Family vacation part 2 - the cities :-)

One of the reasons we wanted to go to the Costa Brava when my family visited us in June (see previous post) was that we had not yet been to see the city of Barcelona. So one day of the week we were there, we took the train down to Barcelona. The train was fun, though it took about half again as long as it would have in the car. At least we had pretty scenery to watch out the window and for part of the way we even had a little live music to entertain us :-).

Barcelona is a very nice city. We went to see the cathedral (of course :-) ). The highlight of the visit was going up on the roof of the cathedral. There were some amazing views of the city from up there!



We enjoyed a wonderful meal on an outside terrace. For sure, the must have on any Casteel or Risley vacation is good food! :-) A funny aside - at first the maitre'd refused to seat us because there were 12 of us. Fortunately, my dear hubby is a salesman and he was able to persuade him to reconsider! :-)






We took a stroll down the main pedestrian street, Las Ramblas. They had all kinds of street performers and exotic animals for sale. The street leads to the harbor, which was really beautiful!










The day ended with some yummy Italian gelato. It was fun!

We also took 1 evening to go into town. Tim & Mandy and Jason & I went to see the Gaudi cathedral of la Sagrada Familia and enjoyed a yummy dinner of tapas.

Once we got back to Madrid, we enjoyed Sunday morning at church. Then we took Tim & Mandy and family to downtown Madrid to see the bear statue and the Plaza Mayor. We even got some churros & chocolate :-)

Then on Monday, we all (minus Jason who had to go back to work!) went to our favorite little town of Segovia. The goal for the day was to get a good pic of the girls in the coordinating dresses that Mandy had brought for them. Well, perhaps easier said than done! They enjoyed posing like princesses in the castle though!


Tim has been learning about photography and I think he's getting quite good. Our favorite moment was when he was lying on his back in the middle of the Plaza Mayor in Segovia, trying to catch the kids in a good pic. It was like the paparazzi or something :-) Too fun! And it did result in one of the best pics of the day of the 3 girls! Also from the same "shoot" here is Layton trying to grab the camera lens :-)

It was such a fun, fun week to be together. That is the single thing we have missed the most since living in Spain: having longer times to hang out with our family. Even when we've gone home, the time seems so short. So what a blessing that each of our family members made the trip across the ocean this spring where we could hang out for several days in a row!