Seville6 – yet 2 more museums!

Final day in Seville.  Squeezing 2 more museums in.  Archeological museum and museum of modern culture.  Both were a fun quick visit.  But first we stopped by the Plaze de Espana, which was built for the 1929 Iberian Trade.  It’s a huge semi-circle building with a semi-circular moat in the middle where gondola-like boat rides were once available.  Now the moat is dry, but with multi-million euro renovations slated to finish in the fall, the moat will soon be full again. 

The archeological museum was our first visit.  We enjoyed seeing the puzzles that the archeologists put back together, filling in with epoxy (the darker yellow) whenever pieces were missing…

Here’s a similar tablet, in this case the darker grey showing where they were missing pieces.  Reminded me of the 15 commandments in Mel Brook’s History of the World. 

As I’m sure you can imagine, the younger kids were getting rambunxious so I incorporated them into my shots of relics whenever I could…

Despite the look on Zeke’s face above, he really was enjoying this museum.  He demanded taking several shots of the Greek gods and explained to me that Hermes and Mercury are really the same God, one the Greek name and the other the Roman. 

The next museum had more modern collections, including a display throughout the years of the famous white pigeons of the local park.  They had pictures of multiple generations getting photos taken with the pigeons.  This was a photo of an older gentleman holding a much younger photo of himself and his sister posing with the pigeons at the square… Obviously one of his fond memories.

Afterwards we decided to make some more pigeon memories ourselves, having already chased through them on the way in.

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We called it a day and headed back to the hotel to watch Bob de Sponge.  (NOTE: the kids correct me here.  They are no longer watching Sponge Bob but have moved onto Phineas and Ferb).

Tomorrow morning we leave the hot temps of Seville with a train ride to the relatively cool Mediterranean coast.  High today according to the thermometer outside our hotel 44 celsius at 4:45 pm.  Google tells me that’s 111.2 fahrenheit!!!

Temperature update.  I wanted to see what it was like to run in that kind of heat, so I went out later.  The temperature was registering as 46!!! I’m sure it wasn’t 46 everywhere in the city, but on that stretch of sidewalk with the sun beating down all day and no breeze to sweep the heat away, the heat stored in the stone and sidewalk and road was adding to the heat of the sun sort of like a convection oven.  And I was the turkey about to go for a run.  The run out was actually great, I ran through 2 shaded parks and stayed in the shade of buildings nearly the whole time, then I noticed my left calf cramping up as it has the last few days and had to stop and stretch.  The cramp kept getting worse and soon I was nearly hobbling down the sidewalk.  That was the end of my run as I walked the rest of the way home.  I noticed my thighs were noticeably hot to the touch.  I guess that’s what it’s like to run in that kind of heat.  Especially if I’m not conditioned for it.

Seville5 – Saturday - Alcazar

I think we need a complete down day.  Luckily we are only 2 days away from our beachfront weeklong hangout.  The Alcazar, a moorish castle, which is supposed to be the jewel of Seville was mostly a bust in my eyes.  Perhaps it was because we got a late start yet again and visited in the heat of the day and unlike yesterday’s cathedral, the Alcazar offered little escape from the heat.  Lots of interesting architecture, room after room of it.   With a few paintings and trinkets in between, but few gems for the kids.

A couple of highlights

1) The water reservoir converted to a decorative pond with huge carp

2) the garden maze that for the most part kept us out of the heat

That’s about it.  The heat was just too much today.  We saw 38 celsius when we left the hotel at 6:30 pm, which means the high was probably 40+.  That’s 104 fahrenheit plus!  Tomorrow’s high is a predicted 104 fahrenheit too.  YIKES!

I’m relieved to see the highs in Fuengirola, our next stop, are literally 20 degrees fahrenheit cooler!

We made it back to the hotel without melting and settled in for Siesta.  I listened to a radio station on the TV as I attempted to doze off….

Smooth Operator – Sade.

Video killed the radio star – The Buggles

Wouldn’t it be good – Nik Kershaw

Nothing like a good 80’s station to put me in a melancholic mood.  I’m starting to fear returning back to life as we know it.  The hecticness of it all, and the continual march of time.  Wasn’t the 80’s just yesterday?  Soon the kids will be grown and gone.  Enjoy them while you can, right?

Zeke, Jane, Maeve and I rounded up groceries at the store down the block.  Zeke doing some serious extra-credit Spanish language work to get mom an ice cold diet Pepsi.  Here’s Maeve enjoying her desert and Theo showing his full tummy in the background…

Later the 2 of them getting each other clean…

Seville4 – Friday – the Cathedral

Quick Breakfast and a 7 minute walk to the cathedral.  We got one audio tour for the adults and one for the kids.  I had to laugh when Zeke said his audio tour told him “you are in a church, you must behave”.  I didn’t get that same scolding.  The audio tours were useful, but it did get to be redundant.  This is so-and-so’s tomb decorated in the so-and-so style by so-and-so in the year of so-and-so.  Too much for me to remember.  It was still fascinating to see all of it.  Some things stood out…

1) We found our first public drinking fountain!!!  I was amazed and it was even cold.  It definitely deserved a photo… with the lack of bubblers, we’ve been packing water like a camel in the desert.  Trying to keep the kids on that perfect point between hydrated and needing to go bathroom too often.  There’s definitely an art to it.

