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!

Windy Saturday!

We had breakfast here the other day

The place has a nice name, cute location on a tree lined street, but the food there wasn't anything we'd clamor to go back for.

And another day, we had lunch at this place.  The restaurant is called Mim's and we had been saying for a while, even when we were here back in 2011/2012 - we should try that place.  But for some reason we never did.   Now we are so glad we did.  The view from where we sat was beautiful and the food was absolutely delicious.

We were going to take a drive up the coast today but we're too tired.  We were up a good part of the night hearing the wind HOWLING outside.  It was shaking the pot on the window outside, which made quite a racket.  And the whistle of the wind at the windows was loud!  So, we stayed home, washed some clothes and they are out there on the line being whipped around.  We don't remember winds this strong and lasting this long.  At least it's a beautiful clear sunny day.

It's cold....

The warm weather is over for sure.  It's cold now although not all THAT bad, really.  It's just that the house has gotten cold inside and it stays that way.  And seeing as how we can't have many heaters going at one time, all we can do is heat up just the room we are in at the moment.  The only time the weather feels decent outside is when the sun is shining.  We've had more cloudy rainy days lately, so it has felt a lot cooler.

AND, we had no hot water last night.  In an effort to try to make a few more rooms a little warmer, we thought we'd try to use the gas heaters that were installed in this house last year.   That must have coincided with 3 of the gas bottles running out because as we were washing the dinner dishes last night, all of a sudden the water turned cold.  Bad sign.  So, not knowing at the time that it was because the bottles of gas had run out, we thought it had something to do with not knowing exactly how the water heater for the heating system should be set up.  Anyway, no showers for us last night.  Today, Guillermo kept going downstairs and checking this and messing with that and finally he came upstairs one time, tried the hot water and there was hot water!!!  What great news that was.  We have decided to just forget about those gas heaters and deal with the cold exactly the way we did back in 2011 - when things were way worse around here.  The windows and doors leaked terribly then and when it was windy outside, you could see the curtains swaying.  Well, with the new windows and patio door, there is no cold air that can get in that way.  And we have the little electric heater already that we didn't get until several days later back in 2011.  So we survived back in 2011 under worse conditions so we can do it now when things are better.  Forget those gas heaters!!!

The Illeta tower

When we were in El Campello back in 2011 and 2012, we wanted to visit this tower but it was closed for repairs.   We heard that they opened it at the end of 2012 but we had already left.

So, now that we're here in 2014, a goal of ours was to see this tower.  We found out that it can only be seen with a guided tour once a month so we signed up for November's date of November 8th.

As we were driving to El Campello, we saw dark clouds in the distance which was a surprise since the forecast had been for a nice sunny day.  Anyway, the visit to the tower was great and we were glad to finally have been able to see it.

Some pictures of our visit to the tower.  In this first picture we had just climbed up a bunch of metal steps placed there because back then they made their little watch towers with the entrance way high up.  Bck then, they used a rope ladder to go up and when they were up, they rolled the ladder back up inside so no one else could get in.

The view from inside looking out that same door towards the metal steps.

Then once inside, we climbed a very narrow, dark, high-stepped stairway to the top of the castle.  They built the stairway that way just in case someone got in because it would have been very hard to defend yourself inside that narrow stairway.  The stairway curved to the right, so any intruder would have had to have any weapon in their left hand, which was supposed to make it harder to lash out.
A view of the marina as we're going up the stairway.

Several views from the top looking out on El Campello.

Looking north up the coast

 

We walked out with Andrew (when he was here) on one of those jetties that you can just barely see sticking out into the water in the upper left.

Here we all are listening to the guide

And there's the tower that we climbed!

As we left when the tour was over, it started to rain so it was perfect timing.  Sitting here at home, doing this post for the blog, it is raining quite hard every now and then.  It is definitely an inside day for the rest of this day!

The last of the pictures from Guillermo's camera

First we have pictures of when we visited the Botanical Gardens in Brussels, Belgium.  This place truly was an oasis amidst all the hustle and bustle.  Being that it WAS in the center of a big city, the only downside was the constant sound of ambulance or police sirens going by.

Now we're in Spain and enjoying a visit with Tomas and Berit.
In Calpe  

At the Sax Castle

There we are with the 3 other girls (in the background) that came in the castle with us.  They were good, always keeping us in sight and making sure they let us know when they left.  They guy who came in with us was more elusive and we never did see him leave, which concerned us a little since we had the key and were in charge of locking the place up.

At the castle in Guadalest