We took a short ferry from Rolf and Samuel’s town to Cadiz. It was a small boat not the one behind us in this photo.
Cadiz of just as charming as the other cities we’ve visited on this trip.
There were so many doors I was in door heaven.
I took breaks for wine and tapas. Jeff refused to pose for the above photo. I think he’s learned his lesson.
Even the candy store was picturesque.
We started our day at the market which was the cleanest market I’ve ever been to.
Even the fish heads were stylish.
Next up was churros.
The churro maker was super psyched for me to take photos of the process. I could do an entire post on his process. Including the free sample.
It was good we were full of fried dough before the sherry tasting. The walk to the bodega helped us work off the calories.
This was going into the tasting.
Our tour was in Spanish although our guide was able to explain in English when I got lost.
There was a complicated explanation in how they move the sherry from the top to the middle to the bottom barrels.
And then we started the tasting and tapas.
We were a bit loopy after.
After a siesta we made dinner. In Panama this was our favorite thing to do together, cook. Also drink, dance, and sing.
Rolf and I prepared the first course.
Jeff and Samuel made the 2nd course.
And then we had a cheese tasting.
Samuel has been making a parmesan like cheese in Venezuela. He makes it with fresh milk from cows that eat on his farm in Mérida Venezuela and cave ages it for 6 months at his mountain home.
It is amazing. I could have eaten the entire block. His Instagram site is @qyagrumo
Here is Samuel’s explanation of his cheese.
For me, YAGRUMO: The soul of the Italian Alps born in the Venezuelan Andes. A guard cheese, matured at 2,400 meters high, where the cold of the mountain and the weather dictate its character. 100% Bio, without chemicals, only milk, height and patience. Much more than a parmesan: it is the ultimate expression of our soil.
We’re spending the next few days with Samuel and Rolf in their apartment in the town of El Puerto de Santa Maria.
It’s smaller than Sevilla but just as charming.
After walking we hung out on their terrace.
We had just “a little snack” which was like a gourmet lunch that Samuel whipped up including homemade bread, and hummus.
Then after a siesta we went to a grocery store which I loved to see. I’ll do a separate post on.
Samuel whipped up a paella for dinner.
And then we played the matching card game that Rolf made. With cards from our time in Panama.
Not sure from the photo if you can tell who won.
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 am so far behind with my posts. My parents visited over a week ago. We had a great time with them.
One of the highlights was going to Uxamel which is a really amazing Mayan ruin. It’s not only a giant pyramid, but also other buildings and squares.
We also went to a small museum that had an optical illusion exhibit.
This optical illusion was so weird it was hard to even stand without falling over.
Back at our apartment I was going to make my parents a fresh juice but had a crazy hot flash and had to lie down. So they ended up making me juice.
Afterwards we played one of several intense Rummikub games.
We went out for traditional tacos.
And also to a fancy restaurant in a restored house.
Only Jeff climbed to the top of the tower.
It was another wonderful visit with them.
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.
This was from a few weeks ago, but I forgot to post it. There was a really cool art installation in the center of Mérida
The pieces were scattered in different squares so it was a good walk around town to see them.
Some we liked more than others.
One made Jeff purple.
Then there was this church. It wasn’t part of the exhibit, but still lit up nicely.
And of course I still like doors even at night.
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.
And of course when the Seahawks won were happy.
