FALL BREAK

The kids had the week off for Fall Break so we took a trip to Europe. We own a timeshare in Florida so we often swap it out for places closer to where we are living. This time Andorra came available. "Where is Andorra?" right? It's between Spain and France and they speak Spench or Franish more commonly known as Catalan. It's a mix between the two languages in many instances. For example the word for exit in Spanish in Salida, in French its Sorti. So in Catalan it's Sortida. =) So between us we were able to get around just fine. We flew into Barcelona Saturday night and took a city tour Monday morning. It was just enough to see that we definitely want to go back and spend more time there! Here are a few pics from our City tour:

Here is our bus, we sat up top and got a great bird's eye view.

I love these balconies!

Interesting achitecture!

Aren't these street lamps cool?!

This monument honors Christopher Colombus who stands on top.  He returned here to Barcelona and reported to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella upon completion of his voyage to America.

This beautiful green parrot says 'Dare to be different' among all the pigeons at the park. 

We rented a car and drove three hours to Andorra, which is a great place to ski and reminded us of Park City but in European Style! Here are a few pics of our Bungalow and neighborhood..

I love these old churches!

We spent our first day at the Caldea Spa. It's a big, beautiful family spa with pools, steam baths, saunas, hot and cold mineral pools, a lazy river, infra-red lights to warm up under, etc. It also had a water massage that felt like a human car wash. =) Here is a pic of what it looks like inside:

And here is from the outside:

It was a fun way to spend the day since it was cold and rainy.

The next day we checked out a few of the local museums and wandered the city and the shops. We took home a 1000 piece puzzle and put it together. It's one of our vacation traditions. =) Here is the finished product:

Andorra is even on this map!

Thursday was warm and sunny and so we drove 40 min to an awesome park we discovered called Naturlandia. It has the longest alpine slide in the world! The entrance fee was 20 euros, not bad eh? 

These two characters welcomed us in..

This cute bear was part of the animal park.

Here we are riding the sleds:

It really was a fun park with a zip line, ropes course, archery, and Jenna got to drive her own little jeep around a track. Sadly the pictures I took on my phone stayed with my lost phone in Barcelona. 

Friday we did a few hikes--the first one was much shorter than anticipated and the second one was much much much longer than we anticipated. We finally gave up on finding the beautiful tourqoise lake promised in the picture. Here are a few pics..

Some cows along the trail..

Saturday it was time to head back to Barcelona. We thought it'd be fun to go through France this time so we routed through Perpignan. It was wonderful driving through small towns with many old cottages, castles and churches. Here are a few pics..

This is a walled city--a fortress built around a quaint little town

 Cow crossing along the way..

We visited one last castle in Perpignan..

The best thing about family trips is family time and building stronger relationships and fun memories. It makes me really happy when my kids are friends to each other. =)