Spain – Ullan Adventures

Interview with Mara – A Year of Travel Wrap-up

Kirsten / June 5, 2014

Interview with Mara at the end of our year of traveling (age 9)

116 — MaeKwan at Patara Elephant Camp in Thailand

Q: Have you enjoyed traveling this past year?
Mara: Well… it’s fun at times. But sometimes I miss just having a house. But it’s great – I love traveling the world and it’s amazing!

Q: What do you like most about traveling?
Mara: Going new places and experiencing new cultures. And I love to try the different foods. And the different treats are always fun.

Q: What did you like least about traveling?
Mara: I don’t get to have much stuff and it’s kind of hard to make friends when you know you’re going to be leaving soon. Sometimes I just miss having friends and having a real house and being able to decorate it.

Q: What toys/games are you happy you brought with you?
Mara: Well, I’m happy I brought my stuffed animals. Or some of my stuffed animals. And I’m happy I brought my Barbies. That’s pretty much all I brought.

Q: What were your favorite places? Why?
Mara: I loved Thailand because there were so many adventures and there are lots of crazy markets. I loved Paris because I wanted to go there all my life and I SO LOVED going up the Eiffel Tower. And I loved Hong Kong because there was a restaurant we called “Noodle Girl” and it was soooo yum! Santorini was AM-AZ-ING!

Me in front of the Eiffel Tower for the first time!

Q: What were your least favorite places? Why?
Mara: Well, that’s kind of hard but Spain was the worst place we went. But it was still pretty darn good. And in Istanbul, all the restaurants served Turkish food which got boring. Plus the Grand Bazaar was just ok. There are so many stray cats and dogs which got scary.

Q: What were your favorite experiences?
Mara: I loved the elephant camp in Thailand. It was UNBELIEVABLY cool! And I also loved the crazy markets. I liked the Noodle Girl restaurant in Hong Kong – it makes me so hungry for grilled steak. Yee Peng was amazing! Great Wall of China! Marrakech ATVs were awesome! Seeing my family paraglide was neat. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France was amazing! It was so cool. And there were lights on it that blinked and made it looked like it sparkled.

All smiles while warming up after the Forbidden City

Q: What were your least favorite experiences?
Mara: Pamukkale (in Turkey) was ok. And Tiger Kingdom was ok. I really disliked the Louvre, Notre Dame, and La Sagrada Familia. The Alcazar (in Seville, Spain) was bor-ing. The Parthenon was boring. I disliked the ferry from Rhodes to Turkey because the sea was so rocky and wavy and over half the people threw up. Climbing up the Kotor wall was just so long and boring.

Q: Did you enjoy being homeschooled?
Mara: Yes because less school hours. And I don’t have to wake up early, early, early. I have the nicest teacher in the world. I also liked the way she taught multiplication and division.

Q: What was your favorite homeschool subject?
Mara: I don’t have one. I do like multiplication.

Q: What was your least favorite homeschool subject?
Mara: My least favorite was spelling.

Learning about Ancient Greece and hosting our own Olympics

Q: What have you learned from your travels so far?
Mara: A lot about how boring planes are. And how rocky and wavy ferries can be. And how annoying it is to wake up early. I also learned a lot about geography. I also learned how to negotiate. And how fun tuk tuks are. And I learned how annoying it is to have everything you own fit into a suitcase. And that elephants are fun and amazing creatures.

Q: What were some of your favorite foods?
Mara: Pizza in Fethiye, Turkey at Nil Bar. Steak at “Noodle Girl” in the Hong Kong airport. And Nic’s in Chiang Mai, Thailand had great meatballs and pizza. The baguettes we had in Spain were AMAZING! Mint tea in Marrakech. Mmm mmm. The crepes and macarons in Paris – yum! The gyros in Santorini and the olives in Athens were good. I also liked sushi and coconut milk straight from the coconut in Thailand.

I did NOT like the orange hot dog under the Eiffel Tower. Blahhhh.

Q: What do you miss the most about the USA?
Mara: I miss being able to talk to kids in English. And I miss English TV. I miss going to swim team. Girl Scouts! Toy stores!

Q: What will you miss the most about traveling?
Mara: I’m going to miss the food and the cultures and going new places.

Q: Where do you want to travel next?
Mara: Egypt to see the Pyramids. And Russia – I like snow.

