Sheep Guarding Llama

Alarm went off at nine this morning.  Sleeping on the couch turned out to not be all that bad.  It was very stiff and it has been a long time, now, since I used to sleep on the floor but it still did not bother me at all.  The pillow might as well have not existed and that meant that my head was a bit low but that was really the only issue.

I got u and showered and left for the office.  I had to get Dominica up so that I could leave her with the apartment keys while I was at work all day.

The walk to the office only takes a few minutes, which is really nice.  I got there probably around ten.  It is a very nice day here in Madrid.  The sun is out but it is not too warm.

Had a nice morning in the office.  Got a tour and introduced to everyone.  Then after about an hour I got set up with a spot to work in the common room as there was no spare desk available for me.  The office is so packed that several people have to work without desks regularly.

Dominica and the girls had been planning on coming to the office shortly after I went there this morning to get a tour and introduced to people but they slept in and then the girls were both very engaged in playing ABCMouse on their iPads so Dominica decided that it would make the most sense to hold them back at the apartment so that they could get some quiet time and educational time.

At two the whole team in the office went out for lunch to a really nice seafood place not far from the office.  We had a really nice time and it was good to get a chance to casually sit down and spend time getting to know everyone.  There was one other person visiting from the San Francisco office too.

I had fish tacos for lunch, which are nothing like tacos in the New World.  It was much more fried fish bites.  So weird how the words vary between the regions.  We had some amazing tapas to share before we started too including some of the best patatas bravas that I have had yet and a tuna salad (real salad, with tuna, not the tuna with mayonnaise thing that we call tuna salad.)  It was really nice having wine with lunch as a normal thing that everyone at the office did.  And very nice that we did shots after lunch!  That’s less common even in Spain, I assume.

Back in the office for the afternoon.  As soon as we were back from lunch, Dominica and the girls walked down from the apartment and came up to meet everyone and get a look at the office.  Dominica got some coffee there with me.  The girls probably spent about half an hour at the office.

The girls went out for pizza and cupcakes and took the food back to the apartment and spent the afternoon happily playing ABCMouse again.

After work I went back to the apartment and dropped off my bag.  Then we all set out for a walk to go find some dinner.  It was around six when I got back to the apartment, so on the early side for dinner but we wanted to do some exploring no the way.

Today, I learned at lunch, is Saint George’s (San Jorge) Day and that means the day of books here in Spain.  So all of the booksellers all over the city have the streets full of books that are on discount.  It is apparently a lot like St. Valentine’s Day in the U.S.  A very big deal here.  I had been wondering about the extreme number of books for sale all over the place.

So we started walking north on Fuencarrel and did about a mile when we came upon some playgrounds in the middle of a large pedestrian area.  The girls are always looking for playgrounds so even though these were small and designed for very little kids we found a bench to sit on and let them play, probably for an hour at least.  It was a playground that we think that we might remember having seen in Madrid in 2012, the last time that we were here.  Hard to believe that we would have chosen the same road again!

The girls had a grand time on the playground.  It was pretty busy when we first arrived but quickly went down to just a few kids as the evening wore on.  There was one little three year old boy that played with them a lot.  They had a great time playing with him.  The three of them kept trying to go down a small slide together and would pile up on top of each other at the bottom.  They were hilarious.

The little boy’s mother and grandfather ended up hanging out with us for quite a while.  She spoke a little English but he spoke a lot, having been special forces stationed in the US at Fort Bragg.  We had a very nice time.

From there we walked a little farther north and took the girls to a place called VIPS which is an American style and themed diner that I had discovered as I walked past it last night.  I was hopeful that they would have pancakes and other “comfort” food that the girls have been craving.  The place looked, from the windows, much like a high class Denny’s or maybe a Perkins and was very big and I knew that they were open very late or possibly twenty four hours.

We got to the diner and thankfully they really did have pancakes!  Luciana got those, with strawberry syrup as they did not have breakfast syrup, golden syrup or maple syrup, and Dominica and I both got “California” sandwiches which ended up being both very healthy and super tasty.  The French fries at this place were really good too.  All of the food, with the exception of the syrup options, was extremely American in selection and style and was a nice change of pace after an entire month of having nothing like that.  The water was tap and not bottled too!  I am pretty sure that this is the first tap water in a restaurant that we have had since arriving in Spain!  Liesl opted to just have onion rings.

Dinner was very good and we were quite happy by the choice.  We know that we will not have an experience like that again for quite some time.  One of the big things about being in Madrid is that the “traditional” food in Madrid is not traditional Spanish food but big restaurants with a lot of variety.  So eating American here isn’t as non-Madridian as you might think (and tomorrow I would actually have someone recommend eating at VIPS as a Spanish restaurant not realizing that it was American fare!)

