Return to England

In the first part of October we received the news that Colin's English grandmother had passed away. We were sad for her passing, but also felt grateful that we had been able to see her during the summer. We joined Colin's parents, and the rest of the English family for her funeral service. The service was beautiful, and full of memories. It was touching to hear stories from Gran's life. The passing of a loved one often causes us to think about life and death, and I feel grateful for the hope we have through Christ to live again. It is comforting and inspiring to imagine our loved ones crossing into the next life and embracing those who have gone before them. We sang a hymn in the church to say goodbye to Gran and I think we all felt that while she would be missed on earth, she was being welcomed home by her husband and daughter.

Although we were brought together by sad circumstances, it was really special to spend a couple of days with Colin's parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. The only one missing was Ross. We had the chance to spend an afternoon with Rachel and Steve at Kew Gardens. It was proper British weather with occasional blustering winds, cold humid air, and grey skys. The Gardens were beautiful though. My favorite area was the tropical (read heated) indoor garden.

In this picture we are on the "Tree Walk," which is a bridge that winds through the trees about 60 feet above the ground. 

We stayed in Lynn and Hugh's home, and we had a great time. We especially enjoyed seeing how the older brother- younger brother dynamic between Hugh and John played out. John always seems very responsible, organized and mature when we are with him (or perhaps it just seems that way because we are his children), but around Hugh that seemed to fade away a bit and he reminded us of Ross. John was more carefree, expectant that things would just get done, and less worried about getting caught sneaking a sausage before lunch. It made us smile to see the two of them together and also made me think that no matter how much time passes, we maintain some part of our identity as a younger or older sibling. Here's to hoping that my younger siblings still take orders from me in 10, 15 and 20 years :) 

We spent an evening or two in front of the fire playing cards, and enjoying British cheese between rounds. We also went to a local pub with Hugh and Lynn. It was my first time trying Yorkshire pudding, and it was delicious. Through the grey haze outside we could see a rugby pitch from our table. Dried hops were hung around the pub, and of course, a real fire warmed the entire toom. Perfect. We loved spending the weekend with family. 

After a weekend of reflecting on and honoring Gran's life, and bonding with the family we hopped on a plane back to Spain. In typical down-to-the-minute Taylor fashion, we both got off the airplane and went straight to work with our weekend backpacks, and very little sleep. Our trip to England rounded out a very busy October in which we traveled 3/4 of the weekends. We felt blessed to be able to do so much, and ready to spend some time relaxing at home. 

Catching-up part dos (Portugal, Bilbao, Colin's Bday)

Part III

Now for our trip to Portugal. A friend of Colin's from work invited us to his house in Portugal, and this neighboring country has come to symbolize all things wonderful. If you decide to visit Portugal be sure to stay in your friend's country house, have all your meals at your friend's family's restaurant, and roast chestnuts in a brick fireplace. Also you should collect the chestnuts whilst walking through pumpkin patches and fields on a bright sunny day.

Our friend lives in a small town called Viseu. The sidewalks and pathways are a mosaic of hand laid grey stones. Trees, vines and flowers spread over the parks, walls and walkways like a scene from The Secret Garden. A church spire peaks above the skyline in the center of the town. On Friday evening shouts burst onto the streets during the Portugal v. Russian futbol match. On Saturday morning Colin and I went running. At the end of the road we ventured into the woods. At the end of the path we ran into an elderly Portuguese man herding his sheep.

After bring in Madrid, Portugal was like a completely different world. We had a great time getting to know Colin's co-workers better, exploring the countryside of Portugal, and dining on food fit for kings and queens. A huge thank you to Marco and his family for their gracious hospitality and wonderful memories.

Here are some photos taken by our friend Shen. We didn't have a camera, so I am borrowing his :)

Part IV New Jobs and Bilbao

We got back to Madrid on Sunday night. I started two new jobs the next week, and then on Thursday night we flew to Bilbao. It was a pretty hectic 4 days. 

