Huzzah!

The link function in Snapfish is FINALLY working!

Click here to see our pictures from Barcelona.

PS. If you don't have a Snapfish account it will ask you to create one (all the sites I looked at to put the pictures on required this) sorry! If you don't have an account yet and don't have to see them right away I'd love if you'd let me refer you...I get free prints every time I refer some one. And...I took a LOT of pictures - I need all the free prints I can get. Just send me your email address and I'll send you an invitation asap!

MAGNET AND LIQUOR DAY! (Barcelona, Spain 12/20/08)

Of course, we slept in again.

If you’ve ever been on a cruise before you know they charge an arm and a leg for an alcoholic beverage (well, really any beverage…). Although we’re not real big drinkers we like to enjoy a few drinks on vacation. So, we thought we’d go find a liquor store that carried some ‘fruity’ booze. Kyle had to do a little research to find a liquor store that had more then home made grain alcohol but we found the ‘biggest liquor store in Spain’.

So, first thing after we got up we headed out to the liquor store…a short 16 block walk get a little long when you get lost… This store was really cool, and a little confusing. You walk in the front door and it looks like an old time-y delicatessen. It had walks COVERED with shelves full of cans and jars of stuff. The guys behind the counter even had cute little paper hats.

You walk through the deli area into a windowless, low ceiling room that has shelves and shelves of beer and wine – floor to ceiling. You kinda walk around this corner and through this small entryway and the room opens up into another windowless room. Again, floor to ceiling shelves with probably a thousand bottles of hard alcohol – it was awe inspiring :)

We picked up our five liters of booze (remember we’re on a boat for over 2 weeks) and headed to the check out line. Once we got all rung up I started putting the bottles into my fabric bags – I take them everywhere with me – and the checkers was 10 kinds of confused, but then he realized I was being environmental and he congratulated me.

We decided to take the subway back to the hotel to drop off the booze and then headed back out to find some lunch. We walked quite a bit and then eventually found a cute little restaurant where we had some nice Spanish food.

After lunch we went back to Las Rambles to find my Barcelona magnet. We found it right across the street from the Starbucks so we decided to stop by again for coffee, donuts, and chocolate cake (oh, and of course, some checkers).

After a couple of hours of (I can only assume because I don’t actually remember) Kyle losing at checkers we decided to venture back out onto Las Rambles. After snapping some fun pictures of the street at night we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel, try out some of our newly acquired alcohol and go to bed.

I'm Still in Bed and Mad at Myself!

So...it's almost been 2 weeks since my sledging accident. I'm moving around a lot better but I still can't really bend, or pick things up, or carry things, or really do anything with my body but get me from one place to another...oh, and type.

I promise I'm working on the cruise blog posts. I think I don't like doing them because they are so tedious - the pictures take hours to upload it seems like...but as I can't do anything else I have no real reason not to. I will get one up today!

So we got a package today. (The post man dropped it on my bad arm - OWWW). Anyway, Kyle and I were pretty excited about. Now we can have tacos since we got lots of taco seasoning (I don't think I'll ever run out!) Kyle got some vitamins and a book he's really looking forward to read. I got a Master Tax Guide (YAHOOO!!) and a book I was VERY excited about. I thought I was getting this:
I actually got this:I KNOW KNOW KNOW I purchased the first one...but everything points to the fact I'm wrong. So, if anyone wants to mail me a package will you toss in a copy of this book? I'll pay you and can even trade you for a copy of the workbook ;)

I Heart Sangria (Barcelona, Spain 12/19/08)

We got up on Friday and took the other bus route around the city (the blue route). Our first stop was a beautiful roundabout on the west side of town.



We thought we would walk around a little bit and stumbled upon this huge beautiful castle thing. The castle was on this huge hill. My first thought was, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m not walking up all of those stairs!!’ Luckily, there were escalators all the way up to the castle – how cool and lazy is that!!

Inside was a beautiful dome (that we got panoramic pictures of, don’t worry!). It was actually a museum and I think we actually snuck in without paying the entrance fee (they should really have better security). On our way out we found a beautiful, and huge, organ inside of a concert hall.



After we grabbed a quick snack from a street vendor we hopped back on the bus and took it to the Olympic park. (It was actually only 1 stop – we should have walked, oops!) We weren’t really allowed go into any of the buildings so we just walked around the outside. We were able to go into the track and field stadium and that was very cool – although a lot smaller then I expected. It looked smaller than a college football stadium.

