Day 11, bye bye Spain, hello West coast!

Note: This was written on the flight.

Hello readers! This the last day of my Spooner In Spain blog! Today started with us waking up early, getting our things together, having a little breakfast, and hauling butt to the airport. The ride to the airport didn't take that long, probably 20 - 30 minutes. Once we got to the airport, we stood in an long line to check in our bags. After about an hour, we got to the front of the line, we checked in our bags, got through security, and got onto our flight with ease. We flew for about 2 hours, I slept for about a quarter of it though. Once we landed, we headed to the bus to got to the next place for security to get onto the flight. We got to security and we were just about go, but then the searched my bag because I forgot one water bottle in it. DOH! They had to take everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - out of my bag, which put us behind schedule. once we got it all settled, Dad and I sprinted to the transit to get the gate while Miss waited for some food that we ordered from a place called Giraffe. She got the food and headed after us. We got on the transit, basically bitting our nails and hoping that the gates hadn't closed. As soon as the doors opened, we sprinted to the gate. Luckily, the gate closed, yet. We checked our boarding passes with the guy at the counter, apparently, Miss was chosen for a random security check! It was totally not on our agenda, but, what are you gonna do! She went through it, and we walked down to the plane. We had made it! We boarded the plane and we began our 10 hour flight to San Francisco. After a few hours on the plane, I began to get a headache, and it was brutal! I took some Aspirin - thanks mom! - and had 4 glasses of water. I got out of my window seat and walked around the plane for a little bit. I felt better after a while. My headache subsided, and my tummy rely better after having some crackers and some water. Earlier on the flight, Miss and I decided that next time we fly on British Airways - which is an excellent airway by the way - we would sit in either Business or 1st class! 1st class is really cool, there are rear facing seats and there are dividers between the connected seats. It's really awesome. I hope we can get in 1st class next time, but it's really expensive. "Just add another zero to the price and there you go!" Dad said. I'm tired at the moment, because of my lack of sleep. I can last though. I don't quite know when I'll do another blog, but until then this is - sort of - Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 10, IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!

Hello readers! This is day 10 of my Spooner In Spain blog! Today started with Miss waking us up and yelling us to go on our "Churro Quest" in Gothic District. Once we got there, we had the thickest hot chocolate ever, it was so thick, that I could - and did - lay the churro on top of the hot chocolate and it didn't move. It was pretty far up in the list of my "Awesome Drinks." We payed our bill and found another place that sells churros and hot chocolate. It wasn't that good, the churros were salty, the hot chocolate was basically liquid fire, and there was this annoying, bratty, crying 1 year old about a yard away from us. He wasn't even really crying though, he was just kind of yelling and, literally, that baby wouldn't shut up unless he was sucking down lemon Fanta. Also, the mom wasn't doing anything about it, she just brought out a pack of cigarettes, which ended up just making the baby cry even harder. We got out of there as fast as we could and dad bought a few hats. Then from there, we went to a Pablo Picasso museum which wasn't that exciting, but it was O.K. There were some great paintings though. After that, we went to the hotel to pick up the bikes and we rode to lunch. We split a bunch of little tapas like most Spaniards do. One was a cheese covered with nuts and a line of jam. It was pretty good. Once we finished up lunch, we rode to the Joan Míro exhibit. That, I liked! It had an audio tour guide where you punch in the numbers of what ever you wanted to hear about, that was the second time we had had that on this trip. I liked the sculptures better that the painting because the were 3D. After that, we took a long bike ride home to the hotel in which an old man hit Dad's bike with his cane and I was close to getting hit with a bus, but it wasn't Dad's or Miss's fault, it was actually mine for not looking both ways, but I'm fine. Once we got to the hotel, we walked to a local market which Miss got a lot of comments of. I had a little orange and banana fruit icy from a stand. It was pretty great. Once we left, we headed up to the top floor where the pool was where Miss and I took nice little naps, well, mine was about an hour long, so I guess you wouldn't call it "little." Once I awoke, we headed to the -1st floor where the spa and other pool, were. All three of us swam a little, but I swam the most because there were a few other kids, two of which spoke a little English. They were skinny, tall, 14 years old, and I think twins or brothers. I swam forma while then got out. We headed back to our rooms to shower and get ready for dinner. It was a short walk. Once we got there, we had at least 12 courses! Ugh! My tummy still aches! The desserts were fantastic! Both of them! Hahaha! If I went into detail, it would take another blog post, so, I'll explain it to you in person, or if I can't meet you in person, have Dad or Miss explain it to you. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to let the food set. We got ready for bed, got in, and now I'm finishing up this blog post, my next - and final - post will be up tomorrow, until then this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 9, food is good!

