Valencia

The trip from Granada to Valencia was our longest bus ride yet: 9 hours! Thank goodness the buses in Spain are very nice and fairly comfortable. Somewhat unexpectedly, Valencia was one of our favorite cities that we've visited on the trip so far. It's located on the east coast of Spain and has beautiful beaches and a quaint old town, as well as very interesting modern architecture. It is also the birthplace of one of Jesse's very favorite foods: paella! We splurged a little and went to a nice restaurant on the beach so that we could make sure to get an authentic version of the dish. We went for the "Mixed" option. It had chicken, seafood, and rabbit - it was just as good as we had hoped for. Another really cool part of Valencia is the dry riverbed that runs all through the town. When the city got tired of the river flooding, they built a dam in the 1950s and diverted it outside of town, leaving behind a huge amount of empty space. They turned the entire thing into a huge park that includes gardens, sport facilities and lots of space to exercise and play.

Our paella:


At the beach:


The riverbed park:


The City of Arts and Science:

Granada

About four hours north and east of Gibraltar is the city of Granada, most known for La Alhambra. La Alhambra is a medieval complex that overlooks Granada and is one of Spain's most famous attractions. Constructed in the 14th century, it encompasses palaces (for Granada's Muslim rulers at the time), a fortress, gardens and government buildings. The entire complex is huge and very impressive, as were the views of the city that we got from the top of the watch towers. While in Granada, we also experienced another thing that Spain is famous for - tapas! To ensure that we got a better quality of food, we went to a very nice restaurant and tried three of the small dishes - octopus with paprika and olive oil, potato & ham croquettes, and cod with a garlic cream sauce. All delicious. So good, in fact, that we forgot to take pictures before eating them all up!

Inside La Alhambra:










Views of Granada from La Alhambra:






Peering over the edge:

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is actually an overseas territory of the United Kingdom located just beyond the southernmost point of Spain (who knew??). The residents of Gibraltar are British citizens (and very proud of it), and English is the primary language spoken there. Ever wonder where the term "gibberish" comes from? It stems from a mixing of English and Spanish spoken in Gibraltar!

We took the bus in from Seville and stayed in the Spanish border town of La Linea de la Concepcion. From La Linea, you can just walk across the border to Gibraltar, where the highlight is, of course, the Rock of Gibraltar. We accepted the challenge of hiking up the rock (no lame cable car rides for us!), which took about 5 hours in total. The best part was seeing the many Barbary Macaque monkeys that live towards the top. These monkeys are found only in the mountains of Algeria and Morroco, as well as in Gibraltar. It was the first time either of us had seen a monkey in the wild and we got excited about each one we saw (as evidenced by the dozens of monkey pictures on our camera)! However, Jesse did his best to avoid coming too close to any of the monkeys, while directing me to get as close as possible for pictures.

Presenting the Rock of Gibraltar! (recognize the Prudential logo?):


The town of Gibralter in the foreground and La Linea is in the background. Gibralter's airport runway is in between and you have to walk across it (carefully!) after you cross the border:


About halfway up the rock:


Some of our favorite monkey pictures:

Seville

After a six-hour bus ride, we arrived in beautiful Seville, which is a relatively small city in southern Spain and just happens to be the sister city of Kansas City! The Country Club Plaza shopping area in Kansas City was modeled after Seville and we could see some resemblances in the architecture and tilework as we walked around the city. In Seville, we got more of a taste of life in Spain, including siestas (most of the shops close down for a 2-3 hours in the afternoon) and late mealtimes (lunch around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, dinner around 10 or 11 at night!). While we were on board for the siestas, we couldn't quite hold out that long to eat our meals!

La Giralda, the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville:


At the Plaza de Espana:

Madrid

Madrid was our first stop in what has turned out to be a whirlwind tour of Spain. It's the capital of Spain as well as the country's largest city, so three days wasn't quite enough to see all of it! We visited the famous Prado Museum, where we saw several famous paintings by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, and the enormous Royal Palace. We also ate some delicious Spanish food, including calamari, chorizo and ham - lots of ham. We had no idea how popular ham was in Spain - there's even a restaurant called the Ham Museum where you can eat your ham surrounded by what looked like hundreds of hams hanging from the ceiling. Mmm, appetizing.

Chorizo and calamari - lunch of champions:


An artist in action at the Prado:


There are lots of street performers around Europe, but Madrid had some of the best musicians and "statues" that we'd seen yet:




Trying out for the Spanish gymnastics team:

Blarney

Just about a 20 minute bus ride outside of Cork is Blarney. There, we visited Blarney Castle and of course, we had to kiss the Blarney Stone. It remains to be seen whether we will be able to speak more eloquently in the future, but it was worth a try!

Blarney Castle:




The stairs leading to the top the castle where the Blarney Stone is - very steep (practically a ladder) and slippery:


This guy keeps you from falling through the hole while you lean back to kiss the Blarney stone - it's a long way down from there! Jesse said: "Give the guy a hug for preserving your life!":


The area surrounding the castle:

Cork

After a few days in Dublin, we took a 4 1/2 bus trip to Cork, which is on the southern edge of the island. We got to see a lot of very pretty countryside during the bus ride - everything really was very green in Ireland, even in November! Cork seemed to be a nice little city, although we didn't spend too much time exploring the city itself. Mostly, we just walked the main town drag which had shopping and a nice pedestrian walkway. We were more than just a bit disappointed to find out that the butter museum was closed for the season, but perhaps it was for the best. Free samples may have spelled trouble for us.

View of town:

Dublin

We didn't know a lot about Dublin before we visited, but it's a very interesting place with a turbulent history. It seemed to lack the beautiful architecture that we've seen in a lot of the other cities, which makes sense when you learn that it was a very poor country until fairly recently. The guide on the walking tour that we took compared the city to a poor person who won the lottery - in other words, when their economy took off in the 1990s, they spent their money on really silly things. One example he gave was a huge clock that they put in the riverbed that counted down to the new millennium - unfortunately, the river water was so dirty that the clock couldn't be read from above. Whoops!

City view:


Dublin Castle - a good example of the interesting architecture around the city (all five of the structures you see are part of the same building):


Traditional fish & chips - it's hard to tell from the picture, but this was a huge amount of food, all just dumped in a paper bag for takeaway:

Bath

After Stonehenge, the second stop on our day trip out of London was at the beautiful town of Bath. The 2 main points of interest are Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths themselves. The atmosphere was very neat because since the weather was cool, you could see the steam rising out of the hot springs. It just made you imagine how the area was used thousands of years ago.

Bath Abbey:




Street Performer:


Roman Baths:






Fountain:

Amesbury

The first stop on our day trip from London was in Amesbury to see Stonehenge. It was truly fascinating to see the structure itself and hear about all the history and conspiracy theories surrounding this great monument.

Stonehenge:












Heel Stone, aka Friar’s Heel, aka Sun-Stone: