't wait to spend time with them!

I Like Paris in the Winter

One of our goals while we are in Spain is to travel! We plan on trying to visit a new country or city in Spain at least a once every two months. That will give us two months to save up for our trip. Our first trip was either going to be Paris, France or Berlin, Germany. We decided that Paris would be fun and decided to make that our first trip. (little did we know that it would be the most expensive city we visited...)

Before leaving we made a list of everything that we wanted to do. We had a pretty large list, but felt that it was doable. I am proud to say that we did everything, but one thing on our list and even then we made it to the Catacombs, but it had just closed when we made it there. 

Teaching over here has several advantages. One of those is that we are not currently working on Fridays. So we left for Paris on Friday morning and got into Paris, well just outside Paris, at about noon. We flew RyanAir. RyanAir is a super cheap airline that flies throughout Europe. They provide cheap flights, but have very strict regulations with bags and other restrictions that they will charge outrageous amounts for. Our only concern was the weight and size of our carry-ons. They only allow one per person and it can only weight 20 kg. We ended up being fine, but saw several people have to check their bags at the gate being charged 50 euros. Also, RyanAir only flies into Beauvais-Tille which is about an hour and fifteen minute bus ride to Paris. We didn't realize this until the night before and had a semi-panic attack thinking that it was going to be very difficult to make it into Paris. All worked out well and we made it into Paris around 2 pm Friday afternoon.

Paris in early March is so cold! The weather was bitter cold and overcast on Friday and Saturday, but the sun came out and it warmed up on Sunday which made for a nice last day. So on Friday we walked everywhere. We first walked to the Eiffel Tower, which is huge. Rob used to work at the Saint Louis Arch and thought that was tall. The Eiffel Tower is almost twice as tall!! After that we walked to the Louvre Museum. They had discounted rates on Friday so of course we made sure we got those. We spent about 3 hours wandering around with the audio guides and were absolutely astonished by its size. The Louvre used to be the Kings' of France's Palace, until Louis XIII became king at age 9 and decided it wasn't big enough. He then built the palace in Versaille which is just outside of Paris. The Louvre has 3 sections and each section is 5 levels....HUGE! We basically wandered around seeing the major works of art including (of course) the Mona Lisa.  The Mona Lisa is pretty interesting. Smaller than we thought it was, but nevertheless very interesting. We looked at it for a couple minutes, which is a long time to look at a painting. We found out that the average looking time at the Mona Lisa is only 9 seconds! Another fun fact, if you spent 9 seconds looking at every picture/statue in the Louvre, you would be at the Louvre for 3 days! After a long day of walking around we made our way to the hostel. We settled in and went to the nearest restaurant and had pizza..ha. 

Saturday we woke up early and ate the free breakfast at the hostel. Baguettes, cereal, and "coffee"...yuck, but it was free. Next, we decided to shower.... huge mistake. First of all they were gross (Rob can get over that) and worse case we thought was that the water was going to be cold and we know that cold showers are not fun, but doable. Well we were surprised by the complete opposite...burning hot, boiling water. So hot that neither of us were able to take showers. Needless to say, it was gonna be a shower free trip. We were not going to let that bother us. We found a free walking tour which was one of the highlights of the trip. It was about 3 hours long. It took us by the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Palace used before the Louvre was built (which had the only evidence of Hitler's four year control of Paris...bullet holes in the building), the site of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre when thousands of Protestants were drowned in the Seine river, the bridge with hundreds of lockets where couples write their names on it, lock it on the bridge, and throw the key into the river. It finished at the beginning of the Champs-Elysee which is a very famous street with lots of high end shopping stores. It also leads to the the Arc de Trioumphe.

Saturday night we decided to check out Paris' nightlife. One of our friends that we met in Barcelona recommended an area called the Latin Quarter. It is near Notre Dame and was a lot of fun. They have tons of shops, restaurants, and bars. It is similar to the Barri Gothic area of Barcelona, which has lots of small streets and always crowded. We went to a bar and had the best mojitos! Thank god they were good because they cost 7 euros a piece...oh yea, Paris is EXPENSIVE!! Especially in the winter when its cold out and in order to warm up you head into shops and restaurants. After drinks, we went and got crepes. Erin got a Nutella Crepe and Rob got a Bacon and Cheese. The bacon wasn't the same, but they were delicious.

Sunday was another jam packed day. It was the perfect day with the sun shining and the temperature warming up. Started out at Notre Dame. Beautiful! We went while there was an international mass going on with each song and reading done in a different language. The inside is so intricate that it is amazing that is is 850 years old. We then found a little known memorial to the victims of the holocaust right next to it. It is right off of the river and outdoor, but is built so that when you enter is it completely silent. It was very somber. Next, we went to the famous book shop "Shakespeare and Company". This is were Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound gathered to write and share ideas. Erin, being the English major/teacher had to buy a book so we bought A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway...one of our favorite books. We then went to the steps that were used to film Midnight in Paris. Next, we went Montmartre and did a little bit of shopping. Montmartre is a hill north of Paris. At the very top is the Basiclica of the Sacre - Coeur or Sacred Heart. It is supposedly the location in which the Jesuit Order of priests began. We found the church very interesting because several of the stain glass windows were dedicated to the French saints, St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louis. It is a very cool and lively area with several street performers, artists creating and selling paintings, and a beautiful panoramic view of Paris. It also had some awesome shopping which Erin loved :)

                                                                                                    Steps from "Midnight in Paris"

       

On our way home from Montmarte, we stopped by the Moulin Rouge! Very cool and still in use as a night club/theatre. Sunday night tried going to a restaurant recommended by a friend for their steak. Unfortunately they weren't making food for some reason so we headed back towards the Eiffel Tower because we wanted to see it at night. We had a very nice dinner and headed back to the Latin Quarter for one more crepe before we left on Monday morning.

Overall, we had an awesome time! Paris in the summer is probably a much different experience, but we are so glad and thankful that we were able to see this amazing city. Since we have come over, we have not once questioned our decision to go on this adventure. We are both settled in at our jobs and are enjoying every single experience. We are also getting very excited for our friends and family to come visit! :)