KVTravelSpree

Today is Spain's National Labor Day, so the city was packed! We started our day trying to go to the Royal Alcazar Palace, to only find a line that was ridiculously long and not moving (in 20 minutes, they allowed in less than 50 people). We stood in it for a while, and decided to book a tour later in the day. In the meantime, we went to the Museo de Flamenco (The Flamenco Museum). This museum was an interactive museum with a lot of videos, costumes, artwork, etc. Cody and I learn best by having written information in front of us with the option to listen to audio/video, but with only having videos of different dancers showing the variations of flamenco, this museum was not for us. We liked walking around and watching some stuff, ... read more

Every time we have the slight opportunity to sleep in, we somehow manage to miss our alarms! Today we slept until about 9:30 am, and went to grab breakfast in Granada. We enjoyed some empanadas and a croque-monsier (traditional French sandwich) before going to try to find some churros y chocolate. Churros & chocolate is a traditional Granada dish that is deep fried churros with hot chocolate on the side to dip the churros in. For breakfast, we definitely weren't quite in the mood, but it was worth trying and pretty good! Typically people enjoy this after a long night of partying at the clubs, but both of us would prefer something else as post drinking/partying food. Cody would want something more savory fried (i.e. burgers and fast food), I'd want ice cream or some other ... read more

Today we learned the hard way being on Spanish time + early flights = not a great combination. After a late dinner last night, we had to turn around and get up at 4:30 am (as people were still out on the streets partying!), to catch our flight to Granada. We had a 7:20 am flight to Granada, which landed around 9:00 am. Barcelona is in northeast Spain, while Granada is in south east Spain at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The Barcelona airport was a little tricky to check our bags, as it is all self check-in with a lot of people who don't know what they're doing / how to check their own things in, but, we made it! We both napped on the way to Granada, and then navigated our ... read more

Today we had another late start of a morning waking up around 9:30 am. We took another one of Rita's suggestions for breakfast, and went to Patisseria Hoffman. Not having our internet synced up, it was a bit of a challenge to find on the narrow, windy streets within El Born, but the extra walking just meant we could consume some extra calories, right? Cody had a strawberry cheesecake croissant and a cinnamon roll croissant, I had a had a ham and cheese croissant. Everything was delicious! Cody claims it's the best croissant he's ever eaten, so if you like croissants I guess you should book a trip to Barcelona ASAP with that endorsement. We will probably be eating there again tomorrow. :) We next went walking in downtown Barcelona to the coast. The weather was ... read more

Today we decided to take a trip to the storybook-esque town of Sintra, Portugal. We made it up the windy roads of Lisbon this morning to the train station, and found our way. The train from Lisbon to Sintra is about 45 minutes, and round trip for both of us cost about 10 Euro. Sintra has a variety of palaces, chateaus, and gardens. They also have a bus system that takes you from place to place throughout the city, because while these monuments are all in "Sintra," the walks in between can take well over an hour to get from one point to the next, and the roads are quite steep. The bus system, however, was not the most...prompt. While it saved us steps and sweat, we had a lot of standing/sitting time waiting for the ... read more