So, btw, we went to Spain!

We finally made it! It only took us three years to get there, but we made it. Now I know what you may be thinking, isn't the flight only about 6 hours? What did these maniacs do, walk there? No, no, we spent most of the time waiting thanks to that darn pandemic! But honestly, what better way to celebrate your 2020 birthday than spending a week in Spain with your bestie in 2023?! I suppose it could've been better if we didn't have to postpone the trip, but then I wouldn't have been able to write about it here! ..and apparently writing out my thoughts during the trip wasn't enough to help me get this blog post out in a timely manner, but here we are..

Y'all know how this works, I make the rules for the blog, so this is going to be quite the catch all sort of blog post. Lots of photos, plenty of words-- some in nice sentence form, some just brain dumped onto the page-- and hopefully a good time all around. Since we've already established we didn't walk there, how about I start with the flight?

The flight was fine, nothing much to write home about, although it was kinda weird catching both the sunset and the sunrise in a matter of 6 hours. You know me, I love my sun, so we’ll call that a plus. Once we were off the plane, we found that navigating the airport wasn't too much of a struggle, but when you collectively have been to 3 dozen different airports, you tend get the hang of a new airport pretty quickly. We managed to find a taxi who took us to our Airbnb and practically gave us a tour of the area while we were zoomin through the streets. The only caveat was that were only allowed to speak Spanish in his taxi and yo se solo un poquito español, but that just made the ride that much more fun.

As we were making our way to the Airbnb, all I could think of was how Madrid was muy bonita. SO. FREAKIN. PRETTY. And very clean. Our taxi driver was telling us about how much pollution and contamination was in the air, but as we were walking around to find some breakfast, we noticed a LOT of people out cleaning and keeping the area nice.

If only we could've hired one of them to do the same to us. Although, I gotta say, even if we had to do it ourselves, naps, showers, and sunshine on the balcony made for new women. We genuinely felt like we had started a new day after that magic concoction. Granted, we had been running on one collective hour of plane sleep leading up to that point, so we’re not too surprised, but we were incredibly grateful for siesta culture in Spain.

After our reset, we changed clothes and started our trend of taking an OOTD which I guess in Spanish would be TDD for traje del día; I'm not sure which I like better.

In our refreshed outfits, we set out to truly explore the town and started off with a fun little speakeasy called Jack's Library. We couldn't take any photos inside, which was probably for the best because we still managed to take over 1500 pictures and videos between the two of us throughout the entire trip. The vibes inside of Jack's were *chefs kiss,* which made up for the meh drinks. We love a speakeasy and this hit that nail on the head thanks to the sneaky instructions for entrance and code needed to open the door, but if we were being honest, we were underwhelmed by the drinks.

Not being able to take photos left us to people watching and chatting, two of our favorite activities. We mostly recapped on our first impressions and first learnings which are as follows:

1. The cars, people, and especially pigeons have a track that they’re going on, and you better not be where they wanna be. They will run into you. Or at least scare you off of your track.

2. Carrying luggage through the streets of Madrid is not Aimee's cup of tea. How rude of the Spanish lads to not offer to help every time we struggled over a bumpy section of road!

3. You will benefit incredibly if you bring a friend who can semi speak Spanish, even on an elementary level because only knowing a mix of English, French, and Vietnamese doesn’t get you very far with someone who only speaks Spanish. Unless that thing is cerveza, in which case, CHEERS.

4. Lastly, don’t accept rosemary from strange women on the street or acknowledge strange men who say they have to ask you a question even if they get all up in your personal space, just give them a nice hard side eye and they'll walk away, usually..

Remember that surplus of photos I told you about? Many were taken on our phones, but we also had the opportunity to try plenty of mini photo shoots with the film type camera Aimee brought along; a notable photoshoot being on our on our balcony when we got back to our Airbnb to specifically try out the flash on the camera. As you peek at the photos, you may notice some new ink, but don't be alarmed, it was just temporary; apparently my Spanish alter ego has lots of tatts!