2) The tomb of Christopher Columbus!

It’s been interesting to me to get a more Spanish point of view on the Americas.  Spain conquered all of Latin and Central America and took much of the riches they found there.  Hence all the Spanish spoken there.  Seville was the center of commerce to the Americas in the 16th century.

3) The Treasury, where Maeve and Theo each posed in front of their favorite piece

The treasury also contained a crown for the Virgin Mary with the 2nd largest pearl in the world on it.  Zeke later pointed out that it’s the 2nd largest known pearl, i.e. there may be larger pearls not yet discovered in some part of the ocean.

4) The expanse and spaciousness and cool protected feeling of such a massive cathedral.  If I were a peasant living in the heat of the streets and I were offered the opportunity to enter such an extravagant cathedral and feel the ostentatiousness of it all, the protection from the heat, the spaciousness, the wealth collected from the Americas… I’d definitely buy whatever they were selling.  In this case, Christianity.  It’s a little overwhelming.

5) Really old graffiti.  Here’s one we spotted from May 30 1934…

5) An empty portico where some priceless work of art once stood.  Zeke felt obligated to fill the missing piece.  Yes, Zeke is priceless…

6) We ascended the 34 ramps (not stairs, because they would ride their horses up to ring the bells to call the people to worship) and got a shot of the bell tower.

And a view over the town including the orange tree courtyard.

We finished the day by exchanging some money.  Maeve found a fan that she loves…  and that matches her Spain World Cup jersey.

Seville3 – Thursday - bus tour

I got back from my run and the troops were already awake.  We stopped at the breakfast buffet, fueled up, and headed out to find our hop on/hop off double decker bus stop after some hasty directions from the concierge.  Kate asked a couple more people in the street and got us where we needed to be fairly quickly.  One of the workers at the bus spoke very good English so we hit him up with extra questions, including which bus to take to get us to the train station for our ride 3 days out to Malaga.  He was incredibly helpful. We found out that our 24 hour ticket was extended to 48 hour ticket and also that two walking tours were included.  We rode the full loop once just to see the sights.  The hop ons and offs were a little few and far between.  Only 4 of them on the entire loop and the route only skirted the old downtown so few true areas of interest to hop off at that we couldn’t walk to.  One area of interest we certainly wouldn’t have seen without the bus was the 1992 World’s fair exposition along the river.  On the first loop through I’d noticed how unused it was, almost defunct.  The recorded commentary said that businesses were starting to reuse the buildings and transform the area into a technological center.  Sure, right.  We’d read that there was heavy politics to get the exposition to Seville in 1992, because Seville was suffering from severe unemployment at that point.  The building of the centers for the exposition were certainly a boom for the city, but unfortunately the city was evidently unable to maintain much of it and left many of the buildings go.

  We walked through some nice gardens that were still being maintained, but unfortunately we were the only people there besides the maintenance workers.

  We did see three local teens come down to the park and start swimming off the pier, but that was about it.

  Maybe it was simply the heat of the day and the park is more used in the evening.    I’ll be curious to see if the same has happened in Barcelona with all the infrastructure they built for the Olympic games.  We were now in the heat of the day as we walked past more unused buildings, reaching our bus stop just as one of our buses was pulling out.  About 30 minutes later, one of ours pulled up.  Luckily we had a spot of shade to wait in and the kids were happy enough pretending to play soccer with a brown dried out orange while seated in the shade.  

We arrived back at our initial departure point.  I’d hoped to stop back at the restaurant abutting our hotel, but poor behavior on the bus by the boys meant we were heading back to the hotel.  We ate the remainder of our groceries from the day before and took siesta.  Kate attempted to solve our Travellers Checques woes over the phone.  While out looking for a Western Union for them to wire our cash too, I bumped into an ATM and thought I’d give my worn out card another try.  This machine was sensitive enough to read it and I returned with what felt like a fistful of cash.  After Zeke and Jane awoke from siesta we walked to the nearest grocery and got supper.  I attempted to get a nice 5 euro bottle of wine for Kate and but accidentally bought the fizzy wine.  Yes carbonated wine.  Oh well, maybe it’ll taste better when it goes flat.  Tomorrow the cathedral.  the largest gothic cathedral in the world.