139 — Cooking Thai food at Sammy’s Cooking School in Chiang Mai, Thailand

454 — Loi Krathong festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand

224 — Longtail boat trip on the Mekong from Thailand to Laos

Tree "snow" in Paris — Tree “snow” in Paris

Riding a bull at a carnival in La Herradura, Spain

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A Photo Tour of Almuñécar, Spain

Kirsten / March 30, 2014

When we arrived on the Costa del Sol, we scouted out 5 different towns before deciding where to settle down for 2.5 months. Almuñécar was the last of our stops and we fell in love with it as soon as we saw the town from the road. It’s about 27,000 people, with some tourist infrastructure, but mostly a local feel.

I don’t even know that I would’ve gone over to Almuñécar if it wasn’t for Heidi and Alan Wagoner from Wagoner’s Abroad. They are an American family living and blogging about their town. So thanks to them, we added it to our scouting list and the rest is history.

Adorable Streets

007 (2) — Lots of narrow walkways and stone floors

The views of town from above are really beautiful. It looks, well, Meditteranean!

032 (2) — We love the way the houses are all built right up the hills. There’s actually one section of houses that have been slowly falling off into the sea.

And oh yeah, the beach views are nice as well!

023c — There are miles of “paseos”, wide pathways for strolling along the ocean.

They have a number of parks on the beach. Chuck and I would drink Sangria at a nearby bar while the kids played at this one.

Here are a few pictures from another playground.

A few more pictures

JR Restaurant which had delicious Parmesan & Ham Risotto

Mara with our "Happy Cones" outside of our favorite bakery — Mara with our “Happy Cones” outside of our favorite bakery

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Our House in Almunecar, Spain

Chuck Ullan / March 27, 2014

Now that we’re only 5 days away from leaving, I suppose we’d better get around to actually talking about where we’re staying. We’d originally been planning on staying in town near the ocean, but never found a place that was the right fit. So, we smoked the budget a bit and ended up in a villa. Boo hoo, I know!

It’s set midway up a hill in a canyon just around the corner from Almunecar, in a “development” called Cotobro. The owner of the house lives in a much smaller house beneath ours. He’s been really great, though it’s a bit weird having the owner onsite.

Because we’re set back in a canyon somewhat, our hours of daylight are somewhat limited, with sunrise around 8:30, and the sun going behind the hill around 5 pm. That would be great in the summer, but in the winter it means it’s usually too cold to hang out outside after that time.

013 (4) — This is our view on a nice day

001 — And this was our view much of February, when the weather sucked!

We’ve got a balcony upstairs and a pool on the main level. The pool was just there for show, as the weather was way too chilly for us to go in. The kids did take a quick dip our first week. Quick as in a few seconds in, then fleeing the pool while screaming!

There are several entrances into the house, but we mostly use the door that opens on to the kitchen

Down the hall to the left is where Kirsten’s office / school room

Past that room is our family room. It’s a nice, big room with a TV and fireplace. Too bad our channel selection was terrible!

Upstairs, there are 3 bedrooms. The master had a European queen, which is smaller than a US queen. So it was kinda cozy!

Beckett’s room in an unusually clean state

Mara’s room looking like the filth pit it usually is. We could have tidied up, but it seems better to remember it as it was!

Since everything in this area is on a hill, there’s a steep driveway heading down to our house.

There’s also a cool stairway leading down to the ocean. Unfortunately, you first have to go UP that big driveway before going down all those stairs. So we’ve done the stairs exactly once.

There’s a cool little map of the community at the bottom of the hill.

The plus side of having a late sunrise is getting to enjoy it more often than when it’s at a ridiculous hour.

Overall, this worked out to be a really nice place for us. Location wasn’t ideal, but it was gorgeous and spacious. When we’re together 24/7, having some space to spead out is essential!

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How Living in Spain is Different than the US

Kirsten / March 23, 2014

Adjusting to our life in Spain was much easier than adjusting to Thailand. Spain was probably easier because it’s first world and much more modern. Plus Chuck and I both speak a bit of Spanish so it’s easier to figure things out.

Strangely, we found more English speakers in Thailand than here, probably because we went to main tourism hubs in Thailand. But here we’re in a mainly Spanish town. Another reason is because once you’ve adjusted to something like living in Thailand, it gets easier to deal with big changes.

