B-Day in Spain & England

Writing from Faye's aunts house, where we are celebrating her grandmother Pathi's 90th birthday. Faye and I flew back late Thursday night for the surprise party. Happy Birthday Pathi!

On a lesser note, I celebrated my 29th birthday (Jan 8 for all you forgetful types) in Spain with Faye, my girlfriend and traveling companion for the next 5 months. It was a glorius occassion, brought in with free tapas and beer and wine, made even better by our discovery of cured meats. I love cured meat, cut with the grain, it's silky texture and salted goodness puts beef jerky to shame. Pictures say 1000 words, so i'll let the photos do the talking.

Spanish food was incredible, but only if you enjoy pork. Morning, noon and night, everything involves pork or perhaps seafood (which Faye ate...with salads). Jamon and chorizo for the first 5-6 days of the trip. Things not to eat:

callos - stew with tripe and garbanzo beans and black pudding (blood sausage) gross
bocadillo con pringa - its chum and trimmings from pork, beef and chicken heated and placed between two slices of white bread. I thought it would be a delicious type of sausage, but its not.

We walked a lot, talked a lot, and ate and drank a lot during our 11 days in Andalucia. Spain is a comfortable place to travel, except our budget accomodation was often without heat or ambient lighting. That awful flourescent lighting was sometimes accompanied by green hued lighting reminiscent of the Seattle public library toilets, specially designed to discourage the homeless from spending time there. but only 20 to 30 Euros per night and we are budget backpackers afterall.

A perfect vacation before our backpacking jaunt through N. Africa and the Middle East.

Places visited:

Granada - Antequerra - Ronda - Sevilla

Transport used (England - Spain - England):

RyanAir - trains - buses - RyanAir

Welcome

Dear Family and Friends,

I finally did it. A blog. Its practical and leaves a record and I can put photos for you to see and hopefully maps and stuff. The only problem is that i never click on links people send me (except from my Dad), so i expected everyone to be the same. Thanks for being curious enough to click on this one....