After dinner we walked south and stopped at one of the other small playgrounds and let the girls burn off some of their dinner.  While they did that I explored one of the book stores that was open late for the holiday.  I really wanted to get “Don Quijote” in Spanish but could not find a copy anywhere.

Back to the apartment.  It was pretty late.  It took a little bit but we finally got everyone off to bed.  Luciana decided to sleep with Dominica in the bed tonight.  Liesl and I shared the couch.  I have to be in the office before nine thirty tomorrow morning so do not want to be up too late tonight and we already walked a bit today so I decided not to go out for extra walking tonight.  Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

We got up early this morning, Dominica at eight thirty and the rest of us at nine thirty.  Our original plan this morning was to go directly to Córdoba where we could leave the car and catch the Renfe AVE north up to Madrid so that we could avoid driving and parking in the big city.  But after looking at it and really thinking about it we made the last minute decision to just go directly to Madrid by car.  With four of us in the car it just made a lot more sense.

It was almost exactly noon when we got out of the door and onto the road.  It is just over five hours on the highway from Cáñar to Madrid, a bit of a drive and roughly halfway across the country south to north.  This will give us a very good opportunity to see much of the country.

The drive north went well.  Driving through most of Granada Province was very familiar to us.  It was only a little above Granada that we transitioned into Jaen Province which we have not seen before.  That area had a truly amazing amount of olive groves.  I mean truly amazing.  Mountains and hills and valley and stretching to the horizon in every direction for a very long way.

Once we came to the northern edge of Jaen we left Andalucia, for the first time since arriving by train a month ago, and entered, for the first time ever, Castille-La Mancha, the land of Don Quijote.  The landscape immediately changed as we left the mountains behind and entered rolling hills.  The olives and almonds stopped too and more traditional farmland began to appear.  This was more European plain than Mediterranean coastal region.  Very beautiful and the population was quite sparse.  And we really did see Quixotic Dragons (windmills) standing in triplicate on little hills here and there.  And castles would appear here and there dotted around the landscape.  Very magical.

There was really no traffic or large population until we reached Madrid itself, the mammoth city sitting in the very center of the country.

Driving in Madrid was less than fun and the GPS was less than helpful in places.  At one point it sent us to the same roundabout three times with me having to pull u-turns in the middle of the largest urbanization on the Iberian peninsula twice in order to make subsequent attempts at it!  Not fun.  And when we finally got to our parking garage – it wasn’t there.  This caused me to have to go do a turn around in an extremely crazy traffic situation.  And there were policia directing traffic against signals all over the place and at one point they yelled at us to go when an on coming car was not stopping!  Almost had a policia-induced t-bone.

We were very grateful when we were able to turn off of the Gran Via and into the parking garage.  Very grateful, indeed.  The car was parked, we unloaded the kids and walked up to the Fuencarrel to look for our apartment for the week.  It turned out to be a super easy walk and we were set up in the apartment in no time.

This is a very small, very urban apartment.  One small living space with kitchen, nice couch, little eating area, tiny television over the table all in one space.  And then a comfortable bathroom with a nice shower.  And then the one small bedroom with a nice sized bed.  That was all.  Only barely not a studio.  But quite comfortable, a good use of the space and an amazing location.  The windows, one next to the couch and one in the bedroom, basically opened up right next to each other an only existed to let in light and air as the view was only of the apartment a few feet away from us on the other side.

They accidentally left us with no WiFi login information and no toilet paper.  That was frustrating. Dominica managed to reach them and get toilet paper pretty quickly but we did not get the WiFi password all evening leaving me unable to work in any fashion and the girls without anything to watch.  This was frustrating as we had raced to get into the apartment in time for me to attend my seven o’clock team stand up meeting!

I went to the car and got our luggage and stuff and got it up to the apartment. Then I set out to find a market as we needed some food supplies and toilet paper (they had only given us one small roll to hold the four of us over until we were able to buy some of our own!!)  I went north on Fuencarrel and was able to find that pretty quickly.  There was a Carrefour Express right up there.

Then we went out to eat.  There was a Turkish place called the New Istanbul (yes, in English for some reason) that we had walked by just after having parked the car.  We knew that that would be simple so we just went there.

Dominica and I started off with some amazing hummus.  The girls got buttered pasta, as they often do.  Dominica and I each got felafel which was a very nice change of pace.  One of the big advantages of the large city, Madrid has anything and everything.  No need to each traditionally here.  It’s not even traditional to eat tradition when in Madrid!