The first job I took on is a combination of marketing, college counseling, and English teaching. I spend about 15 hours a week helping kids choose colleges to apply to, editing their essays, and get the Spanish grades/ recommendations sent to the US or UK. I'm learning as I go along, and hopefully a few of my students will get into college. the other job is babysitting for a Spanish family a couple afternoons a week. The family is awesome. Both the parents are engineering professors, and they lived in Boston last year working at MIT. They have two boys (ages 8 and 4) whose English improved a ton last year, and now I play with the boys in English. It's almost like they got to bring a piece of Boston back to Spain with them :) It's been a lot of fun getting to know their family. 

Half Marathon in Bilbao! When we arrived to Bilbao on Thursday night it was pouring rain. With both of us having had busy weeks we hadn't planned out the Bilbao trip very thoroughly, and the tentative hostel plans we made fell through. Even with the rain and mist, and the spur of the moment planning Bilbao was beautiful. 

Walking through the city

The city's main attraction use to be a steel factory that has since closed down. Now the Guggenheim get sall the attention. There are still remnants of the steel factory though, like this brick tower in the middle of the park:

We met up with Rachel and Steve on Saturday evening! They couldn't help themselves when we told them we were going to be running a half marathon :) We explored the city with them, ate some tasty pinxtos, nearly solid hot chocolate, and then some more pinxtos. 

Bilbao at night

On Saturday we visited the Guggenheim. Definitely cooler from the outside than the inside. 

Outside the Guggenheim

Saturday night we ran a half-marathon through the city! It started at the Guggenheim with fireworks. It was a really cool course. There were people out cheering almost the whole way. Colin did awesome with a time of 1:39 something. I'll spare you the details of what happened during my race, but I finished a little bit after Colin. Rachel and Steve had a fantastic race and beat their goal time! Overall it was a great experience. We loved Bilbao! 

Part V Colin Turned 25! 

Colin's birthday was the 23rd of October. I organized a surprise dinner for him with some friends, and baked him a cake at our neighbors house (turns out you can't bake cookies or a cake in the microwave, even with the grill setting). He had no idea I was planning anything, and it was good fun. My 80 year old neighbor, Teresa, really saved me though. On the night of his birthday I was dashing up and down from her house to ours checking the cake, getting ready for dinner, and trying to hide everything from Colin. Teresa really came through with candles, a cake pan, a tray, and a smile. At one point Colin came into the apartment when I wasn't expecting him, and I had to hide parts of the cake under the bed #iloveoursmallapartment. Here's a short video from the dinner. 

Happy birthday Colin! 

The next weekend we flew to England. More on that to come!

Catching up

Last post we were basking in the sun along the mediterranean coast in an economical smart car with a menu del dia in our tummies. Six/seven weeks further into our Spanish adventure a lot has happened! There have been ups and downs, but rarely a dull moment. Welcome to a small snap shot of what's it like to travel, eat, get robbed, run, see family and ultimately to be young, in love, and naive in Madrid.

Part I

The last weekend in September Colin and I had plans to go to a birthday party, and relax. On Friday afternoon I met up with a friend to walk around the city. I stayed out longer than I had planned, but didn't think much of it. I got home around 6pm. The door to our apartment was open, which was odd since I didn't expect Colin home for a couple of hours. I pushed in and our suitcase was open in the middle of the living room. I had asked Colin to retrieve a blanket from that suitcase the night before, so my first thought was that he was home and had taken the blanket out. Then I looked around. The computers were gone. The shelves and drawers had been ransacked. The camera was missing. Bank documents were strewn on the floor. Colin's wedding ring was nowhere to be seen. I started to shake a bit then immediately called Colin. A co-worker helped him call the police, and we spent the rest of the evening filing a report.

