The perfect age for making memories.

We did not schedule tickets well in advance of things, which was a rookie mistake, but we had enough time on the trip to work out some of it. 

We failed to get tickets for Park Guell, and after a 40-minute journey to the park, we found ourselves with 2 tired traveled girls, and a long commute back home. At least we got to see some of the city!

Given that experience, we bought tickets for the Sagrada Familia the day before we went and were able to skip the line. If you go, buy the audio tour.  

We will post all of our Sagrada Familia pictures in the photos on this site. It is difficult to adequately represent the reality of an experience navigating such a remarkable work of art. I wasn’t super excited about it because I didn’t really understand what it was - even though I’d heard about it forever and visited Barcelona before it was open to the public - but I cannot overstate how impressed we all were. 

However, we soon forgot about that best practice, and after being denied entry to the Picasso Museum because they filled up, we went home and bought tickets online for the following day. 

And related to the Picasso Museum experience I’ll describe later, we read an article this week about what the right age is to travel with kids, and it really resonated. Because each of the kids has struggled in different ways during the trip.

The 5-year-old is doing pretty well - we just need to keep her fed, diverted, and distracted, and find space for her to decompress by losing herself in screens a few times a week, finding comfort in the familiar. However, she wants to buy All The Things, so redirecting her from these consumer pursuits - which can feel like entitlement and ungratefulness - has been an act of moderating the expectations we have of a 5-year-old being constantly barraged with brightly-colored mementos designed to lure the eye. Each kid gets to buy something small and portable in a city, and she doesn’t have a concept of money quite yet, so she is Always Shopping. 

T is thriving, embracing new experiences and new foods, and expressing some but limited frustration with the younger siblings and their stubbornness. 

But Z is struggling. In Barcelona one day, we left him in the apartment by himself to take the girls to lunch at a place that ended up being fantastic, on a gorgeous day - and at 11 we are comfortable with that - with a phone, his internet, and food - including croissants, cheese, fruits, hummus, veggies, chips, cereal, and yogurt. And that idea - that Z at 11 and T at 12 are not only old enough to stay by themselves but also to stay at home with 5-year-old I is liberating. 

Also, tweens need lots of sleep, so staying up late talking with friends, and then getting up early to do stuff, means you have grumpy people to entertain, so sometimes, I’d get up early, invite the kids to walk to a local bakery - but then just I and I would visit by ourselves. And that’s okay - I’ve had one-on-one time with each kid on this trip, and it’s been really delightful.

Breakfast with the little one rainy early morning.

I look forward to more of that. I originally thought I’d want to spend all the time with J, but as the trip has progressed, I see that for both of us, fewer kids can be actually a really brilliant way to connect more with each of them, and met their specific needs with less resistance. Also, T really craves those unique experiences so it is fairer to her to branch off alone with a parent to do interesting things the littles wouldn’t like. We’re planning to make some time for those adventures.

J hung out with I at Tibidabo, where we took a funicular up to the top of a hill? Mountain? A really tall point where you can see all of Barcelona. 

The kids loved the view - it was incredibly windy and chilly - and the bigs were totally and completely uninterested in buying tickets to what is essentially an amusement park for little kids. So we split up - J went with I on the rides and I got churros and chocolate with the bigs.

We climbed to the top of a church, where we braced the wind and got some great photos.

We then headed home via the Rambla, where we carefully watched our valuables and ate some enjoyed gelato and cafe au lait while we watched street performers and were awed by all the languages we heard. 

People ask about the perfect age to travel with kids. I think that when they are old enough to leave them at home for a bit - giving you to power to introduce them to certain things that they’ll enjoy that are memorable and validate the trip for you, but then also leave them at home or split them up when they are tired or when they’re going to hate something that you really want to see. Also - a good age is before they turn 13, as many places have that as a cutoff for ticket prices, kid meals, and such. 

So 11-12 y/o is kind of a sweet spot. Prepare them in advance for getting used to staying at home, make sure they know how to contact you. And then go and have some fun. They’ll be fine - give them screens, leave them food and beverages - perhaps something a little fun - and they probably won’t miss you much. And especially at night, which can be the only time they’re actually able to connect with their friends back in the states, leaving them with screens and the ability to socialize, while you go out and enjoy the town, can be the best possible solution to keep all of you happy and sane. 

The last day we were there, it was rainy and 60, but as the Swedish say, there is no bad weather - only bad clothing. We are prepared for a rainy Spring European weather with really good rain jackets and hoods, and they came in handy. J and I split up and we took the girls to breakfast while Z slept in.

