I have been on a blogging haitus and have so many beautiful families, couples, and babies to share! But this is going to be the first thing – It’s been exactly a year since Jonathan and I returned from traveling across Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, and Venice in celebration of our ten year wedding anniversary and I’m finally sharing photos! We traveled for ten days at the end of February 2020 and returned right as Covid-19 was hitting the U.S.
In the airports on the way home everyone’s eyes were glued to the televisions waiting for any bit of new news and watching the infection count tick up. It was definitely a surreal experience. We had so much fun on our trip and couldn’t wait to share about it with friends and family but the reality of the pandemic and the fear that everyone was feeling as the world seemed to shut down made it seem less fun for a season. And so I’ve never shared these photos outside of the few people that have looked through our printed album at home! This will be a different post than normal because it’s so personal and I want to remember some details so I’ll be writing some in between photos.
Part of our dating relationship was spent while Jonathan was studying abroad in Spain and I was living and working in California in 2008. We would talk to each other on AIM (ha!) staying up late at night or waking up super early in the morning just to chat for a while despite the six hour time difference. Ah, young love!
Jonathan has always wanted to take me to see where he lived in Madrid and show me around and we were so excited to plan this trip! We had talked about this romantic getaway basically since we got married but as our ten year anniversary was approaching in September 2019, I doubted whether we’d be able to make it happen. We had four kids at the time (now five!) and little Anna was just 16 months old. It felt impossible to work out the details of leaving them for such a long time! It was so fun to daydream about where we would go and what we would do on an anniversary trip but I truly got cold feet when it was time to actually plan and nail down the details!
After much discussion we finally decided (or Jonathan finally convinced me) we should just go ahead and do it! We had saved for the trip and realized if we didn’t just do it, we might not get another chance. We didn’t know how true that would turn out to be! I believe in really taking time and weighing all the options and cost when it comes to making big decisions but I also believe in spontaneity and fun and taking a chance sometimes! We really do only live once.
Thankfully, Jonathan has this really great hidden talent of being able to plan trips well. He started putting together our itinerary and booking travel tickets, experiences, and places to stay while I started putting together a literal excel spreadsheet of who would be taking care of our kids each day and writing out schedules and instructions for our team of babysitters (yes, I’m that mom).
We decided not to take any luggage since we would be traveling to multiple countries and taking so many forms of transportation. Backpacking would lessen the risk of losing luggage and eliminate the trouble of having to tow it around while we explored if we weren’t able to check into our AirBnB rooms right when we arrived in any given city. Although I felt kind of crazy packing for ten days in just a backpack, it was also super fun and exciting! I never traveled internationally as a college student or did the whole study abroad thing so this was a totally new experience for me!
As we were prepping final details in the couple of weeks before we were planning to leave, our family started passing the flu around. In addition to worrying about my young kids being so sick (and being sick myself) I was so scared that after all the planning and waiting and preparing that we wouldn’t be able to go! We were even in the emergency room with our five year old because of flu complications the night before we left. But, praise God! He improved so quickly with fluids and medicine and woke up the next day at almost 100% better! We felt confident that our prayers were answered and were so thrilled to continue with our plans! We kissed our sweet kiddos goodbye with promises to bring back soccer jerseys from Spain and left Greensboro on February 18th!
Since we were traveling light, I rented a Canon PowerShot G5X for our trip. I wanted to have the ability to shoot manually without taking my whole professional camera setup. I was super happy with it! It was small enough to tuck under my coat or in my fanny pack but did just what I wanted it to! (Yes, I had a fanny pack. No regrets. That thing was awesome.)
With our flight leaving in the afternoon plus the time difference, we arrived in Madrid early the next morning. I will never forget the feeling of walking out of the metro holding Jonathan’s hand on that chilly morning. What an adventure! Our first stop had to be coffee so we made our way across the street to a bakery. Now, it’s good to know that Jonathan minored in Spanish and is still pretty fluent. I know just enough Spanish to get me into trouble but I thought I could handle ordering coffee. I was super proud of myself for ordering and even being able to read the sign and ask for it “para llavar” (to go!).
