Oh No, It's the Big Six Oh

March 31, 2010.......Sixty years ago Jim was born! Let's celebrate!

Lunch at El Velero, where else? We invited Clyde and Paul to join us for Jim's birthday fest. The Menu: two small tapas of a marinated mushroom and fish crema.We were so busy swooning over the aperitivo that I forgot to take a picture of the next course....which was a razor clam salad with a caviar vinaigrette! Sorry about that!



The second course was an egg with truffles on a crostini with truffle sauce. Unbelievable!!! And of course served with an excellent wine. The tapas was served with cava and we toasted Jim. The salad course was served with David's own wine La Caseta de Fusta. This white wine made from the xarel.lo grape is the first wine David has produced.

The eggs with truffles with truffle sauce (I just love writing that!) was accompanied by a red wine from Penedes.

This third course of langostines in a fish broth with white beans. Every bite was wonderful! Each of us used our bread to mop up every last drop! We all belonged to the 'clean plate club' for this meal!

Our dessert was a lemon sorbet with orange juice served with a sauternes.

And then came the surprise!!! Jim's birthday cake complete with candles (not 60 but 6 and 0).

We all sang and toasted Jim again!!!

Paul, Mary and David.

Jim and I with Clyde.

The CAKE!

After lunch we walked along the sea. It was a beautiful, sunny day. What a great day to have a birthday celebration!

Mary and David Arrive

Mary and David Badinger arrived Monday afternoon. Sitges was bathed in sunlight! We took a walk along the sea, around the church and into the old section of the city to help them get acquainted with our favorite city in Spain. Tuesday morning bright and early (around 10:00...think Spanish time) we headed into Barcelona. First stop was Santa Maria del Mar. This time it was open. This carving is on the lower right corner of the altar. It has always reminded me of the travelocity elf!
The walk was intended to be an overview of some of the major tourist areas of Barcelona.

As we walked along we stopped to check out interesting store windows and shops. This plaque is in front of the oldest nut roasting shop in Barcelona. This shop has been wood roasting nuts in the same roaster for 157 years. Now there is a small motor attached to the drum, but you can easily imagine the drum being turned by hand. David couldn't resist buying some roasted almonds and pistachios. Yum!

From the nut shop we wandered our way over to the Ramblas and up to the Boqueria, an open market which is open daily. Fruits, vegetables, shell fish, chickens, eggs, flowers, fish, nuts, candy, oysters, pigs, and oh yes, peeled goat heads! If you can imagine eating it, you can probably buy it at the Boqueria! Then it was on to the tourist information center.....where we ran into David and Mary's friends from Chicago, Paul and Clyde, who were in Barcelona for spring break. What a coincidence! Lunch was at a sushi place that serves the small plates by conveyor belt. It was a little light on the raw fish, but there were so many tasty treats to try no one went hungry. After lunch we continued with the overview tour. We stumbled upon the last 3 standing Roman columns in the city....from the Temple of Augustus. The other columns were re-purposed for other buildings after the fall of the Roman rule.

We had seen these our first winter in Barcelona and have been looking for them ever since. Now we know, come out of O'Ryans Irish bar and turn right!

The cathedral was open after 5:30 so we were able to get in to see the interior.

We walked around the cloisters where a group (gaggle?) of 13 ducks have been in permanent residence and apparently they are used as quacking 'watch dogs' when the cathedral is locked up at night. This is one of the fountains. There are many tombs in the floor.This snail is carved inside the cathedral.

After putting on a lot of miles we took the train back to Sitges. We didn't see everything, but it was enough for one day.

Barcelona Zoo

Donna Mitchell and her daughter Stacey stayed 2 nights with us a couple of days after we returned to Sitges. Stacey is studying Spanish this semester in Salamanca. Donna flew in from New York and they came up to our area to see Barcelona. We asked what they really wanted to do since they would only have one full day in Barcelona before heading back to Salamanca. They wanted to see the Barcelona Zoo, Santa Maria del Mar and Sagrada Familia. We had never been to the zoo which is located at the end of the city park. What a delightful treat was in store for us!!!
The number of animals on display was amazing! Most of the exhibits were surrounded by moats which allowed us to feel like we could reach out and touch some of them.

