A few notes on the trip that haven’t come up in previous blog posts:

1) The kids have adjusted well to the time difference. Miss M is a night owl, and Barcelona is her kind of city. She loves strolling the streets in our neighborhood, window shopping at the high end retailers, and the later in the day it gets, the happier she is. Our morning site seeing has been a bear on her. 

2) D has discovered the Barca and Real Madrid channels on the TV in our apartment. He’s watched hours and hours of match highlights and rebroadcasts of games. He owns two FC Barcelona shirts already, but I have a feeling we’ll be buying more soccer gear when we make a pilgrimage to Camp Nou later this week.

3) We’ve seen less smokers in Barcelona versus Paris, but it’s possible that’s because we are surrounded by tourists everywhere we go. Barcelona is crowded, and Paris is less crowded than we were expecting. It’s possible there were less crowds in Paris due to the recent terror attacks — we refuse to live in fear.

4) Supermarket prices are very reasonable: whenever we travel, we try and stock up on waters and snacks at local supermarkets versus buying from vendors all the time. We spent 30 Euros on our first day in Barcelona on cereal, coffee pods for the Nespresso machine, water, milk, juice, chips, cheese, chocolate, fruit, wine and more. The equivalent shopping trip would have easily cost $50 at a market in Boston. Every time we are in Europe, I wish we had more space in our luggage for groceries. Even the $5 jam that I buy at home is sold here for $2!

5) Sangria – I’ve really enjoyed the red sangria in Barcelona and usually don’t like it as much at home. Maybe they use a different type of wine, or maybe it’s just watered down here? It seems less strong and more refreshing here. Definitely going to have to find a recipe or a local to give us sangria tips.