Seville2 – Wednesday - Flamenco

We wanted to head out and finally settle a few things today.  First was our phone, which evidently did not get setup correctly at the train station in Madrid.  Second was our Travellers Checques fun!!  After a quick buffet breakfast the lady at the front desk pointed us in the direction of the Orange SIM card store.  It wasn’t too far off the beaten path and was in the old city, a place we wanted to explore anyway.  Zeke, mapman, took the map and lead us through the maze, and I’m not kidding when I say maze, of streets.  There’s not a single one of them going in the same direction as another.  It’s as if it were a big jig-saw puzzle.  The nice thing about the always clear skies in Spain and in particular in Seville is that you can ALWAYS roughly get your direction just by which side of the street is shaded.  Without that or a map… utterly lost.  Zeke found the Orange store easy enough and Kate attempted the transaction while the kids and I waited outside playing I Spy.  The only rule… It can’t be on a person as this was the heavy pedestrian zone and all sorts of folk were streaming by.  As we played we noticed a man with a big backpack sit down on the corner of the street directly opposite us.  He looked to his left A LOT, and looked to his right A LOT.  Then finally decided to throw down a tarp on the street corner and started dragging Hand Fans and Belts out of his bag and putting them on display.  The kids were curious to know why he was looking around so much.  I already had my suspicions.  In a little while, we noticed him grab all ends of his tarp and within a matter of seconds disappear down a side alley.  Less then a minute later 2 Policia walked by completely oblivious to his presence.  Jane went over to see if he’d dropped anything in his haste to depart, and peered down the alley.  Sure enough he was standing just a bit down the alley looking casual and soon setup on the corner again.  Within 10 minutes he had to vamoose again as a policia car drove by.  Again he returned after a bit and set up shop.  This time he became more bold and laid out his sunglasses as well.  I was thinking, that’s one heck of a way to make a living.  He did make a couple of sales in the 30 minutes we watched him.  Kate came out flushed with success having navigated the process of refueling our SIM card minutes completely in Spanish.  She’s good! 

Our 2nd task didn’t go as well and nearly ended our fun altogether.  After several banks turning us down and each teller referring us to another bank “only a few minutes walk away” that also turned us down, including a bank with exchange rates posted right by the door we more or less melted down.  Our final attempt was a store credit card and exchange window inside a mall.  They explained that things weren’t working but might be working again by 3.  We decided to hang out awhile in the air conditioning and get something to drink, then see if things were working again. I successfully asked the door lady whether they had a restaurant and she directed us up the escalator to the 5th floor.  Zeke pulled out his Spanish and asked if they take Visa.  Si.  We sat at the bar and got an expensive lemonade slushie for each of the kids.  We bought a few necessities, like more sunscreen.  It wasn’t yet 3 and the exchange still wasn’t working so we headed back out into the heat trying to pick streets that had shade on one side or another.  We’d travelled quite a distance in our search for money, so the trek back was not short and everyone was exhausted, physically and mentally.  I was thankful that the break in the mall seemed to refresh Theo and Maeve well enough that they weren’t demanding a ride.  Closer to our hotel we bumped into a SuperSol, one of their supermarkets and bought some fruit and milk for lunch. The supermarket is a great place to build your vocabulary.  We then headed back to the hotel with our haul of groceries for lunch and Siesta. 

The kids didn’t exactly Siesta unfortunately, and filled their heads with more Disney Channel in Spanish of course.  I headed for the lobby for internet access to post a few blogs.  Later they came down semi-refreshed and we decided to head out and see what trouble we could find.  Kate remembered seeing Los Gallos (the roosters) Flamenco show on our walk home from the grocery.  It had come highly recommended from our Seattle friends, Mark, Jo and Laura (thanks guys!!!).  It was incredible.  We found the early show started at 8 and since it was nearly 7:15 already we were worried about finding food in time to get back to the show.  We decided to hustle back to the hotel and eat the remainder of our groceries, change into our “dress” clothes

and made it back with minutes to spare.  Theo and Maeve were semi-entertained.  Theo noticed how loud some of the dancing was and would rate the dancers by loudness.  And Maeve would clap along when others clapped, but the rest of us were enthralled.  I remember the first dancer coming out.  A small petite lady, but she had so much energy and passion.  We did notice a relationship between the size of the lady and the loudness of her stomp.  The poor petite lady was loud but barely registered compared to some of the others.  Still her technique was fantastic and just amazing to watch as were all the others.  The 2 hour show went by too quickly.  We headed home feeling like we’d salvaged a wasted day.  No, better than salvaged; the flamenco dancing had elevated the day to one of our favorites.

Seville1 – Tuesday - transport day

We wanted to get up early and find breakfast somewhere before heading up the rock in the cable car, which started at 9:30.  At checkout Kate noticed that the breakfast buffet was included, so we stored our luggage and doubled back up to the 8th floor.  In between bites, I kept on the kids to keep eating so that we could make it to the cable cars for the first ride up.  The day was still very foggy, and I began to fear that we’d picked a bad day.  But by the time we rode halfway up the Rock,

we were already beginning to see the sun force the fog and clouds back out to sea. (that’s the Spanish side of the bay behind the kids in the above photo) The seagulls also seemed to disappear with the cover.  The ride up was a quick 6 minutes, and deposited us at a man made viewing area with multiple tiers, a pre-recorded tour guide pointed out present and historical sites in all directions.

Quite fascinating.  That little bitty object straight above the left brim of Jane’s cap is one of those HUGE cruise ships.  The kids, especially Maeve and Theo, were more fascinated by the monkeys. 

