Americans In Spain

Our second mini-trip from Sevilla was to Cordoba, famous for its flower-filled patios and the Mosque (turned) Cathedral - the Mezquita. We took the high speed AVE train that got us to Cordoba in about 40 minutes. It reached about 300 km/hr at its fastest and it was beautiful seeing the orange groves zipping past. It was our first train trip in Spain. My previous trips to Europe were done almost completely by train, but with a family of four, and being over-25 year old drivers, it is usually more efficient to rent a car than to buy four train tickets. Cordoba was an exception. Our visit to Cordoba was short, two nights, so we only had time for a quick walk and dinner the evening we arrived, one full day of exploring, then we left around noon the following day. Since it is February, flowering patios are not at their height of splendor, but they are still present and its easy to imagine what an explosion of color they are in a couple of months from now. The Mezquita (C...

Rather than posting about a particular place or experience, today's theme is: what are we doing and how are we doing it?   First, as an important (late) preamble to everything on this blog, I am absolutely aware that a 10 + week trip is very unusual and nearly impossible for most families because of the realities of job schedules, school, life and family obligation, expenses, and on and on.  I would be embarrassingly clueless to present the trip in a "this is great, everyone should try it" kind of way.  Even traveling for a few months as a college student, without any family obligations or job expectations, is an experience open only to those with serious support in their life from family and society, coupled with good luck, socio-economic status, nationality, and on and on.  Doing so with two kids in tow is even less realistic.  So my thoughts here are, perhaps, pointless, but hopefully still useful for something. What are we doing? Our kids attend a ...

Hi everyone! This is Aviana. I am going to talk about our experiences at the Caminito del Rey and in Ronda.  But first, I wanted to say happy Valentines Day! I hope you all have a great one and get and give lots of love. <3 First, travel. The drive from Granada to Ronda was short, about 3 hours, but since Naomi and I weren't allowed to use any technology, it felt like forever. We slept for most of the drive. After two hours, we got to Caminito del Rey, an awesome hike high above a chasm with a river in the bottom. At the start we were super psyched because of all the delicious snacks we bought prior to the hike. We also got our camel back Water-thing-pouch filled up there. Naomi and I were SUPER exited! We were somewhat (OK more than somewhat) bothered by the fact that there was a steep about 1.6 mile hike leading up to the start of the real thing. I was straggling behind the pack as usual, so to keep myself motivated, I grabbed a stick and threw it as far as I could ahead o...

The girls have finished their fifth video: Part 1 of our visit to Granada.

We visited the Alhambra on a slightly chilly but pleasant late January day. We decided to separate the Alhambra from the rest of our Granada post since it is a bit of a photogenic blog hog and really can't share with anything else. We have been looking forward to the girls' reaction to it for our whole Spain trip, and the extra build up of seeing it lit up for two nights before we went added some drama and mystery to the whole affair. The girls were impressed.  It takes a lot for buildings to impress kids, since structures are way down on the list of things kids care about, but they were not in a rush to leave and were perfectly content to wander around seeing what amazing thing was around each corner.  It helped that there were feral cats everywhere in the Alhambra.  It is unclear if they have tried in the past to control the population, but if so they clearly have thrown up their hands in defeat.  The visitors and especially the kids were thrilled wi...