That said, there are some definite differences between Spain and the USA. Some were expected and some threw us for a loop upon arrival. Maybe all of these don’t apply to everywhere in Spain, but they definitely apply to our town and our house.

Household

Line drying clothes. Apparently they haven’t heard of this amazing invention called a clothes dryer here and all clothes (well everything you wash) are hung out in the sun to dry. This isn’t much of a problem as the weather is warming up, but in late January, it would take all day for our clothes to dry and even then we’d have to hang them inside overnight. I never thought I’d be planning my laundry around the weather forecast.

Hanging our clothes to dry overnight on our 4-poster bed

Teeny, tiny clothes washers. Maybe it’s because you’d need too many lines to dry the clothes outside, but the washing machines are tiny here. I miss my super capacity plus that could wash clothes for a small army in 1 load.
No heat in our house. This might be only our house and location although we looked at a few houses like this: we don’t turn on the heat in the house. Not because we don’t need heat but because apparently it’s too expensive. We have a wood burning stove we use in the evenings to heat the house and the sun heats it during the day. Great concept when its warm outside but it’s not very warm here January through March so we’ve been FREEZING this winter. We’re all bundled in sweatshirts and warm pants inside and will go out in the sun to warm up. We have 2 space heaters that move around the house with us and I’ve been known to wear gloves in the house.

TV. As you’d expect, TV watching here is quite different. However, what is odd is we only get 1-2 channels in Spanish and loads of German channels with a few Russian, French and Italian channels thrown in. At first we got loads of BBC channels but we lost all those early on. I watched the Olympics on the German channels entirely in German. Let’s just say I saw lots of biathlon and little snowboarding or figure skating. Since the Olympics are over, we don’t even bother to turn the TV on.

Food

Grocery store shopping carts. I could not figure out how to get a shopping cart the first time we went grocery shopping as they’re all chained together. I was pissed when I realized we had to pay $1 to use the cart. UNTIL I realized that it’s just a deposit to unlock the cart, and when you relock the cart after you use, you get your money back. Guess it prevents people from not returning them to the proper place (or stealing them). Kind of genius actually.
Grocery stores are smaller and have an entire aisle devoted to ham. And not prepackaged ham, but hanging racks of ham hocks. The seafood counter is full of interesting things as well. At one of the bigger stores, there is an entire aisle devoted to boxed, room temperature milk. Think “Parmalat”.

So many ham hocks, how can I possibly choose?!?

The best aisle in the grocery store is the wine aisle. Of course I always love a well stocked wine aisle, but what makes it so great is how cheap the wine is here! You can find many bottles for $2-3. I usually splurge and go for the $5 bottles. I think the most expensive wine at our local store is maybe $12. Cava is super cheap too. My personal favorite is about $3/bottle. ¡Ole!

Cheap, super delicious bread. Since I’m on the subject of cheap food, I have to mention the cheap fresh-baked baguettes and other breads from the bakeries. We have been devouring loaves of bread here, especially our self-proclaimed “Baguette Lovers”, aka Mara and Beckett.
Tapas. OK, I’m not done with food yet. Another wonderful thing about Spain is the free, yes free!, tapas you get when you order a sangria. The sangrias are delicious and the fact that they come with a little appetizer for free is such a wonderful thing.
Menú del día. One last thing about food, I promise. Many restaurants have a “Menú del día” or menu of the day. It’s such a deal! At the one restaurant we like, we each got a huge appetizer (that was practically a meal), a main dish, bread, dessert, and we were given an entire bottle of wine to split for about $10€ or less than $14USD each.

Lifestyle

Operating hours for businesses. I still have no idea when many stores open or when they close for siesta. All that I know is almost everything closes down at 2-3pm and reopens later in the evening. And even businesses like grocery stores are closed on Sundays.
Meal times. The Spanish eat lunch around 2-3pm and dinner at… 9? 10? I don’t really know as the kids and I are probably already in bed by then. Most restaurants don’t open for dinner till 7 or 7:30pm.
The Spanish dress so stylish. Just about everywhere we’ve been, I’ve noticed that the women AND men look so stylish and put together even if they’re just out at the grocery store. It’s not like they’re dressed up all crazy, but they definitely look chic and well dressed. No jeans, no sloppy, slouchy t’s, no sweatshirts. Even the guys will be wearing a nice button down and red pants and look fashionable but casual like this is normal and how they always dress. Let me just say my “Hawaiian bohemian hobo look” is kind of out of place here.