The only species of monkey known to live on the Mediteranean.  Some 200 of them on the rock of Gibraltar, and some thousands more in Africa.  There were stern signs to not feed the monkeys or face a 500 Euro fine, and also numerous warnings to keep your distance from the monkeys lest they bite.  Despite all of this we saw a monkey get a tourist’s potato chips and another’s fruit loops cereal.  They were fun to watch but soon became a bit of an irritant for mom/dad as we needed to keep the troops moving in order to make it back to the hotel and onto a bus for our 3 pm train and the kids merely wanted to watch the monkeys..  After learning of the history of Gibraltar, where the Brits claimed they were forced to take the port in order to avoid the French combining with Spain via a royal marriage and upsetting the balance of power in Europe (history is always written by the victor, isn’t it?), and learning of the great Siege by the Spanish and French on the Brits during the time when they were fighting against the US in our Revolutionary war, and their ingenious rain collection system that helped them withstand any siege, we moved on to St Michael’s Cave.  These natural caves were long known on the rock and are so accoustically sound that they regularly have concerts within them.

  In 1942, as they were blasting tunnels, they accidentally blasted open a hole in St. Michael’s cave that exposed even deeper caverns below.  The military history of Gibraltar was fascinating.  During the great Siege (at the time of the American Revolution), the Spanish sent 500 troops up the backside of the rock guided by a sheep herder.  They went into St. Michael’s cave to lay and surprise the Brits, but were soon discovered and taken prisoner.  The British still hold Gibraltar, of course, and it’s quite a source of contention between  the Spanish and the British.  You can tell it’s quite the sunny resort town escape for the British.  During World War II there was thought that Hitler would attempt to take Gibraltar.  Despite Spain’s claims of neutrality in WW II the Italians had manually guided torpedoes setup on the opposite side of Gibraltar Bay, Algeciras, that were able to penetrate the steel torpedo nets protecting the British ships and sink many of them.  Losing Gibraltar during WW II, would have been a huge blow against the allied forces.  At the WWII tunnels museum we learned that there were more than 30 miles of tunnels cut into Gibraltar rock, more than all the streets outside the rock.  Most of those tunnels were made during World War II.  Many of the tunnels large enough to drive vehicles through.  The majority of the stone that was taken out was used to build an airport that is still used today.  The average day of a soldier serving in Gibraltar was 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of guard duty, and 8 hours of hauling rock.  6 soldiers volunteered to seal themselves in a special vault.  In case the Germans ever took the rock, they could then sneak out and spy on their operations.  Luckily Spain, who had just finished a bloody civil war under Franco, remained neutral and the rock remained in British hands.  That’s just a bit of the history I can remember from the Rock.  It was fascinating.  At the WWII tunnels, the man could tell I was fascinated with things so he ran to get me a website where I could read more…RockAndFortress.com .The downside of the rock was all the walking.  Especially the run from the south side downhill to the north side.  All total, a little over a mile.  And continuously having to step aside for the tour vans that crowded us.  Here you see one of them with a monkey hitching a ride…

  Luckily it was still in the shade as the sun was still rising in the east and we were on the west facing side of the rock.  But the kids were REAL TROOPERS to do all the walking we did that day.  We checked out the Great Siege tunnels, and the WWII tunnels and the Moorish castle, spending less and less time at each attraction mostly due to the fact that we were worried about making our bus ride in time.  The sped matters along at the Moorish castle when nature called and we cut things extra short.  Again we needed to use God’s public bathroom behind a car.  Jane and I couldn’t help but notice how much Theo reminded us of the monkey we’d seen earlier, just sitting in the path with a big water mark emanating from where he sat and trickling slowly down the hill.   Both Theo and the monkey haven’t yet learned to face downhill when using the great outdoors.  We then found our way back down the hill on steep street that led us out near our hotel.  Actually, one of the numerous tour drivers that was zooming by us as we walked noticed us walking down a road in town, and pointed out stairs just a few feet away that allowed us to short-cut the zig zag roads that would’ve undoubtedly taken another 20 minutes. 

We made it back to the hotel and let the kids relax in the cool hotel lobby for a few minutes while Kate and I gathered the luggage.  Karen, the lady at the counter with the most charming British accent and demeanor warned us that a cruise ship had just arrived and said we’d be better off heading out on a bus.  She pointed us toward the number 3.  With yet a little more walking, this time under the full weight of all our luggage, we made the bus stop and rode out of town.  A little more walk across the border into La Linea and up a couple of blocks to the bus station, where Kate rewarded the kids with some icy pops, after they ate some healthy fruit, of course! 

I’d planned to nap some on the 6 hour bus ride to Seville, but the country side was so fascinating that I couldn’t.  Though the kids all crashed fairly quickly…

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The bus actually went straight back to the Algeciras bus stop and then further down along the Mediteranean coast to Tarifa.  The drive took us to high vantage points over the Strait of Gibraltar where we could see all the boats travelling along the straight and clearly see Africa on the other side.  Surprising how narrow the strait is at points. 

