Here we go again. Today in Barcelona, Spain we did a huge scavenger hunt! There were quiz questions we had to answer, photos we had to take at certain landmarks and videos we had to make. Some of the videos required us to  even sing and dance to get good points for that location.

All of the teams had to do two required challenges on the scavenger hunt. One requires us to make a mosiac similar to the artist Gaudi, and the next was to spraypaint graffiti on a box. Besides those two required challenges, we had 47 others to choose from throughout the city.

By the time we were done with the graffiti challenge it was time for lunch. We were hot and tired! After lunch we decided on a new strategy. Instead of running all around the city, we hired a cab for a “city tour”. Our driver, Raul, really didnt get what we wanted at first. By the time we got to thru the second location and challenge, Raul became completely engaged with our scavenger hunt. He was getting out of the cab with us, taking some of our videos so all three of us could be in them and guiding us to the best places to get to. He was awesome. What a blast the afternoon was!

Many of the places on the scavenger hunt had to do with the local architect/artist Gaudi. We saw one of his homes as well as the as yet incomplete church  La Sagrada Familia.

After dinner in a local restaurant we boarded a bus to our next location an hour and a half away, Sant Feliu de Guixols, at the north east coast of Spain, for tomorrows challenges.

So for Day 5 we headed to Gava Beach  on the  East coast of Spain just outside of Barcelona  for our challenges.  There were two distinct challenges today one was and individual group challenge. And the other was three groups combined to form one big group to perform this second challenge. The first challenge was the individual teams had to make a flag. It somehow had to represent our team in a way. We created this using our team name, Kanalima And the logo of the tiki warrior that we have on our team shirts. We also incorporated the rainbows that are on the Hawaiian license plate as part of our flag. We did very well in this challenge and actually got bonus points because we chose a high risk value.  Check out the picture below. I think our tiki warrior looked pretty darn good when you look at the actual logo on Kelsey‘s shirt.

So after this we moved onto the second challenge. We were paired up with two other teams and we had to make a Sea worthy raft out of four empty barrels, eight round pieces of wood and a package of twine. Each team had the same equipment and we had an hour to make our raft.  The time certainly went by fast but we did complete our raft. We then had to put each of our teams flags on the raft and secure them so that they would not fall off in the water also. The next part of the challenge was that each team would have to send three people out on the raft and the team would have to go around the close buoy and the first team back would win, then a second group of three would have to go around a second farther buoy and again the first team back would win. The below picture is our finished raft.

Not too bad looking eh? Well, looks apparently can be very deceiving. A couple of things come to mind when thinking of our first voyage. Gilligan and the Skipper’s infamous 3-hour tour and the maiden voyage of the Titanic.  We got the raft in the water just fine but when we tried to jump on the raft all heck broke loose as did the twine holding the boards and the barrels.  We did however fight through it and were able to get out to the buoy but had no chance in circling it, and we then turned back. We were basically floating on three barrels and half of our wood pieces. The rest are back at the beach. I am hoping to get some pictures of us on that fine piece of maritime engineering and when I get them I will post them into this thread.

 

When we finally got back to the beach we had three minutes to attempt to repair our raft for the second group but that was just as much of a fiasco. They basically did the same thing as the first group and floated on the barrels in the wood and kicked to swim the so-called raft out but again never made it around the bouy and had to come back.

The challenge was fun. It was a great time out on the beach. I just don’t know if we are cut out for making sea worthy the rafts.

We came back to the hotel and cleaned up and then went out for a late dinner of pintxos (pronounced peenchos) which are like tapas. That was nice.  We then headed to Plaza Espana to the magical fountain which we were told was only going for three days and we just happen to be here for this. It is a large fountain that doesn’t show similar to that of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. However the Bellagio show which only last a few minutes pales to the show which lasted about an hour. It was very cool and set to music and wonderful to see.

After the show was over we headed back to the hotel call it a night. Tomorrow we check out and go to another new destination.

So for Day 4 we took a flight and headed to Barcelona, Spain. When we landed we took a half hour bus ride to the old town part of Barcelona to our hotel. We got checked in and then it was time to head to today’s challenge! We pulled up to a small shop in the middle of the city down some side streets that thank goodness the driver knew where it was. We were ushered in by one of the employees and saw a sign in the lobby which showed what the challenge would entail. The business is named Gracia Flamenca. Flamenco dancing!!!!

So for the challenge we had about 30 minutes as a group to learn a flamenco dance demonstrated by the instructors.  Then we got to practice it then we were judged on our final dances! Then it was time for dance number 2 with the same process. That was tough!

Finally, for our last challenge we all had to do our own twists on……. the Macarena!!! UGH!! Everyone did a great job and it was a blast to see all of the innovative dances!

