Spain, March 2012

Alonda & Jim went to Spain for Spring Break. The school closed for two weeks in March so they went looking for someplace a little less "wintry". They visited Málaga for a week and then stayed in Madrid for a few days before flying back to Karachi.

Pablo Picasso was born here in Málaga and the Málagueños never let you forget it! Of course, they tend to skip over the part about him leaving the city for good at the age of 14. He never did any of his work here, but the city still claims him. He did a lot of his work in Barcelona. We saw the Picasso Museum there when we visited Barcelona a few years ago.

The churches looked a little odd. If you look at the picture, you will see that they have a sort of large "garage-door" near the normal-size door. This is for Semana Santa (Holy Week). This is the biggest religious/tourist deal of the year. You would see gigantic statues related to Jesus' death and resurrection paraded through the streets. The statues are carried by crews of up to 200 men. Some of them wear what look like Ku Klux Klan robes to hide their identities (no one is supposed to know you are doing penance). You can go to YouTube.com and search for "Semana Santa Malaga" if you want to see why the churches all need an extra-large door! We are frankly glad we missed it by a week! The crowds are horrendous and all the hotel room rates are about double (if you can even find a room!).

This is one of the many cruise ships that stop at Málaga. The city has added a huge new warf to accommodate up to 8 ships at once. With each ship dropping 1000-2000 tourists into the city for a single day, you can imagine the crowd when 15-16,000 tourists are all trying to get lunch at one time. Our tour guide commented that, without the cruise boats, Málaga would be just another Third-World city! We had fun at lunch watching the "boat people" come by!

One of the stops on the walking tour was the local market. We are very familiar with this type of market since Seattle is world famous for the Pike Place Market. Jim got yelled at (in Spanish) for touching the display! The apples were absolutely wonderful!

Alonda loved all of the varieties of olives.

Olives seem to be grown all over the country. We took the train down to Málaga from Madrid and it seemed to be non-stop olive groves. Taking the bus over to Granada seemed to show nothing but olive trees, too.

If you ordered anything to drink in a bar or restaurant, they would automatically give you a "tapas". The tour guide claims this is the law left over from the time of the Spanish Emperors. One of them ordered a beer and the bartender put a slice of cured ham over it to keep the flies out. King Philip (don't ask us which one!) liked it so much he made it a law to serve food with drinks. Jim thinks he would have been more likely to pass a law that they put a lid on the beer to keep the flies away!

This is one of the marker signs at the Botanical Garden in Málaga. It used to be a large private residence outside the city. Very nice place to visit, although the view of the city has obviously changed a lot in the last 100 years.

This is the fort in Málaga. The Spaniards finally threw the Moors out of Spain in 1487 (yes, that is five years before "Columbus sailed the ocean blue"). The war lasted about 300 years and this is just about the last place taken by the Spanish. Spain is absolutely littered with 500+ year old forts built by the Moors and taken over by the Spanish.

This video was taken while we were eating chocolate muffins with "cafe solo" (espresso) just outside the old fort in Málaga. We saw school field trips everywhere we went every single day. We are not sure if there are that many trips or this was just the "season."

This is the little animated "walk" signal. Watch what he does when the time gets short! This is something we consider an "idea from elsewhere". We always look for good ideas we have not seen in the US.

We took a side trip to Fuengirola on the local commuter train. The beach is over 10 miles long and there are condos everywhere! This area is one of the "top-10" for retiring outside the US.

This is the gigantic cathedral in the middle of Granada. We took the bus from Málaga to Granada and needed to ride the local bus from the bus station to downtown to ride the bus from downtown up to the Alhambra. You wouldn't think you miss the directions to get "off at the Cathedral", but from ground level, you cannot see the church. Of course, all the locals know where it is!

This is the Alhambra. The Alhambra (taken over by the Spanish from the Moors in 1487, of course!) is THE number one tourist attraction in all of Spain. If you look online for recommendations of what to see and do in Spain, the Alhambra is always on the list at, or close to, the top. This is the view toward the palace and fort part from the garden part. We had to buy reserved, timed tickets to get in. You can buy them from the ATM's (believe it or not). If you don't have a reserved ticket, you stand in line and hope that there will be a ticket for the time when you are standing in line.

