Monalia's World

Every New Year’s Day the Club Nataçiòn de Barcelona has a first day of the year swim. It is quite something to view from our plush Hotel W suite. I take some shots with my Nikon, which has a phenomenal zoom:

The above big swim lasted about a half hour, although many literally dipped in and out just to honor the tradition. That water is cold! Notice the Catalan flag in many of the shots. I recently joined this very Catalan Club de Nataçiò so you can look forward to a future blog post about it at some point. This club provides me the opportunity to become more fluent in Catalán. Many of the hard core members will only speak to you in Catalan, so I’m learning to be quite comfortable with simple chit chat about weather, dogs, and sports.

It is fun to photograph our stomping grounds from this perspective. Normally it is I down below scurrying about, for our apartment is just hidden from view here. I’ve taken many photos of the iconic Hotel W from down below, so its a real thrill to have an unique point of view from above.

In every day life, Quixote takes a poo in front of the caged sculptures every morning and then we either take a beach walk, a bike ride or I simply throw balls for him until he tires.

Mark and I spend the rest of the day lazing around and snapping last minute photos of our spectacular city view:

views of the city from our hotel room. Notice the iconic Christopher Columbus statue, Tibidabo and La Sagrada Familia. What a great city Barcelona is!

On December 31st we wake up to see they are preparing fireworks directly below our Hotel W room:

This looks promising. Fireworks will go off directly in front of our window at midnight.

We spend the day ordering room service and taking photos from our big picture windows. This is an exciting New Year’s eve already, we are staying at the fulcrum of all the action.

I share some shots taken from our rooms. We live in such a pretty city:

Views of our beach. You can almost see our apartment in the first shot.

Funicular from our beach to MontJuic. In the second shot you can see Tibidabo.

After spending a lazy and somewhat indulgent day, New Years Eve finally arrives.

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

Iphone and Ipad videos edited together for the purose of sharing the fireworks with you.

Although we had planned to check out the Disco upstairs, instead Mark and I have our own private party in the room, which is equipped with speakers and a docket where we can listen to music on our iPhone while it charges up.

Who needs to go to the discoteque when we have front row seats to the fireworks? After the fireworks we dance around to the music. Life is good!

I’ve been a bit negligent of this blog because I’ve been channeling all my energy into publishing a book, which will be the subject of a *subsequent* blog.
Now, I will break the Hotel W blog into 3 parts: 1) Mark’s birthday 2) New Year’s Eve 3) New Year’s Day.

Every year we celebrate Mark’s birthday, which is 2 days before New Years Eve, somewhere spectacular, usually somewhere exotic where it is hot in December. This year we opted to stay in here in Barcelona, in light of all the remodel/renovations we’ve been doing, both in L.A. and in Barcelona.

Here’s a quick recap in images of our first couple nights, beginning with Mark’s birthday spent at the Hotel W in Barcelona on December 29th. (We stayed for New Year’s eve and through to Jan 2)

Quixote and Mark check out our Hotel W digs, home for the next 4 nights. It is very plush and somewhat indulgent. The bed proves to be Quixote’s favorite spot.

Luxury

Our place has 2 rooms; one with a view of our beach. This is the room where we later have some friends over to celebrate Mark’s birthday. The other is an indulgent room with a direct view onto the ocean, the room complete with a bathtub and lounge sofa as well as bed and office area behind the bed.

1- View of our beach. 2- view of sunrise popping out of the ocean from the master bedroom, where there is a long divan to lounge around on and watch ships and airplanes and clouds pass by.

This place is inherrently fun! And the master bedroom is truly sexy.

We had a small party in the beach view room to celebrate Mark’s birthday:

After which we all went to the 22nd floor Hotel W disco, called Bar Eclipse for further celebration.

Discoteca Eclipse

More fun photos of our fancy digs:

1- Lazy sunrise photo taken from bed 2- view from lounge area in front ocean view window.

This is good a place as any to show off the neon lighting which has remote controls to change the colors.

This is how Quixote earns his keep; in exchange for a really fun and active yet comfortable life I make him pose from time to time…

They even have a Pet Menu available for room service here, for my lucky dog.

More neon shots

A few parting photos before I go on to Part 2 of 3 of our vacation at Hotel W.

The bathtub is a real centerpiece of our stay

My dog just LOVES the bed here at Hotel W

Mark’s birthday was a success, our friends all had fun.