Fun time at Violas

Several family members got together at Viola's Ventanas Mexican Restaurant for dinner on Dec. 27th.  It's a guaranteed nice evening going to Viola's.  Our waitress was really good, the ambiance in the restaurant was so nice with all the Christmas decorations and decorated Christmas trees, the food was delicious and the company was fun!

How nice that our cousin John and our aunt Rosie were able to join us this evening.

Our waitress didn't do a bad job of getting all of us in the picture!

Merry Christmas!

We sure had a nice little get-together at Mom's house yesterday evening for Christmas Eve.  We had sandwiches by candlelight like we used to do back in the day.

Ahh, but it's just easier to see with the lights on!

Then on to opening presents!

We got to Facetime with Rebeca while we were all together so in a sense Rebeca and Scotty were there with us.  Rebeca and Scotty got to see some family and meet little Flynn and  the family here got to see Rebeca and meet little Scotty - if only through an ipad screen.  But still, it was nice.

We were just thinking today, on Christmas Day, how we haven't had a "normal" Christmas since 2009!!  Oh, we've had several beautiful and outstanding Christmases since then for sure.  But a "normal" Christmas - where we are and have been in our home so that we can buy a tree, get out all of our decorations to decorate everything and have family over for a Christmas Eve or Day meal - we haven't done that since 2009.   2009 was the last Christmas we spent in our house on El Verde Rd.  

For Christmas 2010 we didn't have a home anymore and were living in Boquete, Panama.  It was our first different Christmas. We bought a few strands of lights, a few decorations, and our Christmas tree was fashioned out of some reeds in a vase. We were very fortunate, though, to have Fernando and Eva arrive a couple of days after Christmas which helped tremendously in making us feel like it was truly Christmas.  

For Christmas 2011, we were in Risvattnet, Sweden!  Now that also was a very special Christmas. To be able to experience a Swedish Christmas with Eva and her family was priceless.  There was a real Christmas tree, lots of Christmas lights and decorations, lots of family and a bonus - we were with both Fernando and Eva!   Plus there was snow outside!  It doesn't get much better than that!

For Christmas 2012, we were back in San Antonio but there was a lot going on.  Mom was in a rehabilitation center recovering from her hospital stay in November of that year.  And we had JUST moved into a new house on about December 15th before we had lots of family come stay with us a few days later.  So between almost daily visits to Mom and trying to get our house set up before everyone arrived, it was amazing that we found time to buy a very nice tree and get a few decorations set up.  But that also was a very nice Christmas because of all the family with us AND best of all, we had Rebeca, Jason, Fernando AND Eva with us!  That was better than winning any lottery.

For Christmas 2013, we didn't buy a tree or put up many decorations because we knew a little grandbaby was going to be born some time in December, possibly around Christmas and that we'd be leaving our house as soon as we got that news.  On December 23rd we got that joyous news and promptly left for almost 2 weeks.  So, there was no sense in decorating much that year!  The best Christmas present we have ever in our life received was being able to hold our little grandson a few hours after he was born.  So, this Christmas was a very very special Christmas.

For Christmas 2014, we had been in Europe for several months and got back to our home in San Antonio on December 16th.  So close to Christmas.  Then, knowing we'd be heading to Jason and Rebeca's house on January 6th made us feel like there really was no point in getting all our boxes of decorations out or even buying a tree for such a short amount of time.  With Rebeca, Jason and now one year old Scotty, we'll celebrate the Three Kings Day instead.

Our Christmases may not have been normal lately, but they have been very very nice just the same.

Last full day in Madrid

We took the metro into Madrid central to meet Ale for a few hours this morning.  We spent time looking in some shops and walking through a Sunday market.  The weather was not good at all.  Cold and rainy.  But that kind of weather sure made for a great anticipation of finding a nice little cafe to have coffee and croissants.  So, that was our last visit with Ale and we had a very nice time.  We said goodbye to her at a metro station and then were on our way back to our hotel.

