Salamanca

First Stop: Salamanca!!!

Salamanca is considered to be one of the most spectacular Renaissance cities in Europe.  In Salamanca, the people speak the "purest" Spanish in Spain - Castilian.  For this reason Salamanca is enormously popular with people all over the world who want to learn Spanish. 

 

The Plaza Mayor

Behind these guys is Salamanca's Plaza Mayor  which was constructed between 1729 and 1755.  It is considered among the most beautiful plazas in all of Spain with its Baroque style architecture of the 18th century.  Bull fighting occurred in the plaza until the mid 1800s.

We've been told that you can barely walk through here on busier days. 

And here it is again looking in from the other side.  This is just before the girls drank some shrinking potion.

 House of Shells

 Casa de las Conchas:(shells)  built in the late 15th century. of Gothic civil style, its façade is decorated with about 350 shells of scallops, distinctive of the Order of Santiago.   It currently houses a public library.  I'm sure there is a secret (smaller) door for the public.

 

The University of Salamanca

This University is currently a Spanish higher education institution,  founded in 1134 and given the Royal charter of foundation by King Alfonso IX in 1218.  It is the oldest university in Spain and the third oldest western university.

Just another shot to give you a close-up of the amazing detail work.  While Columbus was lobbying the King and Queen for a contract to seek out a western route to the Indies, he made his case to a council of geographers here at the University of Salamanca.

 The New Cathedral

The New Cathedral is connected to the Old Cathedral built in 1102, one of the two cathedrals of Salamanca, Spain.  Building began in 1513 and the cathedral was consecrated in 1733.

Just a closer shot before we walked inside this beauty.

Awe-mazing Road Trip to Portugal

Brent and the kids had Thursday and Friday off and we had a car rental for the weekend so we really wanted to take advantage of the situation.  The forecast for most of Spain was rain except in Valencia (the beach) where it was to be in the 70s.  Unfortunately we couldn't find any available hotels in Valencia so we started looking the other direction and couldn't fine anything from one city to the next until we got as far out as Portugal and ultimately found some rooms in Guarda, Portugal.  By this time it was 1am, and the kids were in bed thinking we were going to Valencia in the morning.

 We set out the next day with a few cities in mind to stop at on the way there or back depending on the rain as we were approaching.   To keep this post from being too long I thought I would do a post for each stop.  Warning: there will be several.

This post is just to show some things we saw along the way from the roadside.

This is bull country and luckily for the kids we found some rather friendly ones.  There were several of these colorful bulls along this stretch of the Highway. 

This abandoned castle was out in the middle of some farmer's field.  We wish we could have found an exit to it.

Here is another view of this same castle.  We saw many other ruins along the drive, although none were quite this large.

Not a great picture as we were going 120 km on a busy highway when I stuck my camera out the window and snapped this.  This is just on the side of the road right in the middle of a large town.

At least with all the rain we saw many 
beautiful rainbows along the way!

A Few Cultural Differences

Here are just a few interesting or different things  we've noticed about Spain.

1.  The Eating schedule is very different than ours in the USA.  Breakfast isn't that different, although most companies feed their employees breakfast at work.  Lunch is eaten around 2 p.m. and most companies pay for their employees' lunches.  Dinner is not eaten until around 9p.m.  If you walk by a restaurant between 5- 8pm it would be empty even if it were open (most don't open until around 9pm).  We are compromising our Utah dinner time of 5:30-6 to 7ish.  No one will ever convince us that 9pm is okay to eat dinner. 

Morgan's watch shows it is 7:50 and the place is empty.  It most likely doesn't even open for another hour.

I will talk about the typical Spanish foods in another post when I can get some pictures.  

 2.  School Stuff:  They do quite a few things differently here in the schools, some I've already mentioned, and here are a few more: *After the first couple of days of school the vice principal was concerned because Kaiya's  and Morgan's math teachers claimed they didn't know how to divide.  After I explained that they do know how to divide but just don't know how they do it here, she seemed to understand that they were just confused.   Once we figured it out how they do it here the kids were fine. 

Our Discovery Walk

We go for walks nearly everyday while Brent is at work,  so this last Saturday we were just itching to show him some of the places we have discovered.  Following are a few pictures of this walk which took us over 2 hours.

While we were walking and watching for bunnies, Kamree found and caught this cute little leprechaun... Unfortunately, she was getting a little anxious holding it....

So she passed it on to Morgan, who had no problem disposing of the poor little thing.  

We later found this super long dark spooky tunnel that no one in their right mind would ever dare trek into, but Brent was with us, he knew it had to be a shortcut and he said "vamos" so we all hunched over and followed (I think Brent was just scared of running into that scary little leprechaun again).  I was certain Brent would stumble upon a homeless man and not see it coming til he was face down on him.  Fortunately all 6 of us made it out safely on the other end.

This is where we came out and the small little light at the end of the tunnel is where we started.  It was much creepier than it looks here.  

