Back to Madrid

Friday
-Checked out a small market near El Prado, finally a real market, no crazy amount of tourists
-Did mosnter 5 hour Prado excursion where we were tasked to view all "Masterpieces" of the prado. we did it. so tired
-Went back to find Rex had completed his presentation, everyone tired and crashed for 3 hours.

-Awesome tapas with Rex
-Partying with Rex's buddies, Tiziana and co at Ariea and Moby Dick Bar till 3 am
-bacon fried rice from Rex

Awesome Tapas example...at place I can't remember the name...TZ

Hanging out at a club called Moby Dick club

Saturday

-Woke up super late
- checked out a kind of touristy market
- yummy pincho tapas for breakfast/lunch
- short stint at the royal palace again
- awesome afternoon checking out Madrid's Ritiro park! People watching, lounging, password, and discussing ridiculous propositions and how much we would need to be paid to do it
- nap again
- Casa Granada for roof top/terrace tapas! Awesome night.

Sunday
-woke up super late again
-jeff and jackie visit el rastro
-cafe, tapas and the crazy technology playground
-shopping for groceries and random clothes
-bull fight!! (scary :/)
-cooking with Rex! Butter/garlic shrimp, black bean mussels, fish stew!
-chilling and reblogging :/

Barcelona Day 3 and 4

As you can tell, i have been really irresponsible and stopped blogging due to hardcore tired-ness. I think we hit our energy draining limit and blogging become a really low priority :p. anyway, in an effort to not forget what happened, i'm going to spew everything in bullet point style as to our last couple days...

Wednesday:
-Woke up early and headed to Montjuic and checked out (1) the Barcelona botanic gardens - we found it on accident and (2) the 1992 Olympic stadium
-tour of the Diagonal, a street with tons of shopping and nice stores; checked out the L'illa mall and trucked it back to Oriol's
-jeff took a nap. so tired.
-AWESOME experience with Oriol and friends watching Europe style PREGAME as the entire city got ready for the FC Barcelona vs Inter Milan;
-Headed to La Rambla to watch the game, ended up at a bar called Tarrentino to catch the game, they won the game, but did not make it to the final...
-watched oriol and blanca get home and be sad - just like when Texas loses games...
-crashed

Thursday
-woke up late and headed to casa mila, another Gaudi masterpiece. Did tour which was quite nice
-After casa mila, walked down to casa battalo which was also nice, but we decided to not do the tour due to cost and tired-of-museum disease
-walked la ramblas again and other shopping streets before calling it quits and having Oriol take us to the airport and go back to Madrid...

-Jeff

Barcelona day 2 - food and sun

An overall perfect day. Good eats, lots of walking, great weather, and tons of sights. Only drawback - no time for a siesta...

Park guell
To the surprise of Oriol and his roommate Blanca, we were up and at ´em again at something like 10 am. After a little breakfast we hiked it up to the northside of town to Park Güell which was designed by Gaudi, one of Spain´s most famous artists/dudes. Unfortunately we seemed to have taken a side route (bc Jeff wouldnt ask for directions) and it took us 2X at long to get there. (edit: actually, I did ask for directions, we just picked a bad place to start) We huffed and puffed all the way to the top, where we encountered the highest point at the park and a crazy man playing guitar and incoherently singing American songs. He also had a hole in his jeans crotch - sorry ladies no pics.

















Lunch
Hiked to La Rambla and the Boqueria again and got some yummy lunch at Romesco, reco-ed b Rex. It was crazy home cooked delicious.



Beach
Walked along the port to the beach and relaxed on the sand, also stopped by a hole-in-the-wall bar for some tapas and cava wine!

La Familia Sagrada
An awesome church also by Gaudi that is eternally under construction.

Dinner

Dinner was again stupendous, another reco from rex. We got to pick all our own seafood and how it was cooked! Super fresh and super delicious!!

