Terrassa and Barcelona

Wow, that week went fast. We´re totally tuckered out, and have a full travel day ahead of us tomorrow, so we´ll just say this:

Barcelona was great, though we never quite made it to the beach. Instead we got African drums and dancing, all the Gaudí we could ever want, and a beautiful hike on Montserrat. Tomorrow we are stopping by at Granada before heading down to Salobreña for a few days to make up for lost beach time (no worries, we´re headed back to Granada after the weekend.)

Terrassa

After spending all day Friday on a long series of train rides from Loches to Barcelona (we had to go back up to Paris to catch a train that would make it to Barcelona) we made it to Terrassa into the waiting arms of Lissa and Alex.

Of course we slept in on Saturday, but then made up for it with a very full afternoon and evening. In Terrassa right now, the whole city is putting on their Festa Major, which is a festival celebrating the city´s identity. There are lots of parades, performances, and concerts everywhere in the streets. So, we:

-ate out at an amazing Spanish vegetarian restaurant

-saw a building designed by one of Gaudí´s contemporaries (warming up for the Gaudi buildings themselves)

-watched a bit of a parade – mostly this means we saw a lot of Catalonian folk dancing and multi-person dragon costumes.

-went to an ... interesting meditation session/didjeridoo and singing bowl performance.

-watched part of a very long ten-couple uncoreographed performance of the Argentinian Tango.

-witnessed the city shift into mob mentality as the street lights went out and teams of dragons and devils representing the different sectors of the city paraded through the streets. The devils (usually young teenagers) had pitchforks with spinning fireworks, and the dragons were covered with them as well. Each dragon had its own ten- to twenty- person drumline following it, which gave the whole event a wild, tribal air. Almost everything about this event would have been frowned upon, if not completely illegal, in the U.S. Imagine people of all ages (including like 5 year olds jesus) dancing under fountains of sparks and flames through the city streets. It was so great.

Us in our "fire protection" (most people had on jeans and hoodies, with bandanas over their mouths)

Sunday was a little calmer, though also pretty amazing. After sleeping in again, we went out to see the Castellers (http://www.castellersdeterrassa.cat/), who are huge teams of people who build themselves into human towers topped by tiny children. The picture doesn´t do it justice- the scale of it all, plus the shaking of limbs and graceful climbing up and down (really sliding down) is really not captured in an image.

Afterwards, we had a traditional Spanish/Catalonian meal prepared by Alex, and then a super-siesta (we are very good at siestas).

Monday is a planning day, and then we hit Barcelona!

Paris and Loches

Picture catch-up post!
Now that we are on a computer that we can use to put up pictures, we get to show you all the placs we´ve been talking about:

Catacombs:

Eiffel Tower Hat

 Versailles (Our favorite part was the bushes)

 and this tree

The patio in Gail and Maury´s backyard, where we enjoyed many of our meals.

More bushes, but at a chateau near Loches

Chateau Chenenceau - built on/in/over a river. It doesn´t even look like a real place, does it? It looks like we changed out minds and went to Disneyland Paris or something.

This view is from a keep or donjon, looking out over the Chateau d´ Loches