You’d think by now we’d know what we were doing. Admittedly, Spain is the least planned part of our trip. It is our last stop so we thought we’d have plenty of time to figure it out later. Or we were going to be spontaneous. Well, Type A planners are not good at winging it.

First of all, I can’t take this 90+ degree heat.  Our last three apartments have not had air conditioning. This is what happens when you wait last minute to book Airbnb. Currently we are staying in adjoining college dorm rooms. That’s right, single beds for everybody. The boys are honing their foosball skills in the rec room. Between the 4 of us we have 2 forks, 3 glasses, and 2 oversized mugs we can use as cereal bowls. In true college fashion, we are snagging napkins from restaurants to use back in the dorm.

Here we are on a double decker bus tour in Barcelona. These are for people like us who do not plan ahead and need the cliff notes version of a city.

I should have read up about bullfighting before buying tickets on a Spanish website. It turns out this is not like a rodeo. All the bulls die in the end. In a well-choreographed ritual, the bulls are taunted and tricked through a series of rounds. I only liked the part where the bulls chased the banderilleros out of the ring and over the wall. I cheered for the bulls when the gave chase and cried when they died.

Winging it (relying completely on TripAdvisor) is not always a bad way to go. The top rated fun & games activity in Madrid is an “escape room.” It’s like a game of Clue where your team has to solve a series of riddles before time runs out. It was actually a lot of fun for nerds like us and a great excuse to be “trapped” in an air-conditioned room during the afternoon heat.

Another TripAdvisor win: scoring reservations at the #1 and #2 rated restaurants in the small town of Cuenca. It was some of the best food we’ve eaten on the whole trip.  Cuenca is known for their hanging houses off the side of a cliff, and thoroughly charming.

To escape the heat, we changed our plans and headed north to the seaside resort town of San Sebastian.  From here, we took a day trip to the Guggenheim in Bilbao.  The museum architecture is phenomenal, like waves of silver ribbon piled high on top of a present.  A fitting ending to our great family adventure.