there's no place like gnome.

We spent Fourth of July weekend at the best campground – Hillside Springs. There is no website and, sorry, you can’t make a reservation.

It’s my brother’s farm, in the town where we grew up. He installed camper hookups behind one of the barns, complete with lights, a fire pit, and river views. The cattle are our neighbors while camping.

Bonus: My sister-in-law runs a little bakery stand out of one of the out buildings. Cinnamon rolls for breakfast? Sure. Cheesecake to take home with us? Yes.

The cost: Dave mowed a pasture (which was more fun than actual work) and I pruned tomatoes in the garden. (Also fun.)

Following the camping trip, we welcomed a week of visitors. My sister and my brother-in-law stopped at our house on their way home to Indianapolis from their own camping trip adventure in the UP. My mom came over too and we had a nice dinner looking out over the marina.

They left and then dear friends from seminary came with their three girls! Joel and Melissa and I became besties our senior year of sem. Our other friend (Pastor) Paige and I took the train out to Montana, oh, three times or so, where they lived at the time, to visit and attending a continuing education event in Glacier NP.

Their three girls are no longer toddlers (!) and they requested some time in the kitchen – they wanted to make cake pops and French macarons with ‘Auntie’ Lindsay. Done. We packed a lot of other things into essentially a day and a half – a stop at the lighthouse, a beer garden, the Sprecher Brewery Taproom, Culver’s, and Aldi. (Aldi? They’d heard of this mystical store but don’t have them out west!) We had fun catching up like it hadn’t been nine years.

Flower garden update: Snapdragons snapping. Yarrow yarrowing. Globe amaranth globing. Dahlias: still to come. They don’t normally bloom until August. Anticipating their arrival!

We’ve been home now for almost two weeks and the trip feels like it was a dream. Like, was that even real? We’ve gone back to work, back to routines. I write this while camping at my brother and sister-in-law’s farm. (It’s quite the sweet – and free – campsite. It’s raining so we’re hanging out in the camper. Dave plays video games; I blog. Dogs sleep.)

At the tail end of the trip, we had one more day and night in Barcelona. We get kicked off the ship pretty early so they can clean and welcome the new batch of cruisers by lunch time. We taxied to our hotel to ditch our luggage and then set out into the city. But it was Sunday. And a lot of things did not open until noon on Sunday.

We found a cafe (specializing in focaccia bread – how fun) and across the street a different cafe that serves basque cheesecake. (This was Dave’s goal for our last day – to find basque cheesecake. Check. By 9:30am.) After that, we twiddled our thumbs. Now what?

We were tired. It was getting hot. Our hotel room wouldn’t be ready for quite a few hours still. Enter the hop on, hop off bus tour.

And it was here I learned something about Dave – apparently he loves hop on hop off bus tours? He was giddy with excitement as we rode the double decker around the city. There was an audio guide that explained the sites and it afforded us the chance to see SO much more of the city.

We got off at the beach which was so busy (again – Sunday) we couldn’t even reach the water. We ate a crusty ham sandwich (which we will try to recreate at home sometime because they’re so good), found a late lunch place off the beaten path and rode back to the stop closest our hotel.

We checked into our hotel, cleaned up and went to meet up with Dave’s brother, Matt and family for one last drink. They had one more day in Barcelona too and had spent it at the aquarium. They had an early flight and so were staying near the airport. After saying our goodbyes, we headed back into the city, found a spot for paella, and called it a night at our creepy Shining-esque hotel.

On Monday, we had a little time to take one last stroll through the city before boarding the bus to the airport. We strolled … and found an Aldi! (This had been one of my trip goals, as I remember going to the Aldi in Dublin and loving it.) We bought some coffee and chocolate, and had we been staying longer, would definitely have bought some bread and other fun things. The coffee we bought is in capsule form for our original Nespresso machine. The Aldis in the states don’t sell their own brand of capsules but it’s what Europeans use for their espresso at home; we thought this was pretty cool.

And that’s it, folks. We went to the airport, ate just one more ham sandwich, and had a direct flight home. Since then, we talk about how Barcelona was our favorite and we’d love to return; maybe a tour of Spain? We joke and say we’ll go back when La Sagrada Família is complete … so probably never. (They’ve been saying it will be complete in ten years for the last fifty.)