Barcelona!!!

Wait, I mean, ¨Barthelona.¨ So, hola amigos y familias! Estamos en Barcelona! We changed our plans, of course, and we have come to Spain instead of Italy. We´ll be somewhere in Spain for maybe the next 10 or so days, and then we´ll head to Italy for the rest of November, and then spend our December days in Switzerland. And we´ve passed our halfway mark!

Right now, Ali is prolonging her siesta, and Sarah is reading the last Twilight book again. Oh yeah, did we ever mention that we´ve been reading the Twilight books? Sarah bought 2 of the books in Edinburgh so she could re-read them, and Ali finally broke down and started reading them, and I joined in soon after. I still need to read the final book, so we can all be on the same page of this saga... we´ve been reading like mad, though, Twilight or not. I think we´ve each read around 8 or 9 books so far? What with train rides, cafes, beaches, cozy hotel rooms, parks, etc., we have so much time to read.

Anyway, we were in Nice for 5 nights, and it was so nice to have the beach about 5 minutes away from our hotel. It was sort of rocky, actually really rocky, but we still hung out there and swam. They do actually celebrate Halloween there! Well, we saw a few cute families dressed up in costumes, and a few bars and stores had Halloween decorations. Unfortunately, we never got to go rollerblading on the main boulevard by the water, but I´ve seen a few rollerbladers here, so perhaps...

And now, we are in Barcelona! There´s a really gorgeous sandy beach here, and it was hot today (somewhere it said 28 degrees celsius, so in the upper 80s!!!), so we will definitely go there tomorrow. Our hostel is right in the ¨center¨ (somehow we´ve taken to calling the downtown or main area of every city the ¨center¨), near La Rambla, the main pedestrian walkway, and also close to La Boqueria, an amazing market similar to Pike Place where there were enormous avocados and mangos close to the size of some canteloupe.

Adios for now - we´re going out to dinner (we´d heard Barcelona was expensive, but at least compared to Paris, prices look great to us) and then going out someplace ¨out on the town,¨ if you will! Apparently most places are hopping from 1-4 a.m., so we´ll see how late we stay out... while we´re here, we´re either going to get up early to see a sunrise (over the water), or just stay up to see it... :) Love to you all!