It's a bird! It's aaaaanother bird!

Our flat is very close to Regent's Park, which is a lovely place to walk around, especially when the weather is nice. Lots of people enjoy it, from the joggers to the mothers pushing babies in prams, from the commuters walking through it to get to the tube to the tourists like myself. But if there's one group that really loves Regent's Park, it's birdwatchers.

The park is full of birds. Everywhere. Swans, geese, ducks, cranes, and the ubiquitous pigeon are all that my untrained eye can identify, but there are scores more species present. And the unusual thing about the birds here is that they are fearless--they aren't afraid of humans at all. Of course, if you go running after them with your arms raised, they will move away (yes, I've seen someone do this), but if you're walking down the path and get close to them, they'll just ignore you. I've never seen birds behave this way.

They are fascinating to watch! I've always thought of birdwatching as a bit, well, weird, but I've definitely reconsidered my position after spending so much time watching these amazing creatures that live only a couple blocks from me.

The park is just a wonderful place. I'm sure it is amazing in the spring and summer, when all the flowers in all the gardens are in bloom.

Life is like . . .

A box of Gordon Ramsay chocolates!  I went grocery shopping this morning at Waitrose, which is the closest grocery store to our flat (there is a Tesco express across the street with a lot of great food offerings, but it's pretty small).  Of course, it was windy and raining and I didn't have an umbrella, but I couldn't have carried groceries back and carried an umbrella at the same time, so it didn't matter anyway.  My look after that could be accurately described as "bedraggled," but I think I've dried out now.

Anyhoo, Waitrose is running a promotion right now where you can buy an entire dinner for two people, including entree, side, dessert and wine, for only £10.  Considering just an entree at most restaurants around here costs well over 10 pounds, this is a great deal.  And the prepared meals over here are far superior to most prepared meals I've had from U.S. grocery stores (even the prepared lasagna from the Tesco Express was fantastic--you can't get that quality of food from any U.S. minimart!).

I selected the beef and chianti lasagna, the Greek side salad, and the winter puddings.  The only wine they had available with the promotion was white, which we don't drink a lot of, so I took advantage of the option to select a box of chocolates in lieu of wine.  I hope the Gordon Ramsay label lives up to the hype.  :)

All of the food items added up to about £16 before the promotion, so really it was like getting the chocolates for free, because they alone cost 6 pounds.  Free chocolate = happy me.

Adventures in Appliances

We feel fortunate that our flat comes with so many appliances--microwave, electric tea kettle, W/D (this one deserves its own post), hair dryer, coffee maker, etc.  What's also nice is that the flat contains the manuals to most of these appliances in a big folder.  When we tried to use the toaster yesterday, we couldn't get it to turn on or to latch down when we put a piece of bread in the slot.  I even looked in the manual book, but there wasn't one there (and geez, toasters aren't that complicated, right?).  So we figured it was broken and sent an email to the management company who responded right away that they would replace it today.

The guy shows up today with the new toaster, but first he tries the old one and calls me from the kitchen that it works.  I run in there, stunned, ask him how he got it to turn on, and he says he just turned on the outlet and it works fine.  Yes, this particular outlet in the kitchen has a switch by it that must be turned on before any electricity starts flowing.  I felt like an idiot and apologized profusely to the guy for the inconvenience, and he was very nice about it.

So our toaster works after all.  I still feel like an idiot.  Live and learn!

Tourist for a day!

We made it! We flew back from Madrid Saturday afternoon, took the Easybus from Stansted to London, picked up our keys, and then walked to our home for the next 13 weeks. Our flat is very nice--it is on an upper floor, two small bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living/dining room, and a kitchen. And this is the view from one of our living room windows.

When we woke up Sunday, the rain had stopped, and it was sunny with blue skies! On such a lovely day, we set out to explore our new city. We walked all the way down to Westminster, seeing Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey.

"Beware: Horses may kick or bite! Thank you." Parliament

Big Ben Westminster Abbey Is Big Ben leaning, or is it just me?

Then we walked over to Buckingham Palace, where we caught the tail end of the changing of the guard ceremony and encountered huuuuge crowds. I was able to snap a few decent pictures.

Marching in & marching out. These guys are fast!

A glimpse through the gate Crazy crowds of people!

We also found a very important building:

The American Embassy, being guarded by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Now we know where to run if need be. Hopefully it won't come to that. :)

Toledo

Holy Toledo! Sorry, I couldn't resist. :) While in Madrid, we took a quick side trip to Toledo, which is just a 30 minute train ride away. The city is situated on a very tall hill surrounded on three sides by a river. We got there right at 10:00 a.m., when everything opens, which proved to be a great decision--there were hardly any tourists there that early. Just two hours later, the city was packed full of tour groups!

