Madrid and More

Welcome drinks - Plaza Major

As you’ll have noticed, I’ve had to change the title of my blog now that I’ve had my 70^th birthday. And what a birthday it was!! Initially, when Steve asked if I’d like a party or go away somewhere, I immediately answered go away! Having no idea whether he meant for a night or two or something longer, I asked him what my budget was. He told me I didn’t have one – BIG mistake on his part! Madrid has been pulling at my heartstrings for awhile so I proposed either Madrid, which Steve hadn’t visited, or Paris, which I know he loves. He said my choice so I chose Madrid.

Front of Palace

To me, Madrid has a very elegant feel – it has history and architectural treasures that are phenomenal and in some instances, similar to other European cities, but they are at the top of my list, followed by Paris. One of the things that I especially love about the city is its vibe. I’ve always felt comfortable and at home there and I love the small plazas lined with outdoor tables and chairs. One of my favorite places is the Royal Palace, full of beautifully decorated rooms; however, my most favorite is its’ armory. It’s a shame that I can’t share any photos but none are allowed. Just past the main entrance are two enormous stair cases where they are each composed of a single piece of San Agustin marble with two lions gracing the landings. There are two stair cases because of course the king and queen couldn’t use the same one. We were told that the queen had to be carried up her staircase by four men because her dress was so heavy she couldn’t hold it up. Wandering through rooms of silk wall coverings, elaborate chandeliers, furniture and countless clocks seem to transport us back a few hundred years. 

Mercado San Miguel

We rented an apartment in the historical area just five minutes from the Plaza Mayor and another favorite spot of mine, MercadoSan Miguel, a renovated wrought-iron and glass building where Steve and I had our first tapas of the trip. Both are also favorites of everyone who visits so they were extremely packed with locals and tourists. The first couple of days we took two city tours, a walking one and the Hop on Hop Off bus tour. Combining both gave us a general idea of where we’d like to go back to visit on the days we didn’t have tours out of the city. One of my new favorite places is the top of Circulo de Bellas Artes where you have a view of the city and can have a leisurely glass of wine. It's definitely on my list for a return trip.

University Salamanca

Avila - walled city

We also took day-long tours to Toledo and Segovia on one day and Salamanca and Avila on another day. It meant being up at 5:30am to catch the Metro to get to the tour meet-up point and both tours were 12 hours long – so incredibly long days but naps on the coach! First was Salamanca with a history dating back to the Celtic era. Known for its ornate sandstone architecture and for the Universidad de Salamanca founded in the 1100s, as well as their cathedral around the same era. Then on to Ávila, northwest of Madrid, known for its intact medieval city wall and a Romanesque cathedral that was part of the fortress. Back at sunset, we had to decide whether to take the Metro back to our area or look for somewhere local to eat. We chose our area and ended up in the Plaza San Andreas for another late dinner.

Sunday was spent as most Madrileños do – European sport (Steve was able to listen but not see the Grand Prix), followed by wandering the streets and battling the thousands of others for a table for a very late lunch at 4 p.m. Perfecto! No dinner that night but we did pop out to a local plaza tapas bar for late night drinks.

Aqueducts - Segovia

Alcázar

Monday was another early start to Segovia, famous for its’ 3 main landmarks – the Roman aqueduct, the cathedral and the Alcázar (castle). The aqueduct dates to late first century or early 2nd century and was built by the Romans – no mortar holding the stones together. Built around 1122 the Alcázar was initially used as a palace, then a military fortress. Fairly recent compared with the others, the cathedral was consecrated in 1768. Then on to Toledo, known as the “city of Three Cultures” due to the medieval Arab, Jewish and Christian monuments in its walled old city. First known to be inhabited by the Celts, then the Romans. The Alcázar of Toledo, a stone fortification located in the highest part of Toledo was once used as a Roman palace in the 3rd century.

Trying out a guitar

On our days off from tours, we wandered the city center for hours stopping off for tapas and wine. There’s just so much to see! On our last full day in Madrid, our first stop was to test and "shop" for guitars. All handmade and what a lovely place! First Steve had to try them out - all the way up to the next level being custom made. What a beautiful morning! We then hopped on the metro and walked to a rooftop bar with an expansive view of the city. Lunch was late again and surrounded by a crowd of futbol fans from Bruge, and then postres at Mercado San Miguel. Finally, on our list was sunset drinks at another rooftop bar in "our hood" as a friend in Vallarta calls local bars. Since our lunches tended to be between 3 or 4 p.m., they eat dinner around 10 to 11 p.m., our sunset drinks were pre-dinner by a few hours.

