Sheep Guarding Llama

The wind continued today but not as much as it was yesterday.  Still continuous howling outside, though.  It is even more overcast than yesterday.  Today we are in the clouds and can’t see anything.  The mountains, the valley, even much of the village, is gone.  Another day with no option to do laundry as it would get wetter, not dryer, hanging outside (assuming that it did not blow away entirely.)

In the late morning we got a bit of rain as well.  Not for long, half an hour at most.  First a light dripping (it drips slowly but doesn’t drizzle like back home) then a short burst of real rain that got the landing quite wet since all of the doors were wide open.

We decided on another very quiet and relaxing day at home today.  We had a tough time with Liesl and school this morning but we put in some time researching other school things for her to do and think that we have some good answers.

I am doing history with Liesl through the Khan Academy now and we really enjoyed our first two lessons today.  The first lesson was so good that Liesl asked to do a second one!  And I really like that the website keeps track of what lessons we have done, how much work she has done.  It’s good for seeing overall progress.  And she likes getting points and badges.

Dominica found new science and math apps for Liesl to use on the iPad which helps a lot too.  Liesl really likes interactive learning and when doing learning with Dominica they tend to argue a lot but you can’t argue with the iPad.  So it lowers the friction a lot.

Otherwise, very little to report.  By the evening the clouds were getting to be less and there was some hazy sunshine.  Slightly warmer, enough for me to go outside for twenty minutes or so, but I gave up on that.

Stayed up very late working tonight.  Working on some Redis database projects.  Was up until four in the morning.

The wind continued all night and into the day today.  The valley was bright and hazy.  Very warm outside considering how much wind we have.  It is a very odd feel today.  If you get a moment without the wind it is very warm.  But the wind is crazy and carries any heat away in seconds leaving you actually cold.  This is one of the windiest days I have ever experienced, especially for such a sustained period of time.

We can’t do anything outside today.  The wind is completely crazy.  Can’t do laundry.  Can’t sit outside, not even to eat.  Food will blow right off of your plate.  And it makes the whole house so noisy.  There is no one outside anywhere, everyone is avoiding the wind.

One thing that I am starting to notice, living in Europe, is that all of the bad news that we see from around the world is not happening here.  When you live in the United States you are bombarded with negative news about horrible things happening around the States like shootings, beatings, terrible healthcare problems, etc.

Today is primarily a YouTube videos day for the girls.  They have been completely addicted to craft videos for a month now like Cookie Swirl C and The Engineering Family.  They always need a down day after a big weekend of traveling.  Dominica used today to read, as well.

Very calm, normal day.  Surprisingly, the local market never opened today.  So we are a bit short on foodstuffs as we typically only buy them “as we need them” and normally the only risk is that we would run out of food during siesta and have to wait for people to wake up from their naps before we could restock.  A whole day with no market was a surprise.  No idea why it was closed.  So we were pretty lean on food around the house today.

Dominica woke up at five this morning and was unable to get back to sleep.  So even though she got to bed at a good time last night, she is going to be exhausted today.  I got up at nine and showered.  We have to be out of our apartment by eleven today so there is a bit to do before we can leave it.

It took all morning to get the girls ready, it always does. Even though we did a great job of getting them into bed last night, they were still not ready to get up this morning.

I was paged out during the night and again early this morning.  Made for rough sleep and a hard time getting ready.   At ten thirty, while we were waiting for my iPhone to get a little charge in it, I took a big load of all of our stuff to our car, which was about two hundred meters away, so that Dominica and the girls would not have to lug stuff over there.

We left the apartment right at eleven.  We saw several places open for breakfast but we did not want to take the time to try to do that right away.  We really wanted to see the Plaza de España that I had gotten to see last night.  It was high on Dominica’s list to see and I was pretty sure that the girls would love it.

So we walked where we had yesterday and cut through the Prado de San Sebastian and right into the Plaza de España now that I knew exactly how to get there.  It was, not surprisingly, packed with people.

It was appropriately jaw dropping for Dominica and the girls.  They were very glad that we had made the time to come here and see it.  Liesl declared it the best thing that she had seen in Sevilla.  We were at the Plaza de España for at least half an hour.  Maybe it was an hour.  Sadly it was extremely hot with the sun beating down on the plaza and high humidity.  It made it less than pleasant to be out there and Luciana was very hungry and begging us to go look for food.

We spent some time checking out the fountain which had been off when I visited the plaza last night.  It is a great fountain.  One of those giant, classical European ones.  There was a little mist coming off of it too, which helped.

We explored the inner part of the plaza with tons of little areas with art and ceramics from different regions of the Spanish world.  It was really neat.  We were sad that it was so hot and busy and that Luciana was in such a mood that we could not spend more time there.

We talked about taking the City Sightseeing bus that had not picked us up last night and going around the city to get to the El Conte Ingles department store in the north of the city so that we could see if they would have a razor for me, but by this point we were hot, hungry and I was a bit gunshy of dealing with those buses again, especially with my “pager” going off on a regular basis.  So we decided to give up, get lunch near our apartment and head back home instead.

We walked back and got to the restaurant right next door to what had been our apartment and sat out on the sidewalk to eat.  Turns out, they had been open for breakfast but were closed now and would not be open again for over an hour for lunch!  It was twelve thirty now.  That was too long to wait.

We made a quick tour through the local market.  It is a huge building right at the end of our street with the confusing translated name of the Market of the Meat Door.  It was full of produce, though, and was, more or less, a normal indoor market with stalls.  It looks good but had nothing that we needed now.  No prepared food.  There were a few bars in there but none serving food because of the time.

We decided to just give up and hit the road.  We were very near the car at this point so getting to it was just a few minutes.  The girls were not very happy as they were rather hungry.   None of us were all that happy, actually.  But I felt better knowing that we were getting underway and it is a long drive back and I don’t like being so inaccessible when I need to be able to get paged.

Driving out of the city proved to be rather easy and in no time we had fought through busy Sevilla traffic and were on the A92 headed east towards home.  It was about one when we were free from the metropolitan shackles. We were all pretty disappointed that we had to cut the trip short so much both last evening and today but it really could not be helped.  We are very aware, though, that we will be coming back to Sevilla.  This was not long enough at all to experience such an awesome city.

Luciana reiterated this morning that we wanted to live in Sevilla.

We were not far out of town, maybe half an hour, when I stopped for gas and snacks.  We stocked up the car and while I was getting the snacks Dominica investigated a tiny restaurant located right next to the gas station, the Bar La Ponderosa.  There was no one eating there but they said that their kitchen was open.  So we gave it a try.

We sat outside in the shade.  The menus were Spanish only but the owner spoke English well.  I got salmon, Dominica got an awesome egg scramble, Liesl got gazpacho which she loved and Luciana got calamari.  It was all very good.  Except for my salmon.  Fish just does not work for us here.  I think that we are just going to give up on it.  It is unnecessarily expensive and it never seems to make us happy, except for tuna.  No reason to keep experimenting with it.

We all got ice cream too.  Dominica and I got very pedestrian berries of the forest on vanilla ice cream cones.  Liesl got some bag of tiny popsicles in various flavours.  Luciana got an awesome watermelon thing that she loved.

We got back on the road and now everyone was full and happy.  Luciana was asleep immediately and slept all of the way until we parked the car in Granada.  Dominica nodded off after about an hour.  Only Liesl stayed awake with me for the entire drive.  She was perfectly happy playing in the back seat.  She did a lot of colouring and imagination games.

Dominica saw a sign for El Corte Ingles while we were driving through Granada, our local city, so we jumped off of the highway at exit 128 and, after having to drive quite some ways to make a turn around so that we could get into the parking lot, pulled into the huge, classically British styled department store and did some shopping.

This was actually a really cool experience for us.  This was our first time going shopping like absolutely normal Spaniards.  This is the biggest department store in Spain and Portugal (think Walmart meets Nordstroms) and is full of suburban Spaniards doing their normal shopping – clothes, appliances, home electronics, food, you name it.  This was very “normal”, everyday Spanish life in a normal city.  And no one anywhere spoke English.  Not in the least.

