Sevilla, Spain

We spent the second half of our October vacation in Sevilla - what a beautiful Spanish city!  This is how I pictured Spain, so quaint and beautiful.

We stayed in a great apartment across the street from the Cathedral de Sevilla and Giralda Tower and in the center of everything.  We even had our own roofdeck, where we could see the beautiful views of the cathedral.  Every night as we went to bed, we heard the clip clop of the horses taking people on carriage rides.  The night we got back home to Switzerland, I almost expected to hear the clip clop again!

Cathedral de Sevilla is the world's largest Gothic church, and technically the largest church in Europe.  Christopher Columbus' tomb is housed in the cathedral.

We also went up to the top of the Giralda, the minaret which is all that remains of the mosque that used to be where the cathedral is now.  they usually have stairs to get the the top of domes or towers here in Europe, but the route here was a series of ramps (originally designed to allow those who went up to ring the bells access to the top on horseback).  For us, it worked great for Meredith in her stroller!

We toured the Alcazar palace and gardens and were amazed.  The Moorish architecture of this palace, like the Alhambra in Granada, was amazing.  And the gardens here were so beautiful.  We saw people painting the scenery, and found a fun maze that we all got lost in!

We ate a lot of tapas in Spain.  The funny thing is that the Spaniards don't even think about having dinner before 8:00pm.  The restaurants don't open until then.  By the way, all of the shops are closed from 2-5pm for siesta, but that means that most of them open up again from 5-8.  In any case, this made for some late evenings with our 4 kids!  But, we it was fun to try a lot of different types of tapas, and the kids liked some of them.  One thing we learned is that a "tortilla" in Spain is very different from a tortilla in South America.  In Spain, it is basically an omelet with eggs, potatoes and cheese.  Yum!

We went to a flamenco show, which was really fun.  It was complete with dinner (starting at 8pm, of course) and very serious flamenco.  Wow - flamenco dancing surely is a workout!

We did some shopping in Spain, including going to a beautiful ceramic shop and a nice artisan mall where many different local artists displayed their work.

On our last full day in Sevilla, we went to...an amusement park! The kids really do a great job traveling so much, and we always try to plan a mix of activities so we will all enjoy ourselves. And, Isla Magica was great! We had a lot of fun on the rides, and even saw a great flamenco performance with Andalucian horses in the evening.

We took the AVE high speed train from Sevilla to Madrid for our flight home.  We had a wonderful time in Spain (and the flight home was only 2 hours, and no time zone changes!)

The Andalucian Countryside in Spain

For October break (the kids had a week off from school for "half term"), we went to southern Spain.  We flew into Malaga, in Andalucia, and stayed in the countryside in Almogia.  This was my first time in Spain, and I was excited to visit since I had learned Spanish in school (although now that I have been focusing on German for the last year, it was a challenge to get used to the Spanish again!).  Dave speaks good Spanish from his mission, so he was able to adjust pretty quickly.  We learned some new words, however, in Castellano!

We visited the beautiful town of Antequera - a small city with a beautiful Moorish fortress on the hill called the Alcazabar, and of course a bullring downtown.  We ate lunch in the restaurant of the bullring, then had our picture taken in the ring!

We went to Granada to see the famous Alhambra castle.  It was first a Moorish, then a Christian palace, and you can see the amazing architecture of both.

Granada has an interesting history, as it was the last Moorish stronghold to fall to the Catholic kings. Moors from North Africa invaded and inhabited Granada from AD 711. Throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, Christian armies worked their way through southern Spain, driving out the Moors.

Granada managed to resist until 1479, when the dynastic marriage between Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille proved just too powerful for the Moorish rulers. Ferdinand and Isabella marched on the ckty in 1491 and with the help o an enormout army, held it under siege for seven months. In 1492, the same year that Columbus sailed for the Americas, Boabdil, the last Moorish king, handed over the keys to his beloved city.

After seeing the Alhambra, we drove into the city of Granada - literally right through the city in our minivan! We didn't intend to drive right through the center, but without a GPS (there were none available from the rental car company) we had a bit of an adventure! I must say that the cars are quite a bit more "dinged up" in Spain than they are in Switzerland (but Dave made it through Granada without any new scratches on ours). We saw the gypsy caves in the Sacromonte district of Granada, which was really interesting.

We went to the beach in Torremolinos, near Malaga, and had a great time. We ate paella and other traditional Spanish food for lunch, then spent the afternoon in the water.

We stopped at a Lobo (wolf) Park and had a guided tour.  We even got to hear the wolf packs howl before we left!

It was fun to see the countryside of Andalucia, and the "white towns" were really striking and beautiful. But, my favorite part of the trip was our next stop - Sevilla.

Elise's Soccer Team

Before the weather got too cold, Elise's soccer team had a chance to play a match in early October against the other big international school in Zurich. Elise's team won, 3-2!

Lauterbrunnen & Schilthorn

After going up Mount Pilatus, we stayed in a beautiful little town called Lauterbrunnen, just up the mountain from Interlaken.  It is a magical town, with a big waterfall, Stabbauch Falls, which we could see from the window and balcony of our hotel rooms at Hotel Staubbach!  We had a nice time at this little hotel.  We took the cable car and then a train up to Mürren, a car-free town that was really special.  There's something very unique (and peaceful) about a place with no  cars!  And it's much easier to travel with little kids in a place where you don't have to worry about them stepping into the street.

Since it was another beautiful day and we were so close, we decided to take the gondola up to the Schilthorn.  I must say this was, hands down, the scariest experience of my life!  As we started up, we could see the grassy hillside below us, and everything was fine.  But, as we came to the crest of the hill, we kept going up and below us was a huge gorge.  We were so high!  I found out once we were at the top that this is the longest aerial cableway in the world!  We stopped at a huge cliff jutting out, just long enough to get off and change to the next cablecar.  This one was just as bad.  I cannot believe they could even build the cablecar stops into this huge rock!  Once I saw how high we were, I really couldn't look at the window anymore.  And, it didn't help that the boys felt free to lean against the windows!

Once we were at the top, it was really spectacular.  The view was incredible, and we ate in a revolving restaurant at the top.  It was a pretty unique experience.  Aside from its majestic views, this peak is popular because scenes from the James Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service were shot here.  There's a little museum at the top that shows some of the clips from that movie.

I must say that the way down was not nearly as scary (or maybe I'd just gotten a little braver).  If you want to visit the Schilthorn when you come see us, I'll give you directions, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to do it again!