Spain Part 3: Albacete and Madrid

We made a one-day stop to a small town, Albacete, before heading to Madrid where we ended our trip. The reason we stopped in Albacete is because Dave loves this town where he lived for several months and he loves the people in this town. However, he also informed me after we arrived that this town has the best pastries in all of Spain. And I then realized, this was the TRUE reason we came to Albacete!

We spent the evening with Dave's friends, Juanito, Angelita, Alex and his wife. They had dozens of pitctures of Dave from 10 years ago and it was so fun to look through all of them.

Our final stop..... Madrid. What an incredible city! I loved it! Here we are outside the Royal Palace.

Cafe Botin, documented in the Guiness book of World Records as the oldest restaurant in the world, built in 1725. Ernest Hemingway used to eat and write here.

Palacio Real. Stunningly beautiful. It was finished in 1764 and has over 2800 rooms. We toured the inside and walked the grounds and loved it! This palace is still used to today for ceremonies and such. It houses 5 Stradivarius instruments which I loved to see since I grew up playing the violin.

After seeing the palace, we hopped on the Metro and went to see the LDS Temple. It was dedicated in 1999, while Dave was on a church mission in Spain, so he was able to be at the dedication. It's near and dear to his heart and I loved seeing it.

And before heading out for our tapas crawl at night, we walked through Parque Del Buen Retiro. Paddleboats, monuments, walking paths, benches, beautifully landscaped trees and gardens..... it's fabulous! It was laid out in the 17th century for royalty, but opened to the public in 1868.

Well, that about wraps it up! 5 cities in 9 days. It was a non-stop adventure and I'm grateful for my wonderful travel partner!

Spain Part 2: Alicante

Alicante is a "hidden jewel" as Dave refers to it. It is a beautiful coastal town south of Valencia that has somehow escaped the throngs of tourists, yet has beautiful beaches and cool things to see and do. Almost immediately after arriving in Alicante is when we discovered our camera was gone, so we spent the first couple of hours trying to track it down - finding our cab driver, searching his cab, going back to the train station, etc. All to no avail. To add salt to the wound, it started to rain. And then it poured! The weather reflected our mood! But then, it started to clear and this beautiful rainbow came out and we decided that there was nothing we could do about our camera, so we were going to make the most of it and just be grateful we still had a camera (even if it did take blurry pictures!)

One of my favorite memories of Alicante is the Orange Juice. It's worth going just for that! Our hotel served breakfast with fresh-squeezed OJ. The best orange juice I've ever had. It was amazing! And you could drink as much as you want! We each had 4-5 glasses. So good!

After breakfast, we hit the streets to explore this beautiful town. There was a castle/fortress on top of this big mountain in the middle of town, so we went on a quest to get to the top.

Here is a picture of the castle atop the mountain. We'd already been wandering through the towns for a while when we took this, so you can see, it was pretty far up there!

We made it! Here we are atop Castillo de Santa Barbara, from the 16th Century. Beautiful! And fun to explore! But the funny thing was, once we breathlessly reached the top (after seeing nobody else crazy enough to walk up to it like us), we were surprised to see quite a few people up there with us. Turns out, there is an elevator that takes people to and from street level to the castle for free! Whoops! Oh well, we were glad we climbed it. We enjoyed seeing all the little neighborhoods, churches, people eating breakfast, etc. Besides, we needed to burn off all that OJ :)

And one last stop before heading out of town..... Dave's apartment. He had really fun memories of living here and it was fun to hear all his stories. We also went to the beach and had lunch with a family that Dave has kept in touch with, so we had a fun visit.

Spain: Part I

Five years ago, Dave and I met.... in Spain. We had some mutual friends who planned a trip to Spain and we both ended up going. But we met in Andalucia (Southern Spain) and ever since we got married, we've talked about going back. We wanted to go back to the northern coastal cities, where Dave served a 2-year mission for our church 10 years ago. And thanks to my saint of a mother and my saint of an aunt (who watched our kids for 9 days!), we were finally able to do it! There is way too much to say in one blog post, so I'm going to do it in segments.
We flew into Barcelona. What a great city! We saw the Olympic stadium, the beautiful fountain set to music and light at night, the Arc de Triomf (yes, there is another one), Tibidabo and much more including Gaudi's Casa Mila (above).