Last sunset in Madrid

So, Madrid was my real birthday present – my birthday party kind of grew through a conversation with a friend at another party who said, “you have to have a party”. My hesitation stemmed from a few things – we have so many friends who live here full time and if I invite some and not others, there would be hurt feelings. Also, I couldn’t think of having a large group of people in our condo a day and a half before we left on our trip and then I kind of felt guilty that I was already spending a lot on our Madrid trip. But Steve and I checked out restaurants that would accommodate us in September – not easy because most close down to give their workers a break just before high season begins. Then I began my list – I did really try to keep it to close friends who live here full time but it just snowballed! 

What a party!

In the end, I had a party that was so much fun held at a restaurant that’s right on the river in the center of Vallarta. Seventy of my friends came to celebrate, which was appropriate since it was my 70^th. We ate and drank and had the best time that evening. So I had the best of both – a dream trip and a dream party! All thanks to a very generous hubby! My recommendation is to live life to the fullest and party while you can!

As I get older, the things that I want are starting to make more sense. Being able to travel makes me happy, and I am a person who lives in the moment. I also want to live a good life. Traveling makes everyday issues seem so much smaller and really changes my perspective on things.

If you’d like to browse more photos from Madrid and surrounding cities, here’s links for online photo albums.

https://myalbum.com/album/9c5KB178g414

https://myalbum.com/album/SP2dJhzzVIIb

Summer explorations in Mexico

Taken in Vallarta by a local resident

August has brought us more heat and humidity and the rain gods have displayed some spectacular thunder and lightning storms. We’ve only been caught out in two of them, but both made driving incredibly difficult because we couldn’t see the roads. The streets in downtown Vallarta flood quite quickly so as we were driving some friends home from dinner one night, the heavens not only opened – it was if the heavenly dam had burst. We made it up a steep hill to drop off one friend, but as we came back down the street, it was a raging river. So glad we have an SUV and 4-wheel drive!

We track all of the animals that come to the clinic

During the night before our August clinic we experienced one of our longest rainstorms. They don’t usually last for hours, but that night, it rained all night up until 5am. I didn’t sleep all night because I kept deliberating how we would keep the animals dry. Our clinic is held outside, and only a tiny bit of the area where the vet techs work is covered. The vets have a tent, but the rest of us just make do. After reassuring several people on Facebook that we would definitely be having the clinic, we arrived at a flooded area in the dark. Steve and I along with a couple of locals got busy moving things and tried to sweep the water out of the area. In one area in particular where the electrical outlet is we just couldn’t remove all of the water. This was more than a bit worrying! The vets weren’t worried – they just plugged in their extension cords and carried on. That’s Mexico! We were happy to see that the rain didn’t stop locals from bringing their animals – we had 81 that day.

Steve's French baguette

 Our first short trip was visiting San Sebastian and Mascota for a couple of days. Both are only a couple of hours drive from Vallarta up into the hills (or small mountains). Both are small villages now, but San Sebastian is an old mining town. There isn’t much there anymore except for two excellent restaurants. We only went through there to stop off at one of the restaurants where the food is French. It was mouthwatering delicious! Steve thought he’d died and gone to heaven when they brought out a proper French baguette. Then he found the espresso beans in the restaurant’s little shop and knew he’d gone to heaven.

Church in San Miguel

We’ve just returned from San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato. San Miguel is very much an artist community for both Mexicans and gringos. Downtown Guanajuato has a Parisian feel and if you weren’t surrounded by Spanish, you could easily believe you were in Paris. Six days was far too short although we packed so much in it felt longer. We decided to drive for 8 hours rather than taking a plane and I’m so happy we did. Most of our trip was driving through mountains that were lush green and either bathed in sunlight or shrouded in misty clouds. San Miguel doesn’t have an airport so we’d have had to get transport to and from Leon, which is about a 2-hour drive. Our apartment, rented from HomeAway, was perfectly located just 2 blocks from the main plaza. Most of the attractions are then only a few blocks from the plaza. 

Our view from rooftop restaurant

Plaza in Guanajuato

Walking tours of both cities were fascinating and filled with history and culture due to our guides being exceptionally passionate and knowledgeable. Our trip to the Cañada de la Virgen Archaeological Site was so filled with the history of the site and its people that our heads were spinning – or maybe it was the 3 kilometer walk up to the site at 7,000 feet altitude! Then climbing all those steps. Dinners were scrumptious every night. We enjoyed two rooftop dinners, one with a couple of friends and one just across the street from our apartment. Friday night we attended a string quartet concert by four Americans who have been playing together for 35 years. They were mind-blowing! After a day of wandering the streets on Saturday, we savored Thai food at a small restaurant that Steve stumbled on while looking for bottled water. It was a perfect ending to our trip.

