Our trip to Spain! Days 1 & 2

Brian had a business meeting in Spain.  Ian and I were lucky enough to be able to join him.  We were all pretty excited to go.  The girls were very excited to have Grandma Kimber come and stay with them while we were gone.

We left on Father's Day, June 19th.  I was a little nervous about Ian on the long international flight.  But he did great!  Here are some photos of us on the plane:

These were just as we were getting ready to leave Houston.  So of course he was still happy and smiling.

When we got to the airport that morning, we were told that our flight was delayed by one hour.  Since we only had about an hour and a half to make our connection in New York, we were obviously concerned about whether or not we would make the Barcelona flight.  The Delta employee checking us in looked at a bunch of different options for us, but there was nothing better that would get is there in time for Brian's meeting.  So we figured we had to take the flight we planned on and hope it all worked out.

Turns out even though our flight left Houston an hour late, we still arrived in New York at the regularly scheduled arrival time.  What was scheduled as a four hour flight, turned out to be only three hours.  According to the flight attendants, the time we left (12:30) was the normal time for that flight.  They said that there is never a 11:30 flight from Houston to New York.  So all the stress was for nothing.   We made our connection just fine and were soon on our way to Barcelona.  This was an eight hour flight.  We arrived in Barcelona, Monday morning, June 20th  Here is a photo of Ian at the Barcelona Airport.  He is still happy!

He didn't sleep very much on the plane, just a few little naps.  He was pretty happy though most of the time.  We had a short flight to Pamplona, then checked into our hotel.

Here is Pamplona Spain as seen from our hotel window:

It was a little bigger than I was expecting.  We were excited to go out and explore - even though we were exhausted from traveling all night.  (We didn't sleep much, if at all, on the plane.)  So we all got cleaned up and changed clothes.  Ian had a little play time:

Then we were off!  It was mid afternoon and we were very hungry.  We stopped at the hotel lobby to see if we could get some recommendations for something to eat.  We learned that lunchtime in Spain ends about 2pm or so and dinner doesn't start until about 8pm and restaurants are generally closed during the afternoon.  Needless to say we had a hard time finding someplace open where we could find something to eat.  We ended up having "leftover" sandwiches at a bar.  Mine was ham and cheese - kind of crusty/soggy depending on what side of the sandwich you were eating.  I'm not sure what Brian's was.  Some kind of seafood salad we think.  Brian tried out his rusty Spanish to help us order.  He asked for two waters and we ended up with two cokes.  Kind of funny!

After we ate we went exploring.  We found the Plaza del Castillo - the main square in Pamplona.

This gazebo is in the center of the square:

We walked down lots of narrow streets.  Most of the streets had shops and stores on the ground level with apartments above:

This was the Plaza de San Francisco.  There was a school and playground here.  It looked fun!

Another street:

Here is City Hall:

After walking around for a bit, we were ready to have dinner and then go to bed.  We were exhausted.  It wasn't quite 8pm yet, so again we had a hard time finding food.  We finally found a place at the main square and had chicken and french fries.  Not too bad.  We called it a night and went to bed.  Brian had meetings the next day and Ian and I planned to do more exploring in Pamplona.

P.S.  Thanks Brenna for the tip on changing the settings. Much better this way!