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Stumbling Into Yet Another Holiday: The Festival of San Juan

A nice thing about traveling is that we often stumble into unexpected holidays. Last week, it was the night of San Juan, which, as Theo’s preschool administrator explained, was a pagan holiday celebrating the coming of summer until it was Christianized. From what I can gather, name aside, it’s largely turned back into a celebration of the summer solstice in Barcelona. Festivities include jumping over bonfires on the beach, drinking, waving around torches, and setting off lots of fireworks.

Our neighborhood of Gràcia, is not on a beach, but they compensated with a parade of dueling drummers, horses, and lots of torches.

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Istanbul

We spent a month in Istanbul last year.

I fell once while trying to get onto a bus while carrying Theo and a stroller, and half a dozen people rushed to help us.

We saw political marches, almost daily. Even though the government is often not kind to dissidents in Turkey, people are still willing to march.

Theo and Brian were once ushered into a bank to warm up, where Theo was provided with hot milk, chocolate, and a book. Unsatisfied that Theo was really warm enough, a bank employee went out to buy Theo soup.

If you sit between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, then you can hear the call to prayer echo between them.

I try to not dwell too much on terrorism, but after the recent airport bombing, my heart goes out to this welcoming, vibrant city, especially since it’s already struggling economically because of similar attacks.

The narrative of terrorism as “Muslims against the rest of the world,” fails to look widely enough to see who suffers the most because of terror.

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Barcelona Street Art

If you visit Barcelona, I very much recommend the Alternative Tour by Free Walking Tour Barcelona. After their guidance, I was able to identify the work of several street artists, making wandering around the city even more interesting. Also super interesting to me, the guides talked a bit about the city’s anarchist past. (I’ve been reading more about this in George Orwell’s memoir Homage to Catalonia.)

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Cooking And Eating In Barcelona

We found the food in Barcelona to be high-quality, affordable, and generally vegetarian friendly. We were staying only three minutes away from a local market, and there were lots of excellent bakeries and shops on the walk home from Theo’s school. Good wine can be obtained for only a few euros per bottle in Spain. Most restaurants had affordable fixed price lunches.

In short, we ate very well all month, at home and in restaurants.

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Gràcia – Yes, It Was Very, Very Nice

If you’re tired of posts about how much we like Barcelona, you’re in luck! We’ve left the city! So, this is my last Barcelona-is-awesome post. I promise.

I’m sure that our impressions of cities are shaped strongly by the specific neighborhoods where we’ve chosen to stay. There are a few places where, in hindsight, I would have chosen differently.

However, Gràcia in Barcelona was a huge win for us, and definitely made it onto our top-five list of places that we’d like to live. But, for now, it’s farewell! Among other things, we’ll miss the street music and festivals, stunning buildings, dozens of bakeries, great playgrounds, and leisurely outdoor dining.

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Books About Spain I Read While In Spain

Only in Spain is the modern-day memoir of an Australian woman who falls in love with flamenco and moves to Spain to continue dancing. It’s a fun, light, easy read.

The Shadow of the Wind is a grand, twisting novel set in Barcelona during the 1950s. It has a huge cast of characters and and a gritty, winding plot that touches on the impact of the fascist rule of Spain following the civil war.

Cathedral of the Sea is historical novel that follows the life of a fictional serf who eventually becomes a wealthy money lender. Occasionally (okay, often), I felt like the author was sprinkling unlikely social mobility on our main character so that he could describe yet another aspect of Barcelona life during the 14th century. But, in the end, I didn’t really mind so much, because I enjoyed the peeks into various social strata.

Homage to Catalonia is a memoir by George Orwell (yes, that George Orwell) that describes his experiences serving in the POUM militia during the Spanish Civil War. I loved this book for its gorgeous language, used to describe both the tedium of the battlefield and the violent rifts that grew between the various anarchist, socialist, and communist parties who were theoretically united in opposing the fascists.

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The Lyon Metro Tickets That Traveled Around The World

Lyon was our second home-for-a-month, back in September 2014. On our departure, we still had two metro tickets that I meant to leave at our apartment but accidentally packed instead. In an act of silliness, I kept them. My goal was to find Lyon residents as we were traveling so that I could give the tickets to someone who would return them to Lyon and use them. (We actually DID meet a family from Lyon in Cyprus and another family in Taipei, but I forgot completely about the tickets in both cases. Oops.)

Well, it turns out that WE are the family who returned the metro tickets to Lyon. When I was researching train routes between Barcelona and Berlin, Paris kept coming up as the main connection point. However, with some finagling I was able to connect us through Lyon (and Zurich) instead.

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I’m displaying the metro tickets. Theo is displaying his almond-chocolate croissant. Both were very exciting, but we won’t try transporting the croissant around the world. Continue reading “The Lyon Metro Tickets That Traveled Around The World”

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Zurich – Luckily, Playing In The Fountains Is Free!

Zurich, Switzerland was our second stop in a six-day-journey-by-train from Barcelona to Berlin.

During our trip, we’ve stayed a couple of places that people have warned us would be quite expensive: Sweden, New Zealand, and Japan come to mind immediately. In all three of those countries, we were actually surprised by how (mostly) affordable we found them compared to the warnings. (Of course, we departed on our trip from the California Bay Area, so we have a somewhat skewed baseline.)

We’d been warned that Zurich was expensive too… Continue reading “Zurich – Luckily, Playing In The Fountains Is Free!”