So…Spain!

Onward!  My sister arrived in cold rainy Paris and we all traveled together to southern Spain.  Rainy, cold, southern Spain.  As I said the day we got caught twice in a deluge:  the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plains, my ass.  Nevertheless, Mark and I are planning to return next winter, not because we’re gluttons for punishment, but we’ve again fallen in love with the town of Ronda.  There’s a small language school there, and we’d love to stay for a month or two and really work on our Spanish.  I brushed up a bit before this trip, and every time I was able to pull out the needed phrase for figuring out messed up train tickets or anything else, I felt like I had superpowers!   Though I assure you my Spanish doesn’t even rise to the level of rudimentary.

 

In Granada, we saw the Alhambra, like so many thousands of others.

 

We went to Valencia for the Fallas festival.  If you like marching bands with Klezmer-ish scales, symphonies of noise, and the smell of gunpowder, this is for you!  It’s a spectacular, city-wide competition of enormous sculptures called ninots, that are burned the last day.  Given that they’re made of styrofoam and are burned in the center of the city, we didn’t regret not seeing, nor not breathing the final conflagration.

 

Tapas were eaten.  One memorable night we went to a recommended tapas bar in Seville. I asked the waiter what was good.  He said, here, everything.   Ok.  I then asked the bartender, What do we absolutely have to try?  He shows me a whole fish.  I’m thinking, ok, I’ve had fish before.  But we order it anyway.  Damn, turns out I’ve never had fish before!  I’ve never had fish like that anyway.

Awaiting many delicious things

 

We saw a huge group doing a selfie in Seville, but they weren’t smiling.  Some of them looked utterly indifferent or annoyed.  So yeah, we did a bunch of those ourselves.

And then we laughed until we cried.

Till next time!