Beach Day

We are so lucky to live right near the beach...it's only a 5 minute walk! Everything in Spain is closed on Sunday's, except for restaurants so we are usually looking for something to do to get out of the house. Lucky for us, we can head to the beach in the summer. There are a lot of beaches in Rota and El Puerto de Santa Maria. Parking is limited once they start to fill up so we have just been going to the beach near our house. It's called Playa de la Muralla in Puerto. We try and get up and get going so we can get to the beach by 10:00...when it's still pretty empty. The Spanish sleep in so the beach doesn't start to fill up until around 1:00...when we are ready to leave. It's perfect because we can pick out the spot we want and the kids can play without too many people being around. By the time we leave the beach is packed. Their are umbrellas everywhere and it's like a maze trying to leave the beach.

Here are some pictures from our beach day!

       

Feria!

Before coming to Spain I had never heard of feria season. It didn't take too long to learn about it...they told us about it in the culture class that Naval Station Rota required us to take our first week here.  Each city in Andalusia designates a week usually sometime in April or May for feria.  We live in El Puerto de Santa Maria, which held feria at the end of April. Seville, the capital of Andalusia, is suppose to have the best feria in all of southern Spain.  

 

Dancing at Feria

Feria means Fair in Spanish.  Their are special feria grounds that are empty all year until feria season and then out of nowhere hundreds of tents pop up. It's not quite like a fair back home.  There are amusements, food and drinking.  But other than horse and carriages there are not live animals.  The only fair that I am familiar with is the Topsfield Fair held in October.  It is really nothing like that.  All of the women dress in flamenco dresses.  Each tent is individually decorated, usually by a restaurant or business but sometimes a family will own a tent.  In addition to drinking sherry and other Spanish wines and eating tapas people go to feria to dance.  The type of dancing is called Sevillana.

The boys at Feria

  

My Sevillana dance class

A few months ago I started taking Sevillana lessons with a few other military wives in my neighborhood. I really wanted to quit after the first class but I decided to go back and am so glad I did. I learned how to Sevillana dance, bought a flamenco dress and even danced at feria! It was so fun and definitely worth the lessons.  The girls also have flamenco dresses and love dressing up in them. They were so excited to wear their dresses to school.  Rebecca even came with me to feria in Puerto and we danced together...she took lessons at school. This year we made it to feria in El Puerto de Santa Maria and Rota. Hopefully next year we can make it to Jerez and Sevilla.  

Back to the States...again!

I'm not the greatest at keeping up with this blog but I keep telling myself I'm going to stick with it and not give up on it entirely. I have been meaning to write about our quick trip to D.C. last month...mainly because I feel like I have to keep defending myself about why we've been back to the states so many times since coming here in July (3 times...which is a lot to some people considering many military families don't go back at all during their 3 year tour).

Eric was invited to a wedding in Baltimore in April. He spoke with his friend and we RSVP'd yes to the wedding with the understanding that if we couldn't get on a Space A flight to the area then we wouldn't be able to make it. We just couldn't see spending $4000 for the four of us to fly to the states for only a few days. As it turned out the Wednesday before the wedding (the wedding was on Friday) there was a flight from Rota to Andrews Airforce Base. We did some research on return flights and saw that there were a few different flights out of Dover that weekend that would get us back to Rota on Sunday...like I said a very quick trip. 

The trip could not have gone more smoothly. We left Rota at 10:00 on Wednesday and arrived in D.C. at 2:00 in the afternoon. We were able to spend Wednesday and Thursday night in Northern Virginia catching up with old friends. The girls even got to visit Laila, their daycare provider! The look on Rebecca's face when she saw Laila was worth the entire trip! On Friday morning we drove to Baltimore.  We spent the day in Inner Harbor and then went to the wedding Friday night. Thanks to Melissa for coming to Baltimore and watching the kids. On Saturday we drove to Dover, DE, it was about a two hour drive and that night caught a flight back to Rota. It was a quick trip but one that I would do again.

Many people here in Rota always ask why we go back to the states so often when we have all of Europe at our fingertips to visit. The thing for us is...family and friends are important to us. If I can get on a free flight back to the states why wouldn't I do it? I miss my family and friends back home and in Virginia everyday. I don't want to go three years without seeing them. We are also taking advantage of being in Spain and have traveled a lot since being here.  The way I look at it is that we have the best of both worlds.  We have this amazing opportunity to live in Spain for three years and experience the culture and travel but we can also hop on a military flight and visit home too!

