¡ Me gusto España !

Hopefully this entry stays around for more than a few days before it gets deleted! I am writing from Barcelona, a city which I am absolutely loving, as it is so beautiful with so many interesting things to see and do. However, more on that later.....

I left off my last entry in Almeria, where Tom and I started our adventures through Spain. I commented that I called Almeria the city of fountains and plazas - I quickly realized that this was not unique to Almeria, as every city we have been in Spain thus far, has the same abundance of plazas and fountains - so nice! From Almeria we took a train north to Granada, where we spent two nights. As Spain´s Sierra Nevada mountains (not the same ones as in California!) are only a one hour bus ride from Granada, we took the opportunity to do some hiking. This was fantastic, as with no trails and not many people around, we had the spectacular scenery to ourselves (as well as with a herd of 30 mountain goats that we came across!). As we were scrambling back up towards the end of our hike, I asked Tom if he thought mountain goats ever slip and fall down the mountain? Talk about foreshadowing - not even 5 minutes later we came across a bone amongst the rocks......we soon found more and more - seemingly a goat had met its end here! There was the spine, jaw, leg, skull and other random pieces all around! A little bit ominous if you ask me - needless to say, we were very careful after this.

After our time in Granada we took a bus for 5 hours to Madrid, where we had 3 nights to spend. I immediately noticed the change in environment, as after Granada and Almeria, Madrid felt huge! It is a beautiful city though, and the architecture is something I especially love - all of the buildings have narrow, wrought-iron balconies with wooden shuttered doors that fold open to welcome the breeze. Makes our rectangluar, cement buildings seem quite mundane in comparison! We had a chance to see a lot of sights in Madrid, including the stadium of the Real Madrid soccer team (SOO nice!), the Museo Nacional Del Prado, a huge and impressive art museum, the Palacio Real de Madrid (incredible Palace with 2800 rooms, compared to Buckingham´s 600!), and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Both art museums happened to have temporary exhibits on while we were there, of Picasso´s works. Very neat to see the work of such a famous artist, yet Tom and I couldn´t quite understand how some of his work (particular the cubist works) are so famous when they look like they were done by a 5 year old child - deserving a fridge magnet rather than a frame! I guess we are just not cultered enough in the subleties of art.......

While in Madrid we had a chance to try tapas - Spanish appetizers which you find everywhere, at all the bars, restaurants and pubs. As we are living on a cheap budget (read: bread and jam has become the main staple of our diet), these were usually way out of our price range. However, we managed to stumble across a pub called ¨The Variety Tavern¨ which from 1pm-6pm had a deal: for 2 euros (about $2.80CDN) you got a half pint of beer and tapas - incredibly delicious and so much food!! We got bread with ham and cheese, pasta salad, spanish tortilla (omellete), mussles, sausage, nacho chips with guacamole......incredible! We thought it was a mirage and couldn´t believe it when we came back the next day and they still had the same deal - YUM!

For those of you that know me well, you are aware that I do not like coffee at all. Well, things may have changed. Tom got me into the habit of drinking cafe con leche (espresso with steamed milk) in the mornings and I have really started to enjoy it. Even after he left last Thursday, I have still been keeping it up. We will see what happens when cafe con leche turns into Tim Hortons.....

This entry is getting long and my time at this internet cafe is getting sparse. I will write more next time on Barcelona, and promise to put up some pictures before I leave here.

Adios!