Driving

Roundabouts. There are shockingly few stop lights here and I’m not sure I’ve seen a 4 way stop as they use roundabouts, aka traffic circles, instead. You do get used to them after a while, but the huge ones with stop lights in the circle are still confusing as hell.
Twisty, turny roads. I have never ever ever seen so many tiny, twisty, turning roads in my life. I guess it makes sense since our town is set into the mountains and cliffs. Think hair-pin turns with only enough room for 1 car to get by and mirrors set up so you don’t bash someone coming from the opposite direction.
Can’t cross the center line on a road. Most of the roads here use a white line in the middle instead of the double yellow line we use in the USA. However, you aren’t allowed to cross the white line or you could get fined by the police. Seems to make sense until you realize this means you can’t park in an open parking space on the other side of the street or turn into a parking lot (or gas station) on the other side of the street. Instead you must drive down to the next roundabout, and come back in the other direction or risk being fined.
Weird road signs. One of the fun things about traveling is the road signs around the world. See below for our favorite road sign in Spain.

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The Alhambra

Kirsten / March 21, 2014

The Alhambra is a palace and fortress in Granada, Spain. It was originally built in 889 and rebuilt in the mid-13th century.

We’d heard repeatedly about how famous the Alhambra was and how it was at the top of the To Do list for Spain, so we drove the 1 hour from our rental and visited it for the afternoon.

We weren’t nearly as impressed as most people. I think a large part of that was because we had just been to the Alcázar of Seville a few weeks prior. It was still neat to see so I’m glad we went.

The Alhambra consists of many different buildings and areas.

The grounds:

Inside the Nasrid Palaces:

The Alcazaba:

The Courtyard of the Palace of Charles V:

The view of Granada from the grounds:

Chuck and Beckett’s Assessment of the Alhambra:

Beckett’s Final Rating:

Europe Favorite Moments Spain

2 Days in Seville

Chuck Ullan / March 12, 2014

After our 2 days in Marrakech, we flew back into Seville airport and stayed for 2 nights to check out the city.

Unfortunately, it started off in the house of pain, as we left the airport at midnight for our 20 minute drive to our hostel, The Grand Luxe Hostel, which was downtown, near the cathedral.

Did I say 20 minute drive? Oops, make that a 2-hour drive! Seville is notorious for confusing streets, and once we missed one turn (which was almost inevitable, given their poor signage), we were hosed. Finally, around 2 am, I flagged a taxi and had him lead us to the hotel. I felt good that even though we were less than a half mile away, he had to call and ask for directions, and it took about 7-8 minutes of twists and turns to finally get there.

To add insult to injury, there’s no parking at the hostel, so I had to drive up and park the car about a block from where I flagged the taxi.

After that, everything was great and we had a really fun 2 days in Seville. The buildings are all so gorgeous downtown and they’ve been maintained and restored well. Hard to explain, but the city just “has it”. We remarked a few times that we’d have loved to spend our Spain time living here.

Apart from seeing the cathedral and visiting the Real Alcazar, we just wandered around, ate, and chilled. Here are some of the photos we took along the way.

579 — Our hostel was just down to the left from those umbrellas sitting outside. (The view is from the tower at the Cathedral.

They had a bunch of horse-drawn buggies queued up in many spots around the city, so we decided to give our legs a rest and go for a ride.

652 — I guess horses have the right of way

We took a spin through a park near the Plaza de Espana. Very, very cool!

While walking around Seville, you could almost close your eyes and take a picture of something cool. For example, all these narrow streets.

We walked over to the Metropol Parasol, supposedly the largest wood building in the world. Looks like a giant waffle fry! Very interesting, but quite different than anything else in Seville.

While wandering through the shops, we found a taste of America. Literally!

708 — We made it out of here with only a purchase of Goldfish crackers. Everything else was 2-3x US prices.

A few more random shots of cool stuff

Finally, got a gorgeous sky while having dinner outside.