This was the door to our sweet little Madrid apartment. It was right next to an amazing coffee shop where we had peanut butter toast and oat milk lattes a couple of mornings.
Looking through any of our vacation photos you may quickly realize that we plan our trips based on where we can find good food. This indoor market (Mercado de San Miguel) was full of tapas vendors and everything was SO good!
Our family trips normally consist of juggling kids and bags and it’s hard for me to pull out my camera and document things the way I want to. On this trip we had a few planned things we were going to do but we left lots of time to just explore. I loved having the space to stop as often as I wanted to take photos.
This photo was taken on our last night in Madrid. I didn’t take many photos inside, but we went to a flamenco show at Corral de la Morería, one of the most well known flamenco performances in the area and I was totally blown away by the emotion and passion of the dancers! It honestly kind of surprised me that I enjoyed it so much! The next day we took a long train to Barcelona…
Jonathan is a huge FC Barcelona fan so we booked a behind-the-scenes tour at Camp Nou before the game. It was such a cool experience and the game was so fun!
La Sagrada Família was such a highlight. It’s a classic touristy thing to see but there’s good reason it’s so popular! I don’t know that I’ve ever seen something so beautiful and detailed. It was incredible!
We also visited Park Güell and kind of accidentally went on the longest hike to the top of the mountain! We weren’t intending on going all the way up but it was so beautiful and enjoyable we ended up walking the whole park!
Our last stop in Barcelona was Font Màgica de Montjuïc. Jonathan really wanted me to see it but I was so tired at the end of that day! I’m really glad we stopped there, though. The picture doesn’t even show how absolutely enormous and stunning this building is!
The next morning we stopped at a bakery for our daily croissants and café con leche before getting to the airport for our flight to Paris! We arrived in the evening and quickly grabbed a bite to eat (French onion soup in France!) and found our AirBnB which was this adorable little apartment tucked above a restaurant. We bundled up and took off walking at 8:00. Knowing we only had 20ish hours in Paris, we had booked a nighttime bike tour so that we could see all the important things in the little amount of time that we had. We met in front of the Chaumet where we found our tour guide and the small group of people we were going to ride with. I told Jonathan I felt like a little girl in a storybook looking up into the huge windows of that jewelry store so late at night.
This ended up being probably our favorite part of the trip. The tour was long and SO fun. We rode electric bikes through the streets of Paris at night and it was so full of people and light, even past midnight! We kissed in front of the sparkling Eiffel Tower, we laughed together, and on the way back to our apartment at 1:00am we ordered steak and frites from a restaurant down the street to finish out the night.
We left Paris the next day and took a flight to Venice. We had unintentionally scheduled ourselves to be in Venice during the last two days of Carnaval but it had just been cancelled due to concerns over the virus and neighboring city, Milan, had just gone into lockdown. These two photos are not the best quality but definitely capture the eery feeling of crossing over to the island that foggy night and finding Venice almost completely empty. As we made our way to our apartment we saw only a few handfuls of people milling about.
I do have to admit that even though the lack of people definitely gave the city a weird feel at first, it was super nice to not be fighting crowds of people through the narrow walkways and bridges. Although we love a big bustling downtown, we really enjoyed having the last two days of our trip be more quiet and low-key.
Venice is so beautiful and colorful! It was definitely my favorite place to photograph.
I am so so grateful for every experience we had on this trip. The things that we got to do, the places we stayed, and the food we enjoyed were all so amazing.
The last thing I’ll say is that, if it wasn’t already clear, it was SO WORTH IT. All the planning and time and bumps along the way were so very worth it for us to spend ten days together, just us and no one else. I love my kids so much. Like, I am with them basically 24/7 working and schooling at home and I’m still not tired of them! But it was very good for us to invest in our marriage and do this with each other. The memories we made will be some of my favorites for all time and we’re already daydreaming about a trip for our 20th anniversary… I’ve always wanted to go to Santorini, Greece!