We did some hunting around and actually found things that we needed.  Dominica needed a USB WiFi adapter for her laptop as she has a Lenovo and the built in WiFi is useless.  It does not work at all.  And I needed a USB Hub.

The big item that we have been looking everywhere for, of course, is a razor for me.  We managed to find one with no problem.  This is a big moment for us.  This is our first purchase of a European appliance!  We do not need an adapter for this razor, it plugs in in Europe!

It was six when we left the department store.  We drove on to our village as quickly as we could.  It took about seventy minutes, from what I could tell.

I went to the market a little after eight and it was warm so Dominica and I sat up on the terraza and ate fresh baguettes, oil and vinegar and local cheese.  It was delicious.  But we could not stay out there long as the wind was getting to be crazy.

Dominica was completely exhausted and went to bed at ten and got the girls off to bed around then too.  I stayed up until very late.

The wind got worse and worse tonight.  At one in the morning I went outside and brought in the umbrella and some other things that were out there as everything was going to blow away.  The wind was completely crazy.

Before heading to bed I shaved a bit.  I still have a lot of beard but it is not nearly so insane as it was early.  And the neck scruff is finally gone.  I hated that but had no way to deal with it.  I feel much better now.

Our first morning in beautiful Sevilla.  Dominica and I were up at nine thirty.  It took a while to get the girls out of bed.  They were up so late last night, they did not get nearly enough sleep.  Even letting them sleep until ten thirty only gave them about eight hours which is not enough for little girls to be their sunshine selves.

The bathroom handle in our apartment came apart this morning.  Little bit of a problem there.  We can make it work but it could result in the girls getting locked in there so we have to be super careful about it now.

Our plan this morning was to head out and try to do the “Green” trail for kids from the guide that we got yesterday.  We only made it to the other side of the Prado de San Sebastian before we encountered the City Sightseeing bus salesman and, since we had talked about doing this anyway, decided that it would be a cheap and easy way to get to see a lot of the stuff that we were never going to get a chance to make it to anyway.

We had to wait twenty minutes for the bus to come, which did not make the girls particularly happy.  We managed to get seats up top even though the bus was pretty full and Liesl sat with me on the right hand side of the bus and Luciana sat with Dominica on the left hand side.

Liesl actually put in the headphones and listened to most of the tour.  She enjoyed.  Luciana was not so inclined and was pretty bored.  The bus tour took about an hour.  We got to see a lot of the parks and across the river through many neighbourhoods.   It was a nice, quick tour of the city although I had seen a fair amount during my walk last night.

We rode the bus all of the way around to one stop short of where we had gotten on (we got on at stop number two and got off at number one) at the Gold Tower – and ancient Moorish defensive tower that still stands in the heart of the city.  On the trip we got to see old and new parts of Sevilla and we even saw the big department store, El Conte Ingles, that both Dominica and I thought would be perfect for finding me a razor.  We made plans to take the bus back there this evening to see if we can get one.

From the Gold Tower we walked north into the college area where I had been last night which was handy because I already knew my way around. As we headed up the street we found a little restaurant that we popped into and enjoyed a nice little lunch.  The girls ate well too.  Luciana just loves getting calamari.

In the big square there we got ice cream which was very good.  It made the girls happy which is always a struggle when sight seeing.

Our big stop this morning is seeing the Sevilla Cathedral, the world’s largest cathedral and the third largest church – one spot bigger than St. John the Divine in New York City which I have been in a few times.  We were stalling with the ice cream because we had arrived before the church would be open for viewing.

We were near the beginning of the line to get into the cathedral.  It was still a bit of a wait and all of the guidebooks telling us that the church was free on Sundays were incorrect.  It was eighteen Euros for us to go in.

The church was very impressive.  So big and so old.  There was just tons and tons to see inside.  It was very dark so quite difficult to get any pictures.  I did what I could.  The resting place of Christopher Columbus was inside as well.

