Test Test - Spain 2023

 Just testing to see if this blog still works!

Dallas

I've been lucky enough to spend the last week in Dallas, catching up with old friends and family. It's been a busy week and has gone by way too fast.

On Friday night I got together with my friends from high school, my sister, and one of her closest friends from college. We went out to eat at one of the hottest new restaurants in Dallas, Trece. It was good and we got to see some members of the Dallas elite social scene. Lucky us... ;) Just kidding, it was really good food and great to catch up with everyone.

After dinner we headed to a concert at the Granada Theater. The band was called "Sorta" - they are a good up-and-coming Dallas band!

Erin, Brooke, Kim, Ellen, Lynne, Tammy


Saturday was my grandparents 57th wedding anniversary. Erin and I went down to hang out with them in the morning and to take a dip in the pool. We met up with the whole family and celebrated their anniversary with a nice dinner and yummy cake. They are both very proud of the fact that they've been married 57 years - it is quite an accomplishment! They're still very much in love.

Sunday I went to church, to Central Market, ran a few other errands, and played with the pup.

Monday morning I had to take my car into the shop. I noticed that the car was hesitating to go from a stop into first gear (it's an automatic...). I took it straight over to the shop for them to look at. They said that the transmission fluid was 3.5 quarts low! So, basically there was no transmission fluid left. Luckily I took it when I did - we were on the verge of having to get the whole transmission replaced if it was driven any further. Eeek!

On Tuesday I borrowed my moms car and went to lunch with one of my Dallas co-workers, Laurie. She is a very fun lady and just a pleasant person to talk to. It was great catching up with her. I went shopping for a little while and went down to hang out at my grandparents house for a little bit! I met up with some friends for happy hour and dinner. It was great to see everyone again - there was no shortage of things to talk about!! We discussed our plan for the 10-year high school reunion that is coming up next summer. Should we try a Romy & Michelle dance? ;)

Wednesday I did a bit of work and went down to see my grandparents again. I had a great time swimming in the pool, talking with my granny, and eating cake with grampa! Wednesday night I worked on finishing up a scrapbook from my time in Spain - I wanted to get it finished so I could take it to show my grandparents before leaving for Boston on Friday! The week has just gone by so fast!

Today, Thursday, I am washing clothes, packing, and getting things in order for Juan's arrival this evening! We're leaving Friday morning to start our 3 day drive.

Juan has the camera, so I'll try to take some pictures of our drive. Maybe a picture of Ringo on the St. Louis Arch?

Hasta Luego España

Well, I am now back in the U.S. packing for the drive to Boston and getting ready to start up life in the real world once again.

My last weekend in Spain was great. Juan and I just packed, ate some good food, hung out around the house, and did some shopping.

I did go out and take pictures of everything that I had been wanting to take pictures of -- but hadn't. First, we drove around the bay to this huge mosaic octopus. It was really cool because there is a great view of the Tower of Hercules, the Domus (our neighborhood), and the beach.

Our apartment was right behind the big silver building (the Domus) on the other side of the bay.



It looks like the octopus is looking at the Tower of Hercules (in the middle-right of the picture).






I also took pictures of the street where we lived. We lived on the second floor (third floor from the street) of the pink and beige building on the left, above the blue Compostela - Chapa y Pintura sign.



Juan in the stairwell of our apartment.


The door to our apartment.


Right across the street from the apartment are my grocery stores - the Dia (which I didn't go to often) and the Familia (where I went every day).



Diagonal from our apartment is the bakery Sanbrandan. We bought bread from the bakery just about every evening for $0.54 - $0.75 per loaf of steaming hot bread. On weekends we usually bought some other fun pastries and empanadas.



I plan to continue writing by blog from Boston. Our lives over here aren't quite as exciting, but I'm sure we'll have some adventures with our first Boston winter... :) So, if you're still interested in reading about my life, just keep checking in!

Fireworks and DE-POR-TI-VO

My last full weekend in La Coruña was really nice. We took it pretty easy and stayed in town, but we had a good time. Saturday morning we woke up and ate a good breakfast and headed over to the club for some swimming and tanning. We stayed at the club until our stomachs started growling at about 3:30 - some yummy Doner Kebaps were calling our names! Saturday evening we walked over to the main tapa/bar area of town for some delicious tapas.

