What we see and hear on a typical day

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday I decided to snap pictures and short videos of the sights and sounds we experience every day. We are so accustomed to them now, they feel like home.

Things we pass every day on our walk to school

A crumbling coat of arms on a castle wall

A castle tower adjacent to a jungle-like park

An old convent, still in use

Walls supported by ancient millstones (used to crush olives into oil, then cleaned off and used to construct buildings for their support and as a bumper so animal carts could bump into buildings without bashing the stucco

Ubiquitous incredible doors

Tiled street names on aged walls. This is the school's street - it means "the big table of the Moor." These are streets dating from the Middle Ages, so I wonder who this Moor was who had a big table - maybe he had a restaurant here? So intriguing to me.

We eat tapas here after school sometimes

The building on the right (yellow and then brick-red) is the school

What we do after school

Sometimes we go straight home, but on Thursday we went out for lunch near the cathedral. We had recently learned that the stones at the bottom of the bell tower were ancient Roman - the Moors used already-cut Roman stones that were sitting around to build their minaret in the 1100's. Once we knew that, it was easy to see which ones are Roman - there's a clear line between Roman stone and Muslim brick. And one of the stones is carved with Latin!

Close-up view

Near the cathedral there is a huge market of artisan crèches for Christmas time, where Christie and I bought ours last week. I took the kids to see them all - we loved this one because it's Joseph who is holding Baby Jesus. We love the posture of both parents adoring that Baby

And this one too.

This one looks so classically Spanish

And this one is huge!!

This is what we pass walking home from the Creche market

This is what I do while the kids are in school

 I dropped them off and then sat at a sidewalk café table in sight of their school to do some Christmas planning. As I wrote, the cathedral bells were ringing and it was so misty, I stopped writing and took a video of the scene.

Then I went to the post office for the first time. It was a different system than at home, and quite a different building than my local post office by Safeway.

 As I walked back to the school past the cathedral, I noticed music coming from inside, and the doors were open! Admission to the cathedral usually costs about 8 Euros so I wandered inside, curious about why they'd opened the doors. It was some sort of important mass the organ was being played, followed by all-male Chant.  I stopped to watch a procession of priests in red robes and white robes, followed by blue-uniformed police officers.

The police wear more modern uniforms on the street - this must have been some sort of ceremony for them, because it was followed by a Mass.

When I showed up to pick up Stone, I saw that the school is building their own creche in the courtyard. It's in process, with scissors and papers and bottles of glue. Every year each student contributes a figure or a detail to the scene. My kids said all the kids have been talking about it, but they get the assignment in Religion class, which my kids opt out of (it's Catholic Catechism).

 This is Stoney and I running back to the school to pick the girls up at 2:00 on Friday

A Saturday at home

A work colleague flew in from Moscow to have meetings with Erik - that's him on the left and Erik on the right. We went out to lunch with them on Saturday, walking there and back. 

Then I decided to take the kids to a museum we haven't seen yet - it's a short bike ride away in Maria Luisa Park  (very near our house). All the kids got in for free, and my admission was 1.50 Euros! I love that about Europe. There is a sense of wanting History and Art to be accessible to everyone.

Stone (of course) loved the swords and helmets from the 1500's

Sophie loved the scales and measurements from ancient Rome

And the baby baptism dresses from the 1800's

I wore them out and they made an exhausted dog-pile, begging to go home

The Archeological Museum across the street

We rode home through our park

And stopped to feed the swans. I happened to have Digestible crackers (British cookies they sell here) in my purse

Stone wanted to run through the park. Eventually we bribed him back into the bike trailer and headed home.