I talked about getting a Moleskine City Notebook to use on my trip before leaving, so I thought I would talk about my impression of using the little notebook on an actual trip.

The first thing is I loved the fact that the City has not one, but three ribbons for placemarking. This  is actually something I would love on any notebook, because I often want to keep my current place in the notepad, but also pages I recently looked up. In the City, I used two to mark the current map, and the last for a place in the notes.

Having a pocketable set of maps of Barcelona in a little black Notebook was perfect, because there is nothing I hate more than broadcasting "Hey I'm a Tourist" when pulling out a map of the city.

I also used the blank pages to write down addresses and web pages to lookup later, and the back pocket for business card.

The blank pages also encouraged me to start using the notebook as a travel scrapbook and sketchbook, which is when its limitation started showing. The pages are a bit thin for drawing and sketching, and definitely too thin for watercolors, which I'd decided to start adding to the travel book midway through the trip, to add a little bit of color (and for my own satisfaction).

You can see all the pages from the notebook after the break.

Arrival in Barcelona without any problem, after a long flight from Los Angeles and a stopover in Newark. This is the first stop of our round the world trip, so we are both pretty excited.

Staying at the Hotel Cram, which was fantastic. After a long nap to try to recover from Jet-lag, dinner at FRICO. Eventhough we arrived at 9:30 we were the only ones in the Restaurant until about 10:30... People eat very late in Barcelona.

Visited the MACBA, Barcelona's Contemporary Art Museum. The architecture itself is very interesting, and the 2 exhibition we preffered were Gego, and Pablo Palazuelo. Sketches of rings seen at a little stall in the street by Natasha.

Dinner at COLORS, a restaurant in the gothic quarter. We learned from our previous experience and showed up at 10:30. Natasha had the mushroom and truffle oil soup, which was absolutely fantastic.

It was a beautiful sunny day (but cold, it was after all only a week before Christmas), so we took the subway to Park Guell. I'd decided to buy a small travel watercolor set the day before so this is my first illustration, based on the logos at the entrance of the park. This was painted at the hotel that afternoon, it was a bit cold to be painting outside.

We went to see the Sagrada Familia on the same day, and we got there just in time to see the sunset from within the tower. 460 steps inside the tower, but we took the elevetor on the way up.

Mmh! Spanish Marzipan, called Massapa, is roasted until a toasty golden color.

Visited the main Cathedral in the Barri Gotic, also Music from Barcelona.

A visit to the Picasso  Museum. The staff were acting like crazed TSA workers at an american airport, which almost prevented me from enjoying the exhibition. Finally saw the much talked about but never shown sketches and paintings from Picasso, made in an actual Moleskine notebook. Funny to see the little pages with rounded corners under glass in a museum.

Fascinated by El Caganer, the little figurine was sold everywhere in the square in front of the cathedral. Also discovered what a Hot Chocolate really means in Barcelona... Mium!

Tapas from Txapela. Loved the Placemat/Menu with little pictures of all their different tapas.

Restaurant ES, right next to Casa Camper. I wanted to try out FoodBall, a restaurant and tapas bar, where most of the food is served in a spherical shape, but sadly it was closed for renovations.

What can I say, Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate!!! See the posts about Xocoa and Cacao Sampaka.

Took the train to visit the Monastery of Montserrat, about 2 hours away.

The cable car from the train station takes you from about 100m above see level to 700m where the Monastery sits. Then from there you can take  a funicular train, which takes you to the observatory point on top of the mountain. My GPS estimated the height to be 980m. The view from there was fantastic!

In retrospect, this was not the best restaurant of the trip, and the people kept entering and exiting all the time, leaving the door open. Of course we were sitting in the draft.

Leaving Barcelona to go to Ajaccio in Corsica. Those little candies where very good.

Apparently a Corsican actually invented the Cola, but was beaten to the punch by the Americans. Corsica Cola is however a recent invention.

Beautiful knives of all kind in that shop. I was looking to replace a set of Opinel that are starting to rust, but I couldn't make up my mind.

The adventures continue in another book. More to follow soon...