The next morning, our adventures started off at La Mallorquina for breakfast pastries. My goodness, what a busy shop it was! That alone was enough of a testament to us of how good the food was going to be, but we still wanted to collect our own data. Confirmed! It was especially delicious while sitting in the sunshine in the middle of La Puerta del Sol (even if it was right next to a ton of construction, which seems to be the case all over the world in at least some regard).

Fueled up on sunshine and pastries, we took a short walk and found ourselves at Plaza Mayor where the people watching was a plenty. From mascot type characters like Chuckie and some Simpsons character and Minnie, to just lots and lots of people, we saw it all. We could’ve stood in with one of the many tourist groups on a walking tour or tried to be extras in the film situation going on, but we mostly just took our own photos and dodged the cars.

This was all before we decided to do some more walking.. and even found ourselves walking back into the plaza thanks to the construction before eventually making our way to Mercado de San Miguel. In three words, Aimee described the market as “filled with bird friends” which is more than three words, but she followed it up with “could be more chaotic” ..which is also more than three words.. so clearly we were doing really well. Maybe the Mediterranean IPA we got was messing up our counting abilities. Except then we tapped into haiku territory with adding “too many options, not enough stomach” and then I got to wondering what even makes up a haiku, but that just made our heads hurt, so we stuck to eating and people watching.

After we had made enough bird friends, we found some more sunshine and good views in La Plaza de la Villa. If I didn't know any Spanish, I would've thought plaza meant tall buildings, open space, and a statue, but maybe that's just a loose translation.

Mr Sun was really showing up today and we were grateful for it since we had some time to kill before our ticketed start time at Palacio Real de Madrid-- which was different from the fake palace we passed a few blocks back. hehehe kidding..but I’m not kidding about buying tickets online. In general, we found it to be beneficial to buy tickets beforehand to allow for more time to explore instead of waiting in the looooong line for in person tickets. It was also nice to add a little bit of structure to our days (we love a good ol free explore moment, but you sent two type A girls on a trip and you think we're gonna play the entire thing by ear? Funny.)

The middle of the day called for a check in of things we were enjoying- the weather, the walkability, the openness (I get it, it doesn’t fit the w theme, my bad) .. the wiiiide openness, better? We probably so easily found things we were enjoying since we were simultaneously enjoying the cafes en hielo y helado at Töto (I definitely don't think we're in Kansas anymore though.).

The enjoyment continued thanks to finding some vintage and thrift stores, with is a surprise to nobody, I'm sure. I mean, come on, they're practically like little museums! The styles of clothes were somewhat similar to what we've seen back home, but there were still plenty of new treasures to be found. With full bags and empty stomachs, we ventured on our own little bar tour of sangrias and mojitos (and dinner of course).

Another thing we learned fairly early in our trip is that life happens late. We are both generally early risers, but my goodness, most Europeans are NOT. They also though have cornered the market on the siesta. I’m not sure we would've survived without our little midday breaks. People in Spain seem to move both quickly and slowly.. which feels incredibly mismatched, but it's true. Service at every restaurant we'd been to so far was fast in the beginning, but once you get your food and drink don’t count on your server coming back any time soon. While you’re waiting though, reminisce about the wandering and hidden gems you've stumbled upon so far!

We channeled our inner life happens late Spaniard by starting our next day with a late brunch at Zenith Brunch and Cocktails, emphasis on the cocktails.

After fueling up, we thought about how we were gonna get our steps in that day. Any guesses as to how many we averaged a day? While you're thinking, I'll tell you about one of our most favorite walkable spots, Retiro Park. The balance of sunshine and shade from the trees was lovely. We thought about renting boats and paddling around the little pond area, but we thought that would be more fun if those strong Spanish (imaginary) men from earlier did the paddling. Instead, we walked around to find some flowers, el Palacio de Velázquez y el Museo Reina Sofia which was free admission and had lots of cool artwork on display. I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the modern artwork to the older architecture of the building. We also found the Crystal Palace and my throne .. I mean a bench in La Rosaleda. All of those things were rather far apart from each other, which allowed for plenty of steps-- have you made your guess yet? How about I just tell you? 19,464 steps.

