Our Vacation-Part 1

So.....we went on our vacation, and here we are two weeks later and I still haven't mentioned much about it. The problem is both my laptop and desktop and having issues and I can't download my pictures! ARG, driving me crazy!! But I'm determined to comandeer Terry's computer SOON to remedy this situation! In the meantime, I figured I can at least start to tell about where we went. We went to the fabulous southern region of the Kingdom of Spain!!

On this map of Andalucia, I've starred all the cities we visited while there. What prompted this trip?? Terry's mom is in the Navy Nurse Corp and was transferred to the Naval Hospital in Rota Spain. She is commanding officer there now, so we went for the ceremony where she assumes command. So, we stayed on-base in Rota, a fabulous little coastal town with a gorgeus beach!!!

It was my first trip to Europe and was quite the adventure. First we flew through London Heathrow. I've heard stories about Heathrow, but WOW are they true! It's an awful airport!! A maze to get through and (not kidding) every flight we connected through there was delayed. Anyway, we arrived safely and started our adventures!! I think I'll do a post about each day trip we took to the cities starred above, but here are a few things I learned while we were there:

-Sunflower farms! I never really thought about farming for seeds and oil, but WOW, how gorgeus to see miles of bright yellow sunflowers!

-Don't assume that someone will speak english. We are very spoiled as Americans and just assume that most of the world has accepted and learned our language. Not the case, but you can get by with some good basic spanish and lots of pointing!

-We are behind the 'green' curve. I was shocked at how earth-friendly Spain was. You see wind farms in the distance behind the sunflowers and I think it is a beautiful sight to see....all those windmills spinning. I heard from someone that 30% of the power in that region is wind-power. I think that is awesome. It's a quite rural and poor area of Spain, so if they can do it, why not here?? Oh right...I remember a debate about how the windmills would mess up the 'view' of some areas and affect tourism. I don't think so.

-Roundabouts. In New England they are called rotaries. In other areas they are traffic circles. They are scary and they are EVERYWHERE!!

-Siesta=good

-Extra long days. It was daylight....like the sun up and everything, until about 10pm every night. Now, of course that is seasonal. but WOW! It was great!! You could get off of work at 5 and still have time to hit the beach!!

So that was my initial thoughts. Look forward to hearing more and (hopefully) seeing some pictures.