Educational Europe Spain

Royal Alcazar, Seville, Spain

Kirsten / March 12, 2014

El Real Alcázar de Sevilla, the Royal Alcazar of Seville in English, is the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe. It was originally founded in 913 as a Muslim fortress and has been rebuilt and expanded over time.

The outside isn’t very impressive, but we were blown away by some of the inside rooms including the courtyard above. The detail on every wall and ceiling was mind boggling. Chuck and I could’ve spent a few hours here taking it all in. Unfortunately the kids weren’t as impressed and were pretty road weary after 4 days on the road (and on our feet). They did perk up when we discovered there was a labyrinth made out of bushes in the garden. We practically had to drag them out of there as they didn’t get to explore the entire maze.

Here are some of our favorite rooms:

Up close of just one part of one wall. They were all covered in this amazing work:

The ceilings were gorgeous. Every ceiling in every room was different. Here are a few of my favorites:

The outside gardens including the labyrinth:

The outside of the palace:

Cultural Educational Europe Spain

Seville Cathedral & La Giralda

Kirsten / March 11, 2014

The Seville Cathedral, technically La Catedral de Sevilla, is the largest Gothic cathedral and the 3rd largest cathedral in the entire world. Construction began in 1402 and ended in 1506 and at the time, it was the biggest cathedral in the world. The cathedral is also noteworthy because Christopher Columbus is buried there.

The Giralda, La Giralda, is the bell tower connected to the cathedral but was formerly the minaret of the mosque that previously stood on the site. Construction of The Giralda was completed in 1198 and was built to resemble a minaret from Marrakech, Morocco. When you visit the cathedral, you’re able to go into the bell tower and climb to the top. Luckily the climb up is via 35 ramps which are way, way better than 35 flights of stairs.

Originally we thought we’d visit the cathedral for about an hour before lunch and then pop over to Real Alcazar for the afternoon. Boy were we wrong. When they say this thing is huge, they mean huge! The main sanctuary is massive but it was exploring all the little rooms and going into the tower that took up a lot of time. We were there for a good 3 hours and still didn’t fully explore everything!

La Giralda:

The interior of the cathedral:

Christoper Columbus’s tomb:

The views from the top of La Giralda including some great views of the city of Seville and of the top of the cathedral:

Some of the other beautiful rooms in the cathedral:

Lastly, here is some of the gold treasure that is kept in the cathedral:

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Italica – Roman Ruins near Seville

Chuck Ullan / March 8, 2014

Before heading to the airport for our flight down to Marrakech, we decided to make a quick pit stop at Italica, which is one of the more significant Roman ruins in the area.

They had an amphitheatre about half the size of the Colosseum in Rome and a little town adjacent to it. Most of the walls for everything are gone, but some of the roads, foundations, and mosaic floors still remain.

Overall, it was kinda neat, but not really a “must-see” attraction. As a fan of the movie Gladiator, I enjoyed getting a chance to see what one of these arenas was like.

So first up, the amphitheatre

Of course there had to be a battle between Becksimus and Chuckimus!

The center of the arena held equipment, combatants, and animals. I’m guessing there was a wood covering for it that’s no longer there now. Tunnels led from 2 different sides of this pit out to the ends of the arena.

These passageways run underneath the stands

Here’s the foundation for one of the housing areas

Finally, a few mosaics

Educational Europe Spain

San Miguel Castle in Almuñécar

Kirsten / February 28, 2014

One of the main features of Almuñécar, Spain is Castillo de San Miguel or, in English, San Miguel Castle.

The fortifications were originally built in the 1st century B.C. by the Phoenicians and Romans. The Moors however, developed it into a massive fortress with 40 towers. In 1489, Christians took over the castle and proceeded to add and rebuild it. Unfortunately, in the 1800s, the castle was bombed and it fell out of use and into ruins until the 1980s when a restoration process began.

On Día de Andalucia, we heard the castle was open for free, so we trekked up the hillside to check it out.

While the term castle makes you think of a building, it’s really more of a self-contained city. It had a prison, water cisterns, and everything needed to hole up for months while defending against attacks.

At the top of the castle is a battery from which cannons would get fired at invaders, both at sea and on land. There were also lots of slits from which archers could shoot.

One of the highlights was the amazing view of town.