Nearing Tarifa the strait begins to widen and soon Africa disappears.  Tarifa turns out to be the Wind Surfing and Kite Surfing capital of the world.  Having the advantage of a near constant 3 to 4 mile hour wind and beautiful coastline.  There were 2 bays on the coast where I estimated 200 to 300 kites in the air and probably nearly as many sail boarders.  I got this shot as the bus sped by…

Would’ve been a fun day to sit at the beach and just watch their antics.  Looks like many bought into the lifestyle, as there were many RVs parked in the numerous campgrounds along that coast.  If it’s not horribly difficult, I’m now hoping I get a chance to try Kite surfing or Sail Boarding, whichever is easiest, when we hit Fuengirola. 

What I’d read as a 6 hour bus ride turned into a 4 hour bus ride.  Finally a mistake in my favor!  The bus station also turned out to be quite close to our hotel.  One of our easiest walks yet.  Maybe things were finally beginning to go our way.  After we checked into our hotel, we stepped out for a bite to eat.  Opting for a family restaurant/bar abutting our hotel.  The owner was quite patient as Kate made her way through the menu.  Kate told the owner something about majer… best menu of the day that we’d found on our whole trip.  Maeve definitely agreed!

At the end of the meal he noticed that I was cutting more fruit off the fruit he’d pre-sliced for Theo.  Actually, Theo had been cutting more off and I took it away from him to prevent him hurting himself.  We thought he rattled something out about getting us another slice of fruit, and as we hesitated about whether we should leave or wait, sure enough a fresh slice.  Looks like Seville will be our town.  Then a quick walk in the park, cut short by Maeve needing to find a bathroom.  We were only across the street from our hotel, so we hustled back.  But again good fortune struck and we bumped into our first pay toilet.  The bad fortune, no .20 Euro coin.  Theo’d gotten a wallet, actually coin pouch, in Rhonda and had been waiting for any opportunity to spend it.  He lept at the opportunity to help Maeve.

But alas, we were foiled by the machine, which despite us watching a boy walk out of, would only say occupied and not take Theo’s coin.  So we headed back to the hotel anyway, and stayed in for the night.  Theo still gets credit for his chivalry.  At the hotel, the kids enjoying their favorite,  Bob de Sponge in Spanish, of course.

Gibraltar1 – Monday – Rooftop pool

Another travel day.  Destination Gibraltar, the southern tip of Spain. We woke early (7:30) and had our final excellent buffet breakfast and headed out for our walk to the train station with a few pit stops along the way.  Even though we crossed the new bridge, Maeve made no mention of death, maybe the edge had worn off.  The kids were once again great troopers as we trekked across the city uphill toward the station with luggage in tow.  Kate picked up her personal battle with travellers checques once again.  Stopping at a bank that flatly refused to deal with her and was extremely rude and rushed having no patience for her.  We found also that the bus station was rude and impatient.  Kate later tried 3 different banks, all of them refusing her transaction and not in a polite way either.  Seems the business crowd of Spain is much less polite than the tourist crowd.  I guess that stands to reason, but a little bit of a let down. 

We waited at the train station for our 10 am train, as the time was getting closer we headed outside to the platforms.  There were plenty of signs with all kinds of numbers on them, so it wasn’t exactly obvious which platform we were at.  Kate and I checked the schedule and found 3 trains coming in near the same time, both of us thinking how could those 3 trains all arrive and depart so quickly.  That and a fellow traveler asking us whether he was on the right platform, made us realize that we should double check our platform.  Sure enough, we were in the wrong spot.  And had to cross under to platform 3.

The train ride was touted to be one of the most beautiful in all of Spain.  It followed a river bed for awhile and crossed through some tunnels at points as it wound through some minor mountains, but honestly a drive in the country south of Verona is more beautiful.  Besides Kate slept through it.  We arrived in Algeciras, a town on the opposite side of the bay, as planned.  The second to last stop was listed as La Linea – P___, so it was likely we could’ve gotten off there and taxi’d to the border (I’d like to research this one I get back), but I decided to stay with our original plan.  Likely the original plan cost us at least an hour, as we had to get our bearings, find the bus stop,

navigate purchasing a ticket at the bus stop (which turned out to be just buying a ticket with the driver), and get stuck in major traffic at points, especially leaving Algeciras and entering LaLinea as we headed for the Gibraltar border.  And unfortunately this was not the direct route, so we stopped at every bus stop along the way.  And there were quite a few.  Finally the bus arrived at the LaLinea bus stop.  All the kids but Theo were sleeping.  We then had to walk the luggage an unknown distance toward the border.  Turned out the distance was only half a mile or so.  But the heat of the day was beginning to pick up.  Customs was easy, and we bumped into the number 9 bus which stopped at the edge of the center of Gibraltar.  I hadn’t yet gotten our bearings on the map, and had to get off with all our luggage in order to let other passengers off.  One of the passengers said this was the last stop for the number 9, so we all jumped off. A long hot walk uphill.  All in all, we arrived at our hotel around 2:10.  We walked into the lobby and the first thing that struck all of us was the cool air conditioning.

