Hi it´s us again. So after we left the internet cafe, Rob got a haircut which the kids say makes him look like a bald rat. Actually, it´s not too bad, because hair does grow back. We went on to see the monastary at El Escorial, and then to Avila, a medieval town with perfectly preserved 11th century walls. While there we broke another of our travel dining rules: never eat in a restaurant where the staff stand outside bekoning you to try their food. And as Aaron noticed, there were 4 restaurants all called "Restaurant".
In the quiet, family campground that we stayed in, quiet time once again began nice and early at midnight and ended at 7am. Needless to say, we were a little sleep deprived during these four nights.
While here, we also got some more laundry done including all of our towels, this time by a more compitent laundress. So, then when Aviva and Rob both wanted to take showers, there was only one towel for them to share. Unfortunately this "towel" was actually just a bath mat, that Rob had inadvertently stolen from the guest house in Glasgow, Scotland. We had been wondering what to do with it ever since, and finally put it to good use.
On the second day in the region, we went into Madrid, and took one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours of the city. At first we tried very hard to pay attention to the somewhat incoherent commentaries by this droning british male voice saying things like "...and here you can admire the beautiful blah blah blah, that was built in the beautiful period of blah blah and it is very beautiful. Many people from all over the world have come to admire its beauty". Actually, it was a lot of fun, once we stopped trying to follow and started to make fun of the tour.
That night we had an amazing grilled fish dinner and Sangria which were deliscious.
The next day we did a day trip to Toledo. We went to the jewish museum, which was housed in a former synagogue....converted to a church after the expulsion of the jews during the Inquisition.....converted to an army barracks, and then an army cemetary, only finally to be restored in its original state. A lot of it was simply answering basic questions like "What is a jew?", but we were able to learn a fair bit about the history of the jews of Toledo, the region and in Spain (although we still don´t know what the present day situation is). That evening we went to eat in this really good restaurant. We were all having a lovely time, until we got......THE BILL. The ¨policy¨in this restaurant is to charge an extra euro per measely slice of baguette you eat (but nowhere in the menu do they mention this, and they bring the bread to you liberally through the meal). Anyway, Diane and Rob had a little "discussion" with the owner, and we fixed the bill. If only things had gone so smoothly with the phone call back in Catalunya. Oh well.
Now let´s talk about the breakfasts in Madrid/El Escorial. Every morning we went to a cafe and had danishes, which the Spanish eat with a fork and knife....so we did too. We also ordered about 7 orders of tostados (toasted baguettes), and Rob and Diane had about 3 cafe con leches each. The waitress was stunned by our capacity to eat. She also was a bit taken aback when Diane ordered orange juice for Aviva, insisting that it be without any octopus in it (pulp is "pulpa" in Spanish, Octopus is "pulpo"). On the final morning we gorged ourselves on churos (straight pieces of fried dough that you dip in your cafe con leche) which caused quite a few tummy aches. But we were all ok enough to take down our campsite and head off to Andalucia.
During the drive down to Andalucia we passed by the 400 million olive trees in the province of Jaen, ending up at our Bed and Breakfast amidst one of the many olive groves (in the province of Granada). When we arrived, we were greeted by Denise our British ex-pat host (who says things like "don´t drink the tap water or you might get a chippy stomache") along with Zack, Luna, Felix, 2pak, and Yogi. These five guests sharing the bed and breakfast with us happen to be three dogs and two cats. Yogi, one of the dogs, wakes us up every morning at 9 begging us to play fetch, not with sticks or balls, but rather with rocks. At first Diane and Rob forbid the throwing of rocks after one of us had a near head injury, but soon that was forgotten, and Yogi´s needs took precedence, and since then we´ve been treating Yogi like the family dog. Actually, he´s quite remarkable as he´s able to identify the exact rock thrown to him based on smell alone among the multitude of rocks that occupy the spectacular property. The B & B is located in a white farmhouse in an olive grove, with fig and pear trees, grape vines, and a gorgeous swimming pool overlooking a valley. We make our way over to the fig trees several times a day to help ourselves to the sweetest juiciest figs we´ve ever tasted. Unfortunately, every morning we inform Denise of yet another thing we broke the day before. It keeps getting worse each day. Starting with the shower door, moving on to the toilet, and then finally, last night, Rob knocked over a lamp in his sleep shattering it into a million pieces on the hard tile floor.
