Day 11 - Travel to Prague

Sunday, June 29, 2025

3.6 Miles Walked

9004 Steps Walked

Another travel day! On one hand, I know it can seem like a lot of travel days. In addition to flying over the pond to the EU (European Union), we have three travel days 1) Paris to Barcelona, 2) Barcelona to Prague (today!), and 3) Prague to Paris. A few things to note about our intra Europe travel: 

• We are flying each of these three days. 
• Each flight is direct. 
• Each travel day is with a different airline as the costs swing substantially depending on where are coming from and going. 
• Each flight is about 2-2.5 hours. 
• Each flight is conveniently scheduled around noon and arriving around 3:00. This allows us to checkout of our apartments before the 10:00am checkout times and arrive at our new apartment around the 4:00 check-in time. So we never really have any time hanging out or walking around with our luggage, which has been really nice. 
• These travel days are kind of fun and relaxing, so they have been a nice way to break up the trip after spending 3-5 days in one location. 

Before we leave Barcelona, as we did for Paris, I want to take a quick look at our Barcelona apartment. 

Again, it was very centrally located. We could technically walk everywhere. 


For context, the Basílica de la Sagrada Familia is a 20 minute walk. The beach is a 30 minute walk. 


The apartment was nice and airy. It felt spacious compared to the Paris apartment. It was also really nice that all the windows had blackout shades. 

Our apartment was on the first floor so we had a private patio we could use. Honestly, it was pretty warm while we were here, so breakfast was the only time it was comfortable to sit out here. 


It was clean, had two bathrooms and everyone had a bed. 










We boarded the flight with a friendly neighborhood fly. It flew by Caleb and he reached out and grabbed it. I told him it was “beginner luck, Grasshopper.” (Karate Kid reference for those who are perhaps too young to catch it.)

We travelled this leg on RyanAir. If you haven’t heard of this budget airline, just know that they make all their money on extra baggage fees. Their roller bag carry on size is very small by American standards…literally half or less. We are traveling with tiny bags so we did not have to check any bags except Cameron’s (who has been here for a month living out of an American size carryon roller bag). But we watched them pull people out of the boarding line and charge them €75 on the spot to check their luggage for being one inch too big. These. People. Are. Serious. Even your personal item had to be 20L or less. Which is roughly a kindergartener size backpack. 

There was a sweet little passenger in front of us. I caught glimpses of various tiny body parts from time to time. 

We arrived at our new apartment. The apartment was technically advertised as having room for 12, so the kids were counting the beds and places you could sleep including sofas. They deemed this sofa a three person sofa! Ha! 


We took off walking to find dinner. Again, we are very centrally located in the Old Town. 

I mean…whatever works…I guess? 


We found a restaurant with wonderful Czech food. 


Goulash 




“Hamburger” = pulled meat sandwich


End of dinner suckers.


 We walked by the old astronomical clock. Quite iconic and impressive. 




I couldn’t quite figure out how it worked. We will spend more time trying to understand this in the coming days. 


This church looked like something out of a fairytale. 


A large square where we found a grocery store. 


While we were in the grocery store, I suddenly did not feel well. I had a little bit of lettuce for dinner. The menu said spinach, but it wasn’t spinach. My stomach struggles with lettuce, so I didn’t eat much of it, but apparently enough to feel unwell. Soooo, we walked home, but somehow when we walked in the apartment a door was closed… (this is moms story of how this went, lets pause here and correct that last sentence that caused 15 minutes of complete chaos - Grace). 

Mom wasn’t feeling good so I walked back to the apartment with her, we got up to the apartment and she went to her side of the apartment and I went to mine. Once the boys got upstairs we realized the door to her side had shut… and locked. Knowing she wasn’t feeling good we went into a slight panic, not knowing how she was feeling or in what state she was in. We tried every key we had multiple times with no luck. The picture below is of one of the windows we had leading to the roof where we could get to the rooftop patio, open it and climb down to get to mom. Cameron stood on the counter top and slid through the window and onto the roof. He tried everything - unscrewing windows, using the buttons that opened the rooftop access, knocking to see if mom would hear him, but again, no luck. Keep in mind this whole time we are texting mom, and calling mom hoping her watch would alert her and that she could answer (I had her phone to navigate us back when she wasn’t feeling good). Still no luck. I went downstairs to the business next door where you pick up the keys, dude looked clueless then proceeded to show me the empty container where any extra keys would have been. Nothing. So he gave me the owners number and I went back upstairs. We continued to knock and call mom until finally mom came to the door and opened it looking confused about all the fuss. We all proceeded to remind each other to never close those doors because we didn’t have keys to them and we went back to our nightly activities of hanging out on the roof overlooking the city. 

Back to Mom typing: This whole situation took about 15 minutes. During which, I was just laying in bed. The mini split air conditioners in each room are so loud I couldn’t hear all of this happening. 

The escape window:

View from the top:


Empty bucket of keys


Disaster averted. Time to enjoy the patio for the first time. This private rooftop patio was so fantastic! 


View from the rooftop patio after dark. The city of 1000 spires. 