We started at the Catedral, which was gorgeous (no pictures allowed inside, though). From there, we walked down to the old Jewish quarter and saw the two sinagogas there. The first was small and didn't allow pictures, but the second was much bigger, allowed pictures, and had a ton of security--there were only a handful of tourists there at the time, and there were probably over 20 people working there. There wasn't a single room that didn't contain a person in a chair watching over it.

We strolled down a few more streets, tried the mazapan (marzipan), and then cabbed it back to the train station (which was gorgeous itself) to end our brief trip.

Here are a few pictures from Toledo. For more, see our Picasa album.

Inside the Sinagoga

View of the countryside from Toledo Tile in the train station

Inside of the train station

Madrid

We took the high-speed AVE train again on our trip from Sevilla to Madrid, and it only took 2 1/2 hours to cover 329 miles (it would take 5 1/2 by car). We were delighted to discover the city covered in vacas (cows)! It reminded me a lot of a similar art campaign in DC that used pandas--basically each vaca is painted/decorated by an individual or group of people who are sponsored by various corporations. It was fun to see them all over town and watch people react to them, especially children.

We stayed at the Roommate Mario (Roommate is a chain of hotels in Spain), near the Royal palace and the Theater. Our room was very small but bright, and the entire hotel has a very hip, modern decor. The walls were thin, though--even though we were on a side street and on the 3rd floor, our room faced the street, and we heard a lot of noise. I think the interior rooms (which look out onto an interior courtyard) would probably be much quieter.

After getting settled, we walked over to the Palacio Real, which is the royal palace of Madrid. Unfortunately, they were closed that day for an official function, so we decided to take a long walk over to the Prado museum. On the way, we passed through a huge shopping district, and what did we see? A Pronovias store! I was happy to see it, because I wore a Pronovias gown at our wedding, and it is a Spanish company. So of course, I had to get a picture. :)

The Prado is free from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., so we avoided paying any entrance fees and squeezed our visit into two hours. You could spend a full day there if you wanted to see everything. We paid for an English headset, which was helpful, because neither of us really knows much about art, and it was nice to hear details about specific paintings. We spent most of our time in the sections including works by Goya, Velazquez, El Greco, Rubins, and Titian. It was definitely a highlight! There were lots of people there, but it wasn't packed.

Before our free entry to the museum, we walked through Retiro Park, which is right behind the Prado, and it used to be the private park for the royal family--all 350 acres of it! It is a beautiful place, even on an overcast day, though we didn't walk through much of it because of the mud (and we still saw snow on the ground there!). I really enjoyed the topiary, especially the "broccoli trees" (named by yours truly, but how could they possibly be called anything else?).

We eventually toured the Palacio Real the next afternoon, when it was open again--truly a stunning palace, but unfortunately no pictures allowed on the inside.

Here are some of our favorite pictures from Madrid. For more, see our Picasa album.

The Prado More vacas!

Palacio Real Both of us in front of the Palacio

A street off Plaza Mayor

Cordoba

While we were staying in Sevilla, we took a day trip up to Cordoba, which is only a 40-minute ride northeast on the high-speed AVE train. The train was very nice--much nicer than the Amtrak trains in the US, and much, much faster. They even show movies!

We arrived at 9:30 a.m. and took a cab directly to the Mezquita, because we knew that entry was free before 10:00 a.m. (saving us 12 Euros). The Mezquita is one of the most unusual buildings I have ever been in--it was built as a mosque, but during the Reconquista, a cathedral was added right in the middle of it, and the two parts don't blend at all. The mosque portion is very beautiful--a wide expansive room with seemingly endless rows of columns and double arches. The cathedral is smaller than the others we saw in Spain, but it was still impressive.

It is free before 10:00 a.m., because they hold a daily morning mass there and wouldn't want to charge parishoners. So services were going on when we arrived, which was also strange, because you really don't see the cathedral part until you are right next to it--when you are in the mosque part, you forget that there is a cathedral there, except for the voices and music being played over the speakers. It is such a unique space--I am so glad that we went there and got to experience it.

We then went to the old Jewish quarter of the city and toured a restored sinagoga (synagogue). We read there that only three sinagogas from before the Reconquista still exist in Spain--one in Cordoba and two in Toledo. All of the others were destroyed. And because we got there early, we were the only tourists there. Later that day when we walked past it again, it was packed full of tour groups! We saw more tourists in Cordoba than just about anywhere else we went in Spain.

We also found the statue of Maimonides, the famous Jewish scholar who was born in Cordoba in the Middle Ages, when Cordoba was one of the largest cities in the world and the center of learning and study in all of Europe. According to the sign, it is good luck to rub his foot, so that is why I'm in that pose in the first picture.

Here are some of our favorite pictures from Cordoba. You can see more in our Picasa album.