This is a view of the old gypsy quarter from the fort. The average tour of the Alhambra takes three hours. They tried to sell us a two-hour walking tour up and down the hills of the gypsy quarter before our Alhambra tour. We are not that dumb! Old forts are really hard on your legs. All those stone walls and steps ...

This is one of the fountains and watercourses that make the Alhambra famous. You can tell it was a bright day since the camera shutter speed was fast enough to stop the water drops in mid drop.

These are some of the Moorish decorations. At the time (and still today), Islam forbade the depiction of the human or animal form so they did all their decorating with patterns and script. These reminded us of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

Here are some closeups of some of the decorations at the Alhambra and the fort in Málaga.

This is the famous Patio de los Leones (Plaza of the Lions). You can see that the entire thing is ripped up and undergoing renovation.

This is a close-up of the newly renovated lions. They have shiny lips since they have new, stainless-steel fountain pipes!

This is why you need to travel before retirement (if possible!). The USA is mostly wheelchair accessible, but the rest of the world is NOT. We saw one man taking his wife around in a chair and she was unable to see at least 75% of the Alhambra.

We took the high-speed train (Jim saw 270 kph /167 mph) up to Madrid. This is the official symbol of the city. It is a bear with a madroñe (Madrona) tree. The tree is also known as the "strawberry" tree. This is closely related, but is not the same as the Pacific Madrona tree seen all over the Pacific Northwest.

This is NOT the Skagit Valley in Washington State! This is also NOT Holland. This is spring in Madrid! Alonda went to the Botanical Garden in Madrid. Jim rode the train back to Málaga and then back to Madrid. We had carefully put our passports in the hotel safe (no in-room safe!). Since we were going by train and not by plane, we BOTH forgot about them until we tried to check in at the hotel in Madrid.

A little fun at the airport on the way back to Karachi!

Lisbon, Portugal

Welcome to Lisbon, Portugal!

We wanted someplace warm for Christmas and decided to go to Lisbon. This is the view down from the fortress that overlooks the city.

This is the view looking back up to the fortress from the shopping district in the middle of Lisbon.

Flowers were blooming up at the fortress. The weather was wonderful.

We took some pictures of the clock and bell towers we happened to see. It is a shame that most of them no longer function. They are expensive to maintain.

Portugal is (justly) famous for their decorative tiles. Entire houses are covered in them.

We didn't see a lot of Nativity Scenes, but we did find this one while we were looking for lunch. This is in the town of Setubal, a well-known tourist destination.

This is the castle up above Sintra. We rode the bus up to the parking lot, but the fee to get in and walk up to it was much too high.

This is Belem Tower over closer to the ocean. Lisbon is actually on a river, not the ocean.

This is walking along the seashore on our way to Cascais. We got of the train at Estoril because the ticket seller told us it was a wonderful walk. He was right!

We went to the Lisbon Aquarium. This video looks an awful lot like snorkeling!

This is the (at that time) largest library in Europe. Still pretty impressive. You have to be a serious researcher to get in. The town is Mafra and we went through it on our way to Ericeira where there the first "Surfing Reserve" in Europe is located.

There are still a lot of the old Roman era ruins around. This is one of the old aqueducts.

The coffee in Lisbon was uniformly excellent!

Christmas is coming

We want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This is Jim on the cover of the Karachi Express. He was playing "Santa" at one of the local hotels during the American Women's Club Christmas Bazaar fundraiser. You might also see him on CNBC doing one of their "Merry Christmas" bits between commercials.

Copenhagen and Sweden

This is the reason we went to Copenhagen. This is the World Convention for the Esperantists around the world. We went to the World Convention when it was in Brazil in 2002.

We went on a walking tour of the city (by ourselves). We finished at the "Little Mermaid". Every tourist in the world who comes through here looks at it. It was donated to the city by Carl Jacobson in 1909. You might know him better as the brewer of Carlsberg beer! He had been to see a performance of the ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale and fell in love with the prima ballerina.