The second was the very welcome sounds of the Queen’s English.  The kids thought the room was cool as there was a connecting room between us, and especially liked the 8th floor rooftop pool.  We dropped our things then headed out for a bite to eat.  The hunger pangs were setting into Kate again and she forced a decision.  The place we happened to be standing in front of at that point served fish and chips, the meal everyone was interested in getting.  I noticed later that almost ever place served fish and chips.  The waitress warned us that the kids meals were small servings and had few chips, but she said they could bring extras.  The portions were huge especially for kids meals, so I had to help finish the chips.  A little girl wondered over to us and started talking to us offering her Nintendo DS.  She was 4 years old, the same as Maeve. 

Her mother said she was not shy.  I suspect that she’s the reason some of the regulars come back.  I know I’d come back just to visit her.  With the remainder of our day we decided to bus out to the Southern edge of Gibraltar to see if we could see Africa.   On the way we stumbled into a fortification that had been converted into a bowling alley, movie theater and Ice skating rink.  Quite a combination and nothing I’d expect to see in Spain, but in Gibraltar.  Sure, why not.  The bowling alley was by far the nicest bowling alley I’d ever seen.  We found the bus stop, and rode out to Europa Point.  The ride also gave us our bearings for the cable car we hoped to hop onto the next day.  We hopped off the bus, and sure enough there was Africa in the distance and large boats all over.  Almost looked like a traffic jam at sea.  After a quick snapshot of Africa and the family (if you look very closely you can see Africa just above Jane’s head on Zeke’s side),

we hopped back onto the bus and headed back to the hotel.  We hit the 8th floor pool for some family fun . Checking out the view, it turned out we wouldn’t have had to head to Europa Point to see Africa.  We could see it and the harbor from our hotel roof.

  We then headed back down to the room around 8 for a late (but early by Spanish standards) supper.  The kids wanted pizza, so I walked around town looking for a pizza joint that took Visa.  There were few pizza joints and even viewer that took Visa.  A barmaid near the bowling alley gave me the tip I needed.  A pizza hut at the entrance to the city.  That’ll do.  Hope they take Visa.  They did, and 25 mnutes later I was heading back the successful meatlovers pizza hunter/gatherer.  I’d even rounded up an ice cold can of diet pepsi for Kate.  I dropped the food at the hotel and rushed up to the rooftop to see what was left of the sunset.  Mostly it was gone, but  the large boats were beginning to turn their lights on and decorated the harbor.  The seagulls were also becoming quite numerous as the temperatures dropped. 

Ronda4 – Sunday – Jane’s Bday

We gave Jane the option of a trail ride in Ronda or a morning sitting on the cliff-side just listening to the sounds again and watching the shadow of Ronda retreat quickly across the valley below.  She weighed her options and decided that the horse ride would be too slow (now that she always cantors) and possibly too hot.  So she opted for morning listening with Zeke and Dad.  Again things didn’t go as planned (notice a theme here?), as we’d locked the kids in their room for safety, but I was unable to wake them when I woke up at 6:30.  And couldn’t get their attention until around 8.  We decided to go anyway, and had fun despite our late start.

  Hearing many of the same sounds we’d heard the day before but also a few new ones, including the loud sound of the bells on a herd of sheep as they were led by a farmer and his dogs across the field.  Janie also seems to have hit her zone as she claimed that she heard the sound of dandelion fluff floating by and a dung beetle walking on a pile of poop.  Zeke protested Jane’s claim, but I helped guide him to just appreciate the humor of her claim and give the birthday girl some leeway. 

After 3 rounds of listening, we headed back up the hill.  Jane and Zeke were back on their man-goat kick.  Zeke was awarding Jane a new goat rank.  I just enjoyed them pretending with each other.  We made it back to the hotel before Kate, Theo and Maeve awoke.  We waited a bit then woke them to head for breakfast, stuffed a little extra food in our to-go bag and went upstairs to pack for the birthday girl’s wish of going to a pool on her birthday.  Yes, that very same pool that wasn’t exactly on site.  The walk over was hot but only took 30 minutes.  When we arrived Kate navigated the front window leaving us with only 4 Euros to our name.  The pool was cold.  But we quickly acclimated and had mucho fun.  We were playing monkey in the middle with a ball we’d bought at the airport, when I noticed a girl about Janie’s age watching us. I asked Zeke to ask her if she wanted to play.  She blew a bunch of quickly spoken Spanish back at us, and I was left only to grin and mime my conversations.  With Zeke’s help, she quickly got the idea and spent the rest of the day hanging out with Jane and mostly Zeke as he could speak Spanish.  At one point she threw our frisbee over the wall and Zeke said no problem I’ll get it (in Spanish).  She quickly added in that she would go along to get it.  They ran out together and were out of sight for 3 or 4 minutes… long enough for both sets of parents to start getting nervous.  Later she kept asking Zeke for help getting out of the pool, then once he gave a hand, would pull him into the pool.  He’d pop out, and she’d ask for help again.  I couldn’t understand a single word she was saying, but I know she was promising that she wouldn’t trick him again.  But sure enough, in he’d go.  He finally said he would not help her and made me help her out instead.  It was a fun afternoon and great to cross the boundaries of language, especially for Zeke.  I can see his Spanish jumping ahead at light speed.  We finished the afternoon with some light sunburns on Theo and I, but others seemed to have gotten through unscathed.  It was a delightful afternoon of fun and downtime.  Maeve, throughout the entire day, kept singing Feliz Cumpleanos a si  (happy birthday to you).  Think she may be progressing with her Spanish too!

