Home Sweet Home

Just thought I'd throw a few more pics on here that didn't make the first cut when I was always so short of time. We're safely home and largely recuperated from the long trip. Cooking up a representative Spanish meal for Kaleigh's birthday today. Gazpacho, tapas, spiced nuts and paella. Hopefully, I learned something while I was away.

This is me on the balcony of our room in Ronda. And the view from the balcony. And then the Ronda bridge connecting the new town to the old town. The kids walked all the way down (and up) to get photos from the bottom. Allan and I sat at the top and swilled wine during their excursion. You must appreciate the effort that went into gathering the shots from the bottom.

On the road again.

We ended up going downtown last night - Madrid has an amazingly elaborate subway system. We headed for the Hard Rock Cafe. We did find it but it was really busy and they were reluctant to give us a table for "snacks". So we moved on and found a nice little spot and had some tapas. Back to our hotel for a very brief sleep. Our room was right above the entrance and for some reason everyone who arrived back at the hotel last night decided to get into an argument. I've never heard such constant yelling and chattering. Seemed like over and over again. So we didn't get much sleep. Wake up call at 3:30 and now it's 5:30 and we're just waiting for our 6:30 flight. This will certainly be a long day (we fly first to Rome for a quick change of planes and then off to Chicago.) But it has all been worth it.

A tough day to leave.

The weather was much hotter today making it tougher than ever to leave. We went to an outdoor market in Torremolinos. I think everyone really enjoyed that. Then we headed to the beach for a last Costa del Sol lunch. It was so hot the girls ate quickly and then went for a dip in the Med. I was so glad they got the chance to really enjoy the beach.

Unfortunately, at 2 pm we had to make another mad dash to the airport and are now in a hotel in Madrid called the High Tech Airport. There are very few options for 4 in a room. We were really lucky to get this one. It has bunkbeds for the girls. It is pretty high tech all right. But the door to the bathroom is see through. We need to be at the airport tomorrow at 4 am so we wanted to be close by. Now I'm trying to convince the gang to take the metro to downtown Madrid for our last night but I don't think I'm going to get any takers.

Found some pics

Just waiting on the kids to arrive but we found a card from Shea's camera before it ran out of juice. Will add some shots here.

This was a guy playing Spanish guitar beside the restaurant where we ate lunch. He played Here comes the sun and Shea was his.

Time is running out!

The kids are off horseback riding and Allan and I took a nice stroll up the street and had a British meal - why you ask? 'Cause the last few meals we've had have been of less quantity than I need to keep my old body going at this pace. We packed in the pork and beef and potatoes and yorkshire pudding. Now I feel a bit of regret. But we'll get our last Spanish dinner tomorrow night in Madrid. We are planning to hit the market in Torremolinos in the morning (if we can possibly get the kids out of bed before noon) and then we have a 3 pm flight up to Madrid. Friday morning we leave at 6 am so I guess we'll have to be at the airport around 4. Back to time zone chaos for us. Today we parked the car and took a train into Malaga and went to the Picasso museum and to his home. It was interesting. We figured as hosts for these two teenagers we'd better make sure they got some real culture along the way somehow. We spent most of yesterday in a shopping mall so that was a different sort of culture.

The girls have all cameras so can't add any photos at this time.

Have I mentioned that my suitcase completely exploded in the Malaga airport when we arrived. It happened when we weren't there. By the time we got my suitcase it was taped shut and apparently people had seen lots of stuff strewn around. So it is history. Allan's suitcase broke a wheel so we just came from a cheapish place where we bought two replacement suitcases for 25 euros. Not bad. The ones I saw at the shopping centre yesterday averaged around 240 euros. I'm sure they are practically the same quality......not.

Anyhow - we can now get my stuff back to Canada. We were looking for duct tape or cheap luggage - whichever we saw first.

Hope all is well in your lives.

Tanger trip - Allan's random post

A beautiful sunrise to get on the road to Tangier. Believe it or not Shea took this one! It may be her first sunrise picture - great job !

This is one of my favourite pictures of the trip. We are inside the legendary cave of Hercules! The Phoenicians carved out this map of Africa in the opening of the cave. It looks reversed because we are inside, if we wanted to go for a swim it would be pretty close to an accurate map. See Madagascar off to the side at the bottom? Way cool. Herc rules.

Beach Day - Allan's version

A little sand castle building on the Mediterranean -you probably can't tell but this sand castle is actually 5 km high by 3 km wide. Ignore the foot prints you see around it....