Afterwards, the instructors gave us a show doing a number of traditional flamenco dancers with a flamenco guitarist playing music for them. It was wonderful to see someone who could really do this dance!

From there it was walking around Barcelona where we went to the  Mirada de Colon. A tall monument to Columbus. There we walked to a nice cafe for tapas for a wonderful dinner. Then a short walk back to the hotel. Tomorrow, a day if challenges at the beach!!

So can you guess what the first challenge this morning was?  Nope, it was Indoor Skydive experience in Copenhagen, Denmark! 😄 This was truly awesome. First we got our safety briefing and instructions on how to “fly” in this massive wind tunnel. Then it was time to suit up and take our turn. Two other groups were just finishing and we got a little preview of what we were doing watching them. It’s a lot harder than the instructors make it look. Our instructor was Jeppe (aka Simon – no one can say his name so when he lived in Spain he just told everyone his name was Simon). He was great and the aerial stunts he showed when he was in the chamber were incredible! Then in was our turn.

We each had 3 practice rounds of learning how to raise, lower, turn, spin, move forward and move back. Probably the coolest thing was after the first run where we walked into the chamber and the instructor placed is in “flight” position, each time after that Jeppe had us basically dive into the chamber to start flying. What a rush!!

The last run which lasted 2 minutes we had to go on our own and touch with one hand targets positioned all around the chamber at all different levels. We didn’t have to hit each target, but you couldn’t touch the same target back to back. Other than that you were to touch as many targets as you could in the 2 minutes. We all hit at least 10 targets! What a ride!!! Since I have zero interest in jumping out of a perfectly good plane in real life, this was perfect for me. We all highly recommend trying this if you get the opportunity!!

We did however hear of an accident that occurred in one of other travel teams when one of the participants landed somewhat hard in the wind chamber and actually dislocated their shoulder. This challenge was incredibly fun, however, it tought us two things – respect the wind and gravity!

We then took the metro back to the hotel and had a late lunch before it was time to get ready for the afternoon challenge. This challenge was a photo and video scavenger hunt throughout the city of Copenhagen. We had to go through and hit the 12 different locations throughout the city. A race course covering approximately 3 miles. We had to solve some quizzes and answer questions about certain locations that we went to to get answers to fill-in a puzzle grid. Along the way we also had  The option to get bonus points by doing other photos or videos of our group doing silly things. We had to act out parts in our favorite movie,  get photos with unknown men and women along our route, get a photo sitting on a bike, get a photo in front of the yellow car etc., etc.

After Maribeth took her picture another waiter wanted to get into the game and asked to take a picture with Kelsey. What a character.

Then on the way to the last stop we actually stumbled across the changing of the guard outside of the Queens Palace. That was kind of neat to see.

After we completed all the tasks we turned in our scorecard to get graded. As usual we never get immediate answer so we still don’t know how we did but we did get through everything that we were supposed to. It was a lot of fun and we got to see a lot of Copenhagen. We then sat down with two of the other groups for a nice dinner and a very neat courtyard in the center of town. Then we took a leisurely walk back to the hotel to crash for the evening. Another fun filled day.

Day 2 started with an hour bus ride to a ferry where the bus itself boarded the ferry for the hour ride to the island of Samsø. The activity for the morning was at the Samsø Labyrinth. This is in the Guiness Book of World Records as being the largest Labyrinth in the World. The place is in the woods of a Christmas Tree farm an area of which covers more than 5 soccer fields! Within this area there were 7 stations that each team had to find. Oh and we had to do this WITHOUT A MAP!!!!! Yet another insane challenge, and something the labyrinth owners had never done for a group before. Steve strikes again. We had about 2 hours to find all 7. We were able to somehow find all 7 with about 20 minutes to spare. We were the fourth team to arrive back at the start having found all 7 (if I didn’t mention before there are 12 teams competing in this tour). Once all the teams returned at the appointed time we had a vegetarian lunch (something that was all produced locally!).

After lunch the teams were split due to another sneaky Steve move. (Yesterday Steve told each team to pick a team member to do a trivia challenge. He then, of course told us after each team submitted their pick, that that person WOULD NOT be the one doing the trivia challenge, that would be the other person!) Maribeth then had to do the trivia challenge which was again going through the labryinth answering questions along the way and based on their answers were told a direction to go. They had to get 9 correct letters. Apparently this was very difficult and the team of three Maribeth was grouped with were only able to get 4 letters. They then all came to meet with the rest of us who were bussed to another challenge.

