The Rain in Spain...

Our plan was to spend today in Barcelona. We debated whether to visit Montserrat --a famous mountain outside Barcelona that looks like an upside-down saw. There's a monastery there and a boys' choir that sings every day. In addition, you can take tram rides up to extreme points of the mountain, and the view is supposed to be amazing! There's also Montjuic -- a castle converted into a war museum that sits next to Olympic venue sites and a Spanish village which houses artisans doing work typical of the various parts of Spain. In addition, I had no idea I'd have such a fascination with Gaudí, and Barcelona has several other buildings he designed, as well as a garden area devoted to him.

As luck would have it...we woke to pouring rain. Sightseeing with 5 kids is an adventure anyway...and we chose to skip the rain option and head to France. That's how you can tell you have a hard life -- when it rains in Spain and so you have drive to France instead. It worked out well since our trip from Barcelona to Switzerland would've been 10 hours, and this way we were able to divide it into halves.

Driving through France this time, I finally put my finger on a way to describe the countryside. It looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting...not necessarily quite as light, but that soft look his scenery has looks like France. I tried to capture it as we drove along the freeway, but I'm not sure the pictures do it justice. There were tree-covered mountains on both sides of the road for much of the trip -- not covered with pines, but covered with deciduous trees. It must be amazing in the autumn.

Some French landscape (photo taken from our vehicle while en route to Valence)

We arrived at our hotel and since they couldn't accommodate a party of our size until 8:30, we headed into town to find dinner. Things didn't look very promising until we took a left-hand turn and found ourselves gazing at a beautiful view -- a gazebo with a fog-covered mountain behind it. It was charming. After locating parking and a brisk walk in the freezing weather, we managed to make our way back to a restaurant that was near the gazebo. After our cool reception at the hotel, we weren't sure what to expect, but the owner was so friendly and kind. He came and attempted to translate the menu for us into English. We gave him a round of applause for his efforts since we were the only ones in the restaurant! He  cooks all of the food himself, and it was delicious! We all shared a creme bruleé for dessert, and it might be my new favorite food.

Le Esplanade Champ de Mars, a Romantic park area near Le Briand (the restaurant where we ate).

Delectable Creme Bruleé!!

As we left the restaurant all of the people who had come in after us wanted Rosa to wave at them, and she smiled and even managed a small "au revoir." I've decided we need to learn the 4 most useful verbs and basic words like please and thank you before we visit a country. The kids took it as far as assigning everyone a couple of languages to learn so that we can speak to people wherever we go!

Heading back toward the car, we could see a couple of people standing out in front of a bar. From a distance, we could see a long, white wedding dress and Rosa started talking about the beautiful woman in her wedding dress who was going to get married. It was about then that I realized the woman was a bit large and hairy...I tried to shush Rosa who was going on and on about the beautiful woman getting married. Right as we pulled up next to the "bride," Rosa looked up and said simply, "Oh. It's a MAN." We just kept walking...