La Sagrada Familia. This picture was taken outside the gates, but we did go inside, went to the top and walked all around. This amazing cathedral was started over 100 years ago and is still not finished. It is Gaudi's most famous work and is truly a sight to behold.

We also visited Park Guell.

And went to the church where Dave went while he lived here.

After 2 days in Barcelona, we headed to Valencia.

We visited the City of Arts and Sciences.

And of course the local bull ring. Every town has one, but we were able to go inside this one, which was really cool. I refuse to actually go to a bull fight, so this is the closest we got!

And we ended our time in Valenia visiting the Lladro factory. I absolutely love Lladro porcelain and it was so fun to see where they are made. I will apologize in advance for some of the pictures being blurry and not having some pictures of some of the really cool sights we saw. We brought 2 cameras with us to Spain - our SLR and our small digital camera. The first day we got there, our SLR started acting funky and wouldn't take pictures in the automatic mode. Neither of us can work it very well in manual mode (they all turned out blurry), so we started using our small digital camera..... which got lost somewhere between Valencia and Alicante. Painful!!!!!!! So sad. Not only did we lose our camera and all of the pictures on it, but the only other camera we had kept taking blurry pictures! Major Bummer. But other than the camera incident, the rest of the trip went smoothly and Dave was a fabulous tour guide! I'm so glad we did this trip and I loved seeing all the cities where Dave served. But, I really, really missed my kids and am glad to be home. Thank you Mom and Aunt Jo!

Meet in the Middle

My brother Ryan, his wife Carrie and their son Jace are some of our favorite people! We look forward to seeing them every Christmas and summer when we go to Chicago to visit family. However, this summer we went to Utah for the family reunion instead of Chicago and they weren't able to go. And we're spending Christmas with Dave's family this year, so although I was able to see them briefly for Ricky's homecoming, Dave and Lacey weren't there, so we decided to do a "Meet in the Middle" trip where we would both drive to Ohio and spend Labor Day weekend. We stayed in Huron, a small town right on Lake Erie and had a fabulous time! Our first activity of the weekend was taking a boat to South Bass Island/Put-in-Bay. We had gorgeous weather the whole weekend, so we all enjoyed the boat, especially Jace and Lacey!

Once we arrived on the island, we discovered that everyone got around on golf carts. Little 2-man golf carts. Well, we actually discovered this place that rented an 8-person golf cart and even provided car seats. I don't know if you can even imagine the looks and giggles we got from everyone passing by in their 2-man carts to see this monstrocity with a car seat on every row! It was hilarious!

Once the kids got up from their naps after returning from Put-in-Bay, we took them to Nickel Plate Beach and they had a blast in the sand and water!

And then, for quite possibly one of the most random adventures of our lives, we went on a Safari. I've always wanted to do an African Safari, but haven't yet made it there. So, when I saw ads for a Safari and saw that it was $29.95 per carload, versus the $5000 real safari, I decided I couldn't pass up a bargain! So, we all loaded in the van and headed to the safari, not really knowing what to expect. Well, this is what we got.... HUGE OX running toward us.......

Huge ox trying to get in our car.........

And huge ox trying to attack my brother!

We bought some grain and carrots to feed the animals, and they seriously stuck their WHOLE HEADS into our car to get the food! Here I am with a gigantic buffalo.

Hi Mr. Buffalo!

This is my 2-year old nephew, Jace, with his hand in the giraffe's mouth. Luckily Mr. Giraffe was able to differentiate between carrots and fingers!

Mr. Giraffe's head in our car. So, I really had no idea places like this existed in the good ole' US of A. But, they do! In Ohio. Who would have guessed?

After the safari, Lacey experienced her first pony ride.

And to cap off the weekend, we all took a nice long walk to the Huron lighthouse. We had so much fun and loved every minute we got to spend with my dear brother and sister-in-law!