Hello readers! This is day 9 of my Spooner In Spain blog! Today started with me waking up at about 11 a.m. and hopping in the car with Dad to return the rental car which was a hassle. Once we got it returned, we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bikes so that we could ride all day! Since I hadn't had anything to eat yet, I had some tiny pastries. They were pretty good! Once I finished them, I ordered a hot chocolate! It was probably the best hot chocolate I've ever had! But, alas, I didn't finish it because we were having lunch soon, so we hopped on our bikes and rode a while until, finally, we reached 7 Portes, the restaurant that we were going to eat at. I ordered some noodles that were really great and for all of us, we ordered paella (pie-yay-uh) that had various types of meats in it including scallops, sausage, octopus, langostino, mussels, and possibly a few others. I also ate some cod puff balls that were terrific! They were so good, I had half the plate, which was 3/6 of them. Also, I had some Fanta soda and a sip of champaign sangria. It was pretty good. Once we left on our bikes, we headed to Gavdis, Sagrada Familia, and Park Guëll. The bike ride to the places was brutal and hot! Once we left the parks, we rode in the cool wind to a Tapas bar named Cal Pep. After we were finally seated, we ordered tuna tartar, piquello peppers, an omelet, and a cream pastry. We ended up going to the hotel after that and relaxing. We watched some TV and just unwinded. Now I'm finishing up this post. My next post will be up tomorrow, until then, this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 8, the big move.

Hello readers, this day 8 of my Spooner In Spain blog! Today started with Dad waking me up give me a choice: sleep in some more, or wake up and eat breakfast. I was still sleepy so I said that I was going to go back to bed. I kept my promise and woke up about an hour and a half later to day saying that there was only about 15 minutes to get breakfast. So I rushed to get clothes on and raced down the hallways to the bridge so I could feast. Once I got to the food place, I had a glass of OJ, some chocolate pastries, some eggs, and a hot chocolate. It was a really great breakfast. After that, we went to our room and dad left me alone so I could pack my bags - we were leaving that afternoon. I packed my suitcase and some of my carry-on things, then I played with my new app for my iPad called Doodle God. It's really fun. Cole introduced it to me. Speaking of Cole, he gave me his address in L.A., his email, and a few other things. I haven't seen him since. After we packed up all of our things, we got in the car and drove from El Ciego to Barcelona. Our 5 hour drive was pretty dorable, until my iPad almost died. Then I had to figure out what to do next, so I finished up my book. It had a great ending. Then I fell asleep in the car for about 2 hours. When I awoke, we were almost done with our drive. It was only about 20 minutes before we were waltzing into Hotel 1898. After wen checked in, we looked at our rooms and decided that we were hungry, so we took a taxi to a few tapas bars. One in which I had half a liter of Coca-Cola! After that we went to a restaurant were we had a reservation and I had the most delicious Mac and Cheese ever! It was fantastic. I also had a pretty great creme burlé. Once we left, we headed to the hotel, and when we got there, we hung out in Dad and my room. After a while, Miss headed off to bed, then Dad, and now me, my next post will be up tomorrow, until then, this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 7, water and wine.

