Things of miniature importance

With only six more weeks of this adventure remaining, the MOTH and I have begun to think there are alterative ways of approaching our days... perhaps that should read, after spending close to three months travelling with three small people, the MOTH and I have come to the conclusion there could be better ways of doing things...

It's no huge revelation that small people have ways of telling you things are not working for them. When you are travelling, or visiting amazing tourist attractions, some of their ways of telling you aren't always ideal. Miss K has had a few major meltdowns when crowds and tiredness get the better of her. Master A's meltdowns can be loud and furious when staying in small-spaces with other people. Master T generally seems to spit the dummy when we're driving long distances.


Spain seems to have been a bit of a turning point so far. This may be for a number of reasons (mainly to do with the MOTH and myself).

1. Having lived in Spain for about a year and a half in total, there's a sense of familiarity for me. The supermarket shelves are crammed with good stuff to eat, the language is beautiful and I can understand the signs.
2. The MOTH and I both speak the language with relative ease.
3. I've mentioned food, but loving Spanish food and knowing what stuff to cook and how to cook it makes for happy tummies and happy family.
4. The house we're in is enormous and we feel like we are on holiday (even though I'm still working).
5. It's just us (and not just us in a small hotel room) - while we loved being with other people, we love having some space to just be ourselves too.
6. We have reverted to our NZ time routines (in general) - no 9 pm dinners for us (yet).
7. It's sunny and warm.

This bodes well for reflecting on why some things might not be going so well and what we could do better. We realised a few things:

What do you mean another attraction?

• Miss K pointed out that we do too much 'stuff' in a day. The MOTH and I thought we were doing one thing a day (with down days scheduled in where possible)... but the last six days involved eating out (often at three different locations), different beds, sight seeing of some monument or attraction and a long drive, not to mention different language, different scenery and different food. Lots of stuff. We need to slow down.

• Quite often the small people were taken to see sights that they didn't really know or understand because we (the MOTH and I) had some peculiar sense of urgency that since we were somewhere (London, Paris), we had to see something (Big Ben, the Eifel Tower). We've spent some time talking about this - who says we have to do X just because we are in Y? We can do something completely different and it's ok, because then it's our adventure in Y.

• We needed to help give our small people context for what they were doing and create some familiarity about it. This is why we think Zunda Mochi is significant to our children - they went twice to the Sendai Castle where they experienced this. It was familiar and had meaning. This is not to say we have to do everything twice, but to prepare/think about/ engage and involve our wee people more for activities (like the Dali Museum).

•   This is our family's trip and all members should be involved in discussing and choosing what we do with our time while somewhere.

SO....

Yesterday I provided the children with ideas for different things that we could do in Barcelona (if they were older they could look up things themselves). Some of them were famous sites (Gaudi's Sagrada Familia for example) and some were less known. We read the information online and saw some short clips. We had four days left in Barcelona; I booked the Saturday for a nearby market, the rest were open.

One of the attractions I had stumbled across was Catalunya in Miniature - dozens of attractions of the region in one space in miniature, complete with model trains - the children elected this as their first choice because they could see lots of the stuff in one place and think about maybe going to see some of them for real. I put Tarragona on the table - that got pushed off in favour of Guell Park - maybe on Thursday or Friday, depending on how we feel. Or maybe La Rambla...

And the MOTH and I - we're all ok with that.

So here's our adventure of Catalunya in Miniature in photos - a little pricey (cheaper to buy online), and having a car to get to it is an advantage, but our three enjoyed three hours here... and I have to say, I liked it too!

WOW it's in miniature and there's a train!

We didn't even have to queue to see this!
 

The boys love the train

And it's Zunda Mochi from us in Barcelona!

 Akira's question of the week:  Why didn't Dali make or paint any trains? :-)