So another food hitlist:

-giant jamon sandwich and cafe con leche for breakfast

-fish and porkchop with rice in Catalan red sauce at Romescos

-yum flan at Romescos

-awesome sausage with roquefort cheese tapa sandwich at Champagne bar

-Squid, shrimp, mussels, mystery shellish and salad for dinner

-chocolate croissant and cafe con leche to close the evening

Miss everyone tons,
Jackie and Jeff

Luggage Retrieved and Barcelona

After our first good night´s rest we woke up bright and early and hiked it BACK to the airport to (1) get our luggage and (2) catch a flight to Barcelona

We got to the airport RIGHT in time after Sunday´s ATL-MAD flight landed. After trucking it to International arrivals, Jackie and I asked where lost luggage was supposed to go and they all kept pointing at the door guarded by those dudes that you walk by when you "have nothing to declare". After some deliberation, we just walked straight thru them and started hunting- Jeff to the luggage desk, Jackie to scour the baggage claims. Jackie found a couple poor souls still waiting for baggage and a man wheeling her "lost" bag away! Meanwhile, she noticed my suitcase stuck on the "loop of death", doomed to circle on the conveyor for eternity. After some paperwork we were back in posession of our luggage finally!!

Next, we camped out like nomads/hobos in the airport lobby, unpacking our re-accquired bags and repacking some day bags for Barcelona! The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. No significant delays, no lost luggage (like we were going to risk checking it), nothing - we arrived right on time. After a long bus and metro ride, we got to our gracious host Oriol´s house ready to have fun!

On a side note, I lost my track jacket and ipod somewhere along the way. Not certain if I was just being stupid or if it got swiped, but anyway - don´t want to talk about it.

(Rex- i feel your pain with typing on Spanish keyboard, crazy, cannot find symbols anywhere and pressing ç a lot instead of ENTER)

Oriol (who has an afternoon radio show in Barcelona!) drove us to Las Ramblas, a beautiful series of streets filled with pedestrians, shopping, and other awesome diversions. We walked all the way down to the Columbus monument + port development.

Today´s food hit list:
-more jamon sandwiches (both iberian and regular jamon at the airport), super yummy
-strawberry and pistachio gelato (shout out to my Italy crew)
-Some crispy spanish pastry with chocolateç
-Paella and Tapas on Las Ramblas
-cheated with a small snack at KFC
-fresh coconut pineapple juice at Boqueria - a sweet farmer´s market

Tomorrow will be part Art mostly food gourging. Stay tuned...

-Jeff and Jackie

Updated with pics:

We made it to Spain!!!

Ok, so short summary of prior events:
Our trip had been set: 1 week in Romania+Budapest helping with Habitat with Humanity, then half week with Sam Mar in Switzerland, last weekend hurrah with Rex in Madrid!

April 13 or 14th: Iceland volcano starts spewing ash, blocking Euopre airspace
April 16th: Jackie and Jeff Romania trip delayed till Monday 19th because of ash cloud. Flight wasn't canceled till like 3-4 hrs before liftoff even though the world knew that the ash cloud was stopping everything
April 18th: ASh cloud still relentless, so we canceled the Romania trip alotgether. Because Madrid was not affected by the ash cloud, we changed our plans to a full week and a half vacation to just Spain, visiting Madrid and Barcelona.

*To all those wonderful people who donated it to us, we are still working on the finances, but the money you donated to use will probably go to a 2011 service trip to either Guatemala or Vietnam! Sounds fun already - already hoping more earthquakes/tidal waves etc spoil 2011*

April 24th: Departed for Madrid! We're at the airport over 2 hrs early, BUT CVG to ATL flight is alreayd delayed which means we're going to miss our ATL-MAD plane. BUT we hop on an earlier flight so we make our connection in time.

April 25th: 9:35 AM Touchdown in Madrid!!! We made it, get through immigration to problems! Then...BAGGAGE CLAIM...waiting...and waiting...and waiting. Turns out because of our CVG flight mishap, our luggage didn't get switched with us and completely missed the plane. HOWEVER, we are so happy jsut to make it out and start vacation we are still so
happy! After messing with all the lost luggage paperwork...

12:30PM- Take the metro and arrive to Rex's house where his friend Yolanda meets us with keys! We immediately crash for 3 hrs even though we are hungry...