Hello readers! This is day 7 of my Spooner In Spain blog! Today started with a surprising wakeup by the telephone in our room. It turned out to be Miss, telling us to wake up. We said that we would get up in about 10 minutes, we kept our promise, got dressed, and headed upstairs to have some breakfast. We actually saw Cole while we were sitting down outside. We had our breakfast, then changed in our rooms for a morning/afternoon workout. Cole and I walked down to the gym, got on machines, and got to work. Once we finished our workout, we hopped in the pool for a cool down. After a while of pool and gym, we decided if I could come on a wine tour with them. Dad agreed, and we headed out, but before Cole, his mom and dad, and I went to the place to go on the wine tour, we decided to stop at this little town to have some lunch. We hade some, Croquetas, some Coca-Cola, and some other things that were really great. Before we left, Cole's mom lent us some Euros and let us go down the street and get some ice cream. Once we got there, we chose our flavors - I got a three chocolate Drumstick type thing, and Cole got a 1/2 chocolate 1/2 vanilla ice cream bar. I looked pretty great. After we finished them, we walked back to the car and drove to a beautiful vineyard where we took some great pictures, they'll be up in my "YouTube Fun Photos" montage. Then we drove to where the wine tour was, it was actually in the same town where we had stopped to have lunch! We had to wait a little while until the tour started. It wasn't that exciting until we got to the tasting room! All of us tried two different types of red wines, one was aged for 6 months in the barrel and 6 months the bottle, and the other red wine was a year in the barrel and a year in the bottle. I liked the older wine better, but it's still an acquired taste. Once we left the tour, we headed in the car to the hotel. When we got there, Cole and I decided that we wanted to take another dip in the pool, we got our suits on and got in the pool. After a while, we were asked to leave the pool because they were closing it down, but we had other plans! We hung out in the gym room until the ladies who were talking left, then we walked back to the pool, hopped in, and had fun for about half an hour until we left, not by force, but just out of boredom. After that, we headed back to our rooms. I took a shower, got on some nice clothes, and we walked over to the wine bar to see my dad, Miss, Cole's mom and dad sitting there. We walked over to some chairs, sat down, and began playing Words With Friends against each other. Then, we - Cole, Dad, Miss, and I - piled into the rental car and drove to a little town where there were a couple dozen little restaurants and we grabbed some food from 4 different places. At the first place we had some delicious lamb and a few other greets things. Then, we walked over to another little place where there were some kabobs that we all split. Next, we waddled over to a little shop where we had meatballs, little edible cups of a chilly type stuff, and some other things that were great, then we hit our last stop for the night, a little shack where we had some pretty good hot dogs. Then Cole and I played soccer with a crushed Coke can until we got to the car, then we got in the car and drove back down to the hotel. We dropped Cole off in his room, Miss at her room, and us at our room. We got ready for bed and now, I'm finishing up this blog post. My next post will be up tomorrow, until then, this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 6, a New Friend.