By now, you've probably caught on to a typical day on vacation with Alex & Aimee-- a nice mix of food, drink, walking, exploring, and of course.. taking lots of pictures.

One thing that I'm always hoping to photograph is a good sunset; however, when we ventured to la Latina for drinks on a rooftop, Mr Sun must not have gotten the memo. We still had a plenty good time people watching and watching the bartenders make our gin and tonics right on the table. Allllso on our table (all trip long lol) was octopus. One of our favorite things to do was to order our server's favorite thing on the menu, and it quite frequently was octopus, but we had no problems with that. Especially at Los Juevos de Luicio, mmmmm that octopus was so tasty. Oh! So was the wine! We got a bottle of Albariño (shout out to our fav bartender Russel for showing us we liked it!).

The next morning, we packed up our bags and ventured down to Urbano Café for some breaky, then made our way to the train station. Next stop, Barcelona!!

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how beautiful that jungle in the train station was?! We made it to the station with plenty of time to admire the greenery, but found out you can’t go through the bag security more than 90 minutes before your departure time, so we were glad we weren't too early. It seemed as though you don’t need to be there waiting much more than 30-45 minutes early anyway, but that does seem like the sweet spot because they’ll start boarding around 30 minutes before departure and it can get kinda hectic as it gets closer. We found our car and seat and parked our butts while everyone else shuffled past to get to their seats. There’s wifi onboard, but we looked forward to finally getting to read our books since we’ve spent so much time go go go so far!

A handful of chapters later and we had made it to Barcelona!! Our taxi driver was very fun and reminded us of our Madrid taxi driver with a bit of a tour as we drove down the longest street, and I’m not just saying that because it was a long straight street, that’s exactly what our taxi driver called it! We made it to our temporary home for the second half of the trip and waited to be greeted by our host.

A picture is worth a thousand words so I'll share 5 of our GORGEOUS temporary Barcelona home.

Without trying to parallel our two halves of the trip, we found ouselves at another mercado with lots of fresh fruit, meat, fish, and people. So. Many. People. We got some spiral potatoes, seafood tapas, and then almost fruit juice but we settled on a cerveza instead.. and some octopus.. who’s surprised? We’re not.

When our plans for dinner got derailed by a lack of reservation, we found a place where Aimee got to try vermouth (which to my understanding is not the same as in America). Her official rating was “with the idea that this is just liqueur itself, a good 7.5/10." The bartender was confident that she would love it, and it seems like he was right!

Only being in Barcelona for less than a day at this point, I'm not sure we were super qualified to conclude what we've learned, but here we are.. Barcelona has lots more people, which is interesting because Madrid had a LOT of people. Also though it’s notably more diverse. The increase of people seemed to lend to it being less clean, not in a gross way, we saw people cleaning but we definitely noticed more of a smell and more litter. On the flip side, similarly to Madrid, there was definitely a surplus of beautiful balconies and architecture.

These balconies became even more beautiful on Sunday thanks to San Jordi, a festival that is some people's favorite day of the year. It is described as their Valentine's Day and the tradition says the boys give girls roses in exchange for books. Before walking around the festival we ventured to El Petit Princep which is Catalan for "the little prince." This brought Aimee back to her days in French class. Breakfast was delicious, especially the truffle hollandaise sauce atop my eggs Benny.

After breakfast, we strolled along and pretended like we knew what any of the books were, partially because most were in a different language and partially because it was so packed we often couldn't see up to the tables. We did however keep seeing dragons at the booths which made us incredibly curious about the connection to San Jordi and the dragon, so I googled it:

“And what about the legend of Saint Jordi? The most popular version finds the martyr in the town of Montblanc in the Catalan county of Conca de Barberà, where there lived a fearsome dragon that was terrorising the population. To appease the dragon, every day he was given a human sacrifice chosen by lot. One day it fell to the king's daughter and he sent her to the dragon's lair. A noble knight then appeared, confronted the dragon and ran it through with his sword, killing it and saving the princess from her tragic fate. According to legend, a beautiful rose bush grew on the spot where the dragon's blood had been spilt, which would bear red roses every April. And this is the origin of the medieval tradition when men would give a rose to their beloved as a sign of love on the day of Sant Jordi.”

