After 3 days of walking up and down five flights of stairs it was time to move on to new accommodation.

We found a cheaper 'hostal,' on only the third floor, above a small shopping mall. The lady of the house always greeted us in a high-pitch shrill voice, "Hola, Moma, hola!". Below us, in the mall, there were many stores for babies, and every time we went in and out, Omo would see the toy stores and start to jump up and down with joy, and force us to stop and look through the windows. But it is the whole display window, or toy store she likes, since she gets tired of individual toys after a few minutes.

Over the next week we did a very slow and thorough tour of Barcelona. It was such a wonderful city full of pedestrian-only areas.
The metro system was spectacular, so clean and quiet, stations everywhere, very clear smart signs telling you when to get off, a live timer that tells you when the next train is, butt-seats to lean on while standing and we never had to wait for more than 4 minutes.

First on our walking tour we did the Modernism Route and saw all of Gaudi's buildings. They gave us great inspiration for our future plans. And of course, each day, we had to set aside a couple hours that had to be spent in a grassy park in order for Omo to get her crawling and cigarette-butt-eating time.



Of course one of our favorite joys of traveling is checking out the restaurant options. Because we had no kitchen we ate out everyday and it turned out actually cheaper to eat organically out than buy organic produce. Our favorite restaurant was BioCenter, an organic vegetarian restaurant where we could get an entree and all-you-can-eat salad bar for less than $5. And on top of that, they had a baby chair that fit right onto our table! Our strategy was to eat there at 4pm and then we would be full until bedtime. Our other favorite was Juicy Jones. Though it was not organic, it was all vegan and very inventive and tasty. We were definitely one of their frequent customers.

We also found a few good natural food stores where we could load up on produce and a few goodies. There was a huge market where we could get cheap avocados, mangoes, and bananas.

One day we visited a modern art museum. The exhibit was very 'modern' (ie. I never 'get it') made almost entirely from recycled materials and slide projectors with lesbian/feminist messages. Omo practiced her stair climbing and avant-garde listening skills.

We also went to a museum of musical instruments. Each floor had a different family of instruments, some very old and unique. We really wanted to try out all the different shaped keyboard instruments, but this was one of those look-don't-touch museums, so had a go when the warden wasn't looking...
We found a playground inside the big city park designed for young children, though we may have enjoyed it more than omo as we pushed her super-fast on the 4 wheeler entertaining all the mothers with scared look on their faces.

We pulled into port and went straight off to hunt for a room. It was Saturday, and we had some difficulty finding a vacant hotel. Finally we just went to a no-name pension that was closest to us, on the fifth floor (no elevator), and got a decent room with recycled newspaper in our trash basket, pictured below.

This is a good idea for guesthouse owners that would eliminate the need for bags for trash baskets and while shopping. We relaxed for the rest of the night.

Today we were out on the town. We went up Mont Juic by funicular and cable car took in the view of Barcelona and the sea below and soaked up the sun we had missed for so long. Momo got a chance to play with her Dad's spring-smelling sandals.

We ended our Italian travels in Cinque Terre, a string of 5 villages along the beautiful rocky northern coast. Though usually packed with tourists, it was still off-season so it was nice and quiet.


While in Sienna there were still resident's cars that were making noise and polluting the air, here, 4 of the villages (the nicest, too) were completely without automobiles, only connected by a train and foot trails and there you could sense the overwhelming quality of life not too long ago.

It was clean and silent, just hearing the train every once in a while. We were impressed with the amazing vineyards and gardens along the steep mountainside terraces, the way the houses blend with each other, and how we were still able to see an old lady sorting potatoes next door to a touristy hotel.


The visit was enhanced with vegan foccacia, and a good off-season deal for a room with a view. It rained the last day, so we only did the walk between the last 2 villages (the hardest according to the book), but it was a great experience, seeing the gardens from close, getting lost for a while, and observing some really great property, too bad the owners weren't wwoof hosts...


Out of the 5 villages, we chose the only one who had a hostel, Manarola and while we were waiting for it to open Omo entertained 3 local ladies.

Andrea, a German women who over the past 5 years had been visiting Rosa and Valerio, and had recently decided to move in with them, invited us to come with her to visit the commune she had been living on for 2 years - Avalon - for a few days.

We rode there in her van, which has plenty of items hanging everywhere, pots, clothes, musical instruments, she has everything in there, and Omo was mesmerized by all of them on the way.

Avalon is part of a network of 6 eco-communes with over 200 members all in the same area. All the other communes are accessible only by walking for a few hours (or a day). Their goal is to be completely self-sufficient, with some of the communes using solar panels.

At Avalon there were 6 members and about 15 'guests' living in a two story house on a mountain with a beautiful view. The hillside below they was all terraced and so they had a different garden on each terrace, each with a different vegetable. They also had many olive trees and so they produced oil for all the other communes. To make money the members of all the communes travel the festival circuit in the summers and sell pizza.

You learn to appreciate things while being there - there is no gas for cooking or heating, if you want to take a warm shower, you need to chop wood and feed the boiler, same goes for laundry; there was no electricity; and the W.C. is a shovel and a bottle of water outside.

We slept in a loft in the room of the oldest member, the founder, on the second floor of the house.There was also another baby there, 5-month-old Nina, and she and Omo enjoyed each other's company.

The commune was a bit too 'shantipi' (grungy, stoned on couch, 'back from India') for us, but Andrea said the other communes are more serious, with mainly hard working families, but they were farther up in the mountains and we decided it was too far to go.

When we got back to Rosa's and Valerio's the ground was covered in snow (first such snow in 10 years), so we had a few days where it was just too cold to do any work besides chopping wood.

Today is our last day with Valerio and Rosa and tomorrow we are heading North to Cinque Terre.