Trip reports, ramblings, photos and videos from our life in Europe. Please feel free to send comments and keep me updated with your emails!

Friday, August 29, 2008

Memory Tag and all of YOU are IT...

My friend Sharon had this on her blog and I thought it would be fun to do. Here is how you play:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.It's actually pretty cool (and funny) to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. :)

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Spain!!!

I like to categorize going places into two different areas. This is purely my opinion and you may disagree. 1) Travelling-this is where you see amazing sites, take in the culture, and broaden your human perspective. 2) Vacation-relaxation. A trip may be distinctly one or the other or a combination of both. Our trip to Spain was a perfect combination of travel and vacation. It was a travelation. After a busy year with Edgar studying for 6 months straight and, more recently, having the wonderful opportunity to host our amazing friends and family, we were looking forward to doing a little relaxing with a little culture thrown in. Edgar was excited to visit his homeland. I was excited about the sangria. We were both happy to be visiting a place where we could finally speak the language! We visited four cities-Toledo, Sevilla, Ronda, and Granada.



Upon our arrival in Madrid, we quickly made our way from Barajas airport to the Atocha train station where we boarded a fast train for a quick 30 minute hop to Toledo. Toledo was once the capital of Spain and has been awarded the distinction of being an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The whole town! Like many old cities, it is enclosed in a very tall brick wall, with various gates for entrance and exit. Back in the day, Muslims, Christians, and Jews all lived peacefully together. I'll spare you the world history lesson and let you google it if you are interested. It is very interesting to see the architecture of so many different cultures melding together into one beautiful place.

The Madrid-Toledo train trek was our only rail ride, since train tickets in Spain are SO EXPENSIVE! I'm all for saving the environment, but come on, when you can rent a car for half the price, including fuel costs, I tend to become a little selfish. So we gave Hertz some business and set off for Sevilla. The landscape between Toledo and Sevilla is pretty flat and arid. Some of it reminded us of West Texas without the red dirt. The further south we went, the hillier and greener it got. After 4 hours of changing landscape, we arrived in Sevilla and returned the rental car to the Hertz desk at the train station. We knew we would not need the car while in Sevilla, so we saved ourselves a few bucks and just returned it for the 2 1/2 days we were there.

Sevilla is also very beautiful. The city itself is pretty big, but the tourist area containing the cathedral and important sites is pretty small. All of the buildings are built very close to one another, creating lots of little passageways and alleys. In fact, most of the cool stuff can be seen only on foot. They call these closely constructed abodes "kissing streets" because you could lean out your window and kiss the person leaning out their window in the building opposite you. This type of design also creates quite a bit of shade and leaves the air feeling significantly cooler in this part of town. Very important when it's 110 outside! Sevilla's cathedral is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the world (St. Peter's in the Vatican is a basilica, not a cathedral). They even have the Guinness Book of World Records certificate on display to prove it. After so many jaunts through many beautiful churches all around Europe, we have become quite picky about which ones will win out and take a small piece of our time. We decided "largest in Europe" was worthy of a peek, and also the fact that it contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus! I have a very bad photo of it in the Spain photo album. The LCD screen on our camera is busted, so we have no way of knowing if our flash is on or off. Since we weren't really supposed to take a picture with the flash on, we just snapped it on the fly and hoped no one saw us and that it turned out half way decent. You can see a little of it anyways. Sevilla is also known for it's flamenco dancing! We watched a show in a cultural center connected to our hotel. I really had no idea what to expect of flamenco dancing. Knowing it is a Spanish dance, I had envisioned something close to the typical Latin dances I know such as salsa/meregue. And...it's really nothing like that. I think the only thing the same is the passion with which it is danced. Sevilla has very strong Moorish roots, having been the Moorish capital of Iberia for centuries. This is reflected in the music of flamenco. The songs are reminiscent of a Muslim call to prayer. The guitar players have very quick fingers and makes it sound as if there are 2 guitars being played instead of one. The dancing involves alot of quick feet movements and upper body motions that are fluid and graceful and, at times, angry. The men tend to focus more on the quick feet movements, while the women add in the upper body. While watching this show, I tried to come up with some kind explanation for the blog. A descriptive phrase that would make it all clear. This is what I decided on. Take tap dancing, throw away the top hats, canes and cheesy smiles. Add a handsome, passionate man, and a confident, "don't mess with me" woman, and you'll almost have flamenco. Edgar laughed at this, but it's the best I can come up with.