So the rest of us were taken to Samsø Downhill where we did 2 challenges in Zorbs at the only Zorb location in Denmark. We had get into these huge inflatable balls and make the ball roll acting like a hamster in a wheel. It was crazy hot in them and the slalom course we had to navigate was challenging. And on top of all of that they were timed races. Kelsey did a great job on her runs!

The last part was just for fun. We each took a Zorb run strapped inside a Zorb rolling quickly down a hill! It only lasted about a minute but it was rediculously fun!! Click on the link below to see the video of Maribeth and Kelsey rolling down the hill in a Zorb.

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After that it was back on the bus for a trip to the next ferry. This ferry took us across the bay to where we hopped on the train to take us to our next destination which is Copenhagen, Denmark. Tomorrow is already looking like its going to be another crazy challenge day based on the teasers Steve gave to us!

So away we go. Well, sort of. We all got up on time and got into the “team” shirts that we had made. They have our team name and mascot on them (each team had to come up with a team name (and reason for that name) as well as a team mascot). Our team name is Kanalima, which means 50 in Hawaiian (we love Hawaii and the trip is a destination 50th birthday trip). Our team mascot is our dog Caymus and we had a drawing of his breed placed on our shirt sleeve! We had breakfast with a number of other teams then headed to the airport for the short flight to Billund.

The security lines were crazy long in the Brussels airport, or at least ours was and it was SLOW. We eventually made it through and got to the gate in plenty of time. We next had to board a bus which took us to our plane on the tarmack.  We boarded then started for the runway. We must have been right in line for takeoff when we were informed that we were being sent BACK to the gate to pick up a co-pilot to replace one that got sick in Billund and needed a replacement. About an hour and 45 minutes late we finally departed for Billund.

We finally arrived at Billund, took a taxi to the hotel and literally dropped off our bags behind the check-in counter and then got immediately back in the taxi to LegoLand.  We were escorted to our first challenge by Matias who gave us our instructions. We had to draw on a whiteboard the picture of a windmill which we would then have to make out of Legos. Teams will get extra points for height, extra blades on the windmill and if the windmill would actually spin.  We did beat the 1 m height requirement to get extra points for that but certainly did not reach the maximum height of some of the other groups. Our windmill did however spin and some of the other groups did not do that. That was 45 minutes of sheer craziness. Oh and that was only the first of three challenges.

The second challenge was a mastermind type game where we had to find hints hidden throughout the park given different clues, and then use the clues to determine the color and location that a Lego would go on a game board. There were 10 slots that had to be filled with up to a maximum of six colors being used.   We were literally walking around the entire park for approximally 2 1/2 hours solving quizzes and finding clues. We did however get the 10 colors in the correct location on our first try.

After a short break the teams met up again for instructions for the third challenge. And yes again the third challenge had us running all around the entire park. We had to do activities on five separate rides in the park.  The cool thing here was however that all the rides are closed to everyone except for our group. Steve (evil mastermind) states that this is the first time Legoland has ever done that for a group. It was awesome.  Up to this moment we still don’t know how the final standings came out as of yet. One was using fire type houses and filling water cups to fill a bucket without spilling the water. Team with the most volume wins points .  The second ride involved 3-D computer game simulation.  The third game was another water challenge where a small cup of water was placed on the front of a small car that we had to drive through obstacles and over bumps to try to keep the most volume of water left and fill a bucket. Each of us got to do one run through the race course and fill the bucket. We did really well on that challenge filling our bucket with 1.3 L of water!!

The fourth ride involved in getting in spinning cups and having to make a Lego truck. We only got to about the fourth step as this was very difficult to keep oriented and follow directions and put this together while spinning at a relatively high rate of speed. Luckily no one got sick!

The last ride involved basically a robotic arm twirling us around like an astronaut or someone in a fighter plane and we had to throw large rubber Lego bricks into one of three baskets. Landing it in one of the closest two baskets to the take off ramp would get one point and in the farthest basket away would get two points. We were told that we tied for the most points with a whopping three points. One in a one point basket and one brick and a two-point basket.  Kelsey then got to take a ride on a higher speed of the same game with more twists and turns and upside downs.

After finishing all the challenges the entire group took a walk back to our hotel where we formally checked into our rooms and then sat down for a group dinner.  Then it was off to bed. Tomorrow we go to Samsø, Denmark for morning and afternoon challenges. This is absolutely crazy fun and it’s only Day 1. We have spent time chatting with each of the groups over the course of the last 24 hours and it’s been fun getting to know everyone. What a Blast!!! Lets see what Day 2 has in store?!?!

All right! So here we go! Today was repositioning day. We moved from our hotel in downtown Brussels to the Sheraton Brussels airport hotel – the “team hotel” for the beginning of the competition portion of our trip (Competitours.com). Most of the teams have checked in, although 2 teams leaving Philly had flights canceled and needed to re-route to the first destination city. The first destination city, we just the other day found out, is Billund, Denmark!