Cultural Europe Spain

Día de Andalucía Fiesta in Almunecar

Chuck Ullan / February 28, 2014

Last Friday we got to attend our first real fiesta in Spain. It was celebrating Día de Andalucía, which celebrates the day Andalucía voted to become an autonomous community of Spain. I’d figured that was a long time ago, but in fact it took place in 1980.

Overall, it pretty much had a 4th of July feel to it minus the fireworks.

There was a flag-raising celebration around noon, which we missed, and then a fiesta all afternoon at a park in the heart of town. It was a beautiful afternoon with clear skies and temps in the upper 60s, so we were all comfortable. We finally got to wear shorts which was so nice – we all miss wearing shorts!

The fiesta was pretty basic – some flamenco dancing, music, beverage and food sales, and activities for the kids. And believe it or not, adults could actually order a beer without having a wristband. Those crazy Spaniards.

We hung out for a few hours, then visited the big castle in town, then finished the day with a playground and pizza. Throughout the day, we were bumping into and hanging out with our new friends, Heidi and Alan Wagoner, who moved from North Carolina to Almunecar about a year and a half ago. (They’ve written a lot about their adventures here at WagonersAbroad.com.)

045 — A cool little building near the entrance of the park

The park is at the base of El Castillo de San Miguel which was first fortified 2,000 years ago

Of course there has to be some flamenco!

They had this cool inflatable soccer arena for the kids which was free! Yes, free!

They were also making a HUGE paella. They added ingredients and cooked it over a fire for an hour or two, then served it up. 3 Euros for a plate – had to give it a try!

The park also has some Roman ruins fenced off. This was a fish salting facility back in the day.

There were also old folks playing bocce at the park which is pretty typical here.

There was also this dog which had nothing to do with the fiesta but we loved his little wheelchair contraption. He was a total cutie too!

Finally, a little pizza with our friends.

Europe Favorite Moments Spain

La Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona

Kirsten / February 17, 2014

One of the highlights of our trip to Barcelona was visiting La Sagrada Familia.

The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família is a large Catholic church designed by Antoni Gaudí. It was less than 1/4 complete at the time of his death in 1926 and currently its about 1/2 complete. The Basílica is quite unconventional and unique from any other church I’ve visited. One of the facades is more conventional but the inside, decorations, geometry and the like are completely unique.

Frankly, I loved it. It was unexpected but grand and beautiful yet strange in parts. I could’ve spent hours inside the main sanctuary.

The first thing we did upon arriving was take the elevator to the top of one of the towers. Here we got great views of the city.

From there, we had to walk down a tiny spiral staircase which kind of freaked all of us out. I got a bit dizzy from going around and around and around for nearly 400 steps.

After we recovered from walking down the tower, we explored the main sanctuary.

Some pictures of the outside:

Logistics: We bought our tickets ahead of time from the official website. We bought tickets for the basilica and for the towers. The tickets for the tower had a specific time so we entered the basilica about 15 minutes before our tower time, navigated to the tower, and up we went. FYI, if you’re really scared of heights or get bad claustrophobia, it might be best to skip the tower part.

Europe Favorite Moments Spain World Travels

3 Days in Barcelona, Spain

Chuck Ullan / February 16, 2014

We just finished spending 3 days in Barcelona and loved it!

After taking an early-Saturday flight in from Malaga, we wandered up La Rambla (a big pedestrian/shopping street), then went to the FC Barcelona football game that night.

Sunday was pretty chill, as we went up to Guell Park, then just wandered and ate.

On Monday, we went to La Sagrada Familia, the church designed by Antoni Gaudi. It was really spectacular and much different from “normal” churches. We took an elevator to the top and got a great view of the city. After that, it was more wandering and eating, then early to bed to catch our 6:15 am flight back home on Tuesday.

We covered the football game and La Sagrada Familia in separate posts:

Going to a FC Barcelona Fútbol Game
La Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona, Spain

It’s really hard to call Barcelona anything but a Grand European city. We spent a lot of time strolling and eating, which really is the way to enjoy a city like this. There was so much detail in the architecture, public spaces, and food options, that it would be a shame to rush just to see the A-list attractions.

After being in Spain for about a month, one thing about going to Barcelona threw me for a loop initially – most of the signs aren’t in Spanish. What are they in, you ask? Well, they’re in Catalan. Barcelona is part of Catalonia, an autonomous community within Spain’s borders, and they’ve got their own language. Many signs also have Spanish listed below, and from what I could tell, many people speak both. But Catalonian independence is a hot issue, which may come to a vote in 2014. Didn’t directly affect anything for us, but it was interesting to observe.

