With our T-usual cards running out this week, we had to get in our final tourist activities requiring public transportation. This was anchored by a trip to Basilica of the Sagrada Familia (day 347).

Also through the week was an unfortunate amount of prep for our return to CO. This includes searching for car options, and carpet/flooring options.

On days 350 and 351, JC and I enjoy some adults only fun on the beach, drinking and people watching.

Travel Log: Day 346 (6/8), Spain

In the middle of the night I had a major coughing fit and had to get out of bed and go to the couch. I was up for about 90 minutes, and then fell back asleep and didn’t get up until around 10:30am.

After getting up and around, I went to the gym and realized I forgot my towel. I went up to the area next to the pool and had the place basically to myself. I did some extra heavy lunges so I wouldn’t have to do leg press in the main area and potentially get busted without my towel.

We all went to the beach for a few hours and it was pretty nice. The people watching was interesting, because there was a rare Asian (likely Japanese) couple at the beach near us. They were the most conservatively dressed people there, and were in the water most of the time. I was wondering what they thought of the nudity culture. A super hot chick parked right in front of us, brazenly busted off her top and went swimming right by the Asian couple. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was mind blowing to them, or not a big deal.

JC and I went to the grocery store, I did Spanish work, and then filled my time looking for cars.

Travel Log: Day 347 (6/9), Spain

We went to Sagrada Familia today. The architecture of that church is unreal and is almost hard to fathom how they built it, with the tree like columns and the high towers.

Despite that I was a little underwhelmed by it, which is becoming true of most tourist attractions. The free church we went to by our Airbnb was also so impressive that my mind couldn’t fully absorb it, and I could have settled for just going to it.

I went to the gym after 4pm and it was the first time I’ve gone that late. There were fewer people, and it was a much more pedestrian crowd. All the hot women, gone, and in their place just a regular crowd I would see in CO. Not sure why late morning is the glamor time-block here.

JC and I both woke up with headaches, which for me is very unusual. I just rarely get headaches at all. At some point she busts out of the bedroom saying “I wonder if we’re drinking decaf coffee”. Sure enough, we were, so we both switched to fully caffeinated immediately.

We had some back and forth over email with our property manager. She is having trouble getting the sprinkler guy’s time, so we told her we don’t mind paying a bit of a premium to get another company out there. It’s been pretty hot and we don’t want to return to a scorched lawn.

Travel Log: Day 348 (6/10), Spain

Most of my day was spent thinking about the pony wall removal at our house, and talking through the electrical scenarios with Claude. I have the possibilities pretty well sorted out in my head now. After reading through the permit and homeowner agreement, I sent a couple more questions to the building department. I mainly wanted to verify that if I encounter something unexpected I could still hire an electrical contractor, and the short answer was yes.

I took a nap in the afternoon, probably longer than I should have. We’ll see how I sleep tonight.

JC and I went for a long walk after dinner.

Travel Log: Day 349 (6/11), Spain

I got to the gym a little late today, and it was really busy. I went up to the room by the pool to stretch, and then did deadlift and calf raise. After that I checked on the main area where I needed to do leg press. I had to wait a good 10-15 minutes for one of those to open up. Came back to the Airbnb and did my HIIT/core rounds.

I took another long nap today, and just feel a little off, sort of like yesterday. I still have a cough too that I’m trying to shake.

In the afternoon an architect came by at a pre-scheduled time to check some things with the building. It was a mixed bag of wins and fails with Spanish.

I understood him saying he was the architect, and I told him pasa, pasa (a local common way of saying come in). He then said a couple sentences and I gathered enough that he was saying he needed to check each floor, and I said “yes” and gave him a thumbs up. I was worried the clothes drying rack was in his way so I asked him “esta bien aqui” (is this ok), and he said “si”. He then said a sentence that I gathered was that he needed to go upstairs for a moment, and I thumbs upped. When he said he was done I thumbs upped yet again and thought about saying “buen dia”, but wasn’t sure that would really come across as having a good day vs a Paul Harvey good day.

Later in the evening I showed AC and BC a couple gems of the 90’s and early oughts. One was a Ronco infomercial where he’s selling a dehydrator and pauses mid pitch to bust out spray paint for his head to cover his bald spot. The next was a mashup of ShamWow and the other Vince-pushed products.

More time was devoted to cars and flooring, and I’m getting tired of thinking about this stuff.

Travel Log: Day 350 (6/12), Spain

JC and I went on our usual beach walk.

The gym was very busy again, and one guy alone was using up 14 plates on his leg press, making for a drought of plates. I had to split my time between the main floor and the room by the pool to get everything done.

Through the day I became increasingly irritated thinking about the sprinkler situation at our house, and the fact that they haven’t been running right or much at all during the six weeks since they were turned on. The guy our PM is using installed a new timer/controller, but didn’t do the solenoid, so they still aren’t running. I started remembering she had said the controller had already been replaced and went searching for that communication. Sure enough, on 5/30 there was a note saying the controller was replaced and a solenoid fix was needed. It’s hard to trust anything that’s going on with that, and I’m just hoping they don’t fry the lawn or cause other damage before I can get it back under my control.

In the afternoon JC and I went to the beach to have drinks on the sand which we bought from a supermarket by the beach. It was a lot of fun, with lots of people drama to watch. There was a single guy asking to sit by two girls, them not saying no, and then getting weirded out and leaving to move about 30 yards away. There was an incredibly high guy in front of us moving at a sloth pace. All kinds of entertainment.

For movie night it was my pick and I chose some alien horror movie available on Hulu.

Travel Log: Day 351 (6/13), Spain

Terrible sleep last night after drinking, but I rallied to go run and it went really well.

More sprinkler drama today. It started as good news, that the sprinkler company replaced the timer and fixed the pipe that was leaking. He also commented though that the grass looked dry. Our PM said she asked him to aerate and fertilize which sounded alarms in my mind about the danger of fertilizing a dry lawn. We texted her and asked to hold off on that, and luckily they hadn’t done it yet. I’m a little worried about a freshly repaired sprinkler system running unattended by anyone with the tenants having moved out.

JC and I repeated our beach date night. We took mixed drinks with us this time because even the supermarket drinks were priced pretty high. It was enjoyable the second time as well with more good people watching. I’m going to really miss this incredible free fun on tap around here once we’re back in CO.

JC and I stopped and had dinner on the way back home at the place where I keep telling the guy “maybe next time”. We had nachos, sweet potato fries, and tacos, all of which was very good.

Travel Log: Day 352 (6/14), Spain

I slept badly last night, but I at least slept in until 10:30.

The thought of looking at cars or flooring made me wish I were dead, so instead I made another round of changes to yesalittle. It’s all set to change all of the UI text to the language chosen for “I speak”. It’s a pretty involved enhancement and only took a couple hours to get in place, thanks to my chief design consultant (Claude Chat) and the best software engineer in the world (Claude Code).

JC and I went to the grocery store. I went for a walk by myself. Later in the evening we all went for a walk to the beach.