Picnic on the way to Portugal ...

 

It was a little cheaper to fly home from Portugal so we decided to drive that way instead of going back through Madrid since we had already seen that country/city.  It was a fun little detour.  We enjoyed yet another picnic of PB and jelly sandwhiches with meat, cheese and crackers.  It was a gorgeous drive to get through Portugal into Lisbon.  The scenery was amazing.

 

Our church and our "Home Away from Home" ...

 

 

This was by far the hardest place to leave in all the places we stayed.  I am sure it was because it felt so much like home and we were there for a longer period of time, but it was quite sad driving away from our little Spain home.  We enjoyed our time in Spain immensely.  We would certainly return to this area of the world if ever given the chance!



Belen walk with Claudia and Simon ...

Right before we left Claudia and Simon invited us to go on a Belen walk around the city.  They had huge displays of nativities and models depicting the life of Jesus.  It was really interesting.  We walked through the city of El Puerto and saw several cool ones.  There was even one with live animals.

 

When Owen went to say goodbye to Claudia, he gave her a big hug and told her he loved her.  It was so sweet.  We had been asking him to give her a hug for a long time and he kept resisting but he couldn't resist when we had to say goodbye.  We sure fell in love with Claudia and miss her and talk about her often. 

Seville, Spain ...

 

Even though the weather was terribly rainy, we are sure glad we got to see a little bit of the beautiful city of Seville.  It was breath-taking.  We visited the Alcazar, the cathedral and enjoyed walking through the Belen (nativity) shops.  We were wishing the rain had stayed away, but at least we got to see what we did.  We missed seeing the Plaza de Espana in Seville and lots of movies have filmed scenes there and we heard it is beautiful.  We drove past it but it was closed off for renovation anyway, so we didn't miss much.  It was gorgeous from the little bit we saw. 

 

 

Churros and hot chocolate...

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Oh Churros, you are so yummy!  We enjoyed them so much each time we ate them, especially when we got them super fresh.  While my parents were visiting us, Jake went down to the local shop and got us some nice warm churros to enjoy for breakfast.  And then, we had to get one last set of yumminess before we left Spain, even though the weather wasn't super amazing, but that made the hot chocolate even more delicious! 

 

Rock of Gibraltar ...

 

Oh the memories that were made on the Rock of Gibraltar.  This little piece of rock in the ocean is a part of the British territory.  It borders Spain and has a whole bunch of crazy monkeys on top.  We had to go visit just for that alone!  But oh what an adventure it turned out to be.  We got there and parked on the Spain side and after showing our passport, getting it stamped we walked over to the English side.  Immediately the signs were in English, there were double-decker buses and fish and chip signs everywhere.  Funny how quickly a change of border can change everything.

 

We took the tram to the top of the mountain and just figured we could walk down to enjoy the scenery and take in the fun monkeys.  The tram ride up was fun, with amazing views back into Spain and of the mountain of Gibraltar.  Immediately we got out of the tram and encountered a monkey.  It was crazy.  It just ran right past us.  We were all a little hesitant after that.  The signs told us not to show our teeth to the monkeys so the kids would hardly talk to each other for fear of showing their teeth.  They actually were just not supposed to "bear" their teeth at them, not just talking showing teeth but they were quite serious about obeying the rules.

 

We got to see some beautiful scenery, an airplane take off and land on the short runway and lots of monkeys!  But then we started walking down the mountain and it all went "downhill".  The maps were horrible and the mountain was steep.  It took us WAY longer than we thought it would to get down, we took a few wrong turns and we ended up walking between 3-5 miles. It would have just been easier to take the silly tram back down the mountain.  The kids were such good sports, the adults maybe not so good :).  I was grouchy, exhausted and hot by the time we got down.  Once we got down to the city, we enjoyed walking down the main street of Gibraltar and taking in the sites.  We also enjoyed our fish and chips England style, so yummy!

 

All in all we made some fun memories, but we would certainly do it differently if we had the chance to go back.