Spring (Primavera)

Spring 

Fresh tulips from Holland

Spring has arrived although it still drops down to the mid-30's at night. But this means the afternoons are starting to get quite warm in the sun and we already have lovely daffodils blooming in our garden. With it, the tourists have also started to arrive, in hordes, and it is rare to not see large groups when you walk through our local squares. This means that the Segway guys are also back out in full force although they never disappeared over the winter like some other things, including our favorite gelato stand which just opened its doors again.

Tapas tour

Still figuring things out

Over six months in Spain and we just figured out how to check our voicemail! Let me start off by saying I didn’t even know we had an answering machine. It is built in to the phone but our landlord never told us. Then one day I heard my step-mother’s voice talking to me and when I figured out she wasn’t on the other end of the line I suspected something was up. I emailed our landlord and she told me to just leave the phone off the hook for one minute and I could hear my messages. So I tried that, but couldn’t understand the rapid Spanish voice afterwards telling me what to do next. So I had Clark’s new tutor translate for me on Friday and voila, 26 messages dating all the way back to our arrival in August. So sorry we didn’t get back to you sooner.

Clark's bus to the ski area

Skiing/Esquilar

One lovely perk of the boys school is that the 5^th graders get to go skiing up at the local ski area for a week and because they didn’t get enough people they opened it up to Clark’s 6^th grade class as well. It’s a long day; bus leaves at 8am, returning at 5:30 but he is the most excited he’s been all year. Another little communication problem led me to run around in a panic on Friday as Clark was told he wouldn’t be able to ski on Monday as he didn’t provide his health card information (I had left that blank on the form since our insurance is from another country). Again, with the help of his tutor, I printed out copies of our insurance coverage, proof of insurance that we had to provide for our VISA application and copies of our residency cards and hiked back up to the school late on Friday. Not finding anyone there and worried that Clark wouldn’t be able t ski on Monday if this didn’t get resolved, we wandered over to the local bar where we found the secretary and the principal enjoying a glass of wine and a meal. We meekly interrupted and handed over said information with an explanation of the problem and it was explained that things would be fine.

Colin the Elder



Colin cooks for the masses



Hike at Hueto Sierra

Nat’s older brother Colin is in town, visiting from Amsterdam, Holland where he has lived for the past 25 years. One of the perks of having Colin visit is that he loves to cook and is damn good at it. We’ve eaten the best food we’ve had all year and he even cooked up an elegant Sunday lunch for our friends and neighbors. We’ve enjoyed showing him around the local area and took him on a great hike at nearby Huetor de Sierra and biked over to Pinos Genil on Monday along the Genil River.

Ccocinad con Esther de Botanico Café

A friend of a friend runs a local restaurant here in Granada, the Botanico Cafe, and she offers cooking classes on the side. Although they don't really need it, I signed Colin the Elder and Nat up to take a class at her house and they happily learned to cook sopa, risotta and creme brulees.  I was a total scammer and only showed up to sample the wares. Era una mañana agradable de diversión y comida.

Bike path along the Rio Genil

Flamenco

Fabulous flamenco at La Chumberra

After 6 weeks of flamenco classes, I finally asked my teacher for a recommendation on where to go and see the real deal. I have learned quite a bit about flamenco and now understand that the women in fancy dresses are a very small part of the process. Authentic flamenco is usually sung by men and is all about spontaneous emotion. Thus she recommended La Chumberra which is in nearby Sacromonte but is not one of the tourist caves where the masses end up. With Nat’s brother in town, we were finally motivated to arrange a babysitter and buy tickets. After a few drinks/tapas we walked over to the venue as the show started at 9:30 but we barely made it in time as although the building is large and roomy, it was impossible to find in the dark and there were absolutely no signs helping direct us there. The performance started with one man playing several pieces on an acoustic guitar, with very spectacular fingering. He was soon joined by 6 other men who played either guitar, drums, clarinet and or clapped. The one dancer in the crowd turned out to be a man in a white/silver suit with very long hair (think John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever) who turned out to do some spectacular moves, particularly with his feet. The music was very moving and the scenery behind the perfomers spectacular, a glass wall looking out over the Alhambra at night.