The first night in Andalucia we ate at Marcelo´s, a fabulous restaurant, which like all the others, start serving only at about 9 at night. We ate garlic soup, garlic shrimp, and garlic chicken. And for dessert...garlic ice cream! Just kidding. No dessert that night. But we stank like heck the next day. That day, we went to Monte Frio to see the tower, which, unfortunately was closed. But we had a great homemade lunch of pimiento, bagette, and pickled onions, olives, etc.
We swam in the pool that hot afternoon. The next day, we drove into Granada, and took another hop on hop off bus tour. This time we learned a lot. We´ve been reciting one of the rather strange, but interesting poems we learned on that tour, ¨Dear Granda, if it were legal I would marry you.¨ We saw an incredible example of Flamenco dancing in a show that took place in the gardens of the Alhambra palace. The show started after about 10 p.m. and ended well after midnight, so that by the time we got back to the B & B by about 1 a.m., the chlildren were practically delerious with fatigue. The dance numbers were not typical traditional flamenco, but rather arty, modern interpretations, with spooky lighting, eerie vocals, and very Spanish-sounding fast paced guitar accompanyment. All the pieces were very interesting except for the last one, which was the only one without fighting, spooky police, sex, or stripping. The next day we went to the beach in Salobreña, an absolutely spectacular, but chilly corner of the mediterranean. But after a while the water is not so bad, because your body is completely numb. Besides the cold water, the beach was warm and gorgeous. We spent some of our time there carefully deliberating the question of which of the topless bathers had implants. The half naked women with cigarette butts hanging out of their mouths are particularly attractive. We spent a long time skimming stones and playing in the sand. As we were preparing to leave, we noticed a Spanish girl running by with a bunny, then she threw the bunny, then picked it up by its ears, then she created this little island in the water out of sand, and put the bunny on it. The bunny having no idea what to do, tried to jump, and then fell in the water. She ended this interesting series of experiments by literally ringing out the bunny. This whole experience made for some fascinating conversation about the nature of cross cultural differences in cruelty to animals, which was not unlike our prior conversations which took place following the bullfight we watched on television a couple of days before. That night we ate amazing grilled fish at a straw hut overlooking the sunset on the beach (and no...that night, we did NOT eat rabbit stew).
Yesterday we got an early start at 11:30 in the morning and hiked a mountain in the Sierra Nevada. It was an exhausting hike, in part because we had to be back down from the summit by 5:45 to catch the last lift down the rest of the mountain. So we basically had to sprint up the mountain. But once we got to the top, we had a gorgeous panaromic view of a lot of Andalucia, and even a bit of Morroco (well, really we couldn´t actually see Africa, because it was too hazy, but let´s just say we did). By the time we were down, our feet, legs, hips, and butts were killing us and we had headaches from the altitude, so we all solved it in our own way: Diane and Rob, by drinking caffeine, Aviva by sleeping in the car, Aaron by trying to sleep in the car and Noah by eavesdropping on Rob and Diane´s conversation.
We ate dinner again at Marcelo´s, but when we got there, our lungs were greeted by a little surprise: Raid, being sprayed at the entrance by Marcelo. After sputtering, coughing and taking a walk, we returned and headed to the rooftop terrace. Unfortunately Aaron´s headache had morphed into a full-on migraine and he was not able to eat any of the garlic that we had. He is feeling top notch today, but all day he has been complaining, at times violently, about our atroscious breath. He has asked to eat a clove of garlic in retaliation, but we haven´t been able to find one. Remarkably the children got 11 1/2 hours of sleep, in contrast to our previous complaints about sleep deprivation in Spain.
We´re at the beach again today, at this cafe. Noah has a bit of a fever, so he´s a little off his game today. But we´ve been having fun writing this blog together.
Oh, we have a few other things to add:
Last night during our post-Raid/pre-dinner walk,on the tiny winding roads of Tarzo, one of those white villages you see perched on a hill with two-way traffic on one lane roads, where the houses end at the edge of the road, and everyone drives like it´s the 401, we saw a 6 year old boy driving a mini, motorized 4 wheel motor cycle (with another child holding on as a passenger). He drove up towards an oncoming car, and adeptly manoevered his way up and around the car, without slowing down or looking fazed.
Yesterday, we also saw a car with padding all around it. We noticed it was from Great Britain, and so Rob and Diane wondered if this might have been a good option for us when we were in Scotland!
So that´s it for now. We have one day left in Granada and then we start heading back home, via Scotland. We´ll see about squeezing in one more entry before the end.
Talk to yo soon,
RANAD.