Visit with Sandrine and family July 3rd to 6th

Time to go back and finish writing about our summer. A few days after Christine and her kids left for Germany, Sandrine and her family arrived. Sandrine and Eric are originally from Marseille in France, but live in Brampton now with their 3 boys. Their oldest boy, Alexandre, was best friends with Nathan, their middle child, Quentin, is the same age as Ciara and they got along very well too and their youngest, Tomas, was best friends with Rylan. We spent a lot of time together when we were living in Brampton. They always spend their summers in Marseille with Sandrine's family, so last summer we spent a few days with them up in Marseille which was really fun.

This summer they decided to do a road trip around Spain, so naturally they planned to spend a few days with us in Barcelona. They arrived on the evening of July 3rd from Granada. The next day, we took them downtown to see all of the typical famous sights of Barcelona. It was really hot and we did a lot of walking. The highlight of the day was swimming in the pool in La Mallola.

The following day was Sunday, so we advised them to go to the Sagrada Familia in the morning and then we would meet up with them in Parc Güell in the afternoon. Sunday was an even hotter day, and everyone was hot, tired and thirsty in Parc Güell. Fortunately we found some public fountains so that we could refill our water bottles.

Melting in Parc Güell

Gaudi's famous dragon

Funny faces at the summit of the park

They had to be back in Marseille on July 6th, but since they would have to drive up Costa Brava to get to France, we took them to a beach near Playa d'Aro, called Cala Belladona. It was a beautiful day and we brought our cool Decathlon Easy Breath snorkels so that they could try them out. Eric is a very resourceful guy. He caught some sea urchins, cut them open and all of us got to eat uni sashimi on the beach!