This particular blog post has been like an albatross, following us around for the past two months. It turns out, when you return to the US, gumption to finish anything immediately dissipates.
Well, better late than never!
From Munich we caught a cheap flight to Barcelona, easily one of the top three European destinations that we were excited about pre-travel. Barcelona alone was Michele’s ‘must’ European city. The city was not short on places to see, unreal architecture, and incredible “now these are Spanish tapas” tapas.
When we first starting looking for a place to call home in Barcelona, we had a surprising amount of trouble. We couldn’t figure it out at first, it wasn’t peak season, there were no festivals to speak of, what could be going on? Well, if you’ve followed the news about Spain at all in recent months you may have heard that the region of Spain we were visiting (Catalonia) was having a vote to decide whether they should be independent of Spain. Kind-of-a big dill. It just so happened that one of the days we were there was the day that the rally for independence was held in Barcelona. So us and around a million of our friends walked through the streets of Barcelona. Them in a show of solidarity and cries for independence, us because we didn’t know quite what was going on and just happened to be out and about. Looking back, it’s kinda cool to be part (even accidentally) of something so historically important for the region. On the flip side, everything was closed. Where are your priorities Barcelona??
Actually, that day was one of our first days in town and we found a hike we could do to get some fresh air and views. So we wound our way through the city, up a large hill / small mountain, and landed at a church / amusement park called Tibidabo. This is one of the best juxtapositions you can imagine, a beautiful gothic ancient church on a mountain with the screams of children as they whip past on a rollercoaster that hangs off the edge of the mountain. 
Piety has its advantages, and those advantages are apparently cotton candy and unlimited rides on the Scrambler. It was on our way down from the mountain when the protests were going full strength. Chants of ‘Si’ (the Catalonian branding for voting “Yes” on the independence from Spain), with flags and t-shirts galore to match. Hundreds of thousands of people peacefully roaming about (if we had been here for actual vote, it was apparently a slightly different story). What was striking was that it wasn’t just young people. It was everybody, including a ton of families marching together with their children. It was just something “neat” for us to see and modestly be part of, but it obviously meant more than we can understand to the people participating. Keep an eye on this, should be interesting to see what resolution they can reach…
Food is a large part of Spanish culture, not only are there great restaurants with tapas and other amazing things, but families and friends will get together to cook and eat as a way to spend time together. 
To get just a little taste of this, we took a paella cooking class from a local expert. We learned that traditional paella cooking was a full day affair, gathering family and friends together. We made both the traditional paella with rabbit and one with seafood. Who know bunnies are both cute and delicious! (Full disclosure, Michele did not eat anything that was cute and furry this day). We met folks from around the world at our class and joined a handful of them to tour Park Guell following the class. A creation by Gaudi, who we’ll describe in a little bit. The park had a fairytale feel to it, gingerbread-like houses and winding vine-like railings surrounded the park. Indeed, one of the most amazing aspects about Barcelona is the architecture. 
From the extremely old castle district to modern skyscrapers, there’s nothing quite like that we’ve seen. One of the biggest reasons for this building eye-candy is all of the buildings and random other things (including light posts, parks, etc), which that dude named Gaudi we mentioned before, influenced or built. His style is basically like walking into a living fairy tale. He uses windy curves, unique colors, and a lot of nature. Like columns that are meant to look like tree trunks reaching up into the sky. Pretty amazing. To give you an idea of how amazing, if you’ve ever been to Europe you’ll know the progression that we’re about to describe:
First time in a church: “Oh my god! This is amazing! There is nothing like this in the states. It’s so old, and look at the detail! I’m going to read about every random saint and story about this church so I can understand it’s history”
Next ten times: “Huh, these are neat. I wonder how old they are. 2000 years? Cool.”
Next fifty times: “Is Christ himself buried in here? No? Then we’ll pass”.
So, after traveling around Europe for a bit you get a little calloused to what are actually all pretty impressive buildings. And then there is the La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. 
This building is literally awe-inspiring. It is one of Gaudi’s masterpieces, and it has been built (and it’s still going) for the past 135 years continuously. Let that sink in for a moment, in this modern era La Sagrada Familia had its first stone laid in 1883 and has been under construction since then. Five generations of people have seen some phase of construction. It’s nearly complete, and rarely can you say this about something that took that long… So. Worth. It. 
The outside is impressive enough, with crazy detail and tons of carved tableaus detailing different aspects of Christianity. The inside is otherworldly. Massive ceilings, which at the highest point reach over 500 feet, greet you. To give you some perspective, the Statue of Liberty is only about 300 feet tall. The pillars are trees and go all the way to the top, and all unique in different ways. The massive stained glass windows flood the floor with different colors giving each angle a different feeling. Nothing is by accident and there is so much detail. Word and pictures cannot do this justice, so if you ever find yourself in Barcelona, you better go!
Now, on a more irritatinh note, one thing that has become apparent to us as we travel, is that wonderful cities like Barcelona are being overrun with tourists. Not the good tourists that try to blend in and enjoy some of the local culture, but, mass groups of people moving in hordes ignoring everyone else. There is no attempt to speak the language (even basic hellos and thank-yous are ignored), and the local areas are rightly getting a little tired of their city (and culture) being overrun for money. As a result, beautiful boulevards like La Rambla and the historic Gothic quarter in Barcelona were saturated with souvenir shops and street con artists. And another thing that grinds our gears, because of the high temperatures, many tourists were using parasols as a way to beat the heat. Unfortunately, their oblivious and irresponsible umbrella usage lead to a lot of eye-gouging for Trent. Michele conveniently slid beneath most. So, tourists… that was the one negative about Barcelona, but enough about that.
