Semana Santa, Part 3 - Cap De Creus, Cadaques, and the Costa Brava

After our day in the mountains, we decided we needed a day near the water, to the Costa Brava.  We needed to drive a few hours to get there, but it was completely worth it.  We headed directly to Cap de Creus - which is the easternmost point of Spain.  There is a large lighthouse on the point, and hiking trails all around.  

This is the lighthouse at the point - it's very cool looking.

It was so windy at the point that my hair and clothes would blow at a 90 degree angle to my body.

The views from the point were stunning.  After we went to the point, we went to the nearest city, Cadaqués.  This city had the whitewashed look of a Mediterranean sea town, and was the city where Dali would summer.  

After exploring the town a little, we found a fantastic place that our guidebook recommended to eat at.  There was only one table left, so it was definitely popular!  We ordered the menu of the day - our starters were fish soup for me, and stuffed, roasted red peppers for Brian.  We shared Paella after that, which is Catalonia's signature dish! (Catalonia is the region we were visiting, it runs along the whole north eastern coast of Spain)

I know we take a lot of pictures of food, but it is all just oh so tasty!  Sorry Amber, as you commented on an earlier post, we do more than eat!  I'm just trying to make you drool, and trying to entice you to come on over here and eat some of this stuff with us!

After lunch & exploring the town a bit, we walked over to Dali's summer home - we decided to not go in, but just looked around.  I wasn't able to get very good pictures, sorry.  We knew the next day we would be heading to his crazy museum, so we thought we'd get our fill of Salvador Dali the next day.

It had been a long day of travel and looking around, so we sat in a little cove and read for an hour before starting the drive home.  I decided that since we were so close to the water, I just had to get in.  One word: FREEZING.

On the way home, there was one more town I wanted to see - Roses, anther beach town on the coast.  It turned out that there was a renaissance fair going on in the town's streets, so although we had a terrible time parking, we got to experience the world of small time carnies and artisans selling things we didn't need.  We didn't spend much time there, but it was interesting!

A very chilly evening in Roses, near the beach.

We had one more full day in Catalonia, which we will continue in the next post!

Read more...

Semana Santa, Part 2 - Sculpture Park Restaurant

In our last post, I left off that we went to have coffee in the restaurant near the entrance of the park.  We sat down at the bar, and proceeded to talk to one of the four people working in the entire place.  He was from Argentina, but had lived the last 10 years in France.  He was a really interesting guy to talk to - super kind and entertaining, and he proceeded to verbally translate the entire menu for us.  It sounded so delicious that we decided to stay, and eat this tasty lunch.

Exterior of the little restaurant - didn't look like much from the outside, but there were fabulous people working inside and amazing food awaiting us.

The very cool and hip interior of the restaurant.  We liked the artwork on the walls and the natural elements in the place - branches in the rafters, fresh flowers on each table.  There was a fire & chimney in the center of the room, creating an outdoorsy feel.

The bar with the day's menu, which the bar worker translated for us earlier in the day.

Brian ordered the special Easter tasting menu, so he got to try a bunch of different things.  I ordered just a couple of dishes, and it was ALL amazing.

We stuffed ourselves with these delicious foods, talked some more with the people at the restaurant, and headed off to our next adventure.  We hopped into the car again, and started driving towards the Pyrenees.  On the way, we drove through a national park, and stumbled upon some old volcanoes.  We did a little hiking, and got to see the remnants of at least 3 volcanoes in the area.  

Finally, after a lot of driving, we made it into the Pyrenees around dusk.  We were about 2 miles from the French border, but couldn't cross over because we only had single entry visas into Spain - which we used when we arrived.  It was SO beautiful, and it was so nice having the freedom to get around the country.

Read more...

Semana Santa Part 1 - Sculpture Park

One month after we arrived, we - SURPRISE - had a 5 day weekend with which to do whatever we want!  It was for Spain's Holy Week & Easter.  So, these photos are a little late, but I still wanted to update you on our trip!  This is a several-part post, but we'll see how ambitious I get :)

We had Thursday through Monday off, and decided to head up to the northeast coast of Spain.  Early Thursday morning, we packed the car, getting snacks and music ready to go, and we headed off on our 7+ hour drive to Girona.  Along the way we made several stops and saw some beautiful sights, such as these up in the mountains.  You can see the Pyrenees in the background.

