Greetings, again, from Spain!

Jen and I have been all over the south of Spain! We were so frustrated with our stuff getting stolen that we decided to go back to Granada to try to buy replacements of our souvenirs that got stolen. That proved to be yet another frustrating experience of driving in a Spanish cities. The streets are very poorly marked. The street signs are small placards that are HANDWRITTEN and posted on the second floor of the buildings! Yeah, that´s VERY helpful! hahah =)

Anyways, so, after driving around in Granada traffic, we decided to go back to La Alhambra and just pay to get in and go to the store in La Alhambra and buy the items there. I had sent an e-mail that I found on their website to ask them where their store in Granada (outside of La Alhambra) was and didn´t hear back by the time we´d left.

We waited in line for an hour and finally got into La Alhambra. We wound up only going in for about an hour and a half ´cuz it started to rain. Then, we got back in the car for the 4 hour drive back to Calpe. Yes, yes, call us crazy. hahahah =) But, as I put it to Jen, would she regret NOT going back to get those souvenirs. After all, we are here.

Tonight, we will be celebrating New Year´s Eve (known here as ¨la nochevieja¨....the old night) down on the Calpe beach at a bar/restaurant where we will have a buffet dinner. We will also get a bottle of champagne and 12 grapes each. It´s a Spanish tradition that you eat one grape per gong of the clock and if you successfully eat the 12 grapes, you will have good luck in the new year. You try eating 12 grapes that quickly! And their grapes have seeds! hahahah =)

Today, we went to Alicante and went to el Castillo de Santa Barbara. It was, apparently, one of the great fortresses of all of Europe, which was surrendered to James of Aragon in like, 1296. It´s just amazing how much history these places have. I mean, heck, the US was no where near being discovered!!!

We´ll be sleeping in tomorrow (don´t know how late we´ll be out....last time I was in Spain for New Year´s Eve, we were out ´til 3 am) and just relaxing. Unfortunately, the only stuff on TV that we can understand is BBC World and they repeat their segments every 1-2 hours so we usually see the same thing over and over and over. Great. =) There´s also EuroSport, which broadcasts all sorts of sports....mostly skiing now. We saw some figure skating yesterday.

On Thursday, we´re heading up to Valencia and Friday, we may go back to Valencia. We are definitely going to stop in Villajoyosa where they have a Museum of Chocolate! Guess what I´ll be bringing home?! hahahah =)

Then, Saturday, we check outta here and head up to Madrid for the evening where we are going to see a flamenco performance...dinner at 10pm and the flamenco performance at midnight. Everything here happens really late.

Well, I´ve got less than 2 minutes on this computer so I better post and publish this!!

Happy New Year, everyone! See you in 2003!!!