Wei-Han and I spent 9 days in Barcelona, Granada and Seville without the kids. Admittedly, a couple of weeks before the trip, I was anxious and thought I was crazy to be leaving my kids for so long and being so far away from them. However, as the days drew closer, I was quite ready to go. Wei-Han's parents flew over to help Tina, our helper to care for the kids.

The flight there was 14 hours with a brief transit at Milan and flying economy for that long and overnight could not go quicker. Once we touched down at Barcelona, we were impressed with how efficient, clean and modern everything was. The subways were fantastic too, making it so easy for tourist to travel from the airport to town for just a few dollars. We struck up conversation with an Australian couple Phil and Rebecca, who were sitting in front of us on the plane. We decided to follow them on the train to town and we parted at our stops closest to our accomodation with an agreement to meet up for dinner. Wei-Han and I checked into a basic, but comfortable and quiet hotel in a nice neighbourhood further north of town. After settling down, we walked around the streets, got some food from a supermarket for breakfast, had lunch and visited the famous La Sagrada Familiae, designed by Gaudi. Although it has the gospels all over it, it is not called a church, rather, a temple. I'm not exactly sure whether it's because no one worships in it or it just looks nothing like a church. From the outside, I thought it looked like an enormous grey melting wax cathedral. Wei-Han described it as messy. But the insides were quite a contrast. It was quite beautiful and unique and very interesting in the way it was thought out and designed. For example, the pillars inside the building are made of different strength materials. The pillar at the center of the building was of the strongest granite which represented Jesus. Around this pillar were 12 other pillars built from a slightly weaker granite, of course representing the 12 apostles, and the surrounding pillars thereafter were of the weakest stone there, representing the rest of us.

The Spanish have dinner at 9-10pm, which made for a long day - so of course, we also did what the Spanish do, have a siesta, much needed after the overnight flight in economy. We had paella, tapas and of course the ever sweet and addictive sangria for dinner with Rebecca and Phil which was fun.
The next day, we took a trip out to Monserrat, a monastery up in the mountains. A train and a cable car ride. We listened to a boys choir in the beautiful cathedral. Many a times I have often questioned the logic in man building a large expensive and beautiful church or cathedral so common in the past, while many suffer and perish around them from poverty. And for the first time, while I was sitting in this cathedral listening to the pure voices singing to God, surrounded in wonderful art and architecture, I sense that perhaps some of these buildings were built to glorify God Himself and all of this beauty was a way to express praise to God. And it reminded me of how much bigger, more wonderful and complex God really is.

The following day with joined a Gourmet food walking tour which took us around the city to understand more of Spanish cuisine and its origins. We saw the fresh food market, small shops that specialised in cured meats, pattiserie, chocolates, nuts, nougat, coffee and hot chocolate. We gained a fuller appreciation of the diversity of food here and we were treated to some pate and wine when we finished.

We also visited Montjuic and the Pablo Espanyol. Montjuic was a large park like area up on the hills and it had many gardens, some museums and eateries. One of its attractions were Pablo Espanyol which is a recreated old Spanish village. I'm sure it's probably considered tacky by many travellers who enjoy the 'real thing', but we enjoyed it. I looked into the many little shops in there and saw a variety of the traditional Spanish buildings typical of different eras.

While we were in Barcelona, we decided to arrange to visit Granada. We did some last minute bookings, and the following day, we flew to Seville and drove a rental car to Granada.