Adios!

Living in a Spanish house

When we arrived in Rota last July base housing was not an option for us.  Because we only have two kids we only rate a three bedroom house on base, which there is a waiting list for. I'm so glad that we were forced to look out in town because not only does our house have a pool but it is a five minute walk to the beach. Also, instead of living in a three bedroom standard military home we live in a five bedroom, beautiful Spanish house! However, there have been some things we have had to adjust too...

Last night I was frustrated because I was doing laundry and cooking dinner at the same time and the circuit tripped...AGAIN! This happens all of the time and then I realized that I had the washer, dryer and oven on, which you are probably thinking is no big deal.  Well, here in Spain it is a big deal. So, I had to shut off the washer and dryer until after dinner.  This got me thinking about how many adjustments that we've had to make since moving into our house in Spain. Our house is beautiful and we love it but there are some things that are a little frustrating. For example...Spanish people do not use dryers...they hang dry everything. Our house didn't even have a dryer when we moved in so I guess the circuit breaker isn't used to running a washer and dryer at the same time. I have gotten used to washing a load then drying it before I start another load...but sometimes I forget!

One of the biggest adjustments has been the outlets. Spain is on the 220V system.  Therefore none of our small kitchen appliances, lamps, alarm clocks, night lights, chargers, televisions, etc. fit into the outlets. The base gave us transformers but you can only have so many things plugged into one at the same time. So, when I vacuum I have to make sure nothing else is plugged into the transformer because the vacuum uses a lot of volts. We also only have 3 transformers so there isn't one in every room. Rebecca and Lily don't have transformers so they don't get to use their cute little night lights that match their bedroom sets...we just keep the hall light on now!

The biggest adjustment for us has been the lack of central heat and air conditioning.  Since we live in a beach town the houses were built to only be used in the summer so there is no central heat. Although we live in Southern Spain it does get cold in the winter. Not two feet snow, below freezing cold but it has reached 40 degrees at night, which is cold. Especially because our house is all marble floors. We have radiators in each room that are fueled by gas. You have to make sure to turn them on at least an hour before you would like the room to be warm. We usually only heat the girls' rooms at night and the living room because utilities are so high. Coming from Virginia we were used to central air.  Our house only has two air conditioning units...one in the living room and one in our bedroom. So, on really hot nights in the summer we have slumber parties with the kids!

Pictures of our house coming soon!

Adios!

Barbate, Spain

You can see the village of Barbate in the distance.

Barbate is a small village about an hour drive from where we live.  There is a National Park there called Breña y Marismas de Barbate Natural Park.  There are 22 natural parks in Andalucia and this one is the smallest.  We decided it was a good place to take the kids since the trails weren't super long and the ride wouldn't be too long either.  We found the town of Barbate very easily and once we knew which direction to go in the Park was easy to find too.  We picked a trail that was 7.2 km long and would take us to the village of Caños de Meca but our car was on the Barbate side and we weren't sure if the girls would've survived walking 7.2 km there and back.  Instead we walked about 5km and then turned around. The views of the village, ocean and cliffs were spectacular.  I think we made a good decision to turn around because the wind was really starting to pick up and the sand was blowing.

One of the cliffs.

The girls sleeping/protecting themselves
 from the sand on the way back.

The girls were great on the hike! They rode in the stroller and walked the way there.  The walk must have wore them out because they both slept on the walk back to the car.


After the hike we drove into the village and ate lunch at Casa Oscar, a restaurant located right on the beach.  They served traditional spanish tapas and local dishes.  We ordered a few different tapas to start with, I would definitely recommend the green peppers and we got the chicken kabob for the girls.  They were two euro for a kabob and french fries.  Rebecca ate them up! Barbate is known for their tuna so we ordered tuna stew with rice.  It was very similar to paella except with tuna.  It was delicious and a must try if you ever make it here. Lily loved it and ate two servings!

Because Barbate is only an hour away and the park has a few different trails we can go back here anytime.  Maybe on a Sunday since the park is always open and everything in Spain is closed on Sundays so we don't usually have much to do!

Three Kings Parade

Three Kings Day is just as important as Christmas day in Spain!  Everything, including school is closed.  The night before Three Kings Day there is a parade where the Three Kings lead a procession through the streets throwing candy and treats to the  kids.  The kids in Spain get their presents on Three Kings Day the next morning!

