S'Agaró and A Spanish Barbeque

I thought I had written this down, but obviously not. Sorry!

S'Agaró is beautiful. It's located on Costa Brava, so it's near France and has a distinct Mediterranean flavor. The house is not on the water, but on a hill. Of course, I managed to sleep the whole drive up, it's about an hour and 15 minutes from Barcelona. Oops. :) The family likes to tease me for my intensive sleeping habits over the last week...I'm blame it on jet lag and all the walking I've been doing. And saying "I'm perfecting the art of the nap". Or siesta as they call it.

 Anyway, the house is on a hill, so you have to open a gate to get up it. The outside has the family's last name, which seems to be pretty common in this area. The house itself is very large, there were four bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, a large living room, dining room, and a large kitchen. The house has a plaque above a door that says 1981, because that is when they finished building the house. The girls have a little house of their own, and a swing set that A built them, marked 2011. There is also an area for barbeque, which is marked 2006. A garage with pool table and ping pong table was at the base of the hill.

A's father came and stayed for a couple of days, and I got to go to the beach for the first time! The water was a bit cold for me, but I went in. I have a nice tan going! I was worried that I would be uncomfortable with topless beaches but the only people who were topless were the kids! So, it wasn't a big deal for me. We also went for a nice walk from S'Agaró to D'Aro, a more upscale village. A compared it to Beverly Hills when we were walking by. It does actually look like a Mediterranean version of Beverly Hills.

Barbecue

 The barbeque was on Sunday and, as I'm told, was in the typical Spanish fashion. I described an American barbeque menu to A and E, they found it...odd. 3 of E's high school friends came over with their husbands(3) and children(6). Here was were I learned that having one or two children was typical of a Spanish house. Most of the children were around the same age as the girls or younger, only two were significantly younger. They had a lot of fun running around the property.  From their circle of friends, I learned that most Spanish couples get married later, and usually will have a maximum of 2 children. One of the men pointed out that it is usually foreigners have more children, which has raised the birth rate.

Anyway, most of the time everyone spoke in Catalan, which again, made it very difficult for me to understand. Ok, I didn't understand anything, though sometimes I was able to get the gist of what was being said. Some of them knew how to speak English, so occasionally I was able to have a conversation. I wasn't upset by the language barrier, but it was difficult not being able to participate in the conversation or understand what was being talked about. I don't like being so silent! But I did try and take advantage of being immersed in a new language, but ended up with a headache. :(

The food was amazing though! A and another husband did the barbequing. We started out with a salad, followed by an assortment of sausage, steak(from Argentina and Girona), lamb chops, and pork skewers. This was accompanied by bread and grilled peppers and artichokes and washed down with white and red wine. For dessert, we ate fruit, ice cream(I did not eat this), and had champagne.

We drove back to Barcelona very late that night after cleaning up the house. I ended up being a big pillow to two very sleepy girls. Not a bad way to end the weekend. :)