26-Jan

Although this tag may fail to inspire any fear in the rival "North Side" gang, it does do a nice job of providing a title for our recent trip to Spain. (I believe it may say 'Fetus' in red underneath...although I can't offer any guesses as to what that might mean...) We got the chance, thanks to a GPS in the car, to travel to some other great cities along the South of Spain. Leah warned me that they may not respond well to my "English in a Mexican accent", so we had the added pleasure of advancing our Spanish another notch throughout the trip.

We began our first day in Malaga, which by size and population was the largest city along the tour. It was also my personal favorite and the birthplace of Picasso. Although the beach left something to be desired, (ie. a coastline with something other than harbor, construction, or drilling equipment) the rest of the city was brilliant. Cathedrals still dominated the large building category, but there were plenty of other good sites around the city. There were parks with orange trees, bull-fighting arenas, cozy little street cafes, and plenty more to keep our attention.

The main attraction was the Castillo (Castle) Gibralfaro. After reading some of the history, it apparently defended the city for several hundred years from the Moors and the Roman invading armies. It's situated atop a huge freakin hill, which Leah and I chose to climb by foot. I was in a personal little heaven. The only thing that would've made seeing the castle any cooler would be if it fell under siege while we were there. As you can see, I already had the South wall well defended.

The next day we followed Richard's instructions, the voice of our GPS guide, to the small coast town of Tarifa at the Southernmost point of Spain. The city was a bust. Not really much to see and definitely nothing to do. I don't think we took any pictures. We just had a sandwich, some coffee, and left. I'm sure I saw Leah spit at a local as we walked back to the car...

The drive getting there was beautiful though. We learned that wind turbines are cool, and that even Fiat's are capable of on-the-dime cornering and turning abilities. (while pulling over for some photo opportunities) We also stopped in a great little town called Mijas, which seemed to be the one place most untouched by tourism. On the way back I fired Richard (for some inexcusable errors) and hired July who led us near Gibraltar. I say near Gibraltar, because neither Leah or I knew there was more than just a rock chilling out in the middle of the sea. It's actually a country, and I forgot my passport for customs. No big deal though, the infamous rock is unmistakable in this photo, and hat's off to Leah for one of the prettiest pictures from the entire trip. The dark cloud looming overhead makes Gibraltar look like Dr. Evil's new lair...

For our last day, we trekked about 90 minutes North of Malaga to the city of Granada. We could both feel the rise in elevation, and couldn't miss the beautiful and unmistakable sight of snow-capped mountains in front of us as we got closer to the city. After a little walking around, we aimed our walk toward Alhambra, a very large, very old Muslim-inspired palace on the North side of the city. History explains several overthrows, occupations, and some partial destruction of he palace, so its origin comes from a few places, but it was an entirely amazing structure, with much of the buildings still intact and preserved. I included my favorite photo to the left. It was taken by the late renowned atomic scientist Neils Bohr.*

*my new designation for Leah

A great trip. I know we'll be back to Spain for more in the future.

A few extra photos:

The Palace of Charles V At home in the fruit orchard.

Gibralfaro from ground level Leah in front of a tea shop

Looking out from Alhambra