Harris World Tour

We got a very good night sleep and woke up late. Greg and I went out to look for a grocery store. The kids of course, stayed home. It kind of takes a day to recover from the traveling, or maybe it's the heat that makes us so drowsy. We found a bigger market, finally, and I actually got excited to see more choices of food! We have been going to small and local places where we have been getting the basics. Today we got a decent grocery cart of food. Although, going to a grocery store where all the food labels are in Catalan can be a challenge. However, I asked for advice, and a very nice lady recommended what ham and cheese we should choose. We saw raw rabbit meat and live lobsters. We walked home with our little cart full of food. We had lunch at home and after cleaning up, we took a taxi to the Gothic quarter. We first saw the Cathedral of Barcelona also known as The Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia. There was a long line to get in but I really wanted to go in becaus...

What a day! We woke up late as usual, did our lazy morning routine, and then we went out of the house for our last walk in Madrid in our neighborhood. Believe it or not, Sunshine was in a shopping mood, and lucky for her we found some vintage stores near our place open. She got herself a windbreaker, but who knows if she will wear it considering how hot it is. Gregory and Daniel walked back home and Sunshine and I checked out a few more stores and got coffee. After that, we walked home and got ready to go. We left when the cleaning lady arrived, and we took an uber to the train station. We got there earlier than necessary, but it was nice to settle in on the train on time. It was a very nice and fast train. However, Gregory didn't tell me it was not a direct train to Barcelona, and we had about 20 minutes to run and change trains. I'm glad he didn't, otherwise, I would have been nervous. We made it to Valencia on time and we had more than extra time to make it to the other ...

 We are adopting the Spanish schedule, going to bed late and waking up late. We had our usual late breakfast of eggs, baguette, and yogurt. We left the house and walked to see the Temple of Debod, Daniel's pick after doing his research of things he wanted to do in Spain. On our way to the temple, we found the monument to Miguel de Cervantes which is Plaza España, a must see if you had a Spanish literature teacher who made you analyze Don Quijote for a whole high school year. The kids agreed that Madrid basically a large collection of important buildings, parks, and museums. Gregory usually says, "Oh look, another statue of a dead person." After taking pictures and remembering my awesome Spanish Literature Profe Fernandez, we continue our walk to Parque del Oeste to see the Temple of Debod, which is an Egyptian temple dating back to the 2nd century BC, which was transported to Madrid in 1968. The temple was donated to Spain by the Egyptian government to save it from...

T oday we woke up late again. It has become a habit, probably because we continue to go to bed at midnight. The good thing is that we are enjoying ourselves and having family time at breakfast. We left the house by 1:00pm and took the metro to the Parque Buen Retiro (Park of the Pleasant Retreat, in English) which is the biggest park in Madrid. It covers 1.4 km2 (350 acres) at the edge of the city center. The park belonged to the Spanish monarchy until the late 19th century, when it became a public park. The park is filled with beautiful sculpture and monuments, galleries, a big lake with ducks, turtles, and black swans. We had a great time. Most of the time, we watched the fish, turtles, ducks, and swans. We ate our lunch on a bench, walked some more and then we took the metro back home. We stopped in a beautiful building. I wanted to see what it was. It turned out to be the Museum of History of Madrid. The kids just wanted to go home so we sent them alone with the keys. Greg...

Today we got up late. We were very tired so we decided to take it easy. We had a late breakfast at noon(!), hung around the house and hen took an Uber to the Prado museum. Gregory did his research and you can actually go for free from 6:00 to 8:00pm but we wanted to avoid the crowds and the heat. It is extremely hot to be outside touring the city. We got there at 2:00pm. We all got in for free with our teacher and student ID cards, except Gregory but it was really worth it. For the record, the regular price is 15 euro. Thanks to Gregory's research we focused on the well-known paintings of famous painters like Goya, Velazquez, Rubens, Botticelli and Bosch. I was very happy to see Sunshine so excited about going to the museum and recognizing some of the popular paintings like Las Meninas  by Velazquez and La maja desnuda  by Goya. It was very exciting to see these famous paintings in person! It's one thing to study them in books and see them on the Internet, b...