We finished our stay in Barcelona on Monday. I forgot to mention in our last email the wonderful concerts that they held just around the corner from our hotel. It was an outdoor concert in the plaza that you had to buy tickets for. Fortunately for us by opening the windows to the balcony of our room we could hear everything. I have no idea what she was singing but it was truly beautiful and after 5 nights in a row we had the program memorized and had favorite pieces picked out. The concerts were at 10pm so it was the perfect time to relax, read, play cards or whatever after our day.

After a fairly complicated trip that involved a subway ride, two trains and a cog train up the mountain we arrived in Queralbs. It was a tiny little mountain village (500 people) with beautiful stone houses with all wood interiors. We stayed in a Pension for two nights (it included dinner, Erika tried lamb chops and steak!). We spent the days hiking and once again Erika was a champ. Queralbs is the last point where cars are allowed and so we hiked the path to Nuria which is a family resort type thing that is the final destination of the cog train.

The hike took about 3.5 hours going up and 2.5 coming down. And I do mean going up. In total it was a 750 meter ascent and it was climbing the whole way. It was an incredibly beautiful hike past waterfalls and beautiful mountain peaks. At the end of the hike we were within about 3 miles of France.

Thursday was a travel day that involved 4 trains and 13 hours of traveling. We made our way from the mountains to Toledo (about 1 1/2 hours south of Madrid). We´re spending the day sightseeing before heading to Madrid tomorrow. With only five days left to our trip we´re having a great time and looking forward to seeing Madrid.

Michael-John and Erika

Toledo, Spain

PS Congratulations to Sarah and Colin Van Huie who were married 7/28!

As it stands right now we´ve been in Barcelona for 4 days and we´re staying through Tuesday morning when we´ll head up to the Catalan Pyrenees (mountains).

So that´s the boring logistics. The fun stuff is that we´ve been having a great time. Sevilla was beautiful. We stayed in this completely beautiful hostal just a few minutes from the Cathedral. We got to tour the Plaza de Torros (the arena where they have the bullfights) and just spent a lot of time enjoying the city and drinking sangria. It´s a wonderful city and we really loved it.

We did run into a few small challenges. we had my Jansport (the little backpack)
swiped at a touristy type plaza. Total stupid American Express commercial move where I put it down to take a picture, looked up and it was gone. Fortunately the only thing that was in there was a frisbee, and the guide book. Really the only thing of value was the digital camera cards with all of our pictures from the trip up to that point(the camera was
in my hand). So needless to say we have a new snazzy spanish backpack a new copy of
Let´s Go (the guide book), and Harry Potter and Hemingway to read on the trains. It´s really no big deal and if this is the most that goes wrong on this trip we´ll be doing ok.

Tuesday we went on to Cordoba with the plan of taking a morning bus to Cordoba, leaving our stuff in a locker at the train station for the day while we toured the city and taking the overnight train to Barcelona. Of course I didn´t bother to buy tickets or anythign and didn´t realize there were no seats (or more importantly beds) available. But after asking like 5 different gate agents 10 different times to see if any had opened up, we got lucky (just before we gave up to spend the night in Cordoba). So it all worked out and we had a really nice day in Cordoba.

So we´ve been spending quite a bit of time in and around Barcelona. It is a very lively and beautiful city. Las Ramblas is the main pedestrian street through downtown and it´s a wonderful collection of cafes, street performers and Gaudi architecture. We´ve been touring churches, and lots of buildings that were designed by Antoni Gaudi. He´s to Barcelona what Frank Lloyd Wright is to Chicago. His buildings are everywhere and very interesting.

We went to La Sagrada Familia this afternoon. It´s a huge church that they started construction on around 1880. Guidi himself estimated it would take 200 years to complete and 120 years later only 8 of the 12 bell towers and 2 of the 4 facades have been constructed. They haven´t even started on the insides yet, they can´t because it doesn’t have a roof. It is very beautiful, but very different from any other cathedral I´ve ever seen. It´s definitely a modern cathedral.

The trip so far has had a nice pace. We´ve really felt like we´ve been on vacation and not constantly touring. It also helped to spend a day at the beach a few days ago. We daytripped out to Sitges, about 40 minutes outside of Madrid for some good Mediteranean beach life. And we´re planning on spending our last day in Barcelona at the beach near the Olympic village.

I´ve got a very romantic day planned for us tomorrow. We´re going to go to mass in the morning, a light lunch and then watch some guys stick swords into the neck of a bull. Certainly what every girl dreams of for her one year anniversary, right? Oh well, can I help it if they only have bullfights on Sunday and it happens to be our anniversary?

Anyways, so upcoming highlights from the trip include the Catalan Pyrenees for some hiking in the mountains, down to Toledo and then on to Madrid before heading home.

Hope all is well with everyone.

Erika and Michael-John
Barcelona, Spain

We took a day trip to Volubulis a Roman ruin dating from circa the time of Christ- Erika’s first Roman ruins! One definite highlight of that trip was a French mother and daughter pair who picked us up while we were walking and gave us a ride back to town afterwards, saving us a half hour walk and an hour long bus ride.

We took the train to Tangier this morning. The train system in Morocco is very efficient and comfortable.
Say what you want about the French, but the build good train systems for their colonies.  We’re staying tonight at the hotel where William S. Burroughs wrote The Naked Lunch and where Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac stayed when they came to visit him. Had drinks at a cafe that was part of the intrigue and spy games during WWII.

We’re doing really well. Our intestinal fortitude is holding up and Erika is being a champion traveler.  We’re staying in cheap and yet bug free hotels. Despite its reputation, we’ve felt entirely safe and not hassled much at all the whole time we’ve been in Morocco.

Traveling together is really fun and interesting.  Erika’s french has been absolutely indispensable. It
adds an interesting dynamic to our relationship when I have to totally depend on her for any sort of communication whatsoever. Learning a lot and it should be interesting to see how things change/develop
once we get to Spain, as her spanish isn’t nearly as good as her french.

We can see Spain from here and tomorrow we’ll take the 2 hour ferry ride to Spain and catch the bus to Sevilla. The plan is to be in Sevilla Saturday afternoon and go to mass on Sunday at the cathedral.  Will try and email again in a few days. Hope all is well with all of you.