We had not seen Rolf and Samuel since they left Panama in 2023. Rolf is German but had retired in Spain. Samuel is Venezuelan so splits his time between Spain and Venezuela.
They met us in Sevilla and we met up in the Plaza de España.
There was a lot of catching up to do so we started in a horse and buggy ride.
Perfect way to see the centro.
Next up was tapas, and door photos.
After a quick nap and hair change we met up with them for a Flamenco show.
I didnt take too many photos because I was so caught up in the show. It was truly amazing.
Then we went out for more tapas. At the end of dinner they gave us orange wine in test tubes. We also met the nice woman in the photo. Her and her husband were Sevilla snowbirds which sounded like a brilliant life plan.
The night ended with more wine and singing. We all drank the wine but only Samuel sang.
We spent three months in Sevilla back in 2005. It’s always been one of our favorite cities, so we were really curious to see if it’s changed a lot.
One new thing in the last 20 years, are the high speed trains. It only took two hours to get there from Madrid.
The city is still beautiful.
This is the Marriott were staying in. We are a little out of the main part of town in a tradition residencial neighborhood.
It was a little too traditional at 5:30 on a Saturday. We didn’t eat lunch on the train so were starving. There were all these cute restaurants. But they all stopped serving food from 5:00 to 8:00.
This was us amused after the first two restaurants said no. After all the restaurants said no without exception I was no longer amused. The only places serving food were tourist restaurants in the center of town 30 minutes by Uber. Or Burger King. I’ll admit, my Whopper was delicious.
After I was no longer hangry, we went to our old neighborhood. It was a little hard to find but after consulting pictures, we took 20 years ago and Jeff’s excellent memory for street names we found our old apartment.
It is the dark orange building. There was no graffiti on the garage back then.
We tried to recreate this photo of Jeff in front of the front door.
Older but looking less confused. I think back then Jeff didnt realize I was going to take a photo of every door I saw. It was a new obsession back then. Now he’s used to it.
While we were walking around there was a crowd outside this little building. It had always been closed 20 years ago, but I had loved the tiles on either side of the for. I’m not sure if it was because it’s Lent or what but the door was open. Inside, were two statues that looked like the tiles. It was like a holy statue storage locker.
We also went into a church where you can go behind the altar and touch the foot of the “Señor de Sevilla” statue. There was a really long line so only I went. Jeff waited in front. If you zoom in you can see me on the left touching the foot.
At this point my phone battery died which was probably a good thing or I would have used up all my phone storage with door photos.
Jeff and I are on vacation. Even though we’ve been to Madrid before and even lived in Spain, it’s been a long time since we’ve been here.
We are like country bumkins. I refused to go into the Cathedral because there was a line.
I didn’t understand why there were so many groups of people clustered together until I remembered…tour groups
The metro was confusing. Had to pull out an old fashioned map. We took it from the airport to our hotel. I thought it was odd the guy next to me was fiddling with the zipper on my bag until I realized. Oh he’s trying to rob me.
He couldn’t get it opened and now we zipper locks. And I’m aware of my surroundings again.
I had forgotten what good cheese, olives and Spanish tortilla, taste like. I was the crazy lady taking way too much at the breaking buffet.
Still took a lot of photos of doors.
We forgot it can get below 95 degrees. It was 49 degrees but was freezing to us.
As my mom always said, “If it’s cold enough for your robes, chain and helmet it’s cold enough to wear a shirt.” Jeff is pretty sure this guy is the first evidence of capri pants.
Jeff insisted we were in Plaza Mayor in this photo. I disagreed. Jeff had AI settle it.
This is my told you so face.
We chose to go to a smaller art museum instead of the bigger Prado. Jeff got in trouble for getting too close to this statue.
I can within seconds of mistaking this thing for a bench and sitting on it.
Even though it was the smaller museum, our interest in art ran out before the museum did.
Still getting over jet lag so may have to eat “early” at 8:30 vs the Spanish dinner time of 10pm.
I’m really behind on posting. First let me say we, are very far away from the violence in Mexico. And my parents are here visiting us. But I’m so behind I first want to post about last week’s trip to Mexico City.
We saw two neighborhoods that we hadn’t seen before. This was a park in the Condesa neighborhood. We loved this neighborhood.
The first day I had to eat low/no carb since I had to get a PET scan. Once the test was over I more than made up for it.
The above were mole breakfast enchiladas.
I could have eaten these giant pork rinds when I was low carb
A little cup of bugs, also has very few carbs. I didn’t eat either of these things. One of the restaurants we went to had an explanation of ancient foods. Below it talks about both bugs and worms. Yum.
After carbing up we went back to the Anthropology Museum. We’ve been there before but it’s so big we only got through the Mayan part last time. This time we saw the Aztec exhibit.
Head massage with toes.
Skulls with fancy hair.
“Who wants corn.”
“I’ll take one for each of my many hands.”
Fancy Aztec underwear.
Jeff happy to see Aztec stuff and happy I’m back to eating carbs and not grumpy.
We haven’t seen our friends Clive and Steve for several weeks, so we were thrilled to see then this weekend.
On Saturday we had hummus, wine and a photo shoot on our roof then went to dinner.
At dinner they pulled out my new favorite thing, little lights that change color.
Seriously, how cool! At dinner we discussed going on a day trip to see wild flamingos one day in the next few weeks.
On Sunday we were excited to watch the Seahawks play and see the halftime show with Bad Bunny.
Even though Clive and Steve are not Seahawks fans and the bar was super loud they met us and brought flamingo napkins!!! They had turkey napkins for Thanksgiving, Christmas napkins and now flamingo napkins!!
And the lights which they made Seahawks colors.
We were at huge sports bar. Bad Bunny was definitely the main event.
None of the four of us knew any of the lyrics but we didn’t need to. It was fun to watch.
The crowd at the bar knew all the words.
Watching the excitement of the crowd was really fun. When Bad Bunny named off all the countries in the Americas and got to Mexico the crowd in the bar erupted in cheers.
After the gym on Saturday we stopped in the wine store. We weren’t planning on doing any wine tasting right after working out but…
As we browsed the shelves we found two things we did not buy.
I’m pretty sure these are only for tourists since it’s in English.
After the wine store and a stop at home we headed to a spice store. From the outside it didn’t even look open.
Inside we were thrilled to find bulk items.
Not only did they have spices and healthy flours, nuts and dried fruits, they had chocolate covered macadamian nuts.
Next stop was Mr. Tofu. I’ve ordered online from Mr. Tofu, but I thought going in person would be like a Whole Foods, Sprouts or PCC. I thought they would have all kinds of things not available online.
I was wrong. These two freezers were the entire store. And Mr. Tofu only had one kind of tofu. But they did have tempeh and a few other veggie things from the U.S. so it was worth the trip
Now that the weather is not in triple digits we’ve been able to walk outside more. This walk is down the fancy street
In the 1800’s all the rich people built mansions along this road.
Some have been converted to restaurants but many still are single family homes.
It’s a nice walk because it’s flat and has a good wide sidewalk. Now that I’m on a break from treatment and the weather is better we’re hoping to do more walks.