Hello readers, this is day 6 of my Spooner In Spain blog! Today started with my dad waking me up. We packed our bags, headed downstairs, had some breakfast, and headed in the rental car, and drove about 2 hours to El Beetel, or something like that. I'm not exactly sure how to spell it. On the way, we stopped at the town where "The Running Of The Bulls" takes place. We bought some sweet treats at a local sweets store. They were delicious, even though we didn't finish them. ;-) A little later we piled back in the car and drove to the hotel that I'm in now. I read my book in the way there. Once we got there, we checked out our rooms, changed out clothes, and walked over to a little part of the hotel that serves food and drinks. We had our fill of measballs, noodles, and a couple of cheese things that were really good. After that, we decided to go to the hotel pool, but I wanted to use the gym that was, coincidentally, right next to the pool! I worked our for about 45 minutes total, but once or twice i popped in the pool room to check up on my dad and Miss, the first time i popped in there was a kid swimmimg in pool that was 11. I walked up to him and said, "Hola, abla Ingleso?" which meens, "Hello, do you speek English?" he responded that he spoke English, but that he had to leave to go on a wine tour with his parrents. I said bye! And went back to the gym. After 10 or 15 minutes, I hopped into the pool for 5 or 6 minutes to cool down. We walked back to our rooms and changed to go on a wine tour ourselves! We walked over to the place where we started the tour, the kid was there, too! I walked up to him and introduced myself. He said that his name was Cole, he was from Los Angelos, that he was in Spain for a few weeks before today, and that he was staying for a few more weeks. We went on the tour together, all 6 of us: Dad, Miss, Cole, Cole's mom and dad, and myself. We went to the room where they squish the grapes, the room where they store special wine that is to be opened only on very special occasions, and a few more exciting rooms! At the end of the tour there was tasting! Cole and I were both served almost alcohol free grape juice first, then stepped it up a level. White wine! It was bitter the first few sips, but as I had more, it was pretty good! I actually tried some red wine, but neither Cole or I reallyliked it that much. Then I had some more of the regular grape juice to clear my tastebuds. Cole and I decided that we could meet at the pool and hang out for a while and play. So we both headed to our room, which were down the same hallway, and got our bathing suites on. Dad told me that after we finished swimming, we could use my room key to get into the room and order room service! I was cool with that and Cole was too when I told him. Once we got to the pool, we shot each other with squirt guns that he had brought, then just swam for a while. We also used the handicap lift to go in and out of the water, which was pretty fun. :-) After a while though, it was time to go back to the room. We looked at the menu for a minute or two in Cole's room, decided what we wanted to order, then Cole's mom ordered the food and had it delivered to my room while we were watching a movie. The food came not a moment too soon. We ate our noodles and our meatballs, which Cole loved so much, that when we ordered our dessert, we got a second order, just for him! It was fun. Then his mom came to tell us that we had about 15 to 20 minutes left before Cole had to go back to his room. Man I went by fast because I downloaded "Words With Friends" for him on his iPod touch. It's basically Scrabble but you can play with people across the globe or across town, and no, that's not their slogan. His mom picked him up after a while and I walked down to Miss's room, knocked on the door, Dad and I walked down to our room, we got in bed and now he's asleep and I'm finishing up this blog post. My next post will be up tomorrow, until then, this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 5, The Museum and The Beach (Again...)

Hello readers, this is day 5 of my Spooner In Spain blog! Dad had to wrestle me out of bed this morning and we were off to a very famous museum called the Guggenheim Bilbao. My favorite exhibit was a room with tons of mirror statues by an artist named Anish Kapoor. I liked some other exhibits too, like, the 30 foot tall dog made of flowers. How cool is that?! :-) After we got out of the museum, we went to a restaurant near the museum - they both were about 1 hour away from San Sebastian - and had some pretty good food. After I had my hamburgesa - a spanish hamburger - I ordered a white chocolate brownie with a glass of sangria, which is basically watered down wine with fruit juice mixed in. Then we went to the hotel. After about 30 minutes I asked dad if we could go to the beach again, he was a little uncertain at first, but we went because I promised some nuevo (new) amigos that I met at the beach yesterday that I would be there. So we walked down to the beach, once we got there, I told dad that I was going in the water, even though it was practically raining. I swam all the way out to the raft thing I went out to yesterday. There were 2 other rafts that I hadn't really noticed yesterday, so I swam to one that I thought would be fun to jump off of. It was! There was a bigger diving board, but the raft wasn't as big, which was a bummer. After I got to shore, we walked back to the hotel in the rain! By the time we got back both of us were soaked. We took showers and got dressed to go to a tapas bar for pintxos. They were pretty good. It was really crowded in there, we basically had to fight for our food. After that, we were planning on going to a few other places, but it was not to be. We needed to get some money, so we could pay for the next place, so we walked over to an A.T.M. and tried to get some Euros, but all four of the machines failed us. Well, it was actually, Bank of America that failed us. :-( We took a taxi to our hotel where Dad and Miss had some white wine. Then we went up to our rooms and Miss came over after a while, and now I'm here, writing this blog post. My next post will be up sometime tomorrow, until then, this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 4, The Beach