This was the 2nd set of stairs - we'd already climbed one set

September is going to be a busy month with lots of dinners and more trips planned. We’ve decided to go away for the weekend of our anniversary the middle of the month. And my birthday trip to Madrid begins on the 25th of September. We’ll be gone for just under two weeks. I can’t wait to return to Madrid and to be able to show Steve what I love about the city. We’ll also be visiting Segovia, Toledo and Avila. Again, we’ve rented an apartment from HomeAway located in the center of Madrid. It’s my favorite area of the city.

I know when I return to Vallarta, I’ll be missing the autumn leaves again so I’ve already planned on getting out my decorations as soon as I get back. One of our new friends is a chef and he loves to cook Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve already invited myself because I miss turkey and stuffing! And there’s a part of me that will always miss the autumn leaves!

A plethora of cats, last minute travel and no end to heat and humidity

After receiving multiple emails about some baby kittens on the island in the center of Vallarta, Steve and I went down early one morning with a carrier to look for them. We managed to catch one tiny black one who was so hungry. We think we know who the mother is but she must have stopped feeding him. One of our friends who fosters kittens took her, and we just need to find the others.

There have been plenty of others all over our island. During the July clinic, we had two young cats wander into our clinic and were very friendly and social. We decided to do the surgery on them as one of our volunteers agreed to foster them until they could be adopted. They were so friendly, it was apparent that they had been with humans and had been dumped. They just wanted attention. We seem to be in continual “kitten season,” and so many are dumped on the island.

The first week of June, I had one last-minute conference request for the season in Pittsburg. The temp staff gave me so much information about their city, but I never got to see any of it apart from large windows in the conference center. Early one morning, there was the rising sun shining on a bridge close to the center, so I captured the moment before getting busy with conference attendees.

On my flight back from Pittsburg, I decided I was definitely ready to go home and stay awhile. I’d done 7 week-long conferences in 9 months, plus I’d arranged social events for 3 other meetings. Although I love the onsite work, that many weren’t quite what I’d intended for retirement. Now that I’m back I’ve been trying to cut back some on the additional social events too. I need my space!

When I returned, I decided to learn how to put together photos with music and worked on a video for the Cuale Clinic. I’d read about some software that was easy to use so I started with that one, only to find out that it wouldn’t allow me to save it in a format for Facebook. I downloaded another software package and went to work again. The time consuming task of finding and selecting the photos had already been done so it didn’t take as long. The video has now been on Facebook for a week and is proving very popular. If you’d like to check it out, the link is https://www.facebook.com/cualespayneuterclinics/

Stef and the boys visited for a week this month, and while we tried not to get too booked with tours, we still were crazy busy. We had lunch on the beach most days, and one of their highlights was a full red snapper for both Fynn and Lake. They ate quite a bit of it but couldn’t quite manage the whole thing. It was fun to see their expressions when the fish arrived with head and tail intact.

We also managed to swim and snorkel on most days. We spent one afternoon on La Playita’s beach, and another day we went on a boat with some friends and spent the whole day site seeing, swimming, snorkeling and again – eating on the beach! We also had a swim with sea lions, which the boys voted better than swimming with the dolphins the year before. By the last day, everyone was exhausted, so we relaxed by the pool; went to a little typical Mexican restaurant in the old town. The boys had bacon wrapped shrimp tacos for lunch – not on the menu, but they are made especially when requested. We then wandered down to the beach to have frozen yogurt.

Steve and I are now planning some smaller trips around Mexico during the next couple of months. We’ve explored the Gulf Coast of Mexico, but we want to visit some of the western coast and some areas to the south. Our trip to Copper Canyon was just the beginning and sparked our interest in exploring more of Mexico. Our first short excursion is next week to Mascota, Talpa and San Sebastion, all very small traditional villages.

Summer has settled in here in Vallarta with temperatures in the mid to high eighties and humidity about the same. When you have a day of 88° F in temperature and 85 percent humidity, it makes for a very sticky day. We have what we call two shower and three shower days. You can tell what the temperature and humidity are by the number of showers you need to take, although you never really get dried off.

Everyone enjoy the rest of your summer and hope you are keeping cool. For those of you in the southern hemisphere, stay warm!

Time Flies By

Oh no!!! The whole high season (all six months of it) has raced by, and I’ve not written a blog. No real excuses other than an incredibly busy time with charity work, social activities and working – yes – working!! And I have to admit to a bit of laziness thrown in during down times.