Dominica had an audio guide and managed to get through about half of the church.  The girls were pretty restless and I spent my time wrangling them and getting pictures when I could.

The big thing that we had been promising the girls was that we were going to climb the incredibly tall church tower.  The steps in the tower are actually ramps meant for horses to climb, which seemed insane that a horse would actually have gone in there once we saw it, but it meant that it was safe for the girls to do.

It was quite a climb but the girls did it like old pros.  They went right up the entire way.  We were SO proud of them!  They were pretty bored up top, though.  It was very crowded and hard for them to see or do anything.  I took a lot of pictures and videos from up there.  Really great views of the entire city in every direction.

Then the long walk back down the tower and into the orange grove courtyard which was really beautiful.  We stayed there for some time.  Dominica and I relaxed while the girls played with the fountains.

By this point it was the middle of the afternoon.  We had had a busy day.  We had been promising that if the girls were good that we would take them to the playground that I had found last night.  So that was our next stop.  The long walk back nearly all of the way to the apartment by way of the University of Sevilla.

We spent maybe an hour on the playground.  The girls had so much fun.  They are all about playgrounds.  There is just no getting around that.  It is their favourite thing ever.  No matter where we go it is all about the playgrounds.

We ended up having to leave the playground earlier than intended because Luciana clearly needed a potty break.  We were hungry as it was around six or six thirty so we went to a restaurant in the big park to the south of where we were.  Dominica took Luciana into the bathroom there and discovered that she had had a huge accident which pretty much ruined the afternoon.  It was a huge mess and incredibly stressful for Dominica to deal with.

To add insult to injury, it turned out that the kitchen was closed and we were unable to get food!  So frustrating.

So we gave up on dinner for a little bit and set out to catch the bus to take us to the department store so that we could deal with the razor as that has been such a big deal for so long. But, sadly, the bus never came.  It was supposed to be running every twenty minutes but after an hour we gave up and started walking to see the Plaza de Espańa while we were so close.  No department store for us.

While trying to get into the plaza, Dominica dripped on a pothole and fell on the street spraining her ankle.  It was a real fall.  It really scared the girls.  Several strangers stopped to try to help.  Dominica was not able to get up for a while and was in significant pain.

Eventually she was able to hobble back towards the apartment.  All of our plans are done for the night.  Hopefully she will be able to walk tomorrow.

It was a slow walk back but Dominica’s ankle got a little bit better as we returned.  But it was still really bad.  We tried to get food at one of the places right in front of our apartment but, to add to the disaster of the evening, they were all closed.  All of them.

We I got Dominica and the girls settled into the apartment.  Luciana ran and climbed right into bed telling Dominica that she was ready to snuggle her to make her feel better.  And I set out to walk the city to see if I could find any food that I could bring back.  For all we knew, nothing was going to be open anywhere.

I tried looping around some streets really near to our apartment but found nothing.  Thankfully I decided to try going north in a direction that we had never been to see if I would stumble on something new.  And I did! I found a Mr. Pizza.  This is the first pizza place I have seen in forever.  I ordered two large “Maxi” cheese pizzas which took under twenty minutes and briskly walked them back to the family.  We ate nearly everything!

As soon as we were done eating, about eleven, Dominica and the girls went to bed.  At eleven twenty I set out for an evening stroll.  By midnight my daily total was over thirty thousand steps and thirteen miles walked during this twenty four hour period.  Not too shabby.

My first stop was to go to the Plaza de España and actually figure out where it was and how to see it.  Even at night it completely takes your breath away.  One of the most amazing architectural works that I have ever seen.  It was just incredible.  Actually seeing it at night might have been far  better because it was so personal.  There were only a couple of people there and the space is so big that it was like being completely alone anyway.  Nearly everything was open so I explored the plaza.  Even so far as to climb the steps and stand on the balcony!

It was so amazing.  I am so glad that I took the time to do this walk.  Totally worth it.  This is a memory that I will have for a long time.  I really don’t know how to describe such a gorgeous structure.  And by the time that I left, just before midnight, I was practically the last person there.  I can’t wait to bring the family here tomorrow.