Hello readers! Today was a much better day that yesterday for many reasons.one was that dad went down the wrong way down a one way street which was pretty funny. Another reason was that we went to the beach, dad and I swam out to a raft type thing where we could slide down the slide and jump into the water. It was pretty fun. The water was nice and warm. Once we got back to shore, we found out that Miss and all out stuff had been hit by a wave! We moved up the beach a little bit and stayed there the rest of the time. After we walked to the hotel, we hung out at Miss's room for a little bit. Then I took a nap after beginning this blog post. I woke up after about half an hour, I took a shower, got on some nice clothes, and we took a taxi to a world famous restaurant called Arzak. I actually met the chef!!! We started by having some appetizers. There was a tiny cup of white bean soup that had two strips of apple in there that was served with fish that was covered in some type of fried saffron thread, then there was fried mushroom stuffed in a crispy rice crust, served alone. Then there was a chorizo tempura (chore-ee-zoh tem-pour-uh), wich is a mystery what was in it to us, after that there was sardines layered on a stuffing and served on half a strawberry also served alone. For the next course, I had a poached egg served with bread crumbs, but I put in about 3 extra . It was, by far, the best egg dish I've ever had! Sorry mom and dad! ;-) For dad's second course, he had foie gras (fwah-grah) For Miss's second course, she had Cromlech y con té y café (Krom-lek ee kon tay cafay.) For my third course, I had lobster. It was exctremely delicious! For dad's third course, he had lamb ossobuco (lam osso-boko.) Next, Miss's third course was an amazing sole. We don't really know what was in it though. Then, for our dessert course, I had a sweet and bitter - but great - chocolate sause in a chocolate casing with a mystery sauce on a piece of something - I think it was a thin layer of unsweetened chocolate. For my dad's dessert, he had a lemon fractal type thing, and for Miss's dessert, she had a strawberry soup with basil icecream and squishy chocolate balls. We also shared three flavors of ice cream: apple, strawberry, and chocolate-basil. After that set, we had a cheese platter with 5 different types of cheeses, not all were even from cows, but most of them were great. A little later, we got a free surprise dessert platter with a few different types of styles of desserts. I meant to take a picture, but I got carried away by the food, oops! Then, as we were getting ready to pay the bill, dad's credit card wasn't going through. It was because he had been in so many different places in the past few days that they put it on pause so we spent about an hour trying to het it to work, calling all these different places and getting transferred to other numberes and finally, we got it to work. We left before anything else went wrong. My next blog post will be up tomorrow, but until then, this is Spooner In Spain!

Day 3, Spain Pain.

Hello readers! This is day 3 of my "Spooner In Spain" blog, this morning dad woke me up and told me to take a shower, and get some fresh clothes on, I did, and we went to the downstairs part of the hotel we were staying at. We had some very brief breakfast, then hightailed it to the local museum. We were there for about an hour an saw some amazing paintings and sculptures. Then we left and we walked to a really fun food market where we had some pinchos (peen-choose)and some fabulous tortilla de camerones (tore-teeyas deh cam-er-owns). Then we made our way over to a little stand where I had - in my opinion - the world's best cup of hot chocolate! I also had two twisty churro's to go with it! The churro's weren't as sweet as I expected, but if you dip it in the hot chocolate, it was delicious!!! After that, we bought a few other things and left. Once we left, we walked around part of the city for a while, looking for a good place to stop, let out feet rest, and have some lunch. Eventually we found one, ordered some dishes, and found out that Miss's purse was stollen. It had her cell phone, her passport, her credit cards, our train tickets, and some other important things. She was pretty upset. That was a chain reaction to a whole bunch of unfortunate events including, the train being full, us having to rent a car, my dad's computer dying, and our car chargers not working properly. We were pretty tense for a few kilometers. But we all moved on. My next post will be up once I get to San Sebastian. Until then, this is Spooner In Spain!!!

