we were trying to build suspense...

Sorry for the delay in posting. Barcelona was whirlwind and although we had free internet at our hostel, it did not have a desktop for us to upload photos to, nor did it let us sign into blogger.com. Also, we were in Trapani and Favignana, Sicily until yesterday, and those parts are in the "infancy" of accessible internet.

We found out a little bit of shocking news from home our last day in Berlin. Early Sunday night, my father Gerhardt suffered a heart attack. Luckily, he noticed the warning signs and my mum was with him so they went to Research Hospital in Kansas City, where the staff was thankfully and impressively efficient and got him into surgery stat. He felt back to normal, save for the fatigue, within a day or two of his surgery. He is recovering at home right now, and taking it easy this week at work with half days. Please keep him and my mum in your thoughts and prayers as he continues to recover from this unexpected shock to his system and possibly prepare for another surgery.

So a quick few updates:

Barcelona is a beautiful city and it still holds a place in my heart as the best city I have ever visited. Other cities have certain quarters or characteristics that excite me, but Barcelona has a certain je ne sais quoi about it. The small streets with family run stores, the urban landscape lined with beautiful beaches, the delicious paella and made-in-front-of-you-so-you-know-its-the-real-thing sangria. There is nothing quite like it in any other city I have visited. When Katie K and I visited two falls ago, it was less touristy than it is now (La Rambla is crammed pack and the only people that speak Spanish are Brazilian tourists). While the tourists did suffocate some of the flavor on the side streets, Barcelona did not let me down and proved to be the same amazing city it was two years ago.

The three most notable things about this visit to Barcelona were:
1. We found the best tapas place in Barcelona, which is by default the best tapas place in the world. It was shown to us by Coloma Canals, a family friend of the Bumgarner family, my neighbors in Kansas City, MO. We are forever grateful that they gave us her contact information and that another neighbor Uncle Tom Dillon INSISTED that we call her. She met us on our first night and took us around the Barri Gotic, and showed us the tapas place where she and a group of other graphic designers had designed the logo ten years back. We sampled some tapas and returned the next night for a dinner made up of tapas. Similar to conveyer belt sushi in the U.S. and other countries, you stand at a bar and take the tapas as the waiters come around holding them. At the end they count the number of long and short sticks to figure up your total. Delicous.
2. We met some italian ladies, Stefania and Giovanna at a bar in the Barri Gotic on Thursday night. It was a great chance to ease into the Italian language before arriving in Trapani, Sicilia, and also to make international friends. They happened to be in town for a big concert "Summercase" which Conor and I had noticed signs for earlier. It turns out their favorite bands were our favorite bands - Americans and Italians uniting over a band from the UK.
3. Despite our planning and double-checking, we arrived two hours before our flight from Barcelona to Trapani, only to find that we were at the wrong airport. "What do you mean Ryan Air flies out of Girona? I thought this WAS Girona?...Okay, well then where is Girona? An hour and a half away?" After doing some cost-benefit analysis, we took a cab (from the sweetest old Spaniard) instead of the bus to save time and our cheapest flight became our most expensive. In fact, thanks to meters and cheap airlines, our cabride was actually more expensive than our flight...such is Europe. It was all still less than a flight from Kansas City to New York, and that, my friends, is my rationalization.

Upon arriving in Trapani, we had a mix up at a fabulous hotel by the beach, because camera singola in Italian means one room with a bed for one, where as a single room in the U.S. means one room with one versus two double beds. For more on this subject, please refer to the posting by Conor M. Lanz. The hotel was quite possibly the nicest one we have ever stayed at and was run by three generations of the Moncada family. The names "Giovanni" and "Fabrizio" were hollered several times in our presence. A gift of a hotel indeed, and somewhere you should check out if and when you go to Trapani.

Both nights we ate at the same family trattoria, and enjoyed some Sicilian seafood specialities. It was delicious, as was the gelateria nearby. Trapani has many sweet little streets that branch off in different directions and lob you towards the beautiful and many-hued Mediterranean seas. Both nights we were there, immediate and extended families would stroll the streets, enjoying the salty sea air and their children's tricycle antics. It's something that we lack in America, this planned unstructured time with family, roaming with no set destination, practically extinct since the Sunday drive ceased to exist a couple of decades ago, certainly before I was born.

Conor and I traveled on a thirty or so minute ferry to Favignana and we agreed that it was probably the most beautiful place we had ever been (except for, of course, unrivaled Palau). The sand beaches, the partially paved roads, the mountains in the distance. We found out later that Francesco Moncada, the owner of our hotel, Albergo Vittorio, was from the island of Favignana. He told me this excitedly after I told him I was mezzo isolana Pacifica e mezzo americana and compared our skin colors to show that we were, truly, both islanders.

We left Trapani yesterday for hot, sweaty, and busy Palermo and after a twenty-five minute walk with all of our bags hanging off of us, we made it to the hotel. After a fifty minute search for a bancomat (ATM), we finally got to pay for the room and enter the hotel. Needless to say, we vegged out for a couple of hours before we got the largest bottles of water known to mankind and enjoyed some pizza. Then we walked around Palermo for a couple of hours, hoping to find the beauty that people have raved about, but failed completely (save for the gelato), eventually turning in to read on the terrazza of the hotel. I think they may be talking about the outside beaches in Palermo, because I am trying, but failing to see the amazing beauty of Sicily's capitol city. We leave today for Rome.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, even though we do have hundreds more. We left the hotel for the internet cafe without the cord. Hopefully in Rome and if not, then in NY.

love
maria