2015: Málaga, Seville, Córdoba Madrid, Barcelona
This was my first time visiting Spain, and it was with Zig Gmerek on our epic Morocco, Spain, France trip! Seriously, one of the craziest trips I’ve ever taken!
2015: DockerCon Barcelona
Lisa came with me on this trip and I remember going up on the mountain and having drinks. I remember parting at the top of the Westin for 2-3 nights straight with Patrick and Jen Madriaga. I also remember hanging out with Daniel Riek and Lisa on the beach at 3AM 🤣 I remember going up to Montserrat with Lisa, seeing the church, and spending some time at night outside the Sagrada Familia.
2016: KubeCon/CloudNativeCon Barcelona
I remember finishing my talks, and going up to Montserrat with Tushar and Brian Riordan
2023: Family Trip to Mallorca
Port de Soller
We stayed in Port de Soller for three and a half weeks straight and it was gorgeous. I think this was one of our favorite places ever, and I’d love to return. The first night when we got there, we found a cantina that was open late, ate outside with the kids, and had a drink of Cava. It was nice.
They spoke a strange dialect called Mallorquin and it was pretty difficult to understand. The locals prided themselves in speaking this other language. The kids swam pretty much everyday because the beach was 100 meters away. The front balcony had an amazing view of old houses, and all of their roofs. You could see a tiny bit of the blue water. There was a tiny park and mirador at the top of the hill on our street, a 5 minute walk, and we watched several sunsets there. One night, we walked all over the peer and the kids danced to music that was blaring out of the second floor of the nightclub.
2024: Riding Enduros and Skiing
I rode KTM 500EXCs out in Torre del Compte (West of Tarragon) with Dave Shepard at Trail Bike Tours. The terrain was gorgeous, and I got to see a lot of small towns and villages in a really interesting way. Probably the most interesting memory was when we walked into this little cafe, and all of these 90 year old guys were sitting on one side, and this other 90 year old guy was sitting on the other side. Apparently, one side supported Franco and the other did not. Everyday, these guys come in the cafe, order coffee, have wine, and never speak to each other. And, it was this tiny little town that was mostly dying out.
2024: Family Trip to Barcelona
Barcelona
This was my sixth time visiting Spain and second time in 2024, so it’s starting to feel very familiar. We spent 10 days in the city, and another two weeks on the beach in Castelldefels. Both experiences were amazing in their own special ways.
We stayed 10 days in a quiet, kid-friendly neighborhood in Barcelona called Ciutadella a couple of blocks from Ciutadella Park. We stayed in a two-bedroom short term rental with two bedrooms, and a nice little kitchen where I could work at the table. The apartment was right on the corner of a triangle-shaped building where the roads come together. There was a Vivari Cafe (a chain which appeared to be popular all over Spain) below, and 4-5 grocery stores within a one-block distance. My favorite grocery was the Bon Preu just across the street. We took walks down to the park bunches of times, and just generally explored the neighborhood while I worked remotely.
The view from the apartment was really cool, there were floor to ceiling windows overlooking the corner. This was conducive to working and writing. During the day, it was busy with people bustling about. Bicycles, walkers, and cars. The avenues were wide but the cross walks were really nice. At night, it had a great view from the kitchen looking down on the El Carrer de Sardenya which made me reflective. I fantasized about being like Orwell or Hemingway, looking down on the city, and writing. I wrote, and dug through pictures, music and memories of my Ska/Punk band from the mid-to-late 1990s. I pulled it all together in one place called the Swing Heil Scrapbook on my personal blog.
Apparently, there were some protests in the Gothic Quarter about over-tourism the day we were out exploring that neighborhood, but we didn’t see anything.
Castelldefels
After 10 days, we moved to Castelldefels, a suburban beach neighborhood about 20 minutes Southwest of Barcelona, because Mary had a Spanish immersion camp with Forex. The view was incredible – you could see the water from our front balcony, and the mountains as well as the water from our back balcony. This felt like a vacation after 10 days in the city, but I continued to work remotely. We explored the neighborhood, and I eventually settled on a cafe right by the train station a couple of blocks away. I really have to say that the location and amenities were really nice. We ate down at the beach in the little cabanas quite a bit, and the kids swam in the pool and at the beach.
Dropping Mary off at camp the first day was brutal. She didn’t want to leave us, and she cried a lot. I ended up having to go up to the classroom with her, and we got her to color. Once she broke out the colored pencils and started coloring, she calmed down. I was finally able to shirk my way out of the room. I felt apprehensive, like maybe I was pushing her too hard at six years old. The second day of camp, she immediately saw one of her friends and ran away without saying goodbye. Ah, how the tables had turned – now, I had to resist getting upset 🤣
We explored all of the coastal suburbs of Barcelona: Garraf, Sitges, Vilanova, and Tarragona. We even went to a winery in Vilafranca. We saw the Roman ruins in Tarragona and spent some quiet time on the tiny, cute beach at Garraf. We went to the grocery and ate at a care in Sitges, which we found out was the gay capital of Barcelona. Imagine turning thousands of gay guys loose to transform a medieval Spanish town into the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. It was very special. The waterfront, the cafes, it was all very manicured. I’ve never seen anything like it, anywhere in the world.