Thursday night, we explored a bit of Girona's downtown - there is a huge cathedral there (with the largest nave in all of Europe), as well as some of the Jewish quarter.  It rained, we didn't have the greatest dinner, the Arab Baths were closed, and I'd probably have to say it was not one of our favorite cities to visit, or a very enjoyable evening.  I can't just tell all the good things that happen on our blog!  We definitely have stressful times and days or half days that just don't work out how we want.  That was Girona for us.

We promised ourselves to make the next day better.  Brian found a brochure for a sculpture park at our hotel, and we thought we'd check it out.  We like art, we like being outside, and we even got engaged in a sculpture park, so we thought it would be an amazing way to start our day!  Just finding this place was an adventure in itself.  Back, on a windy country road, at least 30 miles from any major road, we loved zooming through the countryside away from civilization to find this place.

Well, this place was definitely not what we expected.  Yes, there was "art." Yes, there was "sculpture." But it was NOT anything we had prepared ourselves for!  The artist was well known in the area for his erotic sculptures - which were all put on display.  There were at least 100 pieces, scattered throughout his land, with beautiful views of the snow-capped Pyrenees and the surrounding forests.  But, this guy was CRAZY.  Not, Kate likes kind of crazy art crazy, or crazy cool crazy, but straight up CRAZY.  We took a bunch of pictures of this place, mostly so you would all believe me when I wrote the blog post about it.  I created a collage here - small on this site, so you can choose whether or not you really want to see it :)  You can click on the image to enlarge it, and get to enjoy all the art like we did :)

We spent a couple of hours walking around, breathing fresh air, rolling our eyes at the artwork, and proceeded to get some coffee at the restaurant that was just outside of the entrance to the garden.  We started talking to one of the guys at the restaurant, but more of that in the next post.

I'll leave you with a fabulous image of us enjoying our ride through the countryside...

Read more...

Amazing Family

We have a friend who travels back to the states frequently, and he offered to pick some stuff for us.  He stopped in Brian's hometown, and all our parents graciously did a little shopping for us.  I sent a short list (probably 10 items) that I couldn't find here in the states that I asked for them to get for us.  Look what we ended up with!!!!!!

Brian forgot his pillow in the states - it made its way back home to us here!

Jeri, Kenny, Kay, Rich, and Reggie, we are so indebted to you!  It was like Christmas opening this!!!!!  Not only did our parents get the few things we asked for, but they went above and beyond and put in a bunch of special little gifts for us to open.  (GLEEEEEEEE!  and some earrings, and clinique stuff, cute plates & napkins... oh the mothers totally know me!)  We love everything.  So much.  THANK you!!

(question: did I use enough exclamation points in this post?)

We love you all and miss you!

Read more...

The last week in Madrid

I've been up to bunches in the last week!  Here's the week in review.

I've made a great new friend who has taken me under her wing.  Somehow, this has taken the form of Friday afternoon Sangria.  We make it our new habit.  It's been so much fun!  And, the sangria has been d e l i c i o u s.

This same friend invited me to have lunch with her last Tuesday.  One thing I love about a typical Spanish lunch is that there are usually three courses.  On the left is my first course - fish something (patee?) with a really delicious salad with fresh spinach, cheese, tomatoes, strawberries and corn.  I had steak for my second course, and then we shared flan 3 ways - chocolate, wildberry, and traditional caramel.  It was an amazing lunch, and I had fun with my friend and her coworker.

Last weekend we also got to meet some more new friends from Germany.  They wanted to go to San Gines - a well known cafe for it's chocolate and churros.    Hot, greasy, breaded dough, dipped in thick, warm chocolate.  So amazing.  If you visit us in Spain, we will definitely take you here.

I've also been keeping myself busy at home.  I've tried several new recipes, both Spanish, and traditional ones from home.  On the left is a few cookies from my first attempted batch of chocolate chip cookies here.  I had to bring over several of the ingredients from the states, including a 5 pound bag of chocolate chips my mom gave me before we left!  I didn't have all the ingredients I needed, but with the substitutions I did try, they tasted remarkably good!

Last Thursday were invited to a dinner party with about 20 people, and I was asked to bring dessert.  I quadrupled a apple crisp recipe, and made a 9x13 pan and a 9x9 pan of tasty apple buttery deliciousness.  There was enough that we got to bring the smaller pan home, and it's been amazing to eat this with ice cream most nights this last week (though it's not really getting me ready for bathing suit weather)

The last picture is my second Spanish recipe attempt.  Last week I made Salmorejo, a type of creamier gazpacho.  Maybe sometime I'll get the recipe up here.  I didn't take photos of it this time.  But this week I attempted empanadas.  It involved only 6 ingredients: chorizo, pancetta, red pepper, sweet onion, olive oil, and the puff pastry wrapping.  They weren't quite as pretty as I had hoped for, but they WERE pretty delicious!

