the tam

last night in boston.
$1 brubakers + best people ever made our big goodbye so fun.
friends, we miss you!!!

fin::ende::konec::fine::final

time to go home.

we were really sad to see our trip come to an end, but also were ready to go home. pretty tired after all that tripping.

up early for our flight and barcelona airport was a breeze. london, however, was a fiasco. we had to leave the terminal, take a bus to another terminal, go through security again and rush to our gate. no time to relax or (more importantly!) eat. then there was MORE security to get to our gate. and jenn got picked for a random search. not impressed after 2 other times through security that morning. they also took her soap and shampoo because they said it wasn't in the original containers. no shit....it's in a different container because i can't take more than 3 oz because of your rules. ugh.

after that, we were much happier on our virgin plane. kung fu panda, sex and the city, forgetting sarah marshall, battleship and tetris. and food! again, virgin air rocks.

back home in boston! jenn's aunt sue picked us up and it was such a nice homecoming. complete with homemade pesto. what a welcome!

fantástico french people

our last day was off to a good start:

1. arrived for breakfast early enough to not be scolded ✓
2. mailed our last batch of postcards without a hiccup. after 6 cities and countless embarrassments, we finally knew what we were doing! we marveled at our vast knowledge of worldly post offices. ✓
3. rode aerial cable cars up to mount montjuic, where brandon remarked that the view was "fantastic." turned around to see a cruise ship in the bay named "fantastic." hahahaha...✓

we couldn't end our big trip without one more stop on the i ♥ architecture 2008 tour: mies van der rhoe's barcelona pavillion. pretty sexy. brandon was drooling. ok, so was jenn.

we had bad luck for lunch because we couldn't find anything. we had to eat at some little tourist stand at a museum, but that didn't bring us down. mostly because the cashier thought we were french! wow...we must have gotten really cool on this trip. she didn't think we were estúpido americanos!

on our way down the mountain, we stopped to sit on a balcony and drink sangria. (our last sangria ☁!) fully recharged, we went down to walk on the beach until we were tired again.

our last supper was at the oldest restaurant in barcelona. nice experience, but food was nothing to rave about. however something incredible happened there: we saw a little spanish boy wearing a wyoming tshirt!!! a perfect note on which to end our adventure.

we can draw like that....

museu picasso!
holy crap....he could draw like that as a young teenager?! we might hate him just a little bit. and his linoprints, woodcuts and monochromatic ink drawings...so beautiful. makes. us. sick.

lunch in a cute little courtyard at the museu textil, then off to the palau de música catalunya (the palace of catalan music). an incredible stained glass inverse dome and an interesting space, but we could have skipped it. watching an actual concert there would be much better than just touring the building. next time!

we still had to do regular "life" things, so it was off to laundry. but for the last time. whoo hoooo!

finished the night the way anyone in their right mind would....with tapas and sangria! we finagled our way to the downstairs fancy area of the restaurant. who're the estúpido americanos now? the style of this tapas restaurant was fun, too. you grab your food from the bar or from carts, and they just add up your toothpicks at the end. we didn't think to hide any toothpicks to get free grub. (also next time?)

PS — we barely took any pics today. that last one's not even ours.

¡catalonia!

we are so tired by this time in the trip! we slept in a bit and even though we were a half an hour before the cut-off, the elderly woman serving breakfast semi-scolds us in catlan as she looks at her watch. we aren't fluent, but we're pretty sure she said "lazy americanos."

most of today was spent ooohing and aaahhhing over gaudí.

la sagrada familia is literally indescribable. we MUST and WILL return when it's completed (around 2050). it was a moving experience for both of us, even though we're not religious at all. it's just such an overwhelming and beautiful space, like nothing we'd ever seen. casa mila/la pedrera was next for more gaudí craziness. [and doing our best interpretation of what it would look like to pose—gaudí-style!]

spontaneous gelato on the way home. brandon's was bigger than jenn's and she may never get over it. the evening was spent with wine and cheese on our balcony, overlooking the square until the wee hours of the night. fantástico!

out to sea (+ see)

ahoy! thar she blows! another breakfast of cappuccino and croissants...except not as good as rome or paris, respectively. we miss you pain au chocolat.

more deck time! sketching and secret-red-journaling like mad. not to be outdone by our departure time, our arrival time was 2 hours late. good thing we had nowhere else to be except to enjoy the views of barcelona as it appeared over the horizon.

rambled up la rambla to barri gótic and our hotel, el jardí. totally worth paying extra for a room with a balcony. we watched the hustle and bustle in the square below, but it wasn't long before we wanted to join in. so what else could we do but go drinkin in the square? we enjoyed the change of pace from rome, the san miguel on tap and a strolling classical guitarist. "it doesn't get better than this."

after peeling ourselves away from that bliss, we wound our way through the side streets until it was time for bready...and then beddy.

f this s

hate to say it, but rome was the first and only place we were ready to leave. we had more than our fair share of beggars, peddlers and scammers. and if someone offered to sell us an umbrella one more time, jenn was going to punch them. the ruins are cool, it's a city worth visiting, but we'd be fine if we never went back to rome.   .....   the rest of italy, on the other hand, is a different story.

onto the regional train destined for civitavecchia, the town where we were catching our ferry to barcelona. it was a sleepy little town, or so we thought. turns out everyone was just having their afternoon nap. we had our last italian gelato and strolled the streets, waiting for our boarding time.

the ferry was bigger than we expected and the largest ship either of us have ever been on. and it was quite a contrast from our regional train earlier that day. the crowd was older, classier, and noticeably more tan than us. here we were, living out of backpacks—with our blonde hair and vanilla whiteness—among all these suave, suited-up, italian + spanish beauties. let's just say, it was clear were weren't from around there.

straight up to the deck, excited to watch the launch! several san miguels and an hour past schedule, we watched the lights of civitavecchia disappear. final destination, here we come.  (the city, not the movie.)

hey, street people...stop trying to sell us stuff.

more atm troubles > crowded trevi fountain (should have taken najor's advice) > pantheon > campo di fiori: lunch + street market > piazza navona: sketching + cappuccino + people watching > solving the atm crisis (finally! prinzing travel tip #3: if you forget the limit the bank sets on your atm, and accidentally try to withdraw an amount over that limit, they put a hold on your card. nice.) > yummy bleu cheese with honey > realizing honey is entirely underutilized in everyday food

a religious experience?

beautiful scenes at the vatican paired with ridiculous features... like the faux marble paint on columns and even on stacks of bose® speakers. ick. at least our pope pose was on form.

up 320 steps (*after* the elevator) to michelangelo's cupola. views of this ancient city, without a sky scraper to be seen.

gelato.

vatican museum, with the incredible map room. winding paths to the sistine chapel. (like paris, it was not overhyped.)

sandwiches.

hadrian's memorial (aka castel sant'angelo): fort exploring + sketching.

finally, exploring the travestere area, complete with a wine and pasta dinner on a little side street café. bellissimo!