From there I walked south east and explored the 1929 Exposition buildings that were built there and took a long loop around the park before heading back to the apartment a little before one in the morning.  It was a very nice walk and I know the city a little better now.

Dominica was up at eight thirty this morning getting everyone ready for a weekend trip away.  She woke me up at ten so that I could get ready myself.  We have so many places that we really, really want to see in Andalucia (and Morocco) that we really are pressed for times with the available weekends that we have even though we are in the region for three months!  It is amazing how much time it takes just to get to see the highlights of this one single region.  We have to carefully schedule time during the week as well to see things that are more local, like anything in Granada or any Mediterranean sea front stuff, so that are weekends are free for more distant travel like this weekend in Sevilla.  Sevilla is, we think, our most distant location to which we will be driving while here.  So we have gotten two of the most difficult, far away weekends out of the way after this weekend.  Most everything will be easier logistically, except for Morocco, of course.

Dominica had left some laundry out last night thinking that it would get a little dryer overnight.  That did not work so well as it rained last night and at least one towel came down and got completely dirty in addition to everything being completely soaked.

We had a disaster strike before we were able to leave the house.  My MacBook Pro, which is the only device from which I work while in Spain, did an update yesterday and when it restarted this morning to complete the update – it died.  It just never came back.  It said that it was rebooting and, that was it.  Not good at all.

I managed to get it to “power on” but it just came up with a folder and a question mark flashing and nothing else.  Bummer.  We did some research quickly via Dominica’s phone and found some troubleshooting ideas.  We tried the first one and it asked for a password.  A password that I did not have.  Not good at all.  So I sent a message to work from my phone, since I am on call this weekend (also not good), and let them know the situation.  It is the middle of the night in San Francisco so they won’t know for several hours.

We were on the road by around eleven, which was not too bad.  I drove the Opal Corsa up into the plaza and backed it down to the front door to make it easy to load everyone up.  Luciana had gone along for a walk with me because she wanted to “say hola to Lula” which is what she has named her cat thing that she likes to ride on the little playground near the parking area.

We were on the road and had an easy drive out to Sevilla.  Spanish highways are very easy to drive and navigate.  We got just a little rain today, but very little.  Our village was completely encased in fog this morning but once we were heading up the A44 to Granada it got clear, while still overcast.  There was a little sun as we drove west, but very little.

It was four when we arrived in Sevilla.  We had two little bits of getting lost on our way to the city.  One was that got distracted driving through Granada and missed the turnoff for the A92 which cost us about half an hour in total early on.  That was very annoying.  We had to make two stops along the way.  The first for gas and snacks.  The second because Ciana had a bathroom emergency.  She is getting much better at giving us a warning, though, and telling us that we need to stop at a gas station.  And then in Sevilla itself our GPS took us in a big loop because it could not find the entrance to our parking area.  So that cost us fifteen minutes at least.  But all in all, we did pretty well.

Parking was easy.  We got private parking in a big lot for one Euro a day which is nothing at all.  We paid for three days and left the car to go in search of our apartment which Dominica had found on Booking.com.

The apartment is less than five minutes away, on foot, from the parking lot.  Super easy to find and the location is amazing.  We are right by one of the major parks, the Columbus Monument and the Bario Santa Cruz which is the old part of the city and the part where nearly everything that you want to see is.

We got into the apartment right away and were really surprised to find it to be completely modern, even though we are in a very old part of the city.  It is not huge but it is quite spacious with a very modern design.  Extremely modern.  All of the fixtures were very sleek and flush.  It all looked brand new, like out of a television show.  The bedroom was very nice with lots of extra room.  The livingroom and dining area was small but well laid out to be extremely usable.  Not an apartment for a family to live in, but for a single person or even a couple it is very nice.  The bathroom was huge and spacious.  Very comfortable which is a huge change from everything we have seen in Spain thus far.  Instead of cold and making you worry about bumping into every wall (or ceiling) you can practically dance it in and the shower is actually more spacious that you would want as it is a little hard to keep it warm and the washing machine is even in the bathroom too.  We like this for a change.  And solid wifi too.