J took the girls to an Aquarium; Z had been definitive in his distaste for the concept of the Aquarium, stating its inherent boring-ness. 

So instead of trying to force his interest in fish that don’t interest him, I brought him with me to my company’s Barcelona office where he played with Google Glass and got to see the server room, holograms, and robots. 

After he and I grabbed some cafe au lait and a croissant (he does not like fluffy milk BTW but does like cafe au lait), we met back up at the Picasso museum, which I’d fondly remembered from my visit two decades prior, and both littles quickly complained and balked at the boringness of the visit. Like, significant whining et al. I left frustrated and huffy, irritated with their inability to just bear something they didn’t love. I left early, gave J and T - who really enjoyed the museum - 10 or 15 more minutes, went by a store I’d seen the previous day which I was planning to patronize, and then after I was whining that she, too, wanted to buy something, I gave up and stomped back to the Museum to collect T and J. 

Amazing artworks I didn’t see as I rapidly ushered whiny small people out of the Museum. 

It was then that I realized that we have two parents, and we can split up like we’d done that morning. We can’t let one kiddo ruin the whole trip for the rest of the fam. And so J took the two littles back home and I took T out for some authentic comida. Food has been an issue. Fried potatoes and bread are everywhere. Burgers are everywhere. You can even find yogurt. But nothing tastes American and that has been a problem for our littles. Z hates the burgers in Europe. I hates french fries. It’s super difficult to find peanut butter. We are dealing with this by finding staples in each place - in Barcelona it was croissants, cereal with milk, and fruit - and trying to make sure we keep those on hand for the kids when they complain. Pre-party with food in advance, plan to post-party with food if they eat light, and just roll with it.  

We visited la Boqueria market in La Rambla at one point as a family and tried tons of foods - some of which we finished, some we did not. There were juices and chocolate-covered strawberries, fresh potato chips, fruit, paella, slices of steak, and other delicacies. Finally Z found something he liked, a fried potato and pork patty that was divine. Spain does fried food quite well. But getting the kids to be happy with foods has definitely been trial and error. We have decided that getting kids to try ethnical cuisine at night when they are tired is a bad idea. Only for breakfast or lunch. And ice cream, cakes, pastries, baked goods EVERYWHERE. It’s okay. They’ll survive.

Back to the more adventurous lunch I shared with T, it was 2:30 when we left the Picasso Museum - which is PRIME TIME for Spanish comida, the afternoon meal, in a very, very busy area of the city - so grabbing a table inside a restaurant was tough. But we luckily found two stools and a tiny table at a buffet where they have little hors d'oeuvres you can choose and you pay by the piece. I had a beer, she had a coke, and we tried foods from fried seafood to herbed cheese, anchovies to two types of Tortilla Espanola, all on tiny pieces of a familiar crusty bread which I’d forgotten had the capacity to tear up the roof of my mouth. #worthit 

My search for Tortilla Espanola was real. I remembered it fondly from when I lived in Madrid, and I was asking for it pretty often and not finding it. Seems that it’s considered a snack and is more like bar food than a meal, so I found it at a couple of quick-service-like bars, one of which was outside of the Sagrada Familia, where I enjoyed a bit of tortilla and a cup of coffee before meeting up with the family. 

Gorgeous outdoor cafes, everywhere. Moderately tasty cup of coffee - and I paid the “on the same block as a tourist destination” tax, both in price and food quality. 

Since the revelation that splitting up is possible if not beneficial, J and I have also enjoyed two fantastic dates. In Barcelona, we were able to find a restaurant that received a Michelin star in 2018, and we ordered both the pre-fixe menu and a beer pairing, as they are experts in beer. I had never before experienced a beer pairing with a meal and had never considered one for a meal of this caliber. 

Oh. My. Word. 

There were five amazing courses, all with local ingredients. Absolutely incredible. And completely unique - inaccessible anywhere else in the world - which is what we were so desperately seeking. Absolutely phenomenal pairing - AND beer. All five beers were local, and four of the five were gluten-free beers that were vastly superior to any GF option we could get in the US.

The kids would have HATED it. There were things like artichokes and prawn sauce, and it was exorbitant expensive but wonderful. We never could have done it with them…so we left them at home and did it without them. And we all enjoyed it more that way. J and I have traveled the world some already, and this met one of those needs we have for nice, unique, and distinctive experiences that would otherwise be considered “boring” or “gross” by the younger set. 

We left for Italy a day later and will have updates from our visit to Sorrento during Easter week, home of a famous Procession that began in 1300 A.D. and continues today. 

More to come.