We arrived late morning which was also feeding time for a lot of the animals.

We saw lions, tigers, panthers, leopards and bears....

and monkeys, gorillas, vultures, storks and bears.....

penguins, lots of peacocks, hippos, rhinoceros, giraffes, an elephant.....

mountain goats, prairie dogs, dolphins, seals, an entire house full of mini-monkeys, a tortoise,

camels with one hump and camels with two,

an albino peacock, parrots........

and a KOMODO DRAGON!!!!!

The picture of the girl is a reflection, not what they were feeding the dragon! This exhibit was encased in glass as the saliva of the dragon is extremely poisonous!

These two locked horns and it took them over 15 minutes to work themselves loose!

Oh, I almost forgot, there were ostriches and zebras too!

What a great zoo!!!

From the zoo we walked over to the Santa Maria del Mar Basilica, which was closed, and onto the Ramblas. Barcelona was very crowded! Lots of tourists in town for the week leading up to Easter. There wasn't enough time to go inside the Sagrada Familia, but we walked around the exterior and Stacey had a chance to take lots of pictures! Being a Spanish major going for a teaching degree, I'm sure she'll have lots of opportunities to be in Barcelona again as she leads school groups!

El Teide

Our time on Tenerife was drawing to a close and we were waiting for a clear day to go up to El Teide. After checking the weather forecasts for the top of the volcano, we saw that our opportunity to go up would be during the last week of our stay. There is one bus up and one back per day. We hustled over to the stop and got in line with all of the other hikers. The bus ride up revealed the damage the cyclone Xynthia had caused and why the road had been closed for over a week. Along side the road were piles of cut logs while workers continued to cut up more of the downed trees. Many trees had snapped off halfway and others were uprooted. The bus ride up the volcano wound back and forth beyond the tree line up into the most desolate landscape I had ever seen. Being national park land there were no houses or commercial buildings except for the funicular and the Parador. The bus makes two stops, one at the funicular that takes you to the top of the volcano and the other at the Parador, a hotel with a great view of the volcano. We got off at the funicular stop so we could walk to the Parador.

From the funicular we had to walk down the road for a bit to pick up the hiking trail.

Maybe next time we'll take the cable car to the top. This time we were more interesed in the walk.

The day was hazy, but not socked in with clouds. The vegetation was very sparse.

The rock formations were amazing.

The trail wound back and forth and the only way we could tell that we were making progress was watching the hills in the distance getting larger as we approached them.

Looks like I'm walking to the edge of a cliff.

The trail continues on and on.

This formation reminded us of a castle ruin.

And we're still walking.

And still walking. We stopped after about an hour and a half to eat the sandwiches we brought along. Once in a while we saw another group of hikers, but mostly we were on the trail by ourselves.

And the trail still continues...

and the rock formations got closer so we knew we were making progress. This isn't the place I would like to get lost.

It was amazing thinking that the wind helped shape these forms.

Even from a distance I thought this looked like the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter.

And then we came upon a climber. He wasn't making any sound, I think it was the movement that caught my eye. It took about 2 hours of walking before the Parador was in sight. Then another hour before we reached it. Besides a few humans, the only living creatures we saw were a couple of lizards sunning themselves on a rock.

Finally we reached our goal. After over 3 hours of walking we were at the entrance to the Parador! That's Teide (snow capped) over my shoulder.

Proof that we had reached our destination. We stopped at the cafeteria and had cake and coffee, sat and rested our weary legs for a bit and headed over to the bus stop to wait for transportation back to town. Good thing we got to the stop early, the bus picked up from the Parador first and then from the funicular. There were about 6 hikers that had to stand for the ride down to Puerto de la Cruz. I sure am glad it wasn't us!