After a few days in Sevilla, we were off for some R&R in Ronda, one of the many white hill towns in Andalucia. These hill towns almost look like Greek Island towns with their white stucco buildings hanging precariously on the sides of mountains. We stayed at the best B&B here. Alavera de los Banos is owned by a young couple and you almost feel as if you are just hanging out at your cool friends' house, complete with pool and bar! We were lucky enough to have a ground floor room with our own patio overlooking the hillside. We spent many hours next to the pool sipping tinto verano and listening to the horses gallop up the hillside next to us. Ronda is a beautiful town with a very large deep gorge cutting through the middle of it. This makes for some great scenery and very steep hill climbs! We didn't do any major site seeing here, except for a tour of the first bullring in the history of the world (or so they say...). We saw the stockyards, got to walk around the arena, and read about the history of bullfighting in their small museum. Other than this, we worked on our tans and enjoyed the sunshine!

Granada was our last major stop on the tour. I have been wanting to visit Granada since I became interested in Tudor history. Katherine of Aragon was King Henry VIII's first wife. Her parents were King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel of Spain, who finally conquered the Moorish stronghold at the Alhambra Palace after years of intense fighting. Once again, I won't give you the history lesson, or my opinion of their conquer...I'll let you learn and decide for yourselves. Needless to say, I've been very curious to visit the Alhambra Palace for quite some time and see the grand architecture and beauty that is so often spoken of. Built mostly in the 14th century, the Moorish architecture is simply gorgeous. It isn't gaudy like Gothic, or boring and square like others. It is intricate, but not overly ornate. The fascination comes mainly in the fine details that define the style and the knowledge that they were created completely by hand. The colors are vivid and water flows from every direction. Water is a precious commodity in hot and dry Spain, and the fact that they engineered it to flow freely and plentifully throughout the complex is quite amazing. While the English and other Europeans were taking baths once a month (or once a year), the Muslims saw water as the purest symbol of life and bathed everyday. In the end, the Alhambra Palace was everything I thought it would be and I'm so glad I got to see it with my own two eyes.

Another very interesting section of Granada is the Albaicin area. It's opposite the Alhambra and thus provides great views of the palace complex. Lots of hippies and Roma (p.c. term for gypsies) hang out around here to sell crafts and entertain. Just up from this area on the same hillside is the Sacromonte area consisting of the cave dwellings of the Roma. Yes, they live in caves on the side of the hill. But don't raise an eyebrow, they are cool in the summer and warm in the winter! There is fascinating culture and great restaurants in the Albaicin. On our last night here, we sat on a brick wall at the St. Nicolas overlook listening to the Romas sing the song of flamenco behind us and watching a glowing Alhambra Palace in front of us.

Spain has surpassed France and Greece as our favorite country. We like the mid-day siestas...a perfectly acceptable excuse to take a nap and drink sangria. Speaking of sangria...there is nothing better on a hot day. Speaking of hot...it was HOT! 110 degrees! One of our favorite things about Spain, and something we will carry back with us to incorporate into our everyday lives, is the paseo. A paseo is an evening stroll. Every evening around 7 or 8pm, everyone comes out to see and be seen. The old ladies wear their best floral polyester dress and plastic necklace, while their husbands wear their best trousers and starched button up shirts. They literally just stroll around certain courtyards or boulevards catching up with friends and, most importantly, enjoying life. We loved these older couples because they were so cute together. You would very rarely see a man and woman not touching each other. If they weren't holding hands, then the man would have his hand on his lady's shoulder. So sweet. The younger crowds would begin to emerge around 9 or 10pm, which is when things really get going here...dinner, nightlife, etc. We could never quite get the hang of their eating schedule, though. Breakfast is typical of southern Europe-croissant and coffee. While us Americans tend to eat small lunches and larger dinners, they do the opposite in Spain. Lunch is usually the main meal and dinner is usually just tapas or something small. I really liked the tapas, but after a while, I just wanted one big dish as a meal instead of 4 little plates. The good thing is that most places give you a free tapas when you order a drink!

As you can tell, we loved Spain and were sad to see the trip end. It was a great way for Edgar and I to reconnect after a busy first half of the year. We are now settled back into our normal routine and enjoying the remaining days of this great British summer. Fall will be here all too soon and then we will hibernate for the winter and reflect on the 110 degrees of Sevilla, wishing we could feel the heat of the sun and taste the sweetness of sangria once again.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

It's hard to believe it's already been 6 years. I remember feeling so serenely calm waiting to walk down the aisle and then such excitement when they opened the doors and I saw you there at the front. The whole day was so perfect as we celebrated with our family and friends. We've done and seen so many things in our years together. I certainly never thought we would be doing THIS! I am so happy you decided Canada would be too cold for you and decided on San Marcos instead. The painthouse will always hold a special memory for me, no matter how ramshackle it was. And who knew when I gave you my phone number that you would actually call me?!? But don't think you fooled me. I knew you didn't just "forget" your coat that you lent to me that cold December night. I knew it was just insurance to see me later ;) I am so proud of you for all of your accomplishments and for your ambition and perseverance that brought us to this magical place in our lives. I look forward to our next years together and anticipate the adventures to come. You make life so much fun and I couldn't imagine spending it with anyone else. I love you so much. Happy Anniversary, Babe.