Joe Rodin Has A Blog

This day was by far the most relaxing day as we didn't really want to do anything. So we headed down to the shore to check out the beaches. It was a weird looking weather day, as there were clouds over the land, and nothing but sun over the water. Although it looks dark, it never actually rained and the clouds would all disperse within the next two hours. Big 'ol panorama from the beach. Lobster who is pretty whatever about things. Another view of the beach from out on one of the jetties. This rock looks like a whale, a lot of the rocks have animal carvings on them, or faces or people (above the whale is Buddha). Molly wanted a really, really big Sangria, so we got her one! Bought a knock-off Supreme Fanny Pack from a street vendor. Barcelona also has a large amount of graffiti everywhere, some of it is super talented, but some of it is extra cryptic. I'm 99% sure this one says "Barcelona Communist Girls." The 4 towers and the ...

Day 2 in Barcelona, we started off by heading down the the Archaeology Museum, which has so many cool historical items that date back to Prehistoric Times. The museum covers the history of the Iberian peninsula through Greek and Roman conquest, and modern Catalan/Spanish history, and also has on display two of my favorite things: Siege Weapons! The single framed Couillard, split buckets allow this to miss hitting the frame. The classic old reliable, double A-framed trebuchet. After the museum visit, we went back over to the Gothic Quarter to see a few things that closed early the day before, and then headed towards La Segrada Familia, or the most beautiful building I've ever seen. After having been to the Gaudí exhibit and learning his way of workmanship and his approach to building this cathedral, it truly shows how dedicated his life was to this work. The stained glass is otherworldly, his approach of using rippled glass (much like dropping a rock into water) allow...

Today's our first full day in Barcelona, and oddly, my first time drinking fresh pressed orange juice. I don't know how I've made it 31 years in my life without a fresh orange juice, but somehow, I did! It's delicious! The weather in Barcelona is absolutely perfect, it's sunny and 60 and this is where we wanted to come to in order to relax at the end of a long trip, but we aren't exactly doing a great job of this, as we're planning to walk across the entire city, no big deal! We started by walking up the hill to the National Gallery, which was closed, as it was Monday. Probably should have Googled that first, but realistically today is an exploring day and we were up for a nice walk through the Montjuic area. The gardens here are beautiful, parrots are everywhere, and there's even some cute water fountains and waterfalls: We made it up to the Castle at the top of Montjuic, and it's still an active fortress today, (like the Tower of London...

Today was strictly set aside as a travel day, we needed to catch a train from Paris to Barcelona, and that ride alone was set to take close to 6 hours. So we bought some last minute souvenirs in Paris, stocked up on snacks, and hit the train station. Weird thing: They never checked our tickets on the train until after we left the first stop, which was easily 100km out from Paris. We could have free-loaded on this train and no one would have even noticed, much less said anything. And where this was between two real EU countries (sorry, England), there was no security check or passport check, just off you go! Photo of the French Countryside on the way to Barcelona. Arriving in Barcelona, I picked a hotel immediately across the street from the train station, to make travel into and out of Barcelona super fast, and it worked out well for us. We grabbed some dinner at a restaurant a couple blocks down the road and called it a night. Joe

We started this morning off by walking down to the cafe where we had breakfast the morning before, because there was a street artist who had been working on some new art, but wasn't going to be finished until later in the day. Instead of taking a photo at night, we just waited for the morning, and it looks super rad! We then hopped the first train that would take us to Versailles, and Versailles also just so happens to be a band that I used to listen to back in the day, so what better place to listen to Versailles than at Versailles! The one major problem, my fault 100%, I wanted to get to Versailles as early as possible and forgot to feed Molly breakfast. We ate at the fancy restaurant on the property, but it was worth it, that cheese plate Molly had looked delicious. Words honestly can't describe how beautiful Versailles is, nor can they describe the size of the property. Versailles is 3 Square Miles. Downtown Boston, aka "Original 1630 Boston," is only 1....

I can't recommend enough 2 simple things when you travel: Public Transit passes and Museum/Multi-Day passes to a city. We knew Paris had cheap public transit, but we didn't realize how easy it was to get around everywhere on a single-ride ticket. The Paris Metro allows you to buy 10 single-trip tickets at a go, a 20€ cost, and you can split them across as many people as you want (10/2=5 Trips for the both of us!) Turns out this is all we'll actually need for our 2.5 days in Paris (exception, special train ticket out and back from Versailles). The Museum Pass for Paris is stupidly efficient as well, it folds down to the size of a pack of gum, or a Tic-Tacs container, and gives access to something like 60 museums in Paris and the surrounding area for only 48€. Our first day alone we paid the pass off with all the stops we went to, so essentially 2 full days in Paris, travel and museums: 60€/person. SOLID. Our first stop was at the Museum that shares our name, The ...