The courtyard of the Mezquita Bridge over the river Guadalquivir

Inside the sinagoga Hebrew script

And of course, M striking the same pose. :)

Sevilla

After a 3-hour train ride from Granada, we arrived in Sevilla Monday night. We got a cab again, and he drove us through the narrow streets of the old part of the city to our hotel. It wasn't without drama, though.

We had booked the Hotel Amadeus, which is a small hotel--only 15 rooms or so. We saw the sign for the hotel above a door on the main street, but when we looked in the window, we couldn't see a lobby or any people inside. We pressed the buzzer outside the door, but it didn't connect us to anyone, just made a noise. We thought that was odd, and we noticed another door around the corner that also had a sign for our hotel next to it. So we went to that door, looked in the window, saw the same thing, and tried a similar buzzer, but to no avail.

We were getting pretty frustrated wondering how no one could possibly be at the hotel. Then we spotted a third door, also with our hotel's sign next to it. We walked down to that door, but it was a solid wooden door that didn't look like it was in regular use. And it wouldn't budge. Well, now what? It was dark, we were in an unfamiliar town full of dark, narrow streets, we were standing on the street with our luggage, and we had no phone to try to call.

I even started flipping through one of our guide books, looking for nearby hotels to see if we could at least go ask them to call our hotel for us or in the worst case scenario, let us book a room. I noticed a pension in the book that had an address on our street and started to look for it, but I couldn't find it. Then I looked down the tiny, pedestrian-only pathway on the side of our hotel and spotted the sign for that pension. That's weird, I thought.

We started walking toward the pension and stumbled across a fourth door to our own hotel, which happened to be the main entrance and the lobby. And we felt like idiots. That main road that the cab had dropped us off on wasn't the road that our hotel was on, despite our hotel having a door and a sign on it. The narrow, pedestrian-only walkway was actually the "street" and that's where the main door was located. But who would have thought that such a small hotel would have 4 doors and 4 entrances? At least we can laugh at it now!

Sevilla is a charming city, especially at sunset, like the picture above of the Catedral at dusk. We really enjoyed walking through the city, especially the tiny streets of the Barrio Santa Cruz. Even though it was rainy and overcast for most of our visit, we didn't let that deter us from getting out and enjoying the sights, smells, and tastes of Sevilla. Sevilla is filled with orange trees, and even though it was January, the smell of oranges was everywhere. The tapas were fantastic in every place we tried, and our favorite was this very traditional bar where they write your order on the bar in chalk--when you're done, they add up the chalk marks. :)

We also didn't encounter many tourists here, and we certainly didn't hear any American accents. We felt like we had many of the main attractions to ourselves, especially the Alcazar, which was almost empty. The Catedral (the largest gothic cathedral in the world and third or fourth largest overall) had services going on while we were there, which was neat because music filled the huge space. And the views from the Giralda were worth the climb, even with the poor weather.

Here are some of our favorite pictures from Sevilla. See more in our Picasa album.

Looking through the bars of the Giralda Tile floors in the Alcazar

Alcazar Gardens Arches in the Alcazar

More Alcazar tile. :)

Across the pond . . .

I can hardly believe that this trip we've been planning for the last 6 months is finally on!  But even after 3 plane rides, 5 pieces of luggage, 3 laptops, the most turbulent flight across the Atlantic that I've ever experienced, and significant time/language differences, we made it here.  And all our stuff made it too.

As I sit here on the couch in our flat (M is at work already), I think how lucky I am to be here.  And I also think I should really go for a run now that it has stopped raining.  

Pictures to come!

Granada

Our arrival in Spain was pretty easy--we flew directly from Stansted to Granada on Ryanair with no problems. The Granada airport is pretty small, so our bag came out right away, and we went through immigration very quickly. We then took a taxi to our hotel, the historic Parador on the grounds of the Alhambra.

THE ALHAMBRA! What an amazing place--truly. We loved exploring every inch of it, which was easy to do when we were staying so close. The only negative was that it was freezing cold--literally--during our stay. But all the walking we did helped keep our blood pumping and our temperature up. We explored the grounds that don't require a ticket for entry on Sunday, and on Monday we used our tickets to gain entry to the fort, the Nasrid palace, and the Generalife gardens. We saw fewer tourists on Monday, which was nice, and there weren't too many other people with us. I can't even imagine what it must be like in the summer when crowds are huge!

We also walked down to the town itself, but there really isn't much there except for the Catedral, which was lovely. I'm glad we decided to just spend one night & two days in Granada, because that was plenty of time to see everything we wanted to see.

Here are some of our favorite pictures. For more, go to our picasa album.

Sunrise over the fort Arabic script

Doorways, arches & shadows Reflection of the Nasrid palace

Catedral

Charles V's unfinished palace