How the time has flown. We have passed a wonderful winter here in Europe and are now getting ready to cruise again. We well over shot our budget this winter as we traveled off of Cadence and took advantage of lovely cities all over Europe. Our travels took us to Istanbul for Christmas where we treated ourselves to The Four Seasons Hotel and complete spa package.
Then to Vienna where we met up with Grace and David. We had a lovely little Air BnB apartment in the middle of the city. We did all the typical tourist type things visiting museums, the sites, as well as some classical music in an old church.
From Vienna we took the train to Prague where we had another Air BnB apartment lined up. This apartment was right in the center of Old Town Square, in the pedestrian only zone. If you google “best european cities for Christmas”, Prague comes up as number 1. So, the city was bustling with tourism.
We spent a fast paced week with the kids exploring the city. From pub crawls, seeing the local hockey team play, to a crazy New Years Eve celebration and plenty of city exploring we covered the city well. Grace and Dave caught a flight back to the states and Jess and I caught a train to Berlin, we had yet another Air BnB lined up.
This one was in Kreuzberg, on the east German border in Berlin. Berlin is apparently the hot spot for hipsters in Europe right now, I say Yuk. Really was just like Williamsburg Brooklyn, which I suppose is cool to some but we didn’t come to Europe to be in Brooklyn. A ton of construction going on, the city has very little left in the way of historical architecture as it was bombed to obliteration in WWII. The museums were top notch, but besides that, not on our revisit list. So we happily left Berlin headed for our winter home for 6 weeks, in Barcelona Spain.
So we happily left Berlin headed for our winter home for 6 weeks, in Barcelona Spain. Jess attended Metafora art school here, and I was a man of leisure. Kind of strange not having anything to do, no projects, no boat, no job. So I bought a guitar and starting taking lessons on line. We shall see how this progresses. Hopefully by the time we get to the Pacific I will be able to play a tune or two.
Jess poured herself into her art work. She left the apartment early every day and returned back in the early evening. We did have some visitors, my mom, sister and aunt came to visit for a week. Oh, and my good friend Jean Marie from France also stayed with us for a week. We met up with some guys we met in Horta, Pol, Bruno, and Inaki, circumnavigators, who live in Barcelona and they showed us a great time. I think I covered every inch of this city while I was there, Jess only had weekends for exploring but she had a big break through with her art, so all was good.