We were fascinated by this little coffee cart. This is the style of little taxi / transporter very common here and in India. They are called "tuk-tuk"s because of the two-stroke engine noise they make.

Even the birds were complaining about the cold and rain. We were in Copenhagen for the end of the summer and were freezing! It had been cold all summer in Seattle and we were hoping for some warm weather. During the two months in Seattle, it got over 80 degrees for a total of 2 hours!

This is Rosenberg Castle and the King's Garden. These were almost literally across the street from the hotel we stayed in. King Christian IV built the castle. The royal Treasury, Crown Jewels and the Royal Regalia are kept here.


Jim discovered "Xtreme Lawn Bowling"!

This is one of the (very modern) guards at the Royal Treasury. Notice his cute little Guard House. It looks like a giant pencil.


These are the guards marching (with policeman escort) to the ceremonial changing of the guard at one of the other palaces.

We got these because we looked on the internet for things to buy in Copenhagen. We ignored the souvenir recommendations, but these things were on the list as being worth a look. They are called Floederboller and were delicious! We just bought them at the nearest grocery store. The food was very good, but very expensive.

The "Elephants on Parade" is an on-going, world-wide fund-raiser to help save the Asian elephant from extinction. This movement started about five or six years ago. It is similar to what the city of Seattle did with the pigs about ten years ago. It is actually a lot of fun!

Here are a few of the 103 elephants. We got pictures of 16 of them. We originally thought about visiting all of them, but just couldn't do it.

There are a lot of things to do in a major city that don't cost an arm and a leg. You just have to break away from the tourist guidebooks and look around. This is the local botanical garden run by the university.

We decided to visit Malmo, Sweden since we were so close (35 kilometers) and the train went each way every hour. You could ride a bus and/or take a ferry boat, too. We went by train.
These are some of the wind chargers we saw from the train out along the coast. The wind chargers were very common around the city.

If you have been in Tacoma, you might recognize this (style) bridge. It is called a single-support suspension bridge. It is just like the Golden Gate, except it only has one set of towers instead of two. Yes, that is a lighthouse right next to the city of Malmo. You can guess how far the horizon is by the height of the lighthouse. The lighthouse at Alki Point in Seattle is only about one-story high.
This is the "Turning Torso". It is a residential building in the middle of the Industrial Park next to Malmo and its port.
We like murals on buildings, but think the old-style advertising is nice, too.

This was the scene Esperanto convention. Jim went conventioning while Alonda visited the museums.
Here is a short clip of the subway in Copenhagen.

Bremerton Street Art & Statues

We don't know anything about this statue. It is on the corner across from the Navy Yard and didn't have a label. We missed the monthly Art Walk because Alonda had sprained her ankle. We hope to do the walk and find out more about the art next year.

This is a giant fish (in case you couldn't tell). They put it up last year. Kitty-corner across from the fish is, of course, the ...

... giant fisherman.

This is a lion on a fountain. He isn't very fancy, but he has been here a LOT longer than the other statues and art works.

This lady is what everyone thinks about when they think "Pacific Northwest." She is ready for the stereotypical rain.

We don't know what this lady is doing, but she is dressed up for the Kitsap Pumas soccer team playing their first ever international match. Kitsap is the Premier Development League Northwest Division champion. They will play Port Vale from England. Port Vale is the development team for Manchester United (world famous soccer champions). Manchester United is playing the Seattle Sounder in Seattle.

We have been revisiting our tour of the clocks in Seattle. This clock is here in Bremerton and was restored within the last two years and is in front of the bank building that is now the Kitsap Historical Society Museum.

This "Lone Sailor" stands on the end of the outer pier of the yacht basin. You can see the Navy Yard in the background.

This is a memorial to the shipyard workers. The boardwalk area is designed to look like an aircraft carrier deck.

This is a statue of Esther Bielmeier. She worked as one of the rivet heaters during the Great War (you probably know it as World War I).

This is the photograph that inspired the statue!


Bremerton is always an eye-opener when you take the time to walk around. It is clean, neat and is constantly trying to improve itself.