Planes, Trains and Automobiles....my trip to Amsterdam and Barcelona

So my European adventure continued on Friday, October 20th with an extremely fun and odd combination of a weekend trip to Amsterdam with Timmy and his friend from London (the Peacocke), followed directly by a trip to Barcelona for a 5 day work training. Two amazing and very different cities, with a lot of fun to be had at both!

My trip started on Friday with my first real extended train travel since coming to Europe. I took the train from Lux to Brussels and then up to Amsterdam. It was good that I was taking the train and not flying as I overslept and woke up only 1 hour before my train was leaving…but I made it on comfortably with a good 30 seconds to spare.

I got into Amsterdam a few hours before the rest of the crew, so I had a few minutes to settle in and get a few basics taken care of (and yes that is Dutch apple pie, who knew?):

And of course some canals…

And finally the full crew is assembled (Timmy, Peacocke, Ryan) and ready to rock Amsterdam and celebrate Timmy's birthday in style:

Amsterdam is definitely a very cool, very surreal city. As I really was only there for 1.5 days, I did not get to see too many of the sites…but we did go through the van Gogh museum (which was an intense experience) and we saw plenty of the Red Light district and a few other of the downtown spots. But I did get to experience Amsterdam, and I even had the pleasure of basically catching a guy picking my pocket. Good times.

I woke up early Sunday morning to take the train back to Brussels so I could catch my flight down to Barcelona. By Sunday afternoon I was sitting outside in 75 degree weather sipping on sangria (ah, the picture is from another time sipping on sangria in the sun, there were a few) on the roof of the 5 star hotel we were staying at (you can see the Sagrada Familia in the distance). Man, that is they way to spend an afternoon.

While I was stuck in classroom trainings during most of the days during the week I didn’t get to see as much of the city as I liked. But as we were staying right downtown I managed to get out some and do stuff like wonder down La Rambla street, which was full of vendors, cafes, street performers and people…all the way down to the port and Christopher Columbus:

Around to see the Arc de Triumf and a gorgeous palm tree lined park:

And of course to see several Antoni Gaudi buildings such as Casa Mila (see the rest of my pics for a few more examples):

And maybe the most impressive building I have seen so far, The Sagrada Familia (the Guadi cathedral that has been under construction since 1883, with current estimates saying there are still 30-40 years of construction remaining…there are currently only 8 of 18 planned towers completed!):

It is disappointing because there is no way my pictures could or did do these places justice. Barcelona is just full of these amazing buildings, a very whimsical combination of old Gothic architecture combined with these ‘modern’ creations that were done around the turn of the century. All in all, Barcelona seemed like a city that would be great to live in. Of course having a San Diego-esque climate with lots of good food and beautiful people will do that for a city.

Another highlight of the trip was the food. Everyone knows Spain is famous for tapas, and those were amazing (if not a tad repetitive after having massive amounts of tapas every night for 5 straight nights). But the highlight for me was the authentic paella. Yes, I think they are all smiling at me.

After all that I didn’t even talk about the insane nightlife in Barcelona or the unexpected visitor I had to my room when I was trying to pack up on Friday afternoon. Regardless I made it back safely to Brussels and then to complete the final leg of the journey I rented a car and pulled into Luxembourg at 2:00am on Saturday morning….and ended up getting the best night sleep I had in over a week.

Whew, what a great trip! To see the rest of my pictures click HERE.

Check back again soon because I had the privilege of hosting Timmy this past weekend as my first visitor to Luxembourg…and it goes without saying that Luxembourg proved to be much less violent than London. Cheers!