As we progressed through the crowded city, we started to wish that we had allergy meds and maybe even anti-anxiety meds. My goodness there were SO MANY PEOPLE and so much sneezing, you woulda thought we were allergic to the people! While the weather was absolutely gorgeous at this time of year, the seasonal allergies are still very strong. Despite all of this, we decided to explore Park Ciutadella which naturally had even more people, but also had a gorgeous fountain with gold statues and a staircase that lead up and around the fountain taking us to a wonderful view (and another photo op). On our way down, we stopped to watch a few groups who had created their own little dance spaces in the park. They looked like they were having the time of their lives.

We escaped the crowds and the sun by popping into a little hole in the wall bar called Priscilla's for una cerveza and a look at some rather fun and eccentric decor!

Feeling refreshed, we ventured back to Boca Grande (a place we were turned away from earlier for not having a reservation, although we still didn't have one.. but somehow we got in no problem this time) for some real food (and more booze) and a laaaavish bathroom setup. This bathroom had so many candles and mirrors. If only we had known before, we could've just skipped the food and came in to check out the bathroom!!

Next on the agenda was to find a spot for churros. We figured they'd be the perfect fuel for our tour of la Sagrada familia.

Coupled with iced coffees and a sneaky rainbow that kept popping up, we felt ready to venture into the gorgeous church and see even more rainbows made by the sun setting and shining through the stained glass windows. This could've easily been enough for me to enjoy myself, but the architecture, history, and symbolism simply blew me away. Part of our tour included an elevator ride up one of the completed towers which allowed for beautiful views of the city. What we didn't realize though, was that before we could venture up, we would need a euro coin to open the lockers for our backpacks, think aldi cart style. Thankfully, the security guard helped us out with a secret bonus coin that they "only had one of" which was a sneaky way to get it back at the end. Little did they know we were going to struggle so badly to get the coin back out, requiring assistance, and making it plenty easy for them to retrieve their coin. Once the coin and bags were back with their rightful owners, we continued our exploring. Thank goodness we are as curious as we are; the space we thought might just be the bathrooms was a whole other museum!!!

Afterwards we went over to a souvenir shop across the street to pick up a little something for my sis that we thought would make her giggle. Apparently these little figurines go in the corner of the nativity!? How silly!

We then walked down the street to pick up some cervezas to enjoy with the sunset on our balcony. Throughout our travels, we kept seeing bartenders mixing beers with what we thought was lemon Fanta. This intrigued us so much that we decided to try it for ourselves. The market also had lemon cervezas already in a can so we snagged some of those too and trekked back to our Airbnb. The canned lemon cervezas were a perfect fresh companion to the beautiful sunset, as evidenced by our mini photoshoot, and were a perfect way to end our evening, as evidenced by our smiles!!

We truly finished our evening the same way we finish every evening: downloading the pics from Aimee’s camera and sharing our daily photos in our album and on our Instagram stories. While we had been finding sporadic wifi around the town, it proved to be much easier and allowed Aim to share from her camera. Besides, if we posted any earlier in the day, our American fans would likely miss it being 6 hours behind!

Monday morning was our earliest one, but in our commute to our adventure for the morning, we were surprised to see plenty of people out and about already! We were also surprised to see the Sant Jordi displays and tents completely taken down. The only evidence was the flags still hanging on the light posts. It was kinda bizarre to see the same street be practically empty when it was PACKED just the day prior.

Contrasting the empty streets was our packed agenda mostly because it was my birthday!! The first adventure was a ticketed food tour called Culinary Backstreets. This was something that a random lady at a bar told us about while we were planning our trip. Apparently it’s available in multiple locations! We found it to be such a cool way to explore what we likely wouldn’t have explored before.

