Rod's summary of the first two weeks in Spain

We are transitioning to the next house and the internet is much slower....look soon for pics of Gibralter!

Rod’s thoughts on the first two weeks in Southern Spain (sorry this might be a little long)….The flight and driving were longer than expected, but we kept our cool and made it with no major hiccups.  The house was better than we expected, mostly because of the size and the utter beauty of the views.  We fully recovered from Jet-lag about 6-7 days after we arrived. The landscape in Andalucía (the general region of our stay) was gorgeous and took us by surprise…every time we drove somewhere, we lost track of the number of “wows” that were said in the car.  The topography reminded me of the Appalachians in West Virginia, but they were much less lush and more heavily farmed here in Spain.  We saw a number of terraced agriculture to compensate for the hills.  Also, we didn’t really see any crops (no corn or wheat) and the farms were small 5-10 acres. We saw one small herd of sheep and a couple of cattle is all.  Orange and lemon trees grow around here like Maple trees in Michigan!

Driving wasn’t so bad, you get used to the round-abouts quickly and I think they did help with traffic flow.  The roads are pretty well marked and with the help of gps/phone maps, we only missed two turns in all our driving.  Gas is about $5.70/gallon, luckily we had fuel-efficient diesel BMWs to drive.  The drivers in Spain were good and courteous….and pedestrians always have the right-of-way!  Parking on the other hand, was a nightmare, people park wherever, there are very few lots, simply because the towns are so old and pre-date cars, there simply isn’t room.

The Mediterranean Sea was similar to an ocean, although there wasn’t a strong dead-fish smell.  The beach was nice, but the grain size of sand was much bigger than we see in Lake Michigan (we all liked Kirk Park beach better!).  The area reminded me of Gulf Shores, very touristy, mostly for northern Europeans and very clean.  Again, a nightmare to find parking, I can’t imagine it in high-season.  Gibraltar (still under British control) was amazing from a geology and history perspective, but the town was a crazy mad-house, again this was during the off-season….if you ever go, park on the Spain side and take a bus into the city (that is what we did)…If you go to google.maps or google earth, look for 3D views, the mountain is amazing.

Everyone’s favorite town was Ronda.  It was so different from anything in the states, the pictures do not do it justice…we were in constant awe of how they built on the edge of a cliff, again 100s of years ago!  However, it was a little touristy and the food was ok.

The people of the area were all very nice and patient with us, we were mistaken for Brits a lot and some of the locals who spoke good English had a little British accent.  We were a little surprised at the lack of English spoken by people, even though they take it as part of school (this sounds like a bad American!).  We only encountered English speakers in restaurants and the tourist locations (Mediterranean and Ronda)…nobody in the grocery stores, gas station, bakeries spoke it.  Luckily the owner of our villa did pretty well, with the help of Google translate, and we were able to attend her niece’s “dedication” (not baptism, I am not sure what word to use) to the church, along with about 20 other kids.  That was nice and we got a tour of the church (http://www.santaveracruz.org/) that very few tourists get.

Overall, it was a good first two weeks….food has been great (even stuff we make at home), weather is ok, but a little on the cool side.   The kids are doing well and have been up for trying different things.  The next two weeks are in the middle of a town and we should get a better sense of small town life.  

I hope the blog is helpful, Grace and Collin have been putting a lot of work into it....also, the internet upload speed was pretty slow at the first house, so sometimes it would take time to load pictures.