We eventually ran into a park, as we always do, and Morgan just had to do show off some of his favorite Kung Fu moves for the camera.

and Mason had a great view!

....later Kaiya also caught a leprechaun, although not quite as cute as the one Kamree found.

Just before finding our way home, Morgan found this sky scraping tree which he struggled climbing,  blaming it on a finger or something as I recall. 

SEGOVIA

Since Monday was a holiday (Father's Day) Brent and the kids had it off so we took advantage and got a taxi to the old city of Segovia.  After days and days of rain, we were delighted that the forecast was no rain and in the mid 50's for this day.  A couple of us went jacketless and soon regretted that decision once we got there and it felt no more than 30 degrees.


This city is great because you can walk to everything and there are so many amazing sites as we hope you can see in the many following pictures.  We are only sharing a few main attractions.  

The Aqueduct of Segovia

This thing is amazing!! Just a few facts about this, starting with my favorite: *they say it was Roman built in the end of the 1st century to the beginning of the 2nd century *Made up of about 25,000 granite blocks stacked together without any mortar * has a length of 818 meters, * the highest part is 29 meters which is what you can see in the picture.

This is to show you that it just goes and goes throughout the city.  And yes we do like each other!

The background is so beautiful that I kept trying to capture it through the aqueduct.  Kaiya is so cute here, but don't miss Mason in the background going up the steps. 

 

The Segovia Cathedral

This is also quite impressive, it is the last Gothic cathedral built in Spain. It is considered the masterpiece of Basque-Castilian Gothic and is known as "The Lady of Cathedrals."  Construction began in 1525 but not finished until 1768.

Just another view.  This cathedral was on the way to the "Cinderella Castle" from the aqueduct. 

These were the cool narrow roads that led to everything throughout the city, and when cars came down these everyone had to jump up on the sidewalks and squeeze their bellies in.  This is on our walk to or from the castle.   

The Alcázar of Segovia or the Segovia Castle

 The Alcázar was originally built as an Arab fortress but has served as a royal palace, a state prison, a Royal Artillery College and a military academy since then. The first reference to this particular Alcázar was in 1120.  The castle is one of the inspirations for Walt Disney's Cinderella Castle (some say the Sleeping Beauty castle).

This is the back view and if it hadn't been so cold we would have hiked down below to get a better shot from the front.  We plan to do that the next time we come. 

This is where the tours start and where the draw bridge is.  It is really far down to the moat.  And yes those dots in the center are us. 

We were eager to go inside the castle to warm-up, but even with the covered windows it was only a little less freezing inside.  Even though I don't want to bore you with all the incredible artwork and architecture of the insides of the castle I do want to show you the outside views from inside.  

This is zoomed in quite a bit, so it is hard to tell how far up we are.  I was taking a picture for Mason to show him the caves all along the cliffs on the left.

And one more.

 

The Walls of Segovia

This is outside the castle looking back toward the city.  They built this wall to surround the city 

having a  perimeter of over 3,000 m.  It begins and ends in the Alcazar (Castle).

The walls are made of limestone masonry, built in part from large blocks of granite. Tombstones of the ancient Roman necropolis were also used in the construction .

 

Our Drive Home from Segovia

 

Our driver took us home the "beautiful way"  or over the mountain and through the woods.  It really was pretty, it just takes 1.5 hours instead of 1 hour.  As you can see there is a ski resort at the top of the mountain, behind us is the kids area and in front of us is the ski resort.  We did not ask the driver to stop or to let us out since we were just getting warm and we've seen ski resorts before, but apparently we needed a picture of this ski resort.

 

I know this isn't the most amazing landscape, but I snapped this picture just before arriving home to show how close we live to Madrid.  The towers in the center of the picture are the tallest buildings in Spain. 

Funday on Friday

Friday after school was actually a somewhat warm day.  We went for a long walk that turned into a little hike.   

This is a park below the road just before Brent's work.  I thought I would be carrying them if we walked this far, but they were troopers and just thrilled to be outside.  There is a playground on both sides of this bridge.

Not the best picture, but the only one I got of the view from the top of the hill we hiked.  Morgan heard a monstrous sound and saw something black that was running fast and most likely toward us so we had to book it off the mountain without getting anything better than this.  

Brent's boss came over to take Brent to look at cars and brought the kids this amazing cake.  He handed it to Kamree and she politely said, "Gracias" , and then came over and quietly asked me if it was her birthday.

We Made it to Church :)

The kids were talking the other day about how smart I am (which I'm sure they do quite often) and how I know everything, and Mason piped in  "if you know everything then how did Jesus make us?"   He has asked me that quite a bit lately, obviously he didn't get a good enough answer the first time.  

