Sid's Travels

Hola! It's now Boxing Day (well, not here but that's just how I will always view December 26th) and we just finished our Christmas day with our Canadian friends. It was great! Silly and relaxing and definitely not anything like Christmas at home (though we all got our phone calls in to Canada!). We started out with a brunch of pizza, next, a Christmas carol sing-along and a shot of some Spanish alcohol for our sweet receptionist at our hotel who had complained earlier that it didn't feel like Christmas (she loved it and we all got kisses - the boys were in heaven), later, a trip to the famous Mirador San Nicholas (an amazing lookout....the whole Bill Clinton thing I think I mentioned earlier in a blog entry), and then a "homemade" dinner on the -1 floor of our hotel (the basement), which the hotel has graciously designed for clients to cook their own food and hang out in. We had a few canned seafood dishes, olives, toast with cheese and tomates and what the boys so charmingly called, "ass in a glass", referring to our awful, cheap white wine that could only be drunk if mixed with orange juice (OJ courtesy of the hotel). We tried to learn a card game after dinner but a case of delirium (tired and happy) took over and I was unable to play due to uncontrollable laughing. Do you ever get that? I couldn't stop if you paid me and it was interfering with the game so I had to give up. I think the giggling problem was a residual effect from a quite hilarious sight we had seen earlier at the lookout involving two dogs (one male, one female....you get the rest) and an unsuspecting owner clueless to the doubled-over spectators taking pictures and videos of her dogs. I felt like a 10 year old boy because again, I could not stop laughing. It just set the tone for the rest of the evening I guess. We did take a few moments to step inside an old church and marvel at its architecture -it looked like it has seen better days but was somehow still standing. Overall, a perfect Christmas in another country.

I have finally added some photos - have a lot more but there's a quota. Hope you enjoy!

Merry Christmas to all! It´s 1:30pm on Christmas Eve here in Granada. Strange to not being going through the favourite routines back home. We have treated ourselves to a nice hotel (still pretty cheap as it´s the down season) and are enjoying real heat (i.e. not water heat which makes the room damp) and T.V. It´s all Spanish channels but we are enjoying it nevertheless.

Our friends have very much enjoyed Granada....all enjoy the small city feel and of course, the stunning buildings and tourist sites. I´m guessing that between all of us we have 300+ pictures of the Alhambra alone (a conservative guess??). The Sierra Nevada mountains are open for business and the view of the snow-capped mountains is beautiful.

Feeling slightly melancholy about leaving this country. We´ve been asked whether or not we worked here. The answer is no. Hence, the coming home early. We did look at some options here but we were never truly inspired by the amount of money to be made tutoring (some, like our sister do well once a clientele is built up) and being the off season, there just wasn´t a lot. Making enough for bills back home and here didn´t seem feasible. And, let´s face it, travelling just got in the way (i.e. fun)

So, a Merry Christmas to all!

Well, again, where do I start? It just hasn´t been a month for blogs! It´s hard to write about events that happened two weeks ago. Lame, I know! I´ll start with my story I never finished (did I even start it?). We never met Mr. Buble due to a very potential mugging by two creepy guys who were smart enough to know that our Vancouver singer is no one special to the average Spaniard and that only fans such as myself would show up to a desolate park to try to hunt him down. We had it all planned out how we were going to get into the concert and then meet him (Tara, you would´ve been proud!), but alas, fear overruled our ¨date¨ and we were led by a very handsome security guard past the stadium and the creeps and down to another secure area to wait for a taxi. At the very least, I could hear everything as clear as if I were in front row. Could almost just see him too! Sigh...

Not two or so nights later, while typing out my original blog in which I started to tell this story, Savannah had everything stolen from her right in front of all of us. Slick, slick thieves. Money, passport, anything important....so that has kind of coloured the last few days. Two other friends have also noticed suspicious activity with their bank accounts. Very frustrating and time-consuming to deal with in another country. We only had a day left until we left for Granada for our sister´s Christmas party and it was the weekend, so that made things worse. We dealt with the theft like anyone would and went and had way too much wine, sangria, beer, and Black Russians. And tapas. Thanks Bruce!

And hallalujah! Animals rights exist (somewhat) in Spain. On our second to last day in Barcelona, we noticed a couple of signs for an Animal Liberation March that was to take place on Saturday night right near our hostel. Words couldn´t express my shock and then excitement. We showed up just as the crowd was getting organized and then proceeded to walk for 1.5 hours. It felt very, very good. We had police escorts and the whole nine yards. It never got violent. Just a lot of confused stares, some support, and some laughter (always the way!). I´ll post pictures once we find a place that will let us download our photos. Some highlights included stopping in front of the three-storey KFC restaurant and then again, in front of McDonald´s. The protest included everything, from Greyhound abuse (which is rampant in parts of Spain due to the underground racing problem), vegetarianism, fur use, you name it. We passed another march along the way (human rights) and they stopped their march and speech to let us pass. A quiet, touching moment. We also had a band of matadors come by marching and playing their drums and basically having fun. I´m sure it was organized in response to the animal march. A little too coincidental.

Attended our sister´s party on the 19th and got reaquainted (spelling?) with many of the people we first met when we arrived in October. Food, wine, socializing. I´m not sure what our Christmas will entail so I felt that this was our Christmas celebration. Was good to see Pam again.

I´m sure there´s more but my memory isn´t working too well. Waited too long to write!

Hope everyone is doing well and hopefully we´ll be seeing you soon.

It´s been awhile! We just haven´t gotten around to emailing or our blogs these past few days. We´re pretty Barcelona-ed out and are getting ready to leave in a couple of days for Granada to visit our sister and attend her Christmas party. Can´t wait! After that, we´re thinking that we will probably spend Christmas in Sevilla and then see from there. I´m planning on coming home in early January. Tired, poor, but happy to have seen and done a lot.

In reference to the title, I wish I had written about our night trying to get into a Michael Buble concert the night it happened.

But, I have to write again to tell you about it because my time is going to run out! Sorry! Will try this again!