In the evening we found a great little Spanish restaurant/bar by the hotel.  It was a truly little Spanish place and we enjoyed our meal very much.  Then we stopped by a bakery to pick up breakfast for tomorrow.  That's it for this time around in Europe.  We enjoyed our dinner, stopping at the bakery and walking back to the hotel.

Madrid with Ale

We are so glad we stayed in the Xauen Hotel here in Jaen.  Such a great location and so close to parking that we were able to easily wheel our stuff to the garage.  

We got to Madrid around 1pm or so.  Got our hotel and then cleaned out the car and drove it to the Atocha Train Station to return it.  We tried to find something small for lunch at the train station, but nothing appealed to us so we just got on a metro back to the hotel.  We walked around a little around our hotel and found some nice fruit stores, some bakeries, quite a few restaurants and a decent grocery store.  We bought some chips and fruit and snacked on that as our lunch.  We didn't want to eat too much since we knew we'd be meeting Ale for dinner.

Since we agreed to meet Ale in the Sol Plaza at 6, we went back out at 5:20 to get on the metro.  We got to the metro station at Sol and were FLOORED at how packed it was.  Tons of people trying to enter and exit the station.  We finally managed to make our way out of the metro station and then things went from bad to worse.  It was raining outside the station and there seemed to be TWICE the number of people out there.  Almost all of them with umbrellas.  What a challenge that was trying to maneuver through the sea of people, each one of us trying to avoid hitting the other with their umbrellas.  We finally managed to get to our meeting spot, which is a cafe called La Mallorquina but both the inside AND the outside of that place was wall to wall people.  We had NO idea how we would ever find Ale in all that mess.  I tried to go inside the cafe but it was impossible.  So, we stood outside in the rain, trying to move a little in any direction with our umbrellas raised and our necks craned - hoping against hope that we would recognize Ale.  It was just impossible.  So, I ended up calling her and letting her know more or less our exact position but with all the people and all the noise, I had no idea if she could even hear me, because I sure couldn't hear her well at all.  Finally, success!  Guillermo saw someone looking around that looked vaguely like the person he had seen on Facebook and sure enough, it was her.

Yay, so we finally meet and we followed her to a little Spanish restaurant in the Sol area.  It was a nice little place and we sat and had Sangrias, beers and olives before ordering Fried Squid, Padron Peppers, and a Paella type dish.  

So, Ale is an Yznaga, from Venezuela.  Sbe moved to Madrid 10 years ago.  We have no idea how her family line fits into the picture but it was fun meeting her and getting to know her.  She seemed genuinely excited to finally meet another Yznaga who wasn't from Venezuela.

After dinner, we walked a little along the streets of Madrid to a cafe that seemed to be called the Gran Cafe.  Anyway, it was a very special place and we enjoyed coffee and tea there before walking to the metro station.  Madrid is just beautiful at night.  It was 11pm, and the city was as lively as ever, the Christmas lights were beautiful along the streets and it was just simply a pleasure to be there. 

Marbella and Jaen

Post for Thursday, December 11

We drove from Motril to an area of Spain called the Alpujara.  Then from there we drove to Marbella.

This is the town of Lanjaron.  Really cute place.  

There is Lanjaron hugging the hillside.

Now we are approaching two other towns in the Alpujarra.  The one WAY in the distance is Capileira, where we spent some time.

Capileira

I just loved this "door" to one house.  Surely there was something more substantial behind that cloth because it's quite cold here.

A beautiful entryway to someone's home

Heading back down from Capileira.  It's the little line of white hugging the hillside right under where the snow-capped mountains are in the middle.  The line of white to the left of Capileira is Bubion.

This is Pampaneira

Here is a little about the Alpujarra region - taken from the website Andalucia.com

The cultural interest of the region lies in its fifty-odd villages, which were the last stronghold of the Spanish Muslims, or Moors. Soon after the Castillians took Granada in 1492, all the city´s Moors were forced to convert to Christianity. Those who refused took to the hills, settling in this remote, inaccessible area. Constant pressure from the Christians led to a bloody uprising, the Morisco Rebellion of 1568, which was ruthlessly crushed out, with the public execution of the leader, Ben Humeya, in the main square of Granada. Soon followed a royal decree expelling from the Kingdom of Granada all people of Arab descent, since the "new Christians", as the converts were called, were all suspected of being ¨crypto-Muslims¨ in secret...

