Back to Reality

After 2+ weeks of Christmas vacation ... we returned to reality.

It was sad. We had to say good-bye to Mayra (for now).

It was great. We could sleep in our own beds.

It was cool. As we were walking up to our apartment in Valencia, we realized that it actually feels like "home."

It was scary. Our pile of laundry was almost as big as the ski hills in Wisconsin.

Sierra Nevada

During our Christmas vacation, we went skiing for two days in the Sierra Nevada (near Granada, Spain). (There is also a Sierra Nevada in California. Maybe we'll try that one next year.)

It was Mayra's 1st experience, the kids' 2nd experience, and Matthew and my BEST experience skiing.

The Sierra Nevada is kind of like the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin ... but 10,000 ft (3000m) higher. We were above the tree line, so it is snow-snow-snow in every direction.

The first day, we led the kids down a few harrowing hills. It is kind of hard to tell how steep the hill is - when everything is white. By the second day, we figured out how to read the signs that marked the level of difficulty. : )

Lots and lots and lots more photos of our two wonderful days of skiing:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abrownell/sets/72157612248299331/

Sevilla for New Years

We celebrated the New Year in Sevilla. We stayed in a GREAT hostel that was beautiful and had a friendly climate (and FREE internet access). It was an especially great place to hang out when it was raining outside.

Sevilla has everything - a cathedral, huge palaces, a winding river, and many parks with no end. There are also Starbucks to no end but we didn't stop at any. We visited the parks, rode the river boat, went to see the palaces, and climbed to the top of the cathedral tower.

For New Year's Eve, we went to the city square. There wasn't a countdown so we shouted our own countdown (about a minute late). Notice: Yana and Maria were too embarrassed to shout the countdown.

Then we looked for nice place to eat for New Year's Eve. Ha ha HAAAAA. I guess we don't get out much. The menus were about 100 euros MORE per person than we had expected. The restaurants didn't want us to pay for one meal and split it seven ways. So, we made sandwiches and drank coke. (New Year's Eve is one of two days a year the kids can drink coca-cola.)

And ... we made our own FUN!

At the Alcazar palace, we pretended that we were little snotty royal kids running around ... complaining about how our 100's of personal servants don't wipe the bottoms of the partridges after the partridges go to the bathroom. Of course, in jest but as a reminder of how many servants it must have taken to the maintain the whole place. We hoped that the servants were treated well. (Indeed, one of the servant houses was twice the size of our house in Evanston.)

It was easy to capture Bronson's attention in the Cathedral ... just tell him that we were walking over tombs with skeletons. We climbed to the tippy tippy top of the cathedral ... just in time to hear the church bells close up. DING! DONG!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

And here's more photos of Sevilla than you can shake a stick at (my dad used to say that) ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abrownell/sets/72157612241590971/

Notice Bronson's photos. Can you guess what movie was playing in the train?

Spiderman.

Ronda - our kind of town

A young and genuine but carefree and sometimes careless friend of ours, recommended Ronda - he thought it was our kind of little town. This friend might also recommend shady nightclubs and drinks with questionable herbs and other additives. Nonetheless, we took his advice and we are so glad we did!

Ronda is a little white town way up on a rocky bluff. A couple of unbelievably beautiful bridges span the river gorge that cuts through town. There is farmland below the bluff and mountains in the distance.

We went to the Information Center for a map and they strongly recommended going to see the bullring - the OLDEST bullring in Spain! We saw it - from across the street.

On the door of the Information Center, we noticed a little hand-written note posted, "Baños de los Arabes - abierto." Ooooh!," I exclaimed, "Matthew look! There are Arab Bathes!"

The woman said (in her limited English) the bathes are very nice - the mejor (best) in Spain. I knew that Matthew would just LOVE an ancient bath. But, he didn't bring his bathing suit. It was long way down to the bathes ... of course, down by the river (and hot springs). On our way down, I thought maybe we should have stopped at the sport store to get Matthew a bathing suit before we walked all the way there. Hee hee. Imagine my surprise when we arrived to find some very nice, very well maintained ruins. So, Matthew didn't get his Arab Bath but it was still pretty cool see.