3:30PM to 10:00PM get our butts out of bed and start exploring Madrid AND Madrid's food! We walked all up and down the east side of Madrid checking out Plazas (Italy crew knows I love Plazas because they make such great places to meet), statues, palaces and shopping. Among the shopping hit list was H&M where I procured some cheap outfits in case our luggage didn't make it out:/

Food hit list so far:
-Fresh fried Churros + Chocolate drink/dip
-Jamon sandwiches with Fanta (yum)
-Curry mussels with side of potato souffle with waffle for dessert
-Beer with corn nut tapas

Midnight: Rex gets back and we have a mini reunion + Rex meet Jackie time. Then Rex proceeds to show us the debauchery that is La Latina on a Sunday night. Honestly, this is absolute chaos: kids of all ages drinking in large packs, sitting on the floor, on public fountains, mixing liquor and coke in 2 liters, and even red wine and coke (gross right? but i want to try it now) Just insane for a Sunday night- IMO seems more festive then 6th street. Rex also mentioned that people are generally not getting in fights and throwing up all over the place - which is more like 6th street. haha. We sit down for some midnight snacks:

New food victims:
-More delicious jamon and bread
-fresh fried calamares with lemon
-coquettes (fried potato cheese things, i know. it sounds good.)
-Sangria

All in all, a wonderful first day. not bad for all that on <3 hrs of sleep! Closed the night with some laundry, some blogging, and some fervent calls to delta to resolve our lost luggage. As of this momment, the forecast is that we will receive our luggage in the AM just in time for us to make it to Barcelona!!!

Until then, thanks for reading. May update with pics if i have time...no promises :p

Miss you all,
Jackie and Jeff

Day -3 and Day -2

Quick recap of "Day -3" and "Day -2" (from Jeff)

DAY -3
Thursday morning (Albany, GA)
Michael informs Jeff at work that "there's some weird stuff going down in Europe...volcanos? Hope your trip is ok". Jeff reads CNN and is scared but optimistic.

Thursday 3:30PM (Albany, GA)
Jeff super excited to leave the paper plant and head back to Cincinnati to being his journey. Hops on the plane at Albany airport happy as can be.

Thursday 6:00PM (Atlanta, GA)
Jeff heads to international terminal for a dinner and already sees the ensuing chaos. Lots of international travelers stuck in Atlanta because they cannot get home. Reading more on CNN and checking canceled flights. Reports say things might be OK after Friday morning. With out flight being Friday afternoon, Jeff is still hopeful.

Thursday 8:00 PM (Atlanta, GA)
Still cautious, I call Delta customer service to see if the flight is canceled or if there are alternate routes I can take. No - it's all booked up.

DAY -2
Friday 12:00 AM (Cincinnati, OH)
Arrive back at the house and wake Jackie up. Super excited about vacation, make last second preparations and go to sleep.

Friday 5:00 AM (Cinci- home)
Super excited, I wake up and can't sleep. Check of flights indicate still on time and I continue to be foolishly optimistic. I write a series of bold e-mails and facebook updates proclaiming that everything is on track and I am still thinking I am going to leave. Very ironic in retrospect.

Friday 7:00 AM (Cinci - work)
Head into work for my half day and tie up all the loose ends at work.

Friday 12:00 noon (Cinci - work)
In a meeting, I decide to check the flight status AGAIN. CANCELLED. I leave the meeting and start going phone crazy and texting/IM Jackie to discuss what to do. The best option they have (and can book) is to leave Monday, arriving in Europe on Tuesday. A mix of confused, sad, mad feelings. It is crazy to think that I will look back on this day and think "Oh yeah, a volcano ash cloud limited my service trip to Romania in 2010". Ridiculous.

Friday 4:00 PM (Cinci - home)
Left work early because too disheartened to work whole day. My boss Laurent (from France) also reinforced that he was hearing it was impossible to go anywhere in France.

Friday 5:30 PM (Cinci- IKEA)
Jackie and I go to IKEA. We are in a state of "WTF" because we had completely cleared our plans for the weekend. Jackie was like "what do we do now?" and I had no answers so her suggestion of IKEA to look at a desk for her + swedish meatballs sounded pretty good.

Friday 9:00 PM (cinci-home)
Assembled desk with Javier and watched a movie - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). It was ok. Really starting to hit home that instead of being lazy around the house we would be hanging out with the Romania team in Budapest and preparing to travel to Beius Romania the next day.

Saturday 1:27 AM (cinci-home)
Blogging now. I'm still excited about going and doing service work for a partial week and visiting friends the next week, but disheartened that my experience was cut short by a crazy Iceland ash cloud - really crazy. I was really looking forward to working hard all day with the Give Back Cincinnati team building houses for the Beius community in Romania. I'll take the partial week - hope it's going well for the rest of the team (LUCKILY - most of the team traveled early to play in Venice)

Will keep you guys posted...

-Jeff

cancelled...

Ugh. Ash cloud. What are the chances.