The villages of the Alpujarra were resettled with some 12,000 Christian families brought by King Philip II from Galicia and Asturias in north-western Spain. However, these unique hamlets have retained their traditional Berber architecture - terraced clusters of grey-white box-shaped houses with flat clay roofs - which is still common in the Rif and Atlas mountains of Morocco. Perhaps the most picturesque villages are the famous trio which cling, one close above the other, to the slopes of the Poqueira Valley, where red peppers and tomatoes are still set out to dry on the flat clay roofs, among the tall round chimney pots. Pampaneira, at the bottom, bustles with crafts shops and restaurants, as does Bubión, half way up the slope, with its massive square church tower standing on a plaza of rough paving stones. But to savour the authentic Alpujarra, go to Capileira at the top of the valley - the name is an Arabic derivation of the Latin word for head or top - and walk down from the road into the lower streets of the village, where the rocky streets, overhanging passageways and sagging, stone houses have still not been remodelled and prettified for contemporary living...

After driving to those three towns, we drove back down to Lanjaron where we just happened upon a nice place to have lunch and then our next destination was perhaps Malaga.  We didn't see any hotels around there, passed by Torremolinos (where we had stayed back in 1978) and by the time we got to Marbella it was getting pretty late.  And we were having a horrible time finding hotels.  Finally, Guillermo decided to go down closer to the water and there we found a couple.  After checking into one of them, we walked to some grocery stores.  This area is definitely for the wealthy - lots of upscale stores and many beautiful places.  

Post for Friday, December 12th

As we were driving out of Marbella, we decided to check out their beaches.  We weren't all that impressed.  Lots of fancy restaurants along the beach, though.    First, though, a view from our hotel window.

Then a view we got of the beach.  The scenery is pretty.

We drove from Marbella to Ronda and then to Jaen.

Motril

There was no sadness packing up the car today and shutting up the house.  Rather, we were looking forward to be going out on the road again.
We are in Motril this evening.  The drive was long and we can't say beautiful, but it was very interesting.  Around Murcia, Spain, the landscape seemed to be entirely covered with plastic.  It was the strangest sight -  row after row after row after endless row of plastic covered greenhouses.  I tried to get some pictures as we drove but all of them were too blurry.  Sometimes, when looking at those greenhouses as the sun was shining on them, the plastic was so bright and shiny it looked like water.  And that's pretty much how the landscape was from about Murcia to close to Motril.  There are lots and lots of vegetables and fruit growing in this region!!!  We also saw huge fields of Chirimoya trees - Chirimoya being one of our favorite fruit to eat here.  So now we saw where the Chirimoyas that we would buy at the market probably came from.

We took a little detour to a place called Cabo de Gata.  It was very scenic.

We also got stuck in a pretty bad traffic jam along the way - they had completely closed one of the tunnels on the four lane highway so the two lanes in the other open tunnel were for traffic in both directions.  Which meant traffic on both sides had to go down to one lane.  Right before we got stuck in that, we had planned to stop for lunch in a town that we would be passing through.  But by the time we got out of that traffic jam, it was way past lunchtime so we decided to just go on and have an early dinner when we got to Motril.  By the time we found a hotel and a decent place to eat there, we were pretty tired!!!  But the hotel here in Motril is very very nice.  We stopped at a two star hotel, but before going into that two star one, we walked over to a four star hotel that looked like it was going to be WAY out of any reasonable price range.  But no, the price was so fair that we took the room in that fancy hotel.  And what was even better, they guy said he'd give us an upgraded room for the same price.  VERY nice room.  It had 3 rooms - bedroom, living room and bathroom and 3 balconies.  Here is the view from two of the balconies.

It was lovely to be in a nice, warm hotel.