The next few days Colin and I had several debates about appropriate punishments for thieves. Colin's ranged from severe to more severe once asking why society stopped cutting thieves hands off. Trying to make the robbery seem less terrible I sometimes tried to imagine that the person who stole from us must have been desperate and needed the money very badly, maybe his or her kids are eating tonight because of us...? We've come to terms with the fact this it feels crappy to have someone break into your house and steal your stuff. But, in our case, there was no permanent damage, and worse things can happen.

Now we turn our deadbolts all four times, we always close the metal window guard, I never answer the buzzer for the mail lady (spanish still not good enough to verify it's actually her), and we hide things when we leave for the weekend. We may have been naive thinking that we were safe on the sixth floor in an apartment building on a busy street, but we won't let it happen again.

Verdict is still out as to whether or not our landlord's insurance policy will cover anything. Cue Final Jeopardy music.

Part II

Colin did a triathlon! He swam like a fish in the murky lago water, biked like Lance minus the drogas, and ran like the wind. I'm just a LITTLE proud of his triathlon debut :) I dashed between courses to capture the grueling,  sweaty moments on our sub-par phone camera.

He even looks good a swim cap

"I workout"

Drafting

Finish line!

Part III and more coming soon!

Road Trip to the Mediterranean

Madrid is hot. Regularly in the high 80's, and the public pools closed the first weekend in September. What's with that? In need of some relief from the heat we took a trip to the Valencia, Javea and Alicante. We packed our backpacks, climbed into our rented Smart Car, and drove through the mountainous desert out of Madrid and towards the Mediterranean.

Once outside the congested city the sunset spread bright pinks, oranges and purples over the desert. Looking over the mountains into the yellow sun as it cast a water colored sky from one horizon to the other I was reminded how beautiful the earth can be. This was the first of many breathtaking skies over the weekend.

The pictures really don't do it justice. 

Being recently out of school as we are, and having also recently spent an entire summer nearly unemployed and yet still jet setting to as many locations as possible, we found ways to make this trip as economical as possible. 

Wallet saver #1 Couch Surfing. If you aren't familiar with it, there is a website called couchsurfing.com where you can volunteer your couch or a spare bed for free and in return you can request to stay with other members of the couch surfing community for free. We joined up, and spent our first night in Valencia with Jose, a gracious couch surfer in a centrally located part of the city. We had a great experience. Jose was a nice guy. He gave us some tips, talked to us about the culture in different cities, and then we parted ways. 

Wallet saver #2 Menu del dia for lunch, and grocery store for dinner. By law every restaurant in Spain is required to have a menu del dia (at least mon-fri), and it's made lunch my new favorite meal (actually I love them all, I can't pick a favorite). The menu del dia includes a starter, a main course, a dessert and a drink all for about 10 euros each. In Valencia we had jamon con melon, ensalada, dos tipos de paella, granizados de limon, pan, y 2 postres for 18 total euros. Grocery store dinner usually cost about 9 for both of us, but you have to live a little :) 

At lunch 

Visiting the main church in the city

The city plaza

That afternoon we drove out of the city center to the playa. We walked onto a white sand beach that had people scattered here and there. Along the side of the beach there was an channel with some fishermen. Colin decided we should cross the channel in order to get to the completely deserted area. We were the only people. We were separated from the road by a good 200 yards of sand dunes and light vegetation, and none of the other beach goers looked too intent on crossing the channel.  The water was warm, and unbelievable clear. There were small waves that gave us just enough push to body surf a bit. Here's a few pictures from sunset. 

On our way out, instead of crossing the channel we decided to walk up to the road, where we found this sign and this barbed wire explaining why the beach has been so picturesque and secluded. Thank you to the possibly endangered birds for sharing their sanctuary with us for the day :) 

Wallet saver #3 avoid toll-roads and take the most fuel efficient routes. Our beloved Smart Car rental had a navigation system. On our way from the bird sanctuary to our next couch surfing destination the navi took us over the mountains on what it deemed the most fuel efficient route. In the pitch black, as we snaked through the mountains with occasional street lights, we tried to reassure ourselves the navi knew what it was doing. When the navi told us to take a right turn down an even smaller road on the side of the mountain we hesitated, but decided to follow it. When we were instructed to drive down a step we still followed. When it told us to drive down 5 more stairs and through a locked gate we finally drew the line, reversed out of the small graveyard and back onto the main road. Not sure this one actually saved us money, but the navi certainly tried. 

