On our second day, Nolan and I found Lola & Leon Family Club, which was literally a block from the house. Our first week, they were offering a full-day camp because many of the schools were on a holiday break.  Nolan was able to join in for a full week of the day-camp and LOVED it!  I also made friends with Ester the owner, who was terrific.  After the week was over, Nolan had made a few great friends of his own, and I had the opportunity to meet the moms and exchanged phone number on the last day.  So we had a great network of English-speaking friends for the rest of the month.  Sitges is a small town and ran into “friends” on a regular base when we were out-and-about!

After the day camp was over Lola & Leon Family Club offered evening activities, and Nolan participate in several of them; Dance class on Mondays, cooking class on Tuesdays, and crafts on Thursdays. Oh, and Nolan also went to the Halloween Party at Lola & Leon Family Club.  It was a great find and made our month pretty perfect!

Here’s are my research findings:

• As for working hours in Sitges, the town itself is a holiday destination, though there are plenty of people that call it home. Much like Mirano, the city does shut down in the afternoons from about 2pm to 5pm, and most of the stories are closed. The restaurants extend the afternoon siesta even longer — most restaurants don’t open until 7pm or later.
• Sitges did have a few parks, and we did explore all of them. However, it did get dark very early, so we didn’t really make it to the parks in the evenings and besides, Family Club was Nolan’s go to. On the weekends, we did often go to the beach and the playground at the beach.  We often ran into people from Family Club and everyone was so very kind, welcoming and genuinely nice. I found people were easy to talk to and often approached me to say hello.
• Coffee shops were also a frequent stop of ours, though we did find a favorite, I did pop into several. I will fully admit the vibe of the town is very much influenced by the fact that it’s a holiday destination, but people were often just sitting in the coffee shop/cafe, reading the paper, chatting with friends, or just enjoying the sunshine.  The general vibe is laid back and relaxed.
• A sense of “community” was the best of our trip thus far.  As I said earlier, I think finding Family Club really helped make us feel comfortable and at home. It was really nice to have fellow moms to text and say hello or schedule a meet-up with — and it was nice to run into people in town and actually stop and say hello.

Here’s my final thought on Sitges:

• Thus far, Sitges is my favorite overall family city of our trip. I think a significant factor is finding the Family Club. Ester, the family club owner, told us about a few other Family Clubs around the world, so we’ve added “close Family Club” to our house location search.
• After Mirano, we were entirely used to having the town shut down in the afternoons.  It really makes sense to me, though it was rough that many of the restaurants didn’t open back up until later in the evening.

So many great memories from Sitges, but here are a few of my favorite pictures:

^Nolan walking in-line to the park while at Family Club Day Camp.

^Just a few of the crafts Nolan made at Family Club.

^This is Rio – one of the friends Nolan made at Family Club.

^One of my favorite pictures of Nolan at the beach!