Last day here by El Campello

How did we spend it?  Well, we drove into El Campello early in the morning (while the clothes were in the washing machine) to have breakfast at the train station cafe.  We went to that place quite frequently in the last few weeks, discovering that it was a much better place than we had originally thought.  Their waffles and croissants are delicious!  Ever since we've been in Belgium, we keep looking for good waffles and this train station cafe comes pretty close!

It was quite cold and very very windy today.  Not pleasant at all.   Once we get back to the house, I hung the clothes up outside and with the way the wind was whipping around, those clothes dried pretty fast!  I was even able to wash two loads!  That's unheard of at this time of year!  The wind was blowing so hard I thought it was going to flip the clothes line pole out of its hole!!!

In the afternoon, we drove back into El Campello to have lunch at Lizarran on the beach.  They have decent tapas there and it was a good way to end our stay here.

Shortly after getting back home, we had to go back out again, but this time we walked to the bus stop and caught a bus into El Campello.  From El Campello, we took one last ride on the tram to Alicante.  We did all that because we were going to pick up a rental car.  So tomorrow morning we leave for a little drive around the southern part of Spain.  We'll take 3 days doing that before going up to Madrid on Saturday.  We fly home on Monday!!

Last day trip

We've driven through Altea many times, even stopped there a couple of times to look around.  Altea is a little further north up the coast from El Campello.  We've read about it, heard it mentioned all the time on the radio and when we did go through there it always looked interesting.  It is also a place full of expats and since they seem to choose to settle in the nicer areas around here, we thought it merited a closer look and a meal at one of their restaurants along the beach.

So, that's what we did today!  After finally finding a place to park along the beach (and we can't IMAGINE what it must be like in Altea during the summer since it was packed today in December), we walked up into the downtown area of Altea.  We saw many nice stores and a nice market - definitely an enjoyable area to do some shopping.  Then we walked back down to the beach and picked an Austrian restaurant to have lunch at.

Getting ready to enjoy Wienerschnitzel and Hungarian Goulash.

Those two chairs on the right were mine.  When it got too hot sitting in the sun, I'd move to the chair in the shade.  Then back to the chair in the sun when it'd get too cold in the shade.  The whole lunch was spent like that!  The food was good at this beach-side cafe.  After lunch, we shared some Palatschincken and Apfelstrudel, both of them very good.

This was the view from where we had lunch.  That's the Calpe rock in the distance!

Then we walked along the rock wall which lines the waterfront for a little while.

Looking back to where we had lunch.

Maybe there are better beaches somewhere in Altea, but definitely not in this area.

This shot is looking south towards the big party city of Benidorm, which is behind that mountain on the left.  We never did go to Benidorm.

We will miss all of this, for sure.....

There is cold, then there is coldER

We woke up to rain and thunder this morning - a big surprise to us because that hadn't been forecast.  These last few days here will be quite the challenge with how cold it is, both inside and outside the house.  We do keep the room we are in warm, at least.

It had already been raining and thundering, then the sun came out for a while.  It was so cold in the house, even with the heater going, that I decided to set up a chair outside in the sun by a wall.  It was nice sitting outside actually.  Shortly after that,  we went for a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the nicer weather and to get some newspapers.  As we were walking back, it clouded over and the nice warmth of the sun was gone.  A little while after we got back to the house, the sky got menacing again and this is what it looked like before it started raining AGAIN!

6 more days here

We are leaving a little earlier than originally planned, taking 3 extra days to explore a little in the southern part of Spain.  We'll drive down by Motril and Malaga on the southern coast, then possibly over to Cadiz, we'll go up through Ronda and then on to Spain.  We are looking forward to that drive.

It's cold here all day long now - although it still feels kind of good in the middle of the afternoon in the sun.  It's just that the sun isn't out all that much anymore - it seems that clouds come in just about everyday now.  No more of those all day sunny days.

Important announcement!

I almost posted this announcement on the day we were actually told but thought we better wait a little while.

Anyway, on October 18, Fernando sent us a chat asking if we were busy, that he had a question to ask.  So, we said sure,  He said he'd call us on Skype - another "trigger" that should have let us know something was up because he could have just continued chatting as we were doing.