That night we met our host in Javea. David had an amazing house. He designed it himself and we were impressed. It had a rustic wood motif throughout the the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms. There were huge double doors that opened onto a patio with custom designed lawn chairs. The backyard's focal point though was definitely the pool. It was bright blue with sloping edges and a pond to one side. We spent the evening chatting with David about his travels, and enjoying his salmon cashew spaghetti. We spent the next morning lounging by the pool and pushing all previous thoughts of going for a run far, far away. 

After a taxing day poolside we went into town for a menu del dia with David, then hit up the beach. I'll let the pictures do the talking.  

Wallet Saver #4 Stay in and play Angry Birds instead of going 2 da club. After leaving Javea we drove about two hours to Alicante. We got into our airbnb apartment around 11pm. We got all dressed up and ready to go out and enjoy the nightlife. I sat by Colin who was ready before me and started watching his angry birds games. I played for the first time, and we took turns on different levels for about half an hour before admitting we were too tired to go out, and we were both addicted to the game... 

In Alicante we hiked up Castillo de Santa Barbara, went to Playa de San Juan, and played volleyball with a really fun Argentinian family. 

Castillo de Santa Barbara

Playa de San Juan

Wallet saver #5 Don't buy swimsuits, just go to the nudist beaches. Ok, so we may not have followed this tip, but we did spend our last day on the shores of a nudist beach. The water at every beach we went to was crystal clear, calm, and perfectly refreshing. Here are a few (clothed) pictures from the last day :) 

I played around with this one on picmonkey.com

We reluctantly traveled back to the center of the country on Monday night. Madrid is a bit like the New York of Spain. It's crowded, a little bit dirty, and there is a big park in the middle where everyone runs. We like Madrid, but the Mediterranean coast is hard to beat. 

Now,Wallet Saver #7 When in Spain use segundamano.es. Segunda Mano is Spain's craigslist, and it rocks. Colin got a great bike for 85 euros, and I just got an iPad. I needed the iPad for some work stuff, so this one didn't really save my wallet, but I saved them about 100 euros. The iPad is so cool. Buying second hand is awesome. 

We love you guys! Beso Beso, Hasta Luego! 

  

The Beginning of Life in Madrid

We got to Madrid a little more than 3 weeks ago. Hard to believe that much time has passed! The city still feels new to us.

Getting to Madrid was a little bit more difficult than it was meant to be. We stayed in a hotel about 5 minutes (or so we thought) from the airport in Paris. The night before our flight we were up way too late packing and having a serious, and at some points heated, discussion about life. When we finally decided to turn the lights out we realized we did not have an alarm clock, there was no chance of a wake-up call since there wasn't a phone in the room,  we didn't have cell phones, and we needed to be up in 4 hours. Luckily we had our laptop, and there is an online site that allows you to set an alarm.  Unluckily, the hotels internet timed out somewhere around midnight.

I woke up in a panic sometime around 7am. Our flight was at 9am. We still had a bit of packing to get done, and we flew into a frenzy. We finally made it onto the shuttle bus around 7:25 with an almost embarrassing amount of luggage. The luggage situation was made worse when my suitcase fell backwards onto the guy behind me. Twice. We thought we were home free when we got on the bus with over an hour to go. Then the bus stopped at 4 or 5 other hotels. Then the bus dropped us off at another tram shuttle. Then we were directed to the incorrect terminal and spent about 35 minutes trying to figure out where we should be. At 5 minutes to flight time we found the correct counter and security line. The incredibly polite and helpful French woman at the desk called the plane, let us cut the security line, and helped us with baggage so we could make out flight. Haha, just kidding, but that would have been awesome. We had to buy new tickets, and we flew out 5 hours later.

