You might be asking yourselves, "why was there no blog post yesterday?!" the answer is that my bag was stolen with my iPhone, Gabriel's iPhone, my wallet with my credit card and money (only 20 euros or so, luckily), both of our sets of keys for the apartment, my kindle, all of my hairties and favorite handcreams, and my new blue cardigan. Of course, we are varying degrees of unhappy about the various things that were stolen.

It too us about three minutes (at the beach) before we realized the bag was stolen, but by that time it was too late and the bag was nowhere to be seen. Between 2:30 and 4:30 am, we looked through every single trashcan and dumpster on the beach and in the 3-5 blocks closest to the beach thinking that the thief might well have taken the wallet out and dumped the bag.

Well, we gave up at around 4:30 and walked the 45 minutes to the police station. Once there, they let us use their phone to cancel my card and try to call a locksmith to get us into the apartment. Well, the 24 hour locksmith was not working at 5:30 am apparently so we decided to go knock loudly, wake up our neighbors and have them let us in to the foyer and hopefully call our landlord.

We creepily climbed to the second floor of our apartment to knock on their door and they looked very confused as they let us in. We spoke no Russian and they speak limited English, so we mimed a very bad man stealing our keys and they seemed to understand. They then offered to call our landlord to get us through the last door to our apartment and when she finally came, about 20 minutes later, we were so happy to see her, we probably could have married her.

So at about 6am, we were all in our apartment safe and sound and very unhappy.

Right now, Gabriel and Alonso are getting copies of keys made for us and we're about to go file a police report. Tonight, to calm our aching hearts we're going to have Indian food, which some of you may know I've been asking for every day since Glasgow.

xoxoxo
Miriam

Comida!

We stopped at a tent for some Popsicles and smelled the FANTASTIC food of the Brazilian cuisine tent. We made a mental note to return, and procceeded on our 8 mile walk along the barcelona coast. We passed several night clubs, a nudist beach, and muscle beach (an area we christened as such after observing a large contingent of buff spanish men doing pull up and crunches on a beach playground). At 9:00 we made it back to our favorite Afro-caña festival and bought 20$ worth of rice, beens, and grilled pineapple. 

The Afro-Cana food and music festival!

The swing dance on the beach!

Today we went to the chocolate museum, where our tickets were actual bars of chocolate!! 

They had the history of chocolate as well as various things made of chocolate, here are some of our favorites!

Hi!

Barcelona's shipyard

Found a huge gun on Montjuïc.

5:37 pm. Sounds like lunch time!

We went to the beach again today after stopping at H&M to get Alonso some European length swim shorts. It was super hot and we're all looking pretty tanned :) we are making dinner in our apartment for the second time tonight, and all is well so far :)

Xo

Beach photos from the last two days :)

Watching the World Cup final :)

In a square in Barcelona, enjoying the sun 

Selfies, of course. 😊

(In retrospect not so)Quick Update

It's 2 am and I'm still emotionally exhausted from watching the final, but it's my turn so Ill give a quick update. The trend in Spain is for late breakfasts and late dinners, so we adjusted our sleep schedule accordingly. We woke at around noon and set out around 1. Since we now have a kitchen storage space we stocked up on food to live on for the next few days, delighting in how cheap everything was compared to in Switzerland. Among other things we got delicious plums and an odd sweet rice Spanish cereal. After 'breakfast' we set off for the beach, stopping briefly at a flea market on the way. The beach was packed but wonderful, and for the next few hours we all fulfilled Miriam's pre vacation goal of 'getting our tan on'. We left at around six only because there was apparently some soccer game that night. We watched the game in a pricy yet mediocre restaurant, with a waiter who hated us even before an awkward misunderstanding(you'll have to ask us later). We came back to our apartment for overtime, and it was there we saw Germany's decisive goal- impressive, and the best team won, but my heart broke for Lionel Messi. I am experiencing World Cup withdrawal already, but hopefully our location will dull my sense of loss. Barcelona, we all agree, may be our favorite city in Europe, and we plan a week full of beach relaxation. Also for tomorrow- haircuts.

Here are some photos from the train from Geneva to Barcelona today!