We did hear some people working out in the pool – they were jamming out to some Journey. Even the Spanish know good, classic music :)



Next stop was the Mont Juic cable car up to another cool looking castle on an even higher hill. The cable car was a neat little ride – I now love cable car rides and will take them whenever I can. Although…this one wasn’t quite as high or long as a couple of the rides we’ve taken in Switzerland but we also weren’t climbing up a mountain!

At the top we walked around and took some more cool panoramic and sat and enjoyed the sun (something we haven’t seen much of in the last 3 months in CH). The castle housed a military museum that we decided not to go into but there were still canons and other cool military stuff outside of the museum.

By this time we realize we’re absolutely starving so we head back down the mountain via cable car and hop back on the bus. We get off at Miramar, the (kinda) open air mall on the harbor. We find a cute little modern Chinese-y restaurant (I got to have soy sauce so it was all good) with a nice view of the water.

At lunch we had these crazy rice cake type things. They were like half rice cake, half pop rocks, half cotton candy (yeah, I know the math doesn’t work…that’s why I have my ten key with me always!). You’d put them in your mouth and they would pop and melt into your tongue at the same time. Kyle and I spent a good 45 minutes giggling because of these.

After lunch we did some shopping. Shopping for us now consists of walking around the stores looking at all the pretty things that we could afford if we were in the states but because we’re in Europe they all cost 4-5 times more. We did find a Disigual store. It’s a cross between Urban Outfitter, American Apparel, and a bad 80’s hair band music video. In fact, I’m sure that I’ve seen some of the clothes that they had in there in old White Snake videos.

Anyway, Kyle and I had a dance party in the middle of the store and as security was about to ask us to leave we decided we were done.

We hopped back on the bus to finish out our blue route. Once we got all the way around the loop we decided we wanted to head to the casino. So we stayed on the bus to make another ¾ loop around the city going past all the things we’d already seen that day.

Once we get back around to the casino (WE FOUND IT!) we head in and are ready to play some table games. Well, we didn’t have our actual passports with us – just color copies, we’d heard Barcelona was a big pickpocket city – so we were sequestered to the video machines.

I played Hoot Loot for about an hour. At one point I had won 30 Euro but promptly lost it. Kyle lost a few Euro too but I think he has more fun watching me dance around like an idiot to the slot machine music when it’s spinning than he has actually playing, so he didn’t lose much.

Finally we got bored of Hoot Loot so we took another walk up La Rambles until we decided we were done walking. We hopped on the subway back to our hotel and found a quaint little pizza place along the way.

Real Spanish Sangria is awesome – but it really sneaks up on you! We had a pitcher and a half at the restaurant. Red Sangria with dinner and Champagne Sangria (or Sangria Cava) with dessert (Red=good, Champagne=not so good). Half way through pitcher #2 we decided we needed to stop drinking and leave IMMEDIATELY. Luckily our hotel was only about a block away so we were able to successfully stumble home…and we were instantly asleep!

What I did Yesterday

It looked something like this.



Except I didn't hit anyone on my way down.

We went 'sledging' up in the mountains with a couple of people from work. They give you these old school looking toboggans then send you up a gondola. Sledging is a cross between luging and death. It's like skiing down a double black diamond with no control. You're pretty much expected to make U-turns, on an old school sled remind you, at 40 mph (or so it seems).

I'd already taken one turn a little to fast and used my knee as a break so that leg was done for the day. Two turns later I couldn't slow myself down enough to make the turn. I hit the bank of ice and that catapulted me about 15 feet in the air. I came down 30 feet on the other side of the bank, on my head of course, then fell to my left side.

Kyle and Dave were nice enough to get me down the hill after I could breath again. Then, Kyle took me to the Swiss version of an emergency room where they took x-rays and told me that nothing was broken to a point they could do anything about it. They said I definitely bruised my rib cage and might have some hairline fractures but that was it. They gave me an ibuprofen patch and some pain meds and sent me home.

Getting home wasn't quite as much fun though. I have one decent leg to walk on and only one arm that can be touched without my screaming in pain. Kyle helped me hobble along to the train station where we met up with everyone else.

Now I'm stuck in bed with every pillow we own propping me up so my ribs don't have too much pressure on them. Luckily my fingers work (so I can type and play on the internet) but that is definitely the only part of me that works.

I think me and Tivo are going to become even better friends over the next few days.