Costa Blanca, Spain

After essay number two for me, and five months of continuous work without a holiday for Dave, we decided it was time for a holiday. Dave's parents expatriated to the south of Spain about three years ago because that's what english people do when they retire, and we decided to visit them. The holiday involved mostly sitting in the 24 degree (mid-70s) sun near the pool, but we had some occasional interludes with city life in Valencia and nature at Penyal de I'fach, also known as Calpe Rock.

I also managed to read a couple of books for, gasp, my own personal enjoyment. Oh, and we played some scrabble. The trip was mostly great, and I reacquainted myself with the fact that my Spanish is 100% rubbish. But i've still decided that I could move there. Photos from this trip will come in batches. The first ones are from the Calpe/Fustera area, where Dave's parents' house is.


The view from Dave's parents' back porch/pool.


Calpe right before a small rain.


Fustera beach...a 15 minute walk from dave's parents' house


A walk along the cliff next to the beach...Calpe Rock looming in the distance


overlooking the beach

Amsterdam (with Nasim)

I am angry at blogger for deleting my previous three attempts at posting Amsterdam photos and the great stories about our trip. So i'm not going to say much about our time other than the fact that we stayed at a huge horrible hostel with rude backpackers, met about three hundred egyptians and only came home with one tattoo between the two of us. Onto the photos:



Home of a million bikes


pretty self explanatory, i think


Heineken beer at home


clogs on the ceiling of a shop!


like one of those black and white films where a couple of objects are in colour. Nasim is also obsessed with scooters.




typical canal shot


we got a kick out of the slanted buildings, and then spent half an hour convincing a naive canadian that the buildings did indeed slant.


Good trip overall. better news, i figured out how to do captions UNDER my photos. and it wasn't all that difficult.

Photoless Interlude

Briefly, I feel the need to justify my lack of blogs. It is not my fault; Blogger just hates to let me upload photographs. I typed a lovely and long flowing blog about my time in Amsterdam only for the download to timeout and then erase my message. So i briefly protested by refusing to try and post again.

But i havent' forgotten. my notes from amsterdam will be much briefer the next time around as I've slipped into memory lapse about half of what happened on the trip. and Spanish photos will also be forthcoming--Alicante, Calpe, Valencia and the walk up Penyal which weighs in as the #2 scariest travel experience in my life, next to car adventures in Iceland, of course.

in the meantime, i'm going to enjoy my last one point five days en espana!