P.S. - We had a 5 hour drive from Madrid to San Sebastian, and for dinner I had a hot dog called a "hot dog.com." It was a hot dog that had bacon, cheese, and fried onions, I left out the onions and replaces them with ketchup and some mustard. :-)

Day 2, England and Spain ahoy!

Note: this was written when I was in England yesterday.

Hello readers! I've landed in London, England and it's POURING rain!!! But, I'll take it since it is my first trip to England. Our flight to Madrid, Spain leaves here at 13:10 or 1:10 p.m. if you don't know military time. The time change isn't as painful as I thought it would be because I took a 2 hour nap on the plane ride to England, and because there's an 8 hour time difference, and that we were traveling east, the days seemed extremely short, but it's kind of an adventure! Until the plane is ready to depart, we're stuck here at this loud, crowded, WI-FI-less airport shopping mall type place, oh well. I can't seem to understand how the money in England works. I think the whole world should use the same type of currency. There's these money symbols all over the place - €, £, ¥, and p. We have  flown about 10 hours total this whole trip and it's about to be 11 and a half after this last flight. Although it's almost a full day of flying, I like it, the free movies, the complimentary snacks, meals, and drinks, and I just like the experience. My next post will be put up when I get to a WI-FI spot in Spain. Until then this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 1, The Many Planes.

Hello readers, this is my second post of my "Spooner In Spain" blog! Day 1 started with an early wakeup from my mom at 5:45 a.m. I think it was. Man was I tired, but I pulled it together, took a shower, grabbed my bags, and we headed of to the airport! After we got to the airport, we had some breakfast at Quisnos Sub Shop. I got a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on white bread. Mmmmm! It was a great start to my busy day! Right as I finished my last bite of egg, the lady at the desk at our gate said to get on the plane. I hugged my mom goodbye and got on the plane. Since I was flying solo, I decided to get myself a nice little window seat. Once the plane was about 150 feet in the air, we hit fog. That was a little depressing, but it cleared up after about 2 minutes. Then, once we got to cruising speed, and we could take our electric items, I grabbed my iPad and started watching one of my favorite movies staring Jim Carry called "The Truman Show." I watched until we had to put out electric items away, but I didn't get to finish the movie. Oh well, once I got off the plane, to my surprise, I saw my uncle Greg waiting for me at the gate! I guess it is a small world after all. I walked up to him and gave him a high-five then asked him what he was doing here, he said he was waiting to get on his flight to Alaska and the gate I came off of just happened to be right across the hallway! It was really cool seeing him because I hadn't seen him in about a year or so! So I grabbed my stuff - well most of it anyway, I didn't know I had forgotten my jacket on the plane until later - and went to meet my dad at security. I was so glad to see him. We walked to baggage claim, grabbed my checked bag, hopped in the car, ran some errands and now we have about 5 hours until we get on out next flight to LONDON, ENGLAND. That's a place that I've pretty much always wanted to go. I'll put up a new post once we get to London, then another once we get to Spain. Until then, this is Spooner In Spain!!!

Day 0, Preflight Excitement!

Hey guys this is my first post for my "SpoonerInSpain" blog! I'm flying to San Francisco in the morning, then from S.F., I think we leave to London, England. Then we fly to Spain! My first flight leaves at 7:35 a.m.!!! I'm SOOOO psyched! My blogs will be posted every day by 6:30 p.m. for the next 10 days or so. You can also watch my fun picture video on YouTube once I get back from Spain. Until tomorrow, this is Spooner In Spain!!!