We went to the parade in downtown El Puerto de Santa Maria, about a 5 minute drive from where we live.  We were told before hand to be careful because the candy actually gets pelted at you.  Which turns out is true!  I never thought that I would tell my kids during a parade to cover their head and close their eyes so it wouldn't hurt as much if they got pelted with a piece of hard candy.  The parade consists of a bunch of floats (some Disney related), a live Nativity scene (with lives animals and all) and then the Three Kings.  There are kids on all of the floats pelting hard candy at the viewers...and lots of it.  Once the candy is thrown everyone runs to grab as much as they can.  We didn't come prepared with bags like the locals but it didn't matter, the empty stroller caught enough candy to last awhile...I had to hold Lily to shield her from the candy! Here are a few pictures from the parade.

Thanksgiving in Madrid

I have been really bad about keeping this blog up to date. I think that will be my New Year's resolution...to keep up with this blog!  

Since I am so far behind I am just getting around to writing about our trip to Madrid for Thanksgiving. I am one lucky girl and get to go home for Christmas every year (thanks Eric!) so we knew that we would be spending Thanksgiving in Spain. We weren't sure how we were going to spend the holiday so after some thinking and planning we settled on Madrid. As it turns out three other families and a few other people that Eric works with were also going to Madrid. We decided on the train to Madrid, it's a four hour ride and the train station is right here in El Puerto. I thought that the girls were going to love the train...and they did...but they wouldn't sit still! They were up and down the whole ride, which made it seem a lot longer than four hours but finally we made it. There were 14 of us traveling together on the train so when we arrived at the station in Madrid we all walked to the Metro together to the subway to where we were staying. I'm sure we stuck out...14 American's carrying luggage and trying to read a subway map to figure out where to go! 

Finally, we made it to the apartment and got settled in. We stayed near the Opera Metro station, which I definitely recommend to anyone visiting Madrid. The location was perfect. You could walk just about anywhere or take the metro. There were tons of restaurants, shopping and sites right near us.  

Thanksgiving dinner

Thanksgiving evening we had reservations for dinner at a restaurant called Cornucopia. An American is part owner and they would be serving traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone we had traveled with were going here for dinner so we had a big group. That made for a fun night and made it feel a little more like Thanksgiving. The food was good too!   

Rebecca on the walking tour.

There are tons of things to see in Madrid. I would definitely recommend taking some kind of guided tour so that you don't miss the important landmarks and don't have to worry about reading a map. There are a number of different tours you could go with and you should definitely check out the tourist office at Plaza Mayor.  They speak English and will give you all the information you need and want to get around Madrid. We did a tour that wasn't offered through the tourist office, but it was a free walking tour! Yes, free...the guides work for tips!  It was a three hour tour. I was a little worried about how the girls would do, which was why we picked this one, we could leave if needed. But, they were fine...Lily even slept for 2 hours of the tour! This is the website where you can get the information about the free tour - http://www.newmadrid-tours.com/daily-tours/free-tour.html.

A taste of tapas.

Of course Spain is known for their tapas so we decided to do a tapas tour. The tour visited three different tapas bars and your ticket price included tapas and a drink at each bar. Children were welcome and didn't have to pay full price. There was a big group of us that we traveled with who did the tour which made it even more fun. The tapas and drinks were good and we visited tapas bars that we wouldn't have otherwise. Here is the website where you can get the information for the tour - http://www.newmadrid-tours.com/daily-tours/tapas-experience.html.  

At the playground.

Because Eric and I are traveling with two toddlers we are a little limited in what we can do and we want to do kid friendly things. If you visit Madrid you should go to the Prado museum...we didn't but we heard that it was a great museum. We took the kids to Parque del Retiro, the most popular park in Madrid. You can rent a row boat and go out on the lake they have there. They have a few different playgrounds in the park and they also had lots of kid friendly street performers...the kids loved the bubble guy.

Yummy!

On our last night in Madrid we found a Dunkin Donuts...well Dunkin Coffee but it was still exciting! We went back the next morning for coffee and donuts. It wasn't exactly the same but it was a little taste of home.  

Not sure when our next trip will be...we just got back from the states and are a little worn out from traveling. I think we are going to stick to day trips for a few months!