Once we were settled in we set out to explore the city a little bit.  It was not yet five and we had no specific plans.  We just set out towards Bario Santa Cruz.

We found an awesome fountain right at the end of our street and across the street from it was a very impressive city park.  Excellent start to our exploring.  So over to the park we went.  The girls were hoping for a playground but no luck on that.  We did, quite immediately, find the Christopher Columbus Monument, however, which is a large fountain and they love fountains.

From there we just started wondering.  The parks were amazing.  The best thing that we found were the immense trees.  So big.  So tremendously big.  We were guessing that they must date back to the Moorish empire.  We’ve never seen trees of that type so large.  It is hard to describe just how big they were.

We found the old city wall and from there our way into the old city with its winding streets and narrow alleys.  One thing that we all noted immediately was that the city is flat.  We are so used to being on continuous up and down grades that being in a large, flat city is notably different.  It is so nice being able to walk without worrying about stumbling or the huge effort of going up and down.

We found the cathedral very quicky, it is the largest church in the world by volume (how else would you measure the largest?) and we found the old castle.  The girls really enjoyed the large monument that sat between the two and played on the steps of it for a while.

We found the Andalucia Regional Tourist Office, since Sevilla is the regional capital this makes sense.  We stopped in there to pick up some pamphlet guide maps to different parts of the region that we were planning to visit in the coming weeks.  The tourist office girl also recommended, because she had seen the girls, that we take the Sevilla guide for kids.  What a score.  It is a full map designed for kids to see the city and a really nice guidebook and workbook in Spanish and English to help us tour the city!  We are really excited about that and plan to give that a try tomorrow.

We walked a little more from there but we had not had any real meals today so we looked for a restaurant to park ourselves at and get some food.  We started back towards the apartment and found ourselves at one of the restaurants that we had passed while it was still siesta.  Now it was open and busy.  It was on a plaza with a small fountain in it that the girls liked.  We sat outside and ordered tapas for Dominica and me and pizza for the girls.  Dominica and I got ensalada rusa, patatas alioli and espinacha (which was amazing) and then got patatas bravas too.  The girls really enjoyed their pizza.

We hung out for a little while.  Dominica and I each had a glass of wine with dinner.  The girls went and played on the fountain.  Liesl tripped over a ledge and hurt her knee so came back and sat at the table.  Luciana sat on the fountain singing for quite a while.  A lot of the patrons of the restaurant sat and watched her for a long time.  It was very funny.

After dinner, Liesl led us on search for ice cream and with some amazing sixth sense led us almost immediately to an amazing little ice cream shop that was delicious.

From there we worked our way back to the apartment getting only a little lost.  We went back through the park and back the way that we had come, more or less.  We stopped in the park for a little while again as the girls wanted to run around.  I filmed a quick interview with Liesl via my iPhone.

For the entire walk up until now, which was several hours, I had been talking to the office over HipChat and Facebook Messenger trying to figure out what to do about my dead MacBook.  This is a big of an emergency and things like driving up to Madrid on Monday morning to go to the office there or going to Malaga to find the Apple Store or possibly even flying to London were being kicked around.  But they finally got me some information on what to try (e.g. they got me the password that I needed) while we were at the fountain in the park nearly back to the apartment.  So once I had that we took off to get back and see if it would work.

It was just getting dark as we got back to the apartment.  Everyone parked themselves on the couch except for me who had to run to the car and get the rest of our stuff out of it before I could relax.  Dominica is exhausted already.  The girls were pretty excited to get to use their iPads and relax.  I got right to work seeing if I could get the laptop fixed and plugging in my iPhone which died right as we got back to the apartment.

The fix for the MacBook actually worked.  It was something wrong with the drive encryption and it had blocked the install from moving forward and made the whole thing not work.  We are seriously relived that it is working.  It still had to spend over ten minutes running the update that had not worked yet, but it worked and I am writing this update from that MacBook now.