We figured out Saturday night that we actually did not miss the bus to church last week but instead we were half an hour early.  Unfortunately, we did not wait around to find that out last week.  This Sunday was a much better experience.  It was nice to be on wheels again and to finally get out of our little town.  After the bus, we jumped on the metro (subway) and then took a brisk walk making it to church only half an hour late. 

I doubt you can tell but there are plenty of seats on this subway car, however the kids refused to sit. since all they wanted to do is hang on the bars and spin around the poles.  Kamree actually was dancing with a pole (not pole dancing) at one point.

 

The primary was ecstatic that we were not visitors but that we are staying.  No one in the presidency speaks English as far as we can tell, but the music leader is American.   Kaiya and Morgan are in the Valiant class together and Kamree and Mason are in the CTR class together. I think there are only 3 primary classes. The only other American in primary is an 11 yr old boy and he translated for Kaiya and Morgan in their class.  Kamree and Mason's teacher speaks some English so she was able to teach in Spanish and English for them.  

They were celebrating Father's Day at church so the kids were asked to sit in the front row during Sacrament Meeting to sing to the fathers.   After church the primary leaders had a primary Father's Day social that was really nice.  They had a yummy cake with strawberries and cream on top for everybody.

They do a Sunday School, R.S. and Priesthood in English a couple of times a month and Sunday we were able to catch the Sunday School in English. which was really good.  As we were walking out of church we ran into the missionary from Houston, Texas that was on our flights coming over here.  It was really fun to talk to him and see how the beginning of his mission is going.

  

The Kids' School

I just wanted to share a few interesting or different things about the kids' school from what we are used to coming from Saratoga Shores. 

The curved structure in the top middle of this picture is the school's outside play area.  This picture is from our upstairs back window,  I took this just to show how close the school is.

This is the front of the school.  This picture was taken on their third day of school after getting out of school.  While we were walking home Kaiya was giggling about something that happened to Mason at recess.  She said he was surrounded by several girls asking to be his girlfriend.  He is so shy, he wouldn't answer them, and kept looking over at Kaiya trying not to smile.  He also came home from school with a note from a girl wanting to be his girlfriend.  We are learning that this is quite common for kids this age.  Morgan said, on one of his first days of school, a kid asked if he had a girlfriend and when he laughingly said no, no one laughed with him.  After he heard about Mason's experience he said that must be why all the girls are being so nice to him.  We are not quite sure how to handle this.

This is a picture of the large play area where they play until the beginning of school and where they have recess.  In this picture, it's a little hard to tell, but the parents line the fence all the way down to the corner and watch until the kids go into school.  I'm not sure if they are worried about their kids, if they are asked to stay, or they just want to see their kids for as long as possible. Instead of ringing a bell to announce the start of  school, they play music and also when it is time to go home. At first we thought it must be their national anthem, but apparently not as we have since heard all genres of music.  

This is another shot of the play area where they have recess.  It is a lot bigger than this picture shows, however there is no play structure or grassy fields to play on, I guess this will force them to be more creative. This happened to be a really cold day, so the kids aren't being as active as usual and some are still eating their snacks.  The entire school goes to recess at the same time, so this area is normally filled with kids playing games such as cops and robbers.  The preschoolers are on the other side of the school and they do have a small playground.

This is a picture of what I get to look at while waiting for the kids to get out of school.  It looks like a painting to me.  I can't wait until our shipment arrives so I can ride my bike out there and see it better. 

 

We had to add this picture of Kamree and the girl in the red coat coming out of school because she is very concerned about this girl.  In fact, the first couple of days I noticed this girl holding Kamree's jacket or arm coming out of school.  Kamree claims the girl is mean to her.  Which Kamree further explained that, the girl "is like Morgan", and is always "bugging" her, meaning the girl won't leave Kamree alone.  Morgan, since Kamree's birth has had an obsession with her, he always wants to hold her or touch her, play with her, sit by her and Kamree often gets very frustrated with him because of it.  We explained that this girl probably just wants to be her friend, Kamree seemed to be okay with that. 

And for all those in Utah enjoying the nice warm sunny weather today, this is what we got instead. 

Our Home!!!!

 Pase,  come on in!  Here is a short little tour of some of our house.

   If you look at the front door you can see that the door handle is in the middle of the door which is quite common here.  To the right is the kitchen which is a closed kitchen which is also very common.  This kitchen fortunately has a breakfast table in it.  Through the doors straight ahead is the family room and dining room which leads to the sun-room.  

We will first go up the stairs to the girls' rooms. 

Kamree's room.

 This was on the kids' 2nd day of school and besides showing you their rooms notice their smiles.  It was another successful school day!!! 

Kaiya's room which is next door to Kamree's room. 

This is looking out of Kamree's room upstairs towards the attic where Morgan and Mason sleep.

Mason's side.

Morgan's side.

And these two are saying goodbye from the bottom of the stairs. To the left of this picture is the garage, laundry and maid's room.  If anyone needs a job we have a room for you! 

We hope that was short and sweet enough for you!