Lastly, this is a big weekend for Madrid.  It's the patron saint's holiday, and there are a lot of activies going on around the city to celebrate the San Isidro holiday.  Wednesday night things got kicked off with the gigantes y cabezudos parade - the Giants and Big Head parade.  You can see above what I mean.  It was kinda cool to see it!

Read more...

Avila

2 weekends ago, we decided it was time for a day trip.  It had been a few weeks since we had traveled, so we decided to see some of the more regional monuments around Madrid.  There are a lot of small, beautiful sites around Madrid, and the first we decided to go see was The Valley of the Fallen.  Typically, right about now, I would spend a little bit of time giving you some history about the place, so you could feel like you understood a little bit more about what we went to see.  But, this time I'm not.  And here is why: we drove the hour or so to get there, after we had checked online to make sure it was open, there was a small, white sign saying that the place was closed.  :/   Turns out May 1 is a holiday, which we did not know, and this national monument was closed.  

Of course, we knew well enough to not get too frustrated.  So, there was another big destination stop nearby that we thought we'd see - El Escorial.  Again, if we ACTUALLY visited it, I'd give you some history and interesting facts.  But no, this place was closed too!  But I still took some pictures while we were there (if nothing else other than to prove to you that we TRIED but it was closed.  It was a beautiful place, and we'll try to go there again sometime in the future.  

We went for broke and decided to try a third place.  The city of Avila (pronounced like the "o" of ovulate, without the "te" at the end... my friend corrected my pronunciation, and I had a hard time the rest of the day not just saying ovulate for the name of the city...).  Our friend Christiano had tagged along with us at the beginning of the day, and though he had already traveled there once before, he graciously agreed to go again and play tour guide for us.  

Avila is pretty much known for the fact that it has a huge wall around the old city, with 88 towers, and 9 gateways.  There's a big cathedral, which every town here has.  We were a little bummed that we didn't have the success we were hoping for with our previous stops, but I proceeded to get some good photos.  Enjoy!

You can see the whole part of the old city from this photo.  There is a bunch of other development around the outside of the city, but we craftily only wanted to show you the actual ancient city...

Read more...

Mother's Day Surprise - Jeri and Kay come to Spain!!

As we take the day to celebrate the countless reasons that our mothers and mothers everywhere are so fantastic, we just had to share the latest event that once again reminded us why were are so blessed by the two amazing women that we call mom.  Jeri and Kay came to Spain!!!  They really pulled a fast one on us because we had no idea that they were coming but none the less, we had a great time.  Since we already had plans to check out the near by town of Chinchon, the four of us piled in the car and heading out for the day.

Here is Kate and Jeri on one of the old roads overlooking the historic city.  In the background you can see the ancient castle that was used to defend the towns people for years.  I (this is Brian) know that women like to get dolled up but come on Jeri, a corsage for an impromptu weekend trip? 

Another scenic view of the town and surrounding area.  Again I had to deal with the peculiarities of road tripping with 3 women.  Jeri said the skirt was more of a morning outfit.  Will I ever understand?

My mom and Jeri apparently got a deal on the corsages in the airport or something.

Jeri (in outfit number 3) with Kate in front of the town's largest church.  This lady's fabulous fashion sense, and desire to show it off, knows no bounds.

I was pretty excited to give my mom a big squeeze for mother's day.

My mom (also in outfit number 3) and me infront of the clock tower.

Out of control is really the only way to describe these two.  It's amazing what seems like a good idea after a few glasses of sangria for lunch.

In all seriousness, we cannot begin to describe how incredibly blessed we are by these two women and the love they show for us.  Their support for us, regardless of what country we happen to be in at the time, has helped us grow and become the people we are today.  

With that, Jeri and Kay, thank you and we love you from the bottom of our hearts.  Happy Mother's Day!

Brian & Kate

Read more...

Welcome Tanner Charles!

Last weekend, Todd &Shannon (Todd is Brian's cousin) brought Tanner Charles into the world!  We are SO excited for them, and felt lucky to get to "meet" him last night on Skype.  We can't get over how tiny he looks in Todd's arms!  (Todd is approximately 8.75 feet tall, well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but I have to stand on my toes to hug him!)

Doesn't he look just like a natural, cradling that baby?  Congrats Todd & Shannon!!!

Read more...