After dinner it was just an evening in the apartment.  Once everyone was heading to bed I went out for an evening walk and did about four miles in a big loop around the area.  I went south to Gran Via, where my office is located, and headed west to find the office location so that I would be all ready for tomorrow morning.  The I continued on for about a mile or a little more since the road veers to the northwest.  Then I took an east west road over to Fuencarrel far to the north and came down to the apartment from there.  It gave me a decent layout of the area and a good idea of where many things are located.  I found a restaurant called VIPS that looked really interesting – very much an American diner like a fancy Denny’s.  I am hopeful that it will have pancakes which would make Luciana very happy.

Once back to the apartment it was time for me to go to bed as well.  No Internet access yet, so we have nothing but our phones tonight.  Dominica got the big bed.  Liesl, Luciana and I are sleeping together on the couch.

Dominica got up at nine thirty and right as she did Luciana sneaked downstairs and climbed into bed with me and immediately fell right asleep in Dominica’s warm spot.  So I stayed in bed for a little while since Luciana was being so adorable.

Today is our only “down day” for the entire week.  We have a lot going on!  We just got back from Cádiz yesterday afternoon and tomorrow we are driving to Córdoba in the morning and taking the AVE high speed rail to Madrid pretty much as soon as we get there and get things figured out.  Then two days in Madrid and two more days in Córdoba before getting back to our village on Sunday night.  Dominica put in a lot of time working on those plans today to get everything ironed out.  It is going to be an expensive week for us.

Dominica also worked on getting everything finalized for our Norwegian Cruise Lines cruise from Buenos Aires to Santiago (Valparaiso) going around the tip of South American in February.  Because we are in Spain the company’s phone options do not seem to work.  We were only able to reach them in French, for some reason.  So she had to put in a bit of work dealing with that today but did manage to figure it out and we are pretty much all set now and very much looking forward to that cruise which is now less than a year away!  As amazing as it is that we are living in Europe now and as amazing as that was previously that we would be able to do this that we will be in South America in just eight months and doing this cruise that we have been talking about doing for forever in ten months is a little unreal.

The sun was out this morning and it was pretty nice.  Our first time with a sunny day here in the village for quite some time.  Liesl and I did some of her school outside on the terraza.  She has missed having the sunlight.

Dominica made an attempt at doing the laundry today as we have been running low on clothes since it has been so damp and cold that there was no way for things to have dried.  Today was the chance to get a lot done.  Sadly, by early afternoon the sun had left and the clouds were back and nothing was drying.  By evening she had everything draped over chairs and railings around the house with fans and electric radiators running trying to get them to dry.  Hopefully there will be dry clothes to take with us tomorrow.  Five days of travel is going to be a pain if we have laundry issues to contend with as well.

Ryan confirmed today that he was able to get his passport dealt with and has finalized his plans and we will be seeing him here in Andalucia in less than two weeks.  He is only coming for a few days as that was all that he was able to schedule so last minute.

We are also expecting Rachel to be here to visit us soon.  She is leaving Wales and heading for Dover at the end of this week to take the ferry, I think, over to France and then hitching her way across France and hoping that I can pick her up on the Spanish side of the border in about two weeks.

I managed to get in over an hour on Rosetta Stone today.  And some DuoLingo.  I hit level seven there today.

We had to get to bed on the early side tonight.  Laundry had to be brought inside still damp because it got cloudy during the evening and there is always the chance of rain at night and the likelihood of dew in the morning.  Dominica hung the laundry everywhere that she could, like on chairs and railings, and set up an oscillating fan and an electric radiator to see if that would do the trick during the night.

I spent the day working from the main floor, instead of from the kitchen, as Dominica has found it impossible to do anything with me being in the kitchen in the way all day long.  There just is not enough room at our tiny little table there.

We got to bed around midnight, early for us.  Tomorrow is an early day.  Our plan is to drive to Córdoba in the morning so that we have plenty of time to deal with the train and get up to Madrid and get into our apartment so that I can work in the evening.  There is a lot to be done.  Dominica is tired tonight and decided to save the packing for the trip until tomorrow.

Tomorrow starts our longest time away from the house in Cáñar since we first arrived in Spain.  We will be gone for five days leaving first thing tomorrow (Wednesday) morning and being in Madrid all day Thursday and Friday, then all day in Córdoba on Saturday and Sunday.  We did not want to pay for Sunday night in Córdoba because it is so crazily expensive in that city (we have no idea why) so we are going to put in a very full day on Sunday and drive home late at night.  We figure that that will save us easily well over one hundred dollars.