We left Barcelona with Michele fighting a cold and a little wary of crowds, Valencia was the perfect next stop. A short, and quite scenic, train ride along the coast brought us to our next home in Valencia. We had no idea what to expect, and were pretty pleasantly surprised with what we found. Valencia is a beautiful city with a rich cultural center, friendly people, and gorgeous beaches. Our host didn’t speak any English, but Michele speaks enough Spanish to get us through without any issues. Regardless, she was adorable. Gesturing to us to make sure we knew we were welcome and making a quick “walking” motion with her fingers to let us know that if we needed anything she would come right over. Too cute. We used Valencia as one of our “recovery” spots, where we moved slowly, ate in a lot, and watched a ton of Dexter. When we did go out, we found one of the most livable cities we’ve
been in yet. We spent a lot of time in a massive park in the middle of the city that used to be a river. They diverged the river decades ago to prevent flooding and built a beautiful long winding park. The park was perfect for running, and it seemed like the entire city descended on it to run and walk in the evening. There was a playground themed after Gulliver’s travels where you can pretend to be a Lilliputian and crawl around on the fallen giant.
Additionally, in this park was another little gem, the “Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències”, the city of arts and sciences. Being pretty nerdy, both of us were excited to explore this area. Imagine a mostly white series of buildings straight out of the Jetsons with pools and running water going in between the buildings and art sculptures spattered throughout. One building was in the shape of giant whale skeleton, another more spherical, and so on.
They all housed various science-y or culture based things like a nature and science museum and the Opera House. While a lot of cities have arts and theater districts, this one was truly unique and fun.
One final day at the beach relaxing and one evening sampling various wild game local to the area and we said our goodbyes to Spain (for now) and headed to the capital city of its neighbor Portugal.
Lisbon was another city we didn’t know much about, save it was the capital of 
Portugal and our last stop for the European portion of our journey. Lisbon was surprising, it is much older and historic than we expected, roughly 4 centuries older than our Roma! We stayed in the oldest historic part of Lisbon called Alfama. The thing that strikes you right off the bat about Lisbon are the colors. 
The houses are decorated in these intricate designs and striking colors by using tile to cover the front of the houses. We wanted to know more about these tiles, so we took a class on how to make them! They’re called Azulejos (roughly meaning tiny polished stone), and they’re pretty important to culture in Portugal. The class was a blast, you’re given instructions and a brief history lesson and then you get a tile to just go at it. They have an outline for you so you don’t have to create the design yourself, but it’s still pretty hard. Trent got yelled at multiple times by the Portuguese teacher asking him repeatedly, “Are you SURE you don’t 
need glasses” and disapprovingly saying “no, this is wrong”. No participation trophies here Millennials, please keep moving. After a few hours of work the nice lady takes the fruits of your labor and blasts them in a super-hot oven. At the end we were pretty impressed with our results, even if we do say so ourselves.
We had about ten days to explore, so we were able to take our time and relax and go at our own pace. Since our place only had local Portuguese channels on the TV, what did this mean?? Monopoly, Portuguese Edition. We literally played like 30 games of Monopoly in our place. “Oh no, Pague $20,000!!”. We now feel like we have an intricate understanding of the Portuguese real estate market and financial system. Thank you Monopoly!
Aside from our intense gaming sessions, we got out quite a bit in Lisbon and had the great opportunity to take a food and drink tour through the capital. We took a food tour and it was a huge highlight, our guide Ruthy walked us through the small winding streets giving history and culture lessons along the way. Stopping at various places to try the local flavor. Some fun things were a cherry liquor called Ginja that is popular. It’s crazy sweet, but the best thing about it is that little old ladies sit out and sell it to tourists coming in off cruise ships claiming it’s “homemade”, charging a couple Euro per shot. Hint, it’s not homemade :). Sardines are really popular here, and probably would have been good enough… Except that Michele decided she wanted to see what the inside of one looked like and opened hers up. Please never do this, you will not eat a Sardine again. And a lot of deserts, including the ubiquitous and delicious pastel de nata, which was a miniature pie like pastry made from eggs, something creamy, lots of sugar, and fairy dust. But, probably the best thing about the food tour was that it turned into a drinking tour after we met an awesome couple, Stephanie and David, who were on their honeymoon and decided to “explore” / pound Lisbon’s finest craft beers and eventually Mojitos with us. Loved everything about this tour save the hangover we all had the next day. But, it’s a small price to pay for making new friends.
Most of the rest of our time was spent exploring the winding streets, re-sampling the food (deserts, not sardines) we tried on the tour, and visiting the beach. But, as our time wound down in Lisbon as well as Europe, what we became most excited for was our decision to come home for a bit, recharge our batteries, road-trip parts of the U.S. and see our fur-baby Russell.
Actually, as we finish up writing this we are wrapping up our trip home and getting ready to head back out on what seems like is going to be the most interesting as well as challenging part of trip. North and Eastern Africa, here we come!
Places visited in states: New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Indianapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Destin, West Palm Beach, Key West, St. Augustine, Savannah, D.C. So much for R&R in the states! We might not ever learn!