Liesl took a shower, her first chance to take a more American style shower since getting to Europe although the room is so big and spacious that the European trend of having open showers made it so that she could never really get warm because while the water is warm there is so much air space that the air never warms up like it would in a traditional shower.  Dominica and Luciana just hung out on the couch.

I set about getting some pictures and videos from the day uploaded now that we have things working.  I had been expecting that only my iPhone pictures would make it up today but the Nikon pics are getting uploaded too, although it is very slow going.  About sixty pictures for the day heading to Flickr from the Nikon.

Dominica was in bed by ten thirty and asleep long before eleven.  The girls were in bed for a bit but around eleven got up to snack and hang out in the living room on the couch to watch shows on their iPads.  They are late night kids and if we don’t make them, in some way, they will stay up until one or two every morning on their own.

At eleven twenty I set out for a personal walk of the city.  I need a lot more walking than Dominica needs to wear me out.  So did nearly two hours walking casually around the city. I did, as a total for the day, 18,500 steps and around seven miles.  About two thirds of that was on my own without the family.  Unfortunately my health app on my iPhone flips the “day” at midnight, so 6,288 steps and 2.68 miles got recorded as tomorrow instead of today.  Argh.  I need a more robust app for this.  I am pretty sure that I am getting the Apple Watch as soon as we return to the States because I think that I will use it extensively, especially for tracking stuff like this to encourage me to get a lot more exercise.

The walk was great.  I went out to the main road, the Avenue de Maria Luisa, and walked all of the way down and across the river for just a little ways.  I found the local metro station and a really near by playground that looks awesome for the girls.  I also found one of the sights in their kid’s sights of Sevilla book that they really wanted to see, so I can easily get them to that now.

I ended up walking north along the east side of the river, after coming back over, and going just north of the “Gold Tower”.  I assume that it is named that because it was a huge cannon wielding tower along the river designed to protect the gold shipments.  Sevilla is the city of Magellan and Columbus, after all. Long ago this was a port town, before the river silted up.  This was Spain’s primary port for the Atlantic and very heavily fortified.

As I returned to the apartment I walked through the University de Sevilla area going up to the old town and back down through the heart of campus.  The streets were just packed with people of all ages.  From kids in strollers to the elderly.  Even at one in the morning, everyone was out.  Restaurants, gelato places, tea houses, bars, cafes…. all full.  And so many people out walking and biking around.  It was amazing.

I love my lonely city walks.  There is a magic to seeing a city at night.  It is when the city is raw and laid open.  You get to see it in the quiet.  Nothing is hidden.  There is no better time for exploring a city and some self reflection that late at night.  It is especially good in a city that is still alive, like Sevilla.

We were only in this city for an hour or two before Liesl declared that she wanted to move here.   I have to say, I am starting to agree with her.  I had no idea that I would love this city so much, but it is really something.

The one thing that really strikes you about Sevilla, and it was Liesl who pointed this out, is the trees. Trees everywhere.  Every street, every corner, every garden is full of trees.  You rarely see the sky, there are so many trees.  Fountains everywhere too, of course, and amazing buildings.  But the trees are breathtaking.  Even little side streets are full of trees.  It makes the city feel just wonderful.

By the time that I got back from my walk the girls were still awake and watching shows on their iPads and the MacBook was still busily uploading photos from the day.  I can’t believe that I managed to take sixty pictures on the Nikon alone today.  And I really can’t believe that four hours is not enough time to upload them!  And several pictures from the iPhone to get uploaded too.  It really takes forever to do this stuff over here.

I finished up some writing, worked on getting some pictures available for people to see and got ready for bed.  While I was writing the kitchen light burned out.  I got one of my Nikon batteries plugged in and charging.  Want to make sure that we have enough charge to get through tomorrow.  I have three batteries with me but ran through one today and tomorrow is going to be a long day, I assume.

Only a few pictures left to upload before I turned in for the night.  Still have hours of editing before most of them will be visible on Flickr, though.