Barcelona/Catalonia Live Blog Day 0: Sometimes things don't go as planned.

We are going to try something different this trip and write basically faster, shorter, unedited daily blogs to see if we can capture what is striking about each day rather than to remember it days and weeks later.  Maybe we will fail and get too wrapped up in the trip to do it.  Maybe the lack of polish will be a problem.  But hopefully it will help us capture some of the little things that make travel so special a little bit better.

We were supposed to be on a two week camping/dirtbag trip to several national parks that we have not been to in the northwest including Glacier, Badlands, Grand Teton, etc.  But sometimes life has other plans for you.  In early June I fired up Skyscanner and found the best deal I have ever found.  $280 round trip to Barcelona from Dallas.  Trista was at work but I texted her the deal and within minutes we had a different September trip planned.  Those deals rarely last long and our FOMO kicked in and we booked it.

So here we are, sitting at an airport hotel waking up getting ready to head to the airport.  Yesterday our AC decided to go out at 2am.  We both woke up to a loud metallic grinding noise which turned out to be the blower motor on our furnace.  Perfect.  In addition to both of us having a full day of work we now have to figure out how to get our AC unit fixed in a matter of hours.  Frankly I had a hard time going back to sleep because I was so stressed out about it.  To make a long story short luckily we found someone to come out by noon and get it fixed for a reasonable price.  But, this meant coming home from work for several hours, which means having to go back to work and work late to actually get what I needed to done.  I still needed to finish packing and drop our three dogs including our rambunctious new puppy to the dog sitter.  We rolled in to Dallas about midnight last night.  Both of us exhausted and barely functional to drive here.  What a way to start the trip.

So the trip itself should be interesting.  We are actually only going to be in Barcelona itself for two days.  We are staying in southern Catalonia (which is actually an autonomous region of Spain which voted for its independence from Spain in 2017) in Tarragona for 3 days and then in Pallafrugell/Girona in northern Catalonia for three days and renting a car to travel around.  How did we pick these places?  A very scientific way which means basically google image searching the towns around Barcelona.  They looked neat, and so that was the plan.  We literally have nothing planned for this trip.  Which as we have found is the best way to travel.  Our first two week Euro trip had so much stuff jammed into it we literally spent like an entire unplanned day in bed half way through we were so tired.  So we have slowly learned our lesson.  Slow down, drink in the atmosphere (and a few beers/wines along the way) and do what you want to do each and every day rather than what you have planned.  So that's what we are doing.  Showing up and seeing what happens.  Other than watching an old Anthony Bourdain episode on the region we have done very little homework on it and will figure it out when we get there.

So hopefully this blog will serve to

document what we actually end up doing, because right now we have no idea what we will do.  And in some ways that feels lazy, while in other ways that feels exciting.  Our next blog won't be for two days actually as it takes about 18 hours to actually get there.  If you are reading this, thank you for following along.

The newest member of the Matthew family, Steve