We’ve hit “pricetag” parity with the US. The Euro is SO weak against the dollar that the exchange rate is 1:1.06. Since in Europe the price is the price (a one Euro item costs exactly one Euro) and since everywhere we live in the US tacks on seven cents (roughly) in tax to every dollar – which is slightly worse than the exchange rate, it means that a one Euro price tag costs us exactly the same amount as something with a one dollar price tag would in the US! It makes price matching really easy.

Rapidly life in Europe is becoming very, very inexpensive.  Food here is costing us almost nothing compared to food in the US.  And we are getting so much better food.  Now that the dollar and the Euro are nearly identical we are going really far on our money.  This is really wonderful.

We were all pretty tired this morning.  We had to be up and moving around nine thirty because we had to be checked out of the apartment at eleven.  “Checked out” might be the wrong term.  It just means leaving the keys by the door and heading out locking the place up behind ourselves.

It took a bit to get everything packed up and everyone ready to go.  We were kind of tired even before getting onto the road.

I would guess that it was eleven thirty and we were underway.  The drive out of town was not bad, especially as the hardest part of town I knew my way around by this point.  As we left town we got to see a new, very large bridge being constructed.  Very neat.

For the first portion of the drive we are covering new highway territory.  We drove out of Cádiz and went immediately east which gave us about two hours of driving over new ground and seeing a new area, which was nice.  We keep criss-crossing the country and getting a better and better feel for it.  We are going to know Spain very well by the time that we are done with this year.

We have no stops today, just driving right back to our village.  Once we were to San Roque, the village just above the peninsula on which Gibraltar stands, we were back on the highway through the Costa del Sol which we had taken two days ago and covering ground that we already know.  So the trip got a lot less interesting both because it was repeat driving and because we were back in the overly developed, Florida-looking stretches.

It was evening when we got back to Cáñar.  The drive was fine and uneventful.  The girls got a lot of rest in the car.  We were home in time for me to work today.  Everyone was quite tired after our busy weekend and ready for a rest – which is going to be short lived this week and we are only home for tomorrow before traveling again!

I was actually the first one up this morning, waking up on my own at nine thirty, nearly an hour before anyone else in the house was awake.  Only six hours of sleep for me, much more “normal” from my pre-España sleeping schedule.  I’ve been much more of an eight or more hours, typically, crossing the pond.

Dominica got up after ten.  The girls were still very much fast asleep.

We managed to get a start at around eleven this morning.  It is a bright and sunny day, but not too hot, partially because of the nice, continuous breeze coming in off of the ocean.  Being on a point, much like San Francisco, has its advantages.  Cádiz is much smaller and much flatter than San Francisco, though.

We walked to the parking garage and retrieved the stroller, probably a mistake, and set out walking down the pedestrian way to the east side of the city.  We stopped at a panaria very early and have coffee and sandwiches.  The girls did not manage to find any food that they wanted to eat there.  They were both asking for noodles or soup (in Liesl’s case.)

We found a gelato place and got some ice cream, which everyone really liked.  This gave the girls at least a little sugar to run on and a tiny bit of protein.

From there it was south to the Central Market, which was open today unlike last night, which we were able to walk through.  It is the oldest covered market in all of Spain dating from 1837.  It was full of vendors with the most interesting and broad food selection.  We were sad that we had already eaten as the food here looked amazing.

Luciana was having a very hard time dealing with the fact that she could not be in the stroller the entire day and was having a bit of a meltdown which did not go over well.  It is going to be a long day with Luciana.

From the market we headed south the same way that I walked last night on my post midnight walk and we got to the ocean barrier wall.  We sat there for a while giving the girls a chance to see the ocean and us time to get our barrings.

We headed east along the ocean front until we got to the Cádiz Cathedral, which we just looked at from the outside.  It is one of the few “things to see” in Cádiz.  Just east of it is the ruins of the Teatro Romano, the Roman Theater that was built here around 70-60 B.C.  That makes it the oldest Roman amphitheater on the Iberian peninsula.  There was not much to see, sadly.  Most of it was cordoned off although we were able to walk around the outside of it and get a feel for just how old it is.

While we were there I ran into a little corner market to stock us up on water for our walk.  One and a half litres of water is just forty cents, or fifty sense for the high end Lanjarón brand.  I splurged to support our local water supply.

We followed Liesl’s lead and she led us to the “main plaza” of town.  A huge, lively plaza with tons of tourists, the big city hall, lots of restaurants, a large monument, fountains and more.   She seems to have a great sense of direction in old European cities.