The weather has been glorious this winter, perfect temperatures with very little humidity. Perfect conditions have meant that we’ve left the doors across the whole front of our condo open continuously. It’s even been a bit cold, well – cool (65 F – 18 C), so we’ve had to dig out long sleeve t-shirts in the mornings. On the mornings when I have to find a sweater, I keep reminding myself that in a few months I will need to remember how good this feels when I wake up to 85 F (29 C) and 70% humidity. The jungle and most plants are very dry and baked now, so I am looking forward to some rain. 

Since my last blog, quite a lot of my time has been taken up with work for a friend’s company. The first conference, Super Computing, was held in Denver in November last year with the group reaching just under 11,000 attendees. The convention center is so massive that it didn’t feel like that many, until it came to breaks, lunch times or the parties each night. Then the hoards came out of the woodwork and descended on the food like vultures. It was incredibly long days though because Paul and I would start by 6:00 am and then we were responsible for each of the evening’s parties. Long days with very little sleep.

Once that was over, I threw myself into all of the social activities with gusto. We had Thanksgiving on the beach and lots of other events leading up to Christmas. During this time, Paul asked me to plan evening events for a smaller meeting in Tucson plus work a conference in Baltimore at the end of January. Yea!!! It meant that at the end of that conference, I got to spend a weekend with my daughters. While this was going on, I had another event to plan for evening dinners in Dayton and then another conference in Orlando at the end of February. 

Although the planning time wasn’t full time, with the charity work, social events, and my ESL classes twice a week, it kept me going all of the time. In addition to a meeting in Dallas in June, I have two back to back conferences coming up in May. 

The first week of February, I had my first car accident here in Mexico. I was on my way to have lab work done, so it was relatively early in the morning. I made a right turn onto the street of the hospital, and a lady hit the right front of my car. The guy with her jumped out immediately, so I said: “I’m calling the police.” He immediately got all excited and said “no police, no police”! The accident took the whole front of her car off, but because I was going downhill, it did very little damage to my car because she hit my wheel and wheel rim. So I sat there thinking s*!t – I don’t even know how to call the police. I called Steve to find out, but in the meantime, two tourist officers came by and radioed for a policeman. I was not going to move my car until a policeman told me that I could. In the end – two hours later, I’d moved my car, an insurance adjuster showed up, but I found out that unless I claimed 50% of the liability, my car would be impounded for 2-3 months while the case went to court and the judge would decide on the outcome. I ended up claiming that even though she hit me and she was in the wrong, it was 50% my fault. I couldn’t see being without a car for 2-3 months. Also, I found out that insurance wouldn’t cover it and the woman who hit me didn’t have insurance. So repairs had to be covered privately. That’s Mexico!!!

In March, when I returned from Orlando, Steve and I took a trip to Copper Canyon. It is four times larger than the Grand Canyon and is beautiful beyond words! Copper Canyon is only one of four canyons that meet and form one large canyon. In addition to the walks up and down the mountain, we visited some of the indigenous villages and homes and of course their markets. One of our stops was a girls school where we dropped off supplies and learned how the school system works (or doesn’t in some cases) for them. Most of the families live too far away from the school so if a girl is lucky enough to attend; she has to live at the school too. It's a tough decision for families because the children are needed just to help them survive. If a girl gets an education, she most likely will leave and move to a city and the family loses a good worker.


Semana Santa, the week before Easter, is a week when a lot of Mexicans come to Vallarta for their holiday since the Mexican kids have two weeks off school. Our little town swells with nationals, and I noticed a big difference in driving around the city. People who live in Vallarta drive very politely (small town attitudes), while the influx of holiday people arriving from Mexico City or Guadalajara drive like lunatics and are not polite. Easter holiday is two weeks long – the first week is for the nationals who don’t have as much money, so they park on the beaches with their coolers of coke and other drinks for the whole day. The second week, Pascua, the nationals who have more money come to the beach but they will swim or lounge on the beach for part of the day, and they tend to go to the restaurants. Steffanie, Lake, and Fynn came down the weekend between the two holy weeks but the time that they were here wasn’t all that busy. We had a great time with the two boys spending a lot of time in the water, snorkeling, and swimming and a first for Fynn this time - parasailing. They wanted a laid back and relaxing time this trip, rather than racing around trying to fit in a lot of activities.

As I said, high season is winding down and can’t come soon enough for me!! We’ve been having so many lunches, dinners, drinks, etc. so I’m so ready for a “slow” season, although last summer was anything but slow. And the longer we live here, the more people we meet so it’s even more lunches, dinners, and drinks out. 

After having friends over for dinner this week, I’ve definitely decided that it’s better to enjoy a few friends over for dinner at our condo than to go to a dinner with several people at a restaurant where you can’t talk to anyone.

I'm thinking that as my seventith birthday is coming up this year, if I continue the blog, I should change its name. Can't think of words that go with seventy though - have to give it more thought.