Day 10 - Free Day in Barcelona

Saturday, June 28, 2025

4.6 Miles Walked

11,858 Steps Walked

We had a completely unplanned day…that was totally planned. Barcelona was supposed to be the end of our trip. Like a calm beach vacation end to our vacation. 

Then we realized the flights in the other direction (Paris, Prague, Barcelona) would cost 3x’s as much!!! Whoa. Suddenly, Paris, Barcelona, Prague sounded like a really good idea. 

So here we are with the relaxing part of our vacation right in the middle of our vacation…which in hindsight worked out rather well. Perhaps this is how vacations should be. 

We started out a bit late again. We started out at a recommended bakery called El Nostre Pa. It did not disappoint. (Aren’t recommendations great?) It is very close to our apartment and the Arc. They had matcha lattes. Grace and I could not resist. They were quite good! Others had coffee, pastries and sandwiches. 

This is Cascada monumental. It was quite interesting. And yes, the water really was that green. Interestingly, Gaudi (of yesterday’s Basilica fame) was credited for part of the design when actually he was just a young student at the time and was only responsible for the hydraulic system driving the water in the fountain. 


This guy was also hanging out near the monument. I’m not sure why he was there, but I think I liked him more than the monument. 


It was a super hot day, and honestly, we weren’t prepared for a beach day, but we were so close we decided we needed to check it out. It was a pretty warm day with notable humidity, so the beach was really only comfortable in the water or under some shade. They kept stating heat warnings over the intercom system on the beach. 


Grace and Evan did dip their toes into the water. They then struck off on a separate adventure. Cameron and I headed home. I had a blister on my left heel that started bugging me last night. (So annoying.) Matt and Caleb joined us back at the apartment after stopping at a brewery for lunch on the way home. 

Grace and Evan in the water! They said it felt pretty cold. Grace said the sand was so hot it burned the bottom of her feet. Yikes!! 

Grace, Evan, and Caleb went back to the Barcelona museum for a guided tour of the old city ruins. 


Dice and games found in the archeological dig.


Pottery found and reassembled.




Tour guide


Grace and Evan found refreshments. 


Cameron found another good restaurant for dinner. It was really easy to find good places to eat in Barcelona. Everything was so good and most of it was very affordable. 

We actually doubled up on dessert tonight. We had brownie and crème brûlée at the restaurant. 


Then we stopped for gelato on the way home. 


It was nice to have a random day. We would have probably spent more time enjoying the beautiful parks if it wasn’t so hot. This was the first time this trip that weather (heat) altered our plans. 

Day 9 - Pallela

Friday, June 27, 2025

4.7 Miles Walked

11,535 Steps Walked

I feel like we took it a bit easy today. We wandered around for a bit in the afternoon after stoping for lunch…once we finally found a place. It was busy today! We ate at a place that felt more like it was for locals. Very traditional and simple food. 

We looked at shops and navigated the narrow one way streets that wove through the Old Town area of Barcelona. We stumbled upon this area yesterday and decided we want to come back to explore some more. 

Caleb was today’s winner. He found a very cool handmade wallet. He had it stamped with his initials so we had to come back in the afternoon to pick it up. 

This building had eyeballs all over it. 


Finally! It was time to pick up the finished wallet. 


I didn’t take many pictures throughout the day…until now. 5:00pm was the main event of the day! A few weeks ago, I signed us all up for a pallela cooking class. I’ve been really looking forward to this and it did not disappoint! This may go down as the best thing we did all vacation. 

Pallela is a rice dish that we fell in love with during the pandemic. A local restaurant in our town called Flavory Bistro makes it fresh and it is amazing. We began ordering it for takeout during the pandemic as the portions are HUGE. So when I saw that Pallela is very traditional here AND there is a class…let’s just say it was a done deal. 

You walk in and they hand you a glass of Cava sparking wine. Think of it this way; different countries have different sparkling wines: Spain has Cava, France has Champagne, and Italy has Prosecco. 

And, well, long story short, the Cava was unlimited. At one point, our instructor had everyone come over to Matt and my cooking station and said, “I want to show you what they are doing wrong.” Uh oh. Then he said, “They are still on their first glass of wine!” Then he picked up our glasses and handed them to us while he demonstrated the next step at our workstation. :D 

(They had non-alcoholic options as well.) 


Matt composed this picture. Not bad.


Caleb knew how to chop the garlic into really fine pieces. Who knew?!


Grace and Evan were paired up at a workstation, and Cameron and Caleb had a workstation. 


We had the seafood dishes. There was also chicken and vegetarian made by the other couples (we were the only family). 

We had a decorating contest. This was Matt and mine. 


This was Cameron and Caleb’s.


This was Grace and Evan’s. For the record, they had black ink squid. It isn’t burnt. 




These two had way too much fun!




And I do mean WAY too much fun. Just kidding. Caleb couldn’t stop laughing long enough to pose for this picture. 


I guess I don’t have a picture of us all sitting down to a four course meal together. Weird. But we did take this group shot with our instructor and our new BFF’s Stella and Briana. They just got married in September and were on their honeymoon! We really enjoyed getting to know them during dinner and we wish them the BEST! There were two other couples as well, but they kept more to themselves. 


What a night. I have a feeling we will be talking about this experience for years to come.