Barcelona and Toulouse
Our month in Valencia ended on Wednesday. From there we had 2 weeks left until we will go home. We spent the first day in Barcelona, and the next week we spent traveling in France, and the last week will be in London.
All the trains from Valencia to anywhere in France go through Barcelona, so we decided we would stay a night there instead of taking a really long train. We stayed in a hotel near the train station so we wouldn’t have to carry all of our luggage around the whole city. When we came to Barcelona on the way to Valencia we stayed near La Sagrada Familia, so we were in a completely different neighborhood.
After we checked into the hotel we wandered towards Plaça d'Espanya. The first thing I noticed were 2 tall towers. In between the towers was a road, and if you stand in the middle of the road, you get a great view of the Palau Nacional de Montjuïc and the towers. The Palau Nacional de Montjuïc is the National Art Museum of Catalonia. I tried to take a good picture while we were crossing the street, but since I was moving it came out pretty crooked.
We started walking towards the Palau Nacional de Montjuïc. We thought we were going to have to climb a ton of stairs because the museum is up pretty high, but luckily there were escalators.
It took a while to get to the top, but when we did we didn’t even head towards the museum. Instead we walked around the back to go look at the Olympic stadium. The stadium is called Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys and it was the main stadium in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. We weren’t allowed to go inside, but we got to look in through a gate.
After checking out the stadium we headed back into the neighborhood with our hotel for dinner. We had patatas bravas, one of our favorite dishes in Spain, for the last time. After dinner we wandered around looking at the different Christmas lights. We also got some gelato, which was really good even though it’s not Italian gelato.
The next morning we were at the train station before 8 because we had a train to Narbonne, France to catch. Our final stop of the day was Toulouse, but we had to go through Narbonne to get there.
We got to Narbonne around 12, and our train to Toulouse was at 2, so we had time to get lunch. My mom found a restaurant right down the road from the train station and we decided we would try it out. My dad is the only one of us who understands at least a little French, so he had to interpret the menu for us. Luckily we got everything we expected except for my mom’s salad. There was ham on it, which she didn’t expect, and she complained to us about how everyone puts ham on everything here. I got a sausage, my dad got a beef skewer thing, my sister got a cheese plate, and my mom got a vegetable soup. The food was pretty good and filling, so we weren’t hungry until we got to Toulouse.
Our hotel in Toulouse was right across from the train station, so we were settled within the first 20 minutes of getting off our train. My mom saw that there was a big Christmas market in the Place du Capitole, so we went to go check it out. The streets were pretty empty until we were about a block away. Then all of the crowds picked up.
The first part of the market we encountered was a small section of mostly food stalls. There were many different foods like barbeque and bubble waffles. We never got a bubble waffle so I’m not really sure what it is, but it looked good. At the entrance of that section there was a Christmas tree ride. You got to sit in an ornament and control when you go up and down as the tree spun. My sister really wanted to go on the ride, but I didn’t, so she went with my dad instead.
On the next block was the Place du Capitole with a giant christmas market. There were a lot of stands with many things from food to items that would make good gifts. We didn’t really explore that much because we were all hungry and we wanted to find a sit down restaurant to eat at. Even though we were only there for a little bit, I noticed a lot of stands selling vin chaud, warm wine. We ate Italian food for dinner even though it was our first night in France, but it was pretty good.
The next day we started off with a classic French breakfast, a croissant, orange juice, and a warm beverage. My sister and I both got hot chocolate while my parents got coffee. The random cafe we picked to eat at had really good croissants, and my sister kept telling us she wanted to go back.
We started the day by walking along the Garonne, the big river in Toulouse. There were no railings and we were right next to the water, so we had to make sure not to slip and fall in. We noticed a statue of a red guy with a weird head on one of the bridges while we walked.
We walked through a few smaller Christmas markets on our way back to the main one. I wanted to get food at the barbeque stall I had seen the day before. I made a good decision because both the meat and the fries were really good. Everyone else ate random snacks at the main market.
Later in the afternoon my sister had a call with her class, so my dad and I went out to watch some World Cup. We found a random restaurant and sat there for 3 hours watching Croatia vs Brazil which was a great game. After my dad and I got back to the hotel we ate Thai food for dinner.
It’s funny how we were in Toulouse for 2 nights, and the only French food we ate was a croissant for breakfast. I think we’ll eat more French food since we still have 5 nights left here. 2 of those nights are in Bordeaux and the rest are in Paris. I’m excited to go to Paris and see all the things that Paris is known for. I’ll probably tell you about that in my next blog.
