Above is a picture of me inside a Church in Cordoba, Spain which was originally built by muslims as a mosque. It was built using aquaduct construction, thus all of the arches all over the place. It was the most unique of all the churches we visited (and we visited A LOT of them), and very cool. The Christians started to deconstruct it and build it their way, but when they realized they were destroying something really really cool they stopped. Smart. So it's mostly all there as the muslims intended.
Here is a big door, Ben size apparently. Or so he thinks. Gotta love a man who likes a challenge. :) We saw these big doors EVERYWHERE in Spain. There were some signigicantly bigger than this, in fact. The funniest thing was, they would cut doors INTO the big doors that they could actually open without employing cavalry and slaves. But they cut these doors to be very small. They were more my size door. Either too big or too small. Those Spaniards just can't win.
And OHHHHH the pretty gardens. I believe this is a picture in Cordoba as well, outside of a palace. How convenient. I needed a resting place.
I think Ben's alter-ego is a medieval warrior. That would explain all of his video-game obsession with warring, his need to tickle me to death and attempt to wrestle on occasion (which I ignore or flail defeatedly), and this picture. You might say this trip afforded a kind of "coming home" to his alter-ego roots.
We noticed the Spanish, and Europeans in general for that matter, are very good at employing what Ben would call "water features." Sharon would call them "fountains", but whatever. We really liked them. They're pretty. Call them whatever you want.
Here we have cute Ben hanging out at one of the restaurants we ate at. This one was known for its fine seafood fair. Ironically, I'm not sure either of us got seafood. They had really good food in Spain. However, they had some seafood that was a bit too exotic for our taste: anemone, sea urchin.... stuff I haven't seen. Dead or alive. But what we DID eat was delicious. We didn't have a bad meal, I don't think. One thing we missed out on was the traditional "tapas" menu -- lots of little hors d'ouvres type dishes that you eat with while you drink beer and relax after a long days work. Since they were primarily served in pubs and we weren't beer drinkers, we felt a little silly going in for tapas. And most of those venues seemed harder to navigate for non-spanish speakers. Maybe next time?
Here we have a doorway, just my size. :) This is in a little hallway inside the largest fortress in Europe, called the "Alhambra", in Granada, Spain. It contains many palaces, small village areas for the servants to live... it was more like a city inside a fortress. And had great views. And lots of garden acreage. And a cool amphitheater. Very cool. It has a maximum of 11,000 people who can attend. Daily. Yeah, a bit like Disneyland. We had to buy expensive tickets with a tour guide to avoid the lines (who wants to wait in a Disneyland sized line on their honeymoon at 7 am on a cold morning?). Very cool place. Did I mention? It was cool.
Here we have Ben and I on a carriage ride through Sevilla. We loved Sevilla and there was a lot to see there. But we only had one day to soak it all in, so we took a carriage ride that gave us a very good drive-by view of the big sites we didn't have time to walk to. And it took us through a lovely park and some big Spanish pavilion where they have a big official building with 5 bridges to it that represents the 5 queens of Spain and 9 sections (or something like that?) of the building, each different, meant to represent each Spanish province -- a very symbolic building.
Here we have me standing next to a phenomenon I loved about Spain. Electric bikes. They had these charging stations everywhere. And the people on the bikes weren't athletic bikers OR homeless people. Just people running errands -- going to the grocery store or going to school. They're so all about a nice, easy pace in Spain. Or at least in southern Spain. I really liked that.
Lastly, Ben and I found it very amusing that europeans like to name their stores the most peculiar, vulgar concoctions of english words. And the european customers love it. Yellow Rat Bastard? What?!? Serious? What does that even mean? You guys are so weird.
Ben and I are still setting into married life. We're on a tight budget right now as I haven't found a job yet and we found ourselves arguing this morning about which should be the bigger priority -- internet or gym memberships. I think everybody can guess which of us was arguing which side. Ah, the joys of married life. :)
Ben also mentioned this week that I should work on getting my name changed. Oh, yeah. Right. Really? I've always assumed I would change my name, but I have to admit.... it's kind of hard. I mean, I won't even change my cell phone number I've had for the past seven years for fear I might lose people. I need to change my name that I've had for the last 29 years? What if old high school friends can't find me on Facebook? And I can't hyphenate. That would be really really Asian. And I'm just not. Okay, okay, I'll do it. Next week, though? Maybe? :)