The girls ended up just wanting to play on the main monument in town for a while, an odd thing to want to do by my reckoning but they seem to love this.  So Dominica and I went to a restaurant on the plaza close enough that we could just watch the girls from there and got café con leche to keep ourselves entertained while they played.  We did end up getting some patatas bravas, as Dominica can never resist them, that we split and some fig mousse too.

The girls did a good job of making friends with other kids on the plaza but when some of them had to leave Liesl ended up being very sad and crying alone on the monument for a while.

We met some Americans from Florida who were wandering the plaza when they stopped to give beads to the girls.  We never figured out why they had beads in the first place.  The were retirees traveling the Mediterranean on the Holland America ship the Amsterdam which was moored in the harbour.

Once we were done on the plaza we went north to the ocean and found a neat garden that had a historical board that explained these coloured lines running around the city and how to use them to follow different historical paths.  What a neat idea and well done.  We loved the idea and so decided to take the orange path, the one that takes you to the city defenses.  This was a great idea because Liesl could find the orange line on the sidewalk and lead us all along the path.  She thought that this was great fun.

This was a nice walk and led us to the big constitution monument of 1812 that I had discovered last night.  We spent a little time here so that Dominica could see the monument.  We looked at the available historical walking paths from here and then had Liesl take us farther on the orange route which ended up going along, in the opposite direction, much of what I had walked last night on my post-midnight walk.

We walked along the old defensive wall and to the Alemeda (mall) near our apartment which was very nice.  The girls were having a rough day by this point.  They were tired and ready for a break.  Luciana had been begging to be in the stroller all day which was causing no end of problems and Liesl had been requesting food but never got any.

We started exploring looking for somewhere to get food for Liesl who really just wanted simple pasta.  We explored the north end of the city, which is one of the less interesting sections of the city mostly less interesting, old residential, but Liesl, always with a strong sense of direction, managed to lead us to a plaza with several restaurants that would have been perfect – had only we not arrived right at five thirty when everything shuts down and the kitchens all close.  Had we just wanted coffee we would have been fine but wanting food meant that we were out of options.

We gave up and returned to our apartment so that the girls could play with their new toys from yesterday.  It was probably six once we really settled in.

I nearly immediately went out to do some more walking and exploring in the hopes of figuring out the food situation for later.  I did a nice walk for a while, heading east, and checking out several plazas to see what food options might exist.  I found a few, eventually, that looked like they would be interesting and might meet our needs.  It was around seven thirty when I crossed through the biggest of the plazas and the whole place was really packed with people having dinner.

I found a pastry shop and got a few different things to bring back for the family.  I got some muffins for the girls and a cornetta, plus some tuna pockets and spinach things for Dominica and me.

It was probably eight when I got back to the apartment.  We snacked on the pastries, discussed what we might want to do for dinner, decided on a place and I got pictures uploading to Flickr while I was sitting for a while.

At nine thirty I finally got everyone moving for another walk to find dinner. Dominica had decided on a low key place called Boulevard that was on a small side street between two plazas.  This ended up being an excellent choice.  They were not busy at all, no one was for some reason, and we pretty much had the front room to ourselves which was nearly all glass so it seemed a bit like sitting out on the street yet was warm and inside.

Dominica got paella.  She is addicted to all of the rice that they have in Spain.  Liesl got pasta with tomato sauce. Luciana got pasta with butter.  I got potato salad with octopus, which was very spicy, and some French fries that everyone shared.  It was all very good.

After dinner, which was pushing eleven at night, we just walked back to the apartment.  Everyone was tired and now there was no more complaining about being hungry.  So time to get everyone to bed.

Dominica and the girls all went to bed right away.  Dominica did not like the bed that she slept in last night so stole the one that I had slept in in the girls’ room.  So Luciana and Liesl moved themselves to the big bed so that they could snuggle with me later.  I set them up with iPads, as it was early, and went out for a late walk on my own again.

I walked pretty slowly this time out as my right foot was pretty badly blistered.  I did enough to hit nearly 35,000 steps and over 14.5 miles just since last midnight when my health app on my iPhone resets for the day!  That’s pretty impressive.  I didn’t stop walking and did about another hour.

I did some wandering just around different streets in the middle of the city to see what I might have missed.  There is so much hidden around every little corner.  These ancient cities are so interesting.

Andy called me at one in the morning.  Fortunately I was out on the street and not in the apartment so it did not wake anyone up.

Got into bed around one thirty. Luciana had already fallen fast asleep.  Liesl was up and watching her iPad.