After dinner we made our way over to the port area for a fireworks show. Along the way we stumbled upon a fun concert.

The music was very upbeat, kind of like salsa - and everyone was dancing! We found a place to stand and waited for the show to start!

I think the fireworks were supposed to be some sort of battle reenactment or something - I'm not quite sure. I was extremely impressed by the show though - and I've been to the Boston Pops 4th of July!

They had a few types of fireworks that I've never seen before. One of them looked like a dud - but then I realized that fireworks started spraying out of the ocean - out of the water itself! Then, they had these fireworks that just floated around like ghosts! I'm not a good enough writer to possibly explain these…

After the fireworks (at about midnight) we walked through Maria Pita on our way home.

We realized that there was going to be a concert held in the plaza shortly. So, we stuck around for the first few songs. There were dancers, singers, all types of instruments - very exciting stuff. The music had a salsa/mambo feel.

On Sunday we headed over to a nice beach near Juan's office. The beach is huge with great sand and nice waves. However, it was pretty chilly! The air was cold, the water was cold… I was lying in a jacket. We started playing paddle tennis and warmed up pretty quickly. Juan and I broke our personal volley record - making 101 consecutive hits. We waited until about 3:00 (to miss the lunch crowd) and headed up to the restaurant overlooking the beach for some grub. We sat at a table in the sun and waited, waited, waited. I'm not exaggerating when I say that we waited for an HOUR before anyone even came over to our table to get a drink order. The waitress did come over to say that she can only work 3 tables at a time, so to be patient. Ummm, why would you have a 30 table restaurant if the waitress can only work 3 tables?

We were a little frustrated, but so was everyone else at the restaurant. Once you place an order, the food is out within 5 minutes. It was really good food - just typical stuff like tortilla, pimientos, ensalada mixta, and calamares.

On our way back to the apartment we stopped at the stadium to get tickets to the soccer tournament going on that evening/night. There were a few good teams playing, so we thought it would be fun to watch. Plus, La Coruña was in the final - we had to cheer on our home team!

We took the trolley (side note: I've been wanting to take the trolley for a long time!!) from in front of the Domus over to the stadium. We found a little team spirit stand and bought a Deportivo banner - we were ready for the game! We caught the tail end of the 3rd/4th place game : the Club Nacional de Football (yes, "Football") vs. Club Atlético de Madrid.

The final game was Real Club Deportivo de La Coruña vs. A.C Milan. Milan has several very well known players in the soccer world from Italy and Brazil. You might remember some names like Kaka', Cafu, and Gattuso from the world cup games this summer.

Kaka'

The game was a lot of fun. There were several shots on goal and several goals, which make the game more interesting. Deportivo scored first,

so the crowd really got into the game - chanting DE-POR-TI-VO, whistling, clapping, and other loud things.

Here are a few pictures of a Deportivo goal:

Getting ready for the kick... the goalie thinks he's ready.

About to kick!

GOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Celebration time

Deportivo, the definite underdog, ended up winning 3-1. They were awarded a huge trophy modeled after the Tower of Hercules.

We stayed around for the brief awards ceremony and started filing out of the stadium at 0:00 on the dot.

The moon was really big and pretty over the ocean for our 25 minute walk back to the apartment. If only the trolleys ran until midnight…

Juan had today, Tuesday, off of work. We've been working to get things organized and packed. I leave here on Sunday - only 4 full days left...

Fire and Water

There are currently over 65 forest and rural land fires burning throughout the region of Spain where we live (Galicia). Several of these fires have gotten very out of control and are damaging a lot of property and causing massive amounts of smoke to linger over the region. What is even stranger is that many of these fires were started on purpose! Per CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/08/spain.fires.ap/index.html), some people have been starting these fires to deliberately clear away trees from land in an attempt to get the zoning changed. Sheesh!

So, needless to say, the past few days have been very smokey around here. I had to wake up this morning and close all of the windows because of the amount of smoke getting into our apartment.

Anyhow, today I went to watch the tall ships sail away from La Coruña. From my spot on the rocks by the coast I could see a huge plume of smoke and a gray cloud rising up near the coast of Ferrol, just across the bay from La Coruña.

I sat down on these rocks :)


Cloud of smoke


The dark smoke cloud stretched for miles and miles. (Don't worry about us though! We live in a very residential neighborhood - in a concrete building surrounded by other concrete buildings.)