So this evening we all arranged an informal meet and greet in the hotel lobby bar. Everyone who could make it, did. It was great to finally meet most of the teams who we have been texting with over the last few months. A wonderfully diverse group of people who we can’t wait to travel with across Europe.

And now for the competition part. So when we get to Billund we first go and check into our hotel and then meet up with our Tour guide/evil genius, Steve (aka “THE STEVE”) who will give us our formal intro to the competition. Then we will go down the street to our first challenge destination – LegoLand! This is the Original LegoLand and the place where Legos were invented. Just like everything on this tour (much like the tv show The Amazing Race) we have no idea what challenges we will be doing there (although we were told there are 3 separate challenges we will be performing)  and we have no idea where the next city will be the following day,  until Steve gives us that information tomorrow evening. Lots of unknowns but that’s all part of the fun of this travel competition!

Today was a much more laid back day. Did more touristy stuff after sleeping in a bit from our busy day yesterday. We all went down to downtown Brussels and just did a lot of walking around. Got some coffee. Did some shopping (we thought we had enough power converters for all of our electronics. We were wrong). Then we continued to wander around town until it was time for lunch.

We decided that we wanted to find a small pub or something of the sort to have a bite to eat, grab a beer and watch the Belgium versus Tunisia World Cup match.  With the United States not making the finals, we decided to adopt Belgium as our team to cheer for during the tournament since this was our first stop in Europe.  Little did we know that we were jumping on the bandwagon for one of the favorites. I looked up and found they were number three in the world rankings going into the World Cup.

Turns out cheering for the Red Devils is a good pick. They are on fire. They won 5-2. The pub we ate at was small but had the nicest waitress (Fanny). We wanted to grab some food and watch the game but apperently we were late for lunch and the cook was off until dinner. While we contemplated our beer and simple snacks order, she apparently figured out a way to get us some hot lunch food cooked up. Not sure if she or the bartender did it but someone cooked us up Belgian style Bangers & Mash, salads and a Bolognese Spaghetti for the group. They were all terrific. Watching the game was a blast among the locals. What a fun afternoon!

Hired a private driver for the six of us travelling together today. Took a trip first to the medieval town of Ghent, Belgium. The town dates back to 900 B.C. (from what we could find). We walked around the town and started by stopping at St. Bavo’s Cathedral. This place was amazing. The ceiling was estimated buy the group as 6-7 stories tall. The architecture was unbelievable. We then walked to an actual castle which was surrounded by a river and a mote (although that part is dried up now).  The tenth century castle is named Gravensteen. I have never been in an actual castle before (don’t think we have many of those in the good old USofA)! This was really cool. We then stopped at a little Mediterranean restaurant for a light lunch which was very tasty.

Next we loaded back in the van and headed to the town of Bruges! A quaint little Belgian town with chocolatiers, pubs and souvenier shops on every street! There was a bustling central square and many waffle shops as well. We spent a couple hours walking around the town,  then met back up with our driver for the ride back to Brussels. Only a couple more days before our team travel competition. Getting excited!

Adventurous day in Brussels. 😳 So after a nice breakfast including, suprise, Belgian waffles, we headed to the city center to explore the city. Unfortunately, one of us (not one of the adults) realized she left her cellphone on the bus. After tracking down the next tour bus that came by, two of us spoke to the driver and he  looked up and contacted our bus driver and he actually found the phone on his bus!! He then turned it in to their central office. The driver we talked to then drove us to the next stop on HIS tour and dropped us off to one of his partner drivers on another route, who was heading back to the garage/office and he drove us there.  Yay, we got the phone back and that driver went on to drive us back to the Atomium (see previous post) where he called out to another driver on the original route and got us on his bus taking us back to the city center where we met back up with the rest of our group. Whew!!! The drivers who helped us out were so amazingly accomodating and friendly!!! What a wonderful experience after what could have been a horrible start for our first full day in Europe.

Once we met up with the rest of the group we had a late lunch at a restaurant in the central plaza. What a beautiful place. Buildings dating back to the 1690’s!!! The food and Belgian Beer was wonderful and our waitress Sarah, who was very sweet, was having a really bad day (a patron pulled a dine and dash right before we put our order in – what a jerk (keeping it PG)) but we actually got her smiling by the end of our meal!

Next it was back to the hotel for a bit of World Cup watching (Croatia over Argentinia – WHAT?!?!) then out for light tapas at a quaint little reataueant down the street from our hotel. A full day of multiple adventures!!!! Can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow!!!