So, we all get on Skype and he proceeded to tell us that we are going to be grandparents again!!!   He and Eva are expecting a baby in May!!!  Oh my goodness.  It was totally a shock - we truly honestly and seriously thought he was going to ask us maybe a grammar question or something about the car or a job application or something.  But to announce he and Eva are going to have a baby was something that sent us into a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions.  The happiness we felt was so unreal and we are so happy for them.    That was definitely an exciting moment.

Yay, it's now the Christmas season!

Well, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Spain - they go straight from Halloween decorations to Christmas decorations.  But still, we waited until Thanksgiving Day in the states to put up a few Christmas decorations and start playing Christmas music.  Christmas music is just the best!

In the past when we've been in another country during the Christmas season, we've gone out and bought a FEW Christmas decorations and lights to put up around the place we were staying.  And in each place - actually two:  one was Boquete, Panama and the other was this same house here in Spain - when we flew back home, we had to leave behind whatever decorations we had bought.  REALLY didn't like doing that.  Not wanting to do that this time, we found some nice window decoration cling-ons at a store called Lidl that will be easy to peel off and won't weigh a thing in the suitcase or take up any space at all!!!

It's not much, but it's good enough for now and I'm glad we'll be able to take those things home with us.

Goodbye Duke

Jason and Rebeca just had to go through the gut-wrenching process of deciding that it was time to put their dog, Duke, down.  Duke had been declining for many months, but it was just in these last few weeks that he had gotten a whole lot worse.  In the past few days, it became very obvious that Duke was suffering as he had quit eating and drinking.  Yesterday, on November 24th, they said goodbye to Duke.

Jason and Duke became buddies almost 17 years ago.  They spent many many happy years together chasing balls, going for drives, taking walks, loving each other's company.

What I will always remember about Duke:

It was the year 2001, and we were helping Rebeca move out of her apartment in Nacogdoches, Texas.  It was a hot summer day and between lugging items to the trailer and cleaning in the apartment, I sat down on the floor for a few minutes to take a much-needed break.  I had my legs pulled up, with my arms on my knees and my head resting on my arms.  Next thing I knew, I felt a nose on my arms and it was Duke.  He had come up to me, placed his nose on my arms and he just stood there like that.  It was like he was worried about me and what I was doing sitting there on the floor.   I will never forget how heart-warming that was to know that Duke was concerned and wanted to somehow comfort me.

The speed at which he would go after the balls that Jason would throw always impressed me.

One time, at Rebeca's apartment in Tucson, Arizona, I was there alone with Duke and Clover (Rebeca's dog) for some reason.  A service guy came and went around the back to check on something, I can't remember what that was all about.  Anyway, when Duke realized there was someone in the backyard, he went nuts and his bark absolutely terrified me.  I had never heard a fiercer bark in all my life.

Whenever Jason and Rebeca would drive away from our house after visiting us in San Antonio, Jason would have the window to the car open.  Then as they drove off, Jason would say "Cattles" and that would make Duke go into loud barking mode.  So, it was always funny to us how they would drive off down the street with Duke'ss head out the window, barking - almost as if he was barking, "Goodbye" to us.

Farewell,Duke - you were a special dog.

Our Monday drive

The name of the town we checked out today was Javea.  On our way up, we passed a horse center, which Guillermo always likes to stop at because he is trying to find someone who might know of horse-hair hitching here in Spain.  His brother Alfred does horse-hair hitching and his work is top-notch.  Alfred heard that horse-hair hitching got its start in Spain, but so far, Guillermo has been unable to find anyone who knows how to do the hitching the way Alfred does and we have not been able to find any products anywhere that even come CLOSE to the quality that Alfred does.  So, after visiting that horse center which was on the outskirts of Gata de Gorgos, we drove on over to Javea where we had lunch.  We had noted several decent restaurants to look for before we came but found that one was closed and couldn't find any of the others that we were interested in.  (We forgot to take the GPS).  So we ended up at the restaurant that was on the bottom of our list, and it was a "bottom of the list" experience.  The food was nothing special at all.
Javea was a nice town and it had a very imposing mountain to the north of it.  Here is the view of the beach in Javea.  There were actually two beaches here - one rocky and gravely and the other with sand.  The sandy beach was small compared to other beaches.