The kids were both reluctant to go, since we’ve spent a lot of time on the road in the last few months. But they ended up having a good time at the football game, feeding pigeons, and snacking around the city. Kirsten and I loved the look and feel of the city, all the little bars and cafes, and the overall vibe. We’d love to get back for a few days without the kids someday.

Don’t trust the smile on that lobster’s face!

Next 4 pictures are from Park Guell. It was kind of interesting, but not really worth the cost of getting in (about 28E / US$40 for the family).

Front view of the most popular section of Guell Park.

Great view of the city and ocean from the top of the park.

Interesting stone work. The walkway behind is also kind of cool, but the pictures didn’t turn out.

The big boulevards like La Rambla had plenty of cool buildings:

Mara at the Cathedral, not the same as La Sagrada Familia.

Nothing famous about this, just interesting

The side streets also had plenty of interesting stuff to see.

Mara and Beckett got to do one of their favorite things – chase pigeons!

Mara and Beckett act out “Where’s Waldo?”

We also found breakfast at a place called Milk Bar, which had insanely good French toast, topped with berries and Greek Yogurt.

Finally, who doesn’t like a city where you can get Happy Pills?!

Logistics: We stayed at Som Nit Born which had basic, but clean family rooms and was located near the Gothic Quarter and other sites.

Europe Favorite Moments Spain Sporting Events

Going to a FC Barcelona Fútbol Game

Chuck Ullan / February 15, 2014

For a few years now, Kirsten had a bucket list item of attending a big-time European soccer match. So once we made plans to come to Spain, we started working out how to knock this off.

Barcelona was already on our list to visit while in Spain, and FC Barcelona is one of the top teams in the world and regarded by many as one of the great teams of all time, so we decided to schedule our trip there to coincide with a game.

Camp Nou is the stadium for FCB and it’s big, holding about 99,000, the vast majority of which are season tickets. Lucky for us, they were playing a terrible team the week we were going, so were able to find 4 seats together after some searching. 4 seats together in the 3rd of 4 levels ran us 43 Euros each.

First impression as we walked in – WOW. What an incredibly beautiful pitch (field)!! Seems weird to fawn over some grass, but it was immaculate and spectacular!

Beckett and I are wearing the FCB jerseys we bought in Chiang Mai before leaving. They’ve got to be authentic, right?!

There were about 75,000 in attendance for the game, making it about 75% full. People sang team cheers and songs at times, but it was fairly quiet most of the time.

It was also much different than a US sporting event in that it was all about the game. No music during dead balls, no halftime entertainment, no contests, no smoke and pyros during the player introductions. The food was very basic – just a few sandwiches, hot dogs, and popcorn, but no “culinary experience”. What a concept, eh?

The game itself was great – Barca scored in the 2nd minute and went on to win 6-0. Messi had a couple goals and Neymar had a rocket for the 6th goal. While it wasn’t the intense and rowdy experience one often associates with European soccer, it was still a fantastic experience and definitely gave us a better appreciation of the game.

Surprisingly, this was about as crazy or rowdy as it got, with flag waving and cheering.

Goalkeeper is in trouble here but the pass across didn’t connect

The goalkeeper came way out and Messi chipped the shot over his head and into the net

Barca Score — 6-0 is about as good as it gets!

Lots of fun merchandise outside the gates.

Asia Chiang Mai Educational Europe Spain Thailand

Homeschooling – The Plan

Kirsten / June 10, 2013

I had a feeling I would be homeschooling my kids some day. Of course this never occurred to me before they were born. But once they were a few years old, the thought entered my mind.

This had nothing to do with many of the conventional reasons people homeschool though. For many years, I’ve dreamed of taking a year off and traveling the world with my family. I even went so far as to make a rough itinerary one day when I was bored at work a long, long time ago. So I knew if I was ever going to make that a reality, I was going to have to man up and homeschool.

I’m not like others that homeschool in that I was a teacher or worked with children. And anyone that knows me knows that my level of patience could.. uh.. use some improvements. However, if we were really going to go to Thailand for 6-9 months, I was going to have to homeschool.

