Barcelona

I don't know about you guys, but we spent some time in Barcelona last week.  It was quite a scene, you should have been there.  I had a conference all week, then Sam and Calvin joined me for a few days of vacation.  The conference was pretty good if insanely scheduled- talks from 9 to 9 is too much. Not to make you too jealous, but we got to tour the local supercomputer.  Number 87 in the world.  Yep.  I also saw a three year old child climb thirty feet of humans stacked on top of each other though, so it all evens out.

I got fully on board with the Spanish eating and sleeping schedule during the week of the conference, but I noticed very few screaming babies out at dinner.  When Sam and Cal arrived we moved into a mode where we had a big lunch and then an early (by Iberian standards) picnic dinner, so that Cal could sleep fairly normally.  I think this worked out pretty well, even though it would have been nice to go out with Sam in the evenings.  Compromises!  That's life.  

We had some rain on Sunday, when a lot of indoor attractions have short hours, and on Monday the museum we really wanted to go to (Picasso) was closed.  This led Sam to note that if you have two and a half days to tour a European city, two of them shouldn't be Sunday and Monday.  Words of wisdom.  We had a good time though, ate some good food and soaked in some sun.  We'll be back, there's plenty to do and lots of seafood.  Below are a couple pictures, the full extravaganza is here.  Not pictured: local prostitutes, astronomers at all levels of seniority staggering out of a terrible disco at 5 am, deeply tanned and fully naked men strolling down the beach, and the Moeckel family madly dashing through a public employee strike/protest trying to find a taxi to get us to the airport.  Our driver was a master of extremely aggressive gridlock maneuvering, and got us there with minutes to spare.