After our picnic and more water fun we packed up our things and headed back to the hotel.  Maeve was singing ‘Is she really going out with him’, the song we’d all had stuck in our head since the street performer at the Palace in Madrid, and we sung what we remembered of it the whole way home. Back at home we had some healthy food, then Kate pulled out Janie’s authentic Spanish birthday cake and Maeve lead off more Feliz Cumpleanos.

  Then once again in English.  Some neat Spanish presents (thanks mom), a little movie time and off to bed for an early start heading out of town to Gibraltar on a 10 am train.

Ronda3 – Saturday – Down Day

We planned a hike down the side of the hill with all the kids, circling around to the backside of the old city and coming up a much more gradual slope.  Of course, as with most of our plans, things didn’t go exactly as planned.  We woke an hour later than we’d hoped, and given that we needed to return to our hotel before 11 am, we decided to shorten our route, which meant returning back UP the hillside.  The first stretch of path was fairly maintained, with flat stones mortared into a large downward sloping sidewalk.  Zeke immediately noticed a hot air balloon in the sky (centered directly in the below picture)

Not too far after leaving the maintained path we bumped into a couple from Seattle.  Kate offered to help take their photo in exchange for them taking ours.

  Our hotel is just to the right of the bridge, directly above Theo.  The path itself quickly became more rugged than Kate was looking for, and she and Maeve decided to wait at one point.  I had explored the path the morning before when I went for my run and had a specific destination further down the side path I wanted the kids to see.  It was an old electric building.  Possibly for generating electricity.  Too old and dilapidated to tell.  But the water had been diverted unnaturally and ran through the basement of the building and there was a sign on the building that implied electric company.  So that’s the story we’re going with.  Evidently we were so far off the beaten path that at one point we found graffiti from 10 Julio, 1909.  That was a strange sight.  At the edge of the building the water sprayed out like a mini waterfall.  We had to go through the waterfall  in order to get through the front door of the building and in the process get a little wet.  Theo, of course, wanted to get wet.  So that wasn’t a problem. He got wetter than I’d hoped.  Janie did great taking her time and finding good footing so as not to fall.  While Zeke and Theo claimed they were ‘Man Goats’ and danced down the loose rock strewn path.  After passing into the building, we found some stairs that went down to the cellar.  Near the bottom of the stairs was another back door that led further on, but only a few more paces.   As the cliff then fell off rather sharply.  So we took turns looking out through the leaves of the dense undergrowth into the deep canyon below and turned around and headed back up to find Kate and Maeve waiting.   Maeve had decided that she didn’t actually want to wait with mom, and was upset that she wasn’t part of the fun.  So while the others headed back up the path, she and I went back down.  I took the opportunity to travel further down the stream created by the diverted waterfall and found the water flowing out the bottom of the building and into a series of obviously man-made canals or troughs.  Interesting.  Maeve and I decided we’d had our fun and headed back to catch up with the others.  Along the way one of the boys noticed Snails clinging to the rocks.  In fact, nearly embedded in the rocks.  Odd, since at that point there wasn’t a lot of moisture left from the stream.  More exposed in the heat of the day. But evidently they must’ve gathered enough moisture in the evening night and morning to survive the hot days.  We veered right at a branch in the path on the run back up to check out another view.  The kids and I walked up a more modern arch and sat at the rear edge of the arch facing the valley. 

We could see for miles and could hear dogs barking to our right.  Three farmers, who minutes before had been working in the shade of Rhonda were now continuing their labors in the direct sunlight.  We played a quick game of what can you hear.  Zeke set his watch at 2 minutes and the 5 of us each listened for every sound we could pick up.  Then starting from the youngest we excitedly shared our finds.  Maeve had heard the dogs, and a farmer striking something, and others.  Theo had heard a bird flapping his wings as it took off behind us, a man riding a motorcycle, and others.  Janie had heard a bale fall off of a wagon and the driver jumping out to reload it and a “horse'” to our right clearing its throat (actually it was mom), and actual horses to our left clopping in the soil.  The younger kids had pretty much gotten it all that Zeke and I could only add a generator running.  All this playing out below us in the matter of a couple minutes!  I also pointed out the answer to the riddle I’d posed to them the previous day after my morning run…  “What field is yellow in the morning but green in the early evening?”.  Answer a sunflower field, which there seemed to be plenty of in Spain.

After returning to the hotel, we enjoyed our terrific buffet breakfast meal, encouraging the kids to eat as much as possible.  The location of our hotel couldn’t have been better as we were 50 feet from the new bridge and 100 feet from the mines and only a few blocks from the steep hiking path.  The kids were indicating they’d seen enough hotels and had done enough walking for a few days, so we let them have some downtime watching Disney channel, all in Spanish of course, while Kate and I got through some tasks.  Namely, planning for Janie’s birthday party the following day, which included exchanging for some Euros, a routine activity for a Saturday, or so we thought!