Then we drove to another horse center in Verger which apparently was run by German-speaking people, but they seemed to be totally uninterested in what Guillermo had to say.  We passed another place on our way back home and those people were extremely interested and took our phone number and said they would make some calls and see what they could tell us.

So, Javea is about as far north as we're going to visit this time around.  Last time (in 2012), we went as far as Valencia and that was very interesting but we've been there already and want to see things we've not seen yet.

Guillermo and I have decided, after visiting so many beach towns along this Costa Blanca - that the best beaches are in Calpe and in San Juan, which is the long long beach by El Campello.

Our Friday drive

The weather was just ok today.  Cloudy but not all that cold.  So it was decent enough to take a drive.  Today we picked a route that would take us into the Jalon Valley.
First we drove to La Nucia again.  That sure is a nice place and we can definitely see why expats have settled in that area.  We had heard that "the best nursery on the Costa Blanca" was in La Nucia so we set out to find it.  We were impressed with that nursery and we agree with it being proclaimed the best on the coast.  They have so MANY different kinds of plants and trees, it was like going to a special Botanical Garden.  And never in our lives have we seen pots as big as some of the pots we saw there.  Those huge pots are holding equally huge trees that it must be something else to have to move one of those things.  Of course, Guillermo was looking for new and different seeds but as good as this nursery is, they just didn't have any seeds that he was interested in getting.

From La Nucia we drove up through Callosa d' en Sarria through the mountains down  to Porcent, through Alcalali and then to the town of Xalo where we had in mind to have lunch.  The restaurant we had in mind wasn't in the town, we had to drive a ways to get to it.  But when we finally found it, we found it to be a cute little place surrounded by vineyards.  It would have been nice to sit outside on the terrace by the grapevines but it was a little too cool.  It was nice inside though with the wood-burning stove and we had a great meal there.

Our set-menu lunch included that whole bottle of wine on the table - wine which was produced from the vines just outside the back there.  It was really good wine and at first we thought, oh no, how are we going to finish a whole bottle of wine, but by the main course, we were wondering if we were going to have enough for the entire meal!

Happening at the table right beside us.  The guy with the guitar came in and started playing and singing and the guy at the table joined him at the end.  They both had excellent voices and it really made for an all-around enjoyable experience.

Our drive back took us on more windy mountain roads and we came to an area where we noticed the Calpe rock way down in the distance.  

We stopped in the town of Altea on the way back, to check out the beaches there.  We weren't impressed but we did see several very interesting restaurants along the waterfront that we would like to come back and try.  

Venturing out

We had planned on taking a little drive up the coast yesterday, but Guillermo didn't feel all that great.  Also, the wind was crazy-wild outside again so we decided to postpone a day.
So, we went today!  Guillermo felt much better and the weather was WAY better than yesterday.
We drove up the coastal road to Teulada, then down to the water at Moraira and then back up through Calpe and then back home.

This is in Moraira.  We had lunch at that white building there in the middle.

This is the view from where we had lunch.  It was a little cool and a little windy, but with the sun it made sitting outside not too cold and not too hot.

Heading back down the coast.  Where we had lunch is way back there behind that kind of whitish hill in the center.

There's the rock by Calpe, looking at it from a different angle.  It's a LOT bigger than we had thought.

The beach on the east side of Calpe.  Not the beach to which we took Andrew and Eva's parents.  And we're glad we didn't go to this beach with them.  The water here was a smooth as glass and kind of looked more like a lake.

Well, we had been curious about how this beach looked and now we know.  The beaches on the other side of Calpe are way better.

We saw these two sea gulls in top of an old palm tree stump.  They were incredibly loud with their calls!

A view down to the beach-lake in Calpe.

This was such a pretty little walk down to the beach.

No waves in sight!