Happy Anniversary to us!

   May 1 was our first anniversary.  We spent it in Barcelona walking the streets, looking at the beautiful architecture and eating bocadillos at a little tapas where the cook held a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of whiskey (or something alcoholic, i don't have a lot of experience in this area) in the other. I'm really not joking about that either, we wanted to get a picture really bad but the way the restaurant was set up he was facing us and would have seen us. 


   We landed in Barcelona on the morning of our anniversary and tried really hard to stay awake to see some cool sites that day. Here's the Sagrada Familia, or Sacred Family.  It's a giant monster of a Roman Catholic Cathedral built by Antoni Gaudi, it's famous because of its crazy architecture and because it has been under construction since the day they started to build it in 1882 and it won't be finished until 2026! Gaudi designed a bunch of buildings in Spain, Blake told me that we get the word "gaudy" from his name, his buildings are known for looking ridiculous and cool at the same time. 

I wish you could see how crazy the detail is close up, there are hundreds of little statues of saints and demons all over it, there are also strange letters (JSH? anyone know what the significance of these letters would be on a Catholic Cathedral?), giant statues of fruit on the tops of spires and ghoulish looking faces

Here's the fruit

We tried to go in and tour but it was way expensive so we just snuck in the bottom floor and sat in on mass.  This is also where a random Italian man stopped Blake to tell him he looked like Superman. 

Blake also pointed out the fact that cranes are EVERYWHERE in Spain.  It's basically the only way to do construction there.  Those cranes will be an ever-present sight here for another 16 years at least. 

This is on the beach in Barcelona.  We saw enough old overweight (or scary skinny, seriously, there was no happy medium there) topless women and old men in thongs to last us a lifetime.  I wish so bad that I was kidding.

(Oh, by the way, notice the camera bag? Every picture, I'm tellin ya)

   Gorgeous coastline, beautiful cityscape and the hottest man in the world