Finally on our way to Madrid 

Our first few days in Madrid were a hot sweaty mess of reality hitting us in the face. We were staying in the older section of Madrid. The outdoor tables at the restaurants were filled with customers who were in their 70's, the streets were dotted with people who looked like they'd been sitting on their steps for several years. We had been warmed to watch our pockets in this part of town, and after the up-and-down "you're a tourist" looks we got, we followed the advice. There was a heat waving moving through the city that reached about 106 degrees daily. We were having trouble getting our money transferred to our Spanish bank. And dinner wasn't until 9pm. Needless to say we both got a little grumpy at points. It wasn't quite the vibrant, fun, adventure inspiring city we had imagined. Yet.

We spent the next two days walking ALL OVER the city looking at apartments, and we quickly realized that every barrio (neighborhood) has it's own personality, and they are all within a few minutes walk of each other. The apartment we chose (which we love!) is only a 15 minute walk from our first neighborhood, but it's completely different.

Here are a few pictures.

View from the far end of the apartment

                                 


                                                                                 
                                       

View from the window

It felt so good to unpack our suitcases for the last time this summer. With a sigh of relief we put our clothes into drawers and hung our church clothes in the closet. Every morning the sun shines into our bedroom and we cuddle for just five more minutes. When the sun starts to set and the white building across the street reflects the pink and purple hues of the sky we feel happy to be here together. This summer home really has been wherever we were together, but settling into our new apartment has been wonderful. We've found our home sweet home :) 

To celebrate our first night in our new abode we went out for some traditional Spanish fare. 

Gazpacho

Tortilla

Paella 

We moved in on Saturday, and Colin had his first day in the workforce as a college graduate on Monday. 

Off he goes- fingers and mind ready to code!

 Evening shot near Colin's office. I think the main building is the Prado Museum.

Our second weekend here we went hiking with an international group. It was cool to meet more people and get outside the city. The hike was pretty mild, but beautiful. It reminded me of east county San Diego. 

Don't worry, I didn't fall 

Resevoir that supplies water to Madrid

We also visited one of the outdoor piscinas in Madrid, which was awesome. There were three huge outdoor pools with grass, shade, and picnic tables. There were also a lot of topless sunbathers. When in Madrid do as the Madrilenos? Maybe ;) 

A few nights ago we went out for horchata. My dad lived in Spain for two years as an LDS missionary and every time we talk he asks if we've tried horchata yet. This one's for you dad :) We went to a place a few blocks from our house and got some to go. I liked it a lot. It's like cinnaminee rice milk with sugar. 

In the park outside the Palacio

In front of the Palacio

As we discovered in Boston last year, one of the best ways to get to know a city is by running through it. During our first week we ran into Retiro park and stumbled upon an organized running group. They were just starting to stretch so we joined in. It was a blast, and really funny at points. We did a heart pumping warm up for 20 minutes through the park. We ran past roller bladers, paddle boats in the little lake, bikers, families, and obscene PDAs (not even we felt comfortable with what was happening in the park). Then we did some group strength training. One of the exercises consisted of holding hands in a circle doing synchronized lunges into the middle and then back out. We had a good time. There are so many parks here, and we are just beginning to scratch the surface of places to see and enjoy around Madrid.

As much as we like the city, we are already planning a few trips. In a week we are going to rent a smart car and drive to the coastal town of Valencia. From there we plan to spend three days driving down the Andalusian coast to Malaga then back up to Madrid. If you've been to any of those areas or have any advice we'd love to hear from you! In October we are flying to Bilbao to reunite with Rachel and Steve for a half marathon that starts at the Guggenheim. We are hoping to visit San Sebastian while we there also. Advice is welcome! 

Hasta Luego!