Turns out most everything is open on Saturdays, EXCEPT banks.  And evidently all manned cambios, e.g. Western Union, leaving only ATMs open (abierto), for which we didn’t have a card.  Actually one of the 2 Western Unions was open, but the lady there just shook her head when I said cambio and showed her my Traveller’s Checques and US$.  Defeated by the Western Union,  I walked onto the pool that we’d learned of earlier when we naively asked where the pool was located in our hotel, expecting an answer something like go down to the 1st floor and hang a left upon leaving the elevator, instead the lady pulled out a map drew a long line and placed an X on the map.  My journey was to find the hours of operation, the cost, whether they were a kids pool or more of a lap swim pool and whether they were open the next day, ‘monllana’, for Janie’s birthday.  In this task I fared much better.  After I returned to the hotel without Euro, Kate decided to give it a go while the kids and I took a quick Siesta.  She fared no better than I, but did find a supermarcado that took Visa and stocked up on some supplies for Janie’s birthday picnic at the pool.  Upon her return, we finished our birthday plans with Jane and headed out.  Immediately across the new bridge was a gateway to the left that we wandered into to see more of the impressive bridge and deep gorge.  On the way across the bridge I shuffled ahead as I wanted to get Maeve’s “spontaneous” reaction on film.  The first day we’d crossed the bridge to the hotel in the heat of the day, the kids had been playing and walking on an almost continuous bench across the bridge.  It was broken only by wrought iron viewing areas that allowed you to look directly vertically down the bridge.  Maeve had been sing-songing her way across the piazza and onto the long bench on the bridge with me holding her hand, when suddenly she came to the wrought iron and she said ‘ahhhhh Death’ in her cute 4 year old voice, stopped for a few seconds breath, then started her sing-song again and continued dancing merrily along.  I was so amazed at the word she pulled out to describe the experience, because it was so absolutely accurate.  Your initial reaction, whether scared or not, is definitely one of self preservation.  She’s repeated this every  time we’ve crossed the bridge.  But it’s become less spontaneous.  It’s now more of a command performance since we’ve been repeatedly telling the story.

Directly across the bridge we turned left and into an area that allowed for further viewing of the bridge and gorge.  That’s where we met Ramone.  He was selling Mandala’s and 4 band puzzle rings, neither of which I had seen before.  And had such a charm to him that we enjoyed just watching him entertain us and mesmerize us with his toys.

  When the subject of kids came up, and how could’nt it with our 4, he said his 3 brothers that he’d grown up with in San Sebastian, Spain sharing one bicycle were all married and that he had ‘commitment-phobia’, and was even ‘scared’ of calling a girl a girlfriend.  Very likeable fellow.  He also told us that a couple years prior just 150 feet further back from the direction we’d come a man and wife were standing admiring the gorge, when the man leaned too far over when taking a photo, slipped and fell.  The wife returned home a widow.  Zeke cautioned me to be more careful as he wanted to return with both his parents.  About 30 or 40 minutes later, we were starting to feel actual hunger pangs, so attempted to finalize our purchase.  We explained we had only enough Euro left for our daughter’s birthday wish of going to the pool the next day and Ramone allowed us to pay in US$, which is surprisingly difficult to do in Spain! Maeve had become attached to the Orange Mandala, so we knew that was one of the ones we would purchase.  However, when it came time to purchase it, we could not find it.  We all stood there stumped for a moment until I asked Maeve if she knew were it was.  She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I put it in your pocket”.  I immediately laughed outloud and told Ramone.  He also laughed as I pulled it out of my front left pocket that was velcroed shut.  If money got any tighter, I thought, we could put Maeve to work picking pockets.  All the kids were happy with their purchases and we marched on each child playing with a Mandala.  And each of us enjoying the entertainment Ramone provided us with.

As the kids played with their mandalas, we walked on toward the bullring to see how the music stage was progressing, and bumped into our Seattle friends, with a third friend along with them.  We compared some notes and they said a highlight of their trip so far was a Flamenco show in Seville, recommending the Los Guyas (sp?) show but warning not to sit in the front row lest sawdust from the floor should fall into our food!  They sat in the 2nd row and even then some beads from the costumes made it to their table.  We promenaded on with Kate getting more and more desperate for food.  Finally, as we’d swung down a side-street, she said just pick one, I can’t even think straight anymore I’m so hungry.  Our food was good enough.  Zeke’s dogfish was very good and Kate’s Gazpacho was the best we’d found.  As we were finishing our meal the Seattle triple bumped into us once again.  I invited them to sit and we enjoyed conversation with them learning Mark and Jo were married three years now and that Jo’s sister Laura had come along with them.  It was fun to compare notes on children, travel, Microsoft and Seattle, and from Mark we learned that the famous Spanish lisp came about because an ancient king had a lisp and all the noblemen and then the common people had been forced to imitate it.  May not be true, but makes a good story.  We parted ways and headed onto a concert that we’d seen setting up next to the bull station.  The kids danced to a young band covering Green Day and other American favorites

and tried to collect whatever freebies that were being handed out.  Did pretty well too, scoring several T-Shirts.  We headed home with our booty.