We went a little stir crazy

And enjoyed the sunset

xoxo

I Like Train

We left Versoix at noon to catch the 12:08 train to Geneva. On the way we saw some truly impressive little kids doing tricks on scooters. We got the Geneva train station with two hours to spare. After a quick and very expensive stop in a mediocre café for free wifi we made our way to our platform at the far end of the station. We came to a set of sliding doors and entered a unsettlingly quiet waiting room. Unsure as to how to proceed we slowly backed our way out and bought breakfast a grocery store. Emboldened by our purchases or bread, bread, and bread stuffed with chocolate we went straight through the waiting room and past a series of sign and antiquated machinery presumably left over from the pre-open boarders period. We at on the platform and boarded our train a short while later. The first train ride was uneventful and to be perfectly honest the first part of the second leg of our journey was too. My highlight was finishing the book i had started the night before and deciding it was... Ehhhh, ok. At around 9 pm the train broke through onto an amazing scene. The Mediterranean to our left and a large body of water to our right, gave us spectacular views of the well timed sunset. We pulled into barcelona at around 10:30 and were settled into our apartment by 11:45. We caught the very end of the 3rd place match. At midnight we went out to dinner and 50 feet from our door found a delightful restaurant for our first spanish meal: pizza. Just kidding... Empanadas con carne picante AND pizza.

Alonso contemplates the sunset from the train

Today was a huge day! We left our apartment in Versoix at about 1:15 or so and decided to walk from Versoix to Nyon, a distance of about 11km!

The body of water is Lake Geneva which was beautiful and clean and not at all crowded because it's been pretty miserable weather for the last week. We stopped along the way a few times, but mostly trudged along as only a true child of Lara Putnam can do.

We got lunch at a convenience store in Bellevue of bread, chocolate, and drinkable yogurt and arrived at Geneva at around 3, with some stops in parks to take lots of photos and rest our legs. Luckily enough we all wore comfortable walking shoes or we would not have made it.

Once we got to Geneva, we did some more wandering around aimlessly, looked at the (super super super expensive) restaurants and shops, and decided to have a picnic by the water for dinner as well. (All that walking had made us hungry!!) Our dinner was knockoff Orangina, delicious bread, lunchmeat, avocado and peaches. We (by that I mean I) also bought nutella and enjoyed it immensely :)

It looked like it was going to rain so we took the tram to the Gare (train station) and then the commuter rail to our apartment.

We are all looking forward to having our own apartment in Barcelona where we will arrive tomorrow!!
xo

Exhausted from the 5:45 to 12:00 schedule of the previous day and the (admittedly small) time difference, we woke up late. As usual, I was the last to wake. We are living in the cozy guestroom's of the apartment of an elderly couple, Gregor and Morelli Schmidt. The Schmid's have been great, allowing us to watch the snoozer semifinal of the World Cup on their huge tv and offering us breakfast and tea. After joining them for breakfast at 12, us eating mango jam with toast and them eating chicken, we left at about 1. The train to Nyon was quick. We are staying with the Schmidts in Versoix, a small town on lake Geneva between Geneva and Nyon. Today we went to Nyon, where Gabriel had stayed last summer with a host family as part of the experiment in international living. Nyon, also on lake Geneva, was much more scenic than Versoix. Gabriel toured us around the medieval quarter and down to the "beach". From the concrete above the lake we could see Geneva and France, seemingly just an Olympic javelin throw away across the lake. In the lake were expensive sail boats and a group of swans. After spending time along the shore we got cold(the weather has been like Massachussets in late February) and we went up the steep hill to the local h&m, we're unsurprisingly all three of us bought warm garments. Gabriel's host mother from the previous year had invited us over for dinner at her apartment. Gabriel, Miriam, and her chatted in French over a fantastic meal of raclette and spicy meats. I understood little of their conversation, mustering the occasional "merci". After the meal it was getting late so we returned to Versoix, where we took a final stroll along the shore before returning to the Schmid's apartment.

Geneva Day 1

While Alonso's going to do the bigger post about today, I thought I would post a few photos since I have them on my phone :) 

Here, Alonso and I are above medieval Nyon, near the castle. While it was quite beautiful, it was very very cold!

Gabriel with his host mother from last summer :) 

Love,

Miriam