I had no idea where to begin. Thankfully my friend Wendy was homeschooling and told me about the book “101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum” which helped me sift through the gazillions of homeschool curriculums. I was able to rule many of them out and felt much better about my direction after reading this book.

I also scanned the internet and the many traveling family blogs out there to see what they were doing. Unfortunately I didn’t come up with many specifics but did hear about this great website called Time4Learning that parents and kids seemed to love. So my plan is to homeschool them then sign up for the website so they can do worksheets and reinforce the information.

My criteria for a curriculum wasn’t extensive. Basically I was looking for:

Something that laid out what kids should learn in each grade pretty easily
Nothing with too many books/worksheets/etc as I had limited packing space
Something secular (many of the homeschool curriculums are religious-based but I wanted something without a religious bent)
Something that would make the transition back to public school the following year as smooth as possible

My plan was to only homeschool for the year we’re traveling and then the kids would return to public school. My biggest fear is they’d show up the next year and not have learned the base skills to be successful and struggle at the beginning.

Of course Chuck didn’t share in those concerns. Both kids were doing well above their peers in all basic skills so Chuck joked that if they didn’t learn a single thing this year, they’d still go into the following grade prepared.

Plus the kids are 6 and 8 and I’d be teaching 2nd and 3rd grade so its not exactly rocket science. As long as they get the fundamentals, they should be fine.

I’d been hearing about the Common Core curriculum and that many states were starting to adopt it. I figured if I followed the Common Core curriculum for each of their grades, and their next school also followed the Common Core curriculum, then they would know what their peers knew and wouldn’t be behind. For example, maybe they should know multiplication and next year they learn division. Or they need to know certain English grammar but some of the more complicated stuff comes later.

So at the end of the day, I settled on the “What Your … Grader Needs to Know (Core Knowledge)” books. As best as I could tell, these books set the precedent for the Common Core standards and are closely aligned with what is currently being rolled out around the country.

These books cover the basics for English (including some poems and short stories), History, Geography, Visual Arts, Music, Math and Science. Basically it covered every topic I needed to teach, gave me enough information to get started teaching the material and wrapped it all up in a book of around 350 pages. And that’s it. All I needed to buy and take with me were the 2 books – 1 for 2nd grade and 1 for 3rd grade. All the worksheets, spelling tests, homework, etc I could make or print out once we were abroad. So for about $30, my homeschool supplies were procured and I was set.

One of the other major things I needed to figure out was what legal requirement I needed to fulfill to homeschool. Some states have strict rules about who can homeschool and they want proof of all sorts of things. Other states don’t care and you just have to tell them that you’re homeschooling and that’s it. This is where my next problem began. We currently lived in Hawaii but were leaving there permanently. Once our travel was over, we had no idea where we were going to move. California was our best guess, but really, we didn’t know. Since we were leaving Hawaii, we were giving up our address there as well and getting an address for our mail in North Carolina through the Traveling Mailbox company.

So who exactly do I ask when I’m living abroad and have no home or home state or even a state I intend to move to?

Well, I’m one to follow the rules so I figured I would start with talking to the Hawaii school my children currently attended. I told them our plans to move to Thailand and to homeschool and had all my paperwork filled out. However, upon hearing that we weren’t planning to return to Hawaii after our trip, they had no idea what to do with me. They needed to figure it out and finally 2 days later I was told that they weren’t interested in “knowing” I was homeschooling as I was leaving Hawaii and not their responsibility. So they asked that I withdraw the kids and that was that.

So where does this leave us? I guess I’m going rogue. My current home state doesn’t want to know as I don’t live there anymore. And I don’t live anywhere else in the USA so no one else wants to know either. And I’m not officially moving to Thailand either as I’m there on tourist visas.

Sure that stresses a rule follower like myself out that somehow I’m going to get in trouble for not legally having my kids registered at a school in the US. But I’m keeping records and keeping samples of their work and tracking the time spent homeschooling. And I’ll tell the next school what Hawaii told me and cross my fingers and hope for the best that there isn’t an issue. Only time will tell on that one.

So I’m heading to Thailand with my curriculum and base materials in place. And with the knowledge that I tried to register in Hawaii and they said no. I’m not sure what I’ll do about the patience part but as with everything else with this adventure, I’ll figure it all out.

Wish me luck!