Barcelona

We escaped dreary Copenhagen for sunny Spain two days after Christmas. The minute we got out of the airport, we took off our coats and basked in 50 degrees and sunshine waiting for the train. We missed the sun so much!

We chose Barcelona for two reasons: sunshine and the Sagrada Familia. Our hotel was a few blocks away from the church and couldn't possibly have had a better view!

The inside doesn't look like the outside at all-- white and bright, with beautiful stained glass that casts rainbows all over the place. 

Hands down, the most beautiful cathedral interior we've seen anywhere.

Most of our time was spent just sort of wandering around the city. The architecture is beautiful-- it's like Rome and Paris combined, with the addition of some crazy Gaudi designs. We spent a lot of time just walking around... usually purposefully because it was pretty and warm-ish, though one day we basically hiked up Montjuïc because Google Maps picked the wrong Metro stop.

Todd was a bearded mountain man on this trip. He doesn't think it looked too bad, but I thought he looked kinda homeless. See that reddish stubble?

We've never eaten such authentic food!  Todd tried (and loved) it all-- cured mountain lion, bombas (fried balls of dough/fish), bacalo (salt cod?), whole squid, and seafood paella. My cousin, Lacey, told us about a place in Barceloneta that defined hole-in-the-wall. There wasn't even a sign on the door or a printed menu. SUPER authentic and delicious! I probably would have enjoyed that part of the trip a lot more if I hadn't been pregnant and generally uninterested in eating. (Though we did find me an excellent burrito place. Overjoyed.) 

Our favorite activity was probably going out to Spain's first National Park, Montserrat. The view was just incredible.

There's a cathedral and monastery at the top. How they got the materials for such an ornate building up that mountain, I do not know.

We stopped there for a bit, but then took the steepest aerial tram I've ever seen and hiked up to the 16th-century hermitage carved into the mountain side.

The last day of our trip, we went to the Picasso museum and down to the beach and just sat there in the warm sun (in coats, it wasn't that warm). Have I mentioned how grateful we are to have taken so many awesome trips in the past 5 months? Loved Barcelona. So blessed.