Hello From Spain...

Hello everyone….
Well, Dasia and I are currently in Spain for what we are calling honeymoon #2. She luckily ended up with some time off, and we are trying to make the absolute most of it before I start work for good in 3 weeks.

We have both always wanted to go to Spain, so it seemed like the perfect fit for this trip. It was absolutely the right decision as I think we have both been in complete amazement of the country since the moment we landed. We are currently in Granada, but have traveled around quite a bit so far.

We started out spending some time in Madrid, which took us both by surprise with how incredibly alive the city was. It literally never sleeps. If you walk down the street at 3a.m. in certain parts on a random Monday evening you can barely move because it is so packed. While there we took in some sights such as the main palace and cathedral, the biggest art museum in Madrid, as well as countless parks and plazas. We stayed at Plaza Mayor which was a huge historic brick courtyard lined with restaurants, café’s and people at all hours. We also took in a World Cup Triathlon while we were here as well. It was my first time watching that type of racing, and I must admit it was an awesome and humbling experience. The speed with which they attacked the swim portion of the race was absolutely awe inspiring. A lot of the guys who will be in the Olympics, including Matt Reed who I was lucky enough to do a few training runs with in Australia were in the race, so this made it especially entertaining.

Since leaving Madrid, we traveled on to Sevilla, which I think has been our favorite stop so far. We stayed in a great little area right by the massive palace of Alacazar and the Sevilla cathedral that were both built in the 1200’s. Christopher Columbus’ tomb is in the cathedral, which was quite a spectacle all by itself. His body is in a tomb that is actually elevated about 20 feet in the air, and held up by several statues. This is actually just a small part of what is an absolutely massive masterpiece of a cathedral.

We have really enjoyed the laid back atmosphere of many of these places, as most of Spain seems to shut down between 1 and 4 p.m., with most people choosing to sip on coffee or sangria and soak up the good life during this time. The others who aren’t socializing during this time simply nap. I must admit this is one of my favorite parts of Spanish culture! It makes for a very relaxing day and vacation overall to absorb ourselves into this lifestyle.

From Sevilla we went to Cordoba for one night. There we took in a HUGE carnival that happens three times a year there. It goes on 24 hours a day for 10 days straight, and there is literally about 50000 people there at all times for the whole festival. It was amazing. Words can not describe how many people were there just dancing flamenco and having a great time. As far as you could see there was people on horses sipping spanish wine and women in brightly colored dresses dancing their hearts out. Every time I thought we were at the end of it we would turn a corner and there would be thousands more people having fun and dancing.

After that we took a train to Grenada today. Here we’ve taken in the main cathedral and museum, and tomorrow we are planning on going to the palace of Alhambra, which was originally built in the 9th century. It is one of the biggest fortress/palace complexes in the world, and has been named a world heritage sight by UNESCO. About 6000 people visit it daily, so it should be interesting!

After all of this, tomorrow night we fly to Barcelona where we will be for 4 more days before flying back to the US.

Hopefully soon I’ll have a better internet connection to post lots of pictures….I think we’ve taken about 500 at least so far.

Until then, from Granada,
Matt and Dasia