The ships all came out of the port one at a time - sails down. After all of the ships were out of the port they put their sails up - one boat at a time - and sailed around the Tower of Hercules and off to the horizon.

There are ships down in the lower left of the picture - hard to see at this size though...


These ships were really awesome. Some were small and some were huge. One looked like a cruise ship with sails - seriously. There were some that looked like pirate ships (old) and some that were very clean and new.



It was very fun to see these ships - it's just not something you get to do every day :)

Dinner, Ships, and Music

Last night we met up with Jose Antonio (Juan's advisor at Zara) and his wife for a fun filled evening. We started by grabbing some drinks and pinchos at a fun little restaurant by the port. After talking for a bit and getting our fill of food, we walked down to the port. There is a tall-ships race going on right now and the ships are all docked in La Coruña for a few days!

(Please excuse the fuzzy boat pictures. The lighting was terrible, I had to use a really high ISO setting, and I didn't have anyplace to set the camera to make it not shake)




There were probably about 30 (+/-) ships in the port - It was amazing! I don't think I would really like to sail on one due to some seasickness problems, but they're cool to look at! They are huge - even without their sails up. Tomorrow I am going to go over and watch them sail away, which should be really cool. I'll take a lot of pictures!

After looking at all of the boats, we made our way to Maria Pita (via an ice cream shop). By this time it was after midnight - on a Tuesday - and the streets were packed. It seemed like everyone in the city was out! There were older people, little kids, teenagers, sailors, tourists - everyone.



Maria Pita was also packed full of people enjoying the music of Carlos Baute. I've never heard of him, but I guess he is semi-famous here! The concert was free, so we just walked right on in :) I found a little clip of Mr. Baute on YouTube that has the same feel as the concert last night.



He sang a few encore songs to appease the screaming teenage girl sector of the audience. He brought one girl up on stage - the criteria for the girl was that she had to be over 18, single, and willing to hug/kiss, etc... He wasn't joking - At the end of the song there was full on lip-to-lip kissing! I know we're in Europe, but come on!! All of the other little teenage girls were green with envy and I'm sure that the "chosen" girl's friends were taking 1,000 pictures of their friend making out with the dreamy Carlos Baute. :)



It was a fun evening though! We got back pretty late and I felt bad for Juan since he had to wake up early this morning. I'm sure he'll just have a few shots of coffee when he gets into work and he'll be good-to-go for the day.

No huge plans for the rest of the week! We'll probably be out and about in the evenings to see what other fun things we can stumble upon. Oh, and I'm going to see the boats sail away tomorrow. And... I need to go shopping for some new/fun clothes!

I only have 11 days left in Spain - ACK!! I am attending a training for work in Florida on August 21st - 24th, so I'll be back in the States on August 20th! Time has just flown by. I'll be in Dallas from August 24th - September 1st getting everything packed and ready for the move back to Boston. I'd love to see all my Dallas friends/family while I'm home!

Jazz

This evening we went to a concert by the "Mr. Dixie Jazz Band".
http://www.mrdixie.com/

(the band is under the white tent...)


It was held on the steps of the Domus (museum), just down the street from our apartment! It was so much fun! We had dinner reservations at the Domus restaurant for 9:30, so we went over to the concert at about 8:30. We missed the first few minutes, but got into the show pretty quickly!

The crowd was clapping, humming along with popular songs, and cheering on the banjo player. Oh wait - that was just Juan doing all of those things...



Just kidding. The crowd was very into the show! The band tried to wrap up a few times, but they received a few standing ovations and were encouraged to play a few more songs.



The weather was perfect - sunny but cool. The views from the Domus were beautiful at sunset. Several people walking along the boardwalk (down by the water) stopped to listen to the great music.



Dinner was also wonderful. I broke down and ate another poor little suckling pig :) Juan had some fish and a few bites of my delicious dish. The views from the restaurant were awesome and the atmosphere was great. I wish I had known that this was a nice restaurant a few months ago - I would've definitely taken visitors to eat there! Oh well.

Saturday: We're planning on hanging out at the beach, shopping, and relaxing. There are more concerts going on around town, so we'll probably stop by a few of them!

Sunday: There is a wine festival being held in a small town about an hour away. We're planning on going to sample a few of the local varieties.