Redneck in Europe: Mosiacs and Restaurants

12 May, 2014

We have traveled extensively over the past year, which is an incredible privilege. One of the challenges, however, is finding a way to engage our daughters, who have become somewhat saturated with "another cathedral" or "another museum". It makes me a little angry to even say that. I mean, they should be more appreciative of what they're getting, right? Whatever. Teenagers are the same all over the world.

One way of combatting teenage boredom on our vacations is to engage them in some family activity. Lately it has been art. In Barcelona, we attended a workshop with artist Martin Brown. He is actually British, but has been living in Spain for several years. He is a full time artist and has amazing talent. You can see pictures of some of his work on this post. I will also link to his website.

Martin creates incredible mosaics and hosts classes right in his little apartment. It was a real treat to be able to sit down with him and design a mosaic, while he watched over the process. Each person worked independently, using a box full of tile shards of various shapes and sizes.

We all hunkered down to our tasks and chatted with Martin along the way. He is an amiable guy who fell into mosaics after a pretty successful career as a textile designer in the fashion world.

After two hours, that felt like two minutes, we each had a little mosaic to take home with us. Of course, Susan and Katherine made some incredible pieces. Elizabeth's was very nice as well. Mine? Well, I completed the project. In the "everybody gets a medal" kind of way, I'm a winner too.

Truthfully, it was one of the funnest things we did in Barcelona, along with taking pictures of funny sounding restaurants, which has become another staple of our travels. Really the two go together in a weird, mosaic kind of way. All the experiences we have shared have served to shape and define our family. Each moment together is another piece that combines to make a whole. Our lives are nothing more than a composite of tiny little seconds. We must choose wisely how we place them in the framework of time.