Trip to Southern Spain

Hello everyone!

So last weekend Annelies and I went to Spain. We had a WONDERFUL time and kept joking that we really had to figure out how to move down there at some point :) But seriously, it was a fascinating culture and the weather was warm (a welcome change from London!). It was about 20-25 degrees celsius (about 75 degrees farenheit), and it was the first time all year that we actually got to walk around with t-shirts and shorts! Needless to say, we spent a lot of time in the sun and brought back a bit of a tan with us to London when the trip was complete.

Day 1 & 2 - Seville
We left for Heathrow airport bright and early at 5:00 AM to catch our 7:00 flight to Madrid, with a quick layover and change to Seville. By noon, we had landed, checked into our (nice!) hotel, and found ourselves walking around a park in downtown Seville. We had a quick lunch, wandered around the park and discovered an ornate building called the Plaza d'Espagna, mixing Moorish and Castilian architecture. From there, we headed into old town Seville, into the tiny passageways of the old Jewish quarter, stopping to sample the best Sangria on the trip. Other highlights included touring Seville's cathedral (the 3rd largest in the world behind Notre Dame and St. Pauls), which was built upon an old Mosque built 800 years ago when the Moors controlled the Iberian peninsula; the cathedral contains Christopher Columbus' tomb, although Puerto Rico claims to have the same. Seville was once surrounded by a giant city wall, called the Macarena (not sure if that's where the line dance originated! :) ) Also, we toured an old Muslim palace and saw Seville's bullfighting ring from the outside - Annelies didn't want to see a bullfight, but we agreed that we would see one during our next trip to Spain!

Semana Santa
Since it was the Easter Week, the whole of southern Spain was celebrating a festival called Semana Santa (or Saint Week). Semana Santa is celebrated with solemn parade ceremonies around the cities. Religious brotherhoods (each belonging to a particular church) parading around the city in religious garb, blaring trumpeted song w/ drums. The religious clothing consisted of tall pointed hats and long capes; these folks walked around with giant 5-foot long candles, dripping wax onto the ground all over the parade routes. We could see local children (not yet taking part in the parade) collecting the wax drippings to create colorful wax balls; two older boys had been doing it for years and had a ball of wax as large as a football! Also, big guys wearing white cloth wrapped around their heads carried around large parade floats, adorned with ornate gilded carvings of the Madonna and child, Christ on the cross, and other religous scenes. This was definitely quite something special!

Day 3 - Granada
After 2 days in Seville, we got up to catch the 7AM train to Granada, checked into the hotel, and started touring the city by noon. Granada was the stronghold for the Moors (Muslim rulers) for over 800 years. More than anywhere that we saw in Andalucia (southern Spain), the Islamic influence was omnipresent in the architecture and culture. We went through an interesting and colorful Bazaar, walked through the old cobblestoned streets of an Arabic village on the side of the hill, and even had some traditional tea at a Turkish Tea house. We also visited the Chapel near Granada's cathedral; within it was the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, the 15th century Spanish king and queen responsible for reuiniting Spain, commissioning Christopher Columbus' voyage to the new world, and conquering the Moors. After a hearty day of touring and a nice meal of Spanish tapas, we were in for a real treat, a tour of the Alhambra at night!

The Alhambra
The Alhambra is a stronghold on a hill overlooking Granada. It's grounds are filled with Moorish palaces, castles, temples and beautiful gardens. As a restricted-access national park, only 5000 people are admitted each day (lucky for us, Annelies found a website where we could purchase tickets several weeks in advance). While much of the Alhambra was off-limits on the night tour, we did get a chance to see the Nasrid Palace, a 14th century spectacle built when the Moorish kingdom was at it's zenith. Fine marble columns and carvings filled the palace interior and beautiful Moorish plaster and colorful tiles adorned the walls and ceilings; this was once quite a wealthy kingdom!

Day 4 - Malaga
After a bus ride through the lush and fertile Spanish countryside, we made our way to the coastal city of Malaga. With highrises and swanky hotels overlooking the blue waters of the Mediterranean, we couldn't help but soak up a bit of sun at our hotel's pool! We spent this day relaxing, leisurely strolling around the streets, visiting the Picasso museum (he was born in Malaga), and munching on fine seafood tapas.

Day 5 - traveling home...
Due to an unfortunate schedule change by Iberian airlines (Spain's non-customer service friendly national airline...), we had an early flight out of Seville with an awkward layover in Madrid. With not enough time to make it into Madrid, we spent the day walking around the HUGE airport and looking through the duty free stores. Kind of like spending a day in a big modern mall with a bunch of people speaking Spanish!

Pictures
We just set up a website to host more of our pictures. You can check them out by going to our new website. Thanks for reading! We hope all is going well with everyone, that the spring flu season is finally ending, and hope to hear from you all soon!

Almost..... SPAIN!

Two days from now we will be in SPAIN!!!!! We are very excited to finally be able to put some summer cloths on!
This past weekend we went to Belgium. It was the house warming party of a great friend. He lives on 'bunny' street, and that was the 'theme' of the party. You can imagine what kind of "bunnies" were present (even a real bunny showed up!)It was a lot of fun and it was great to catch up with Steven and some of our other belgian friends.
On sunday we went to Gent. My younger sister, Liesbet is living there and getting ready to start Vet school in September. Her apartment is great and we had a blast walking around in Gent and getting lost (she has no sense of direction....but at least she speaks flemish and can ask for directions...) Liesbet came back to london with us on monday (very) early, and will spend a week here (getting lost in the London 'tube' and taking care of Vinny while we are in Spain!) We'll make sure to post some pictures of Spain to make our Bristish friends jealous!
BTW, we are now fully installed to receive visitors... so do not hesitate to come over and spend some time with us (specially now that the summer is getting very close!!!)