Random things we learned by our deeeelightful guide are as follows: Catalan breakfast typically comes with alcohol. Paella day is Thursday to get rid of the Tuesday fish at a good price. Paella first was made with rabbits, quails, and snails in the fields. Romesco - Spanish sauce. Pigs! Ham! Iberian black pig especially are bigger so they age longer so the flavor is better. We also saw the ham vending machine. Jamon = back leg. Peleta = front leg. Bellota = acorn (food they eat). Vermouth for an aperativo (aka open the stomach). Tapa = lid (look up the story of the king and the mosquito).

After we had eaten our weight in food for the first part of the day, we needed to do some more walking and burn some more energy.. what better way to do that than thrifting! We stumbled upon what I initially thought was a map glitch but turned out to be three of the same thrift store on one street corner along with a handful of other vintage and thrift shops.

Finishing the evening was a trip to Park Guell. Pro tip (since, ya know, going one time makes you a pro)-- go right before sunset (with your pre-bought ticket) and watch the sunset from the mountain area where the three crosses are, then go down to the main area where the bridge is to get your picture over the town with the pinks of the sunset, no sun in your eyes, and significantly less humans. Be prepared to be chilly as you walk home, but just complain the entire way and let your best friend bully you. Also, don’t go in with a plan of where you're going to walk, the map is deceptive and all roads lead to everywhere and nowhere. Plan to walk a lot and climb up stairs and hills a lot, but like everything in Spain, it’ll be worth it. And you might just hit a record high on steps for the day.

We broke up the walk home with una cerveza at a random hole in the wall place and then dinner at another random spot we passed. It might not have been my traditional Thai birthday dinner, but my goodness was it an excellent way to end an excellent day.

Topping our excellent day was going to be hard, so it was a good thing we were just hoping for a relaxing day and to finally enjoy some paella. After filling up, we posted up on Barceloneta beach for some naps and reads and people watching. Lottts of people watching.

Next, we trekked up the beach and saw even more people playing on.. I mean working out on an adult outdoor jungle gym style gym before walking along the boardwalk and stumbling upon an outdoor bar where we were serenaded by a four person band. It was a little bit chilly without the sun but with the breeze but we suffered through.

Everything was right in the world again though when we found ourselves at Creps al Born which quickly became our new favorite bar. It was a perfect one to end the trip on. The food was SO tasty and the vibes were so much fun. We (surprise surprise) befriend the bartenders early on and Aim fake played the trumpet along to the music at one point so well that we were rewarded with free lemoncello shots! It probably helped that we showed up shortly after they opened because it ended up getting rather crowded. All in all, it was the perfect ciao to Barcelona. Cheers to Alejandro who had the best name and kept us hydrated/ free from hangover all night.. mostly.

The next morning was the end of our trip, so here comes the end of this blog post (shout out to you if you stuck with our shenanigans this long!). It was so very hard to compact this trip down into one post, so sorry to our fans who were stuck waiting! Hope it was worth the wait!

One bonus I’ll leave you with is a list of our favorites..

• Sights- retiero park (exhausting but lush and green) maybe would’ve gone at sunset?

• Activity- culinary backstreets

• Cerveza- Moritz (es la primera cerveza de Barcelona! Des de 1856)

• Breakfast- la petit princep

• Neighborhood- Malseranos in Madrid (vintage shops and wandering)

• Airbnb- Barcelona

• Random thing we saw- dancing in ciutadela park

• Travel hack- download where you wanna go into favorites to use offline and check randomly for wifi to reconnect and search but don’t bother with a SIM card

• Drink- g&t made at the table (theatrics, booze, people watching)

• Octopus- at the market in Barcelona

• Food- tripe (especially because it was something we didn’t know to order/ got it as a recommendation)

• Second favorite food- paella

• Restaurant environment- bodega for lunch on CB tour

• Bathroom- la boca grande

• Honorable mentions- Jacks Library (for being the most speakeasy speakeasy we’ve ever been to, very cool experience) and Sagrada familia at sunset

..and a bonus bonus one last sunrise! Where should we adventure to next?!