Instead of warming ourselves by the (non-existent) hot springs - we found a Belgian Hot Chocolate Shoppe. Yummy!

We walked up and down and all around. Ronda is definitely our kind of little town.

We stayed at a great pension. Unfortunately, we cannot recommend it because the owners retired the moment we left ... as was planned, not because of us. (It is true!)

A mountain of more photos of Ronda in case you have nothing better to do than to look at our photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abrownell/sets/72157612239536335/

Granada ... Home of Mayra (and the Alhambra)

Throughout the years of planning our move to Spain, Granada was near the top of our list. It certainly would have met all our needs and more. Granada is a great city. (Almost as great as Valencia.) Granada feels like a small town with lots of streets and neighborhoods and buildings and people. The Alhambra palace watches over Granada. The Sierra Nevada mountain range hugs Granada. We loved it.

We started and ended our Christmas vacation in Granada. Our family gets a kick out of silly things ... like escalator ramps where the carts don't roll down. Elena wanted to push the cart so she didn't smile for the picture. Bronson is on the other side, running up the down ramp. Afterward, we "stole" the cart to take the groceries back to Mayra's house. I didn't want to get in the picture. I didn't want to be implicated if Mayra forgot to take the cart back.

As we do everywhere we go, we walked up and down all the hills ... touring the neighborhoods. We met a man who speaks more languages than we can name. He gave us a tour of his cave house - solid, quiet, and peaceful. He reminded us that we can hear the joy in our hearts when we quiet all the noises in our heads. We tried and it worked for a couple of seconds until the kids started giggling. They are not used to quiet.

We went to Mass at the cathedral. It was big and beautiful and all but the absolute best part was that pews were heated!!! None of us wanted to leave at the end of the Mass.

We saw lots of little towns of Bethlehem (Belenes ... traditional Spanish Christmas decorations). The holy family and the three kings and lambs and cows and bulls (of course!) were everywhere ... in the shops, on the street, up in the air. One thing they try to do when making Belenes is to incorporate everyday scenes. Here is a mother spanking her child. Sometimes they have people going to the bathroom. (Matthew DID take a picture of one but we'll spare you.)

Matthew's favorite Belen was tucked in the shelves of a pub - next to the liquor.

Yana and Maria treated everyone to dinner at a restaurant of their choice. THANK YOU!! They wanted to be able to go out for dinner at least once and not have to share their plates.

And, of course, we went to see the Alhambra. A l h a m b r a ... all the a's sound like short o's (like "hot") and DO NOT pronounce the H or Yana will cringe, Maria will roll her eyes, Elena will correct you, and Bronson will giggle.

The Alhambra is a fortress (think castle) with many palaces and endless gardens surrounded by big walls and guard towers. It was built during Muslim rule in Granada only about 600+ years ago - so it is relatively new when compared to other monuments in Spain.

The Nasrid palace grounds were especially impressive with detailed Arabesque art of geometric shapes and symmetrical designs and arabic script in every building and every room, on every high wall and every tall ceiling, inside and outside - even the endless garden pathways and bushes and flowers that surrounded the palace.

There was an echo room - one of those where if you whisper in one corner of the room, a person in the opposite corner could hear you as if you were whispering right in his or her ear. We would tell secrets about the cute boys walking through who had NO IDEA why people in opposite corners would suddenly and simultanesouly burst out in laughter. The boys would check their hair and their zippers and, of course, we would then laugh harder and louder.

We spent most of a day at the Alhambra - Matthew and I could have stayed longer. But, our pesky children were hungry after walking up and down and all around for 6+ hours with just a few Maria cookies (round graham crackers) to hold them over. Hee hee.

Here are 100s more photos in Granada that may not interest you:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abrownell/sets/72157612246744630/