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For years, Glo had a poster on her bedroom wall from the Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Ecuestre, or The Royal School of Equestrian Arts, a place that we visited a couple of times in Jerez de la Frontera while living in Germany.  Even though it was a good two hour drive from Ronda to Jerez, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to visit the Andalucían horses again. But first things first.  When we left our apartment and drove to meet the kids at the house, we walked in to a very sick Clarkie.  Super high fever.  Thankfully, Glo had packed Tylenol and within 30 minutes, he was feeling much better, but it's always scary to get sick in a foreign country. Before we entered the arena, it was a marvel to see all of the storks on the rooftops.  I mean, we've seen them in Poland and Morocco, but I didn't think I would see them in Spain as well.  Kind of a fun bird to add to my life list ;-) The horses were amazing as always.  They really hide their streng...

We had originally planned on driving down to Marbella for a beach day, but I hadn't really worked out the details for that to happen.  Believe me, I tried.  Nancy was helping me think through ideas, Hannah and Glo had helped me call places.  But for me, when something doesn't happen, I don't want to force it because it usually doesn't work out. Instead, I felt pretty inspired to give us a day off of traveling.  With the house in Arriate having its own pool set amidst gardens, I didn't think we needed much else.  So we decided to make a day of relaxing in our own literal backyard. It was such a treat.  We found mulberries ripe for the picking on the way to the pool, so Glo grabbed a bunch of them.  Clarkie enjoyed them, and we enjoyed using them (and him) for our art project ;-)       As always, we loved the pool.  Was it a bit chilly? Yes, but I think Clarkie was the only one who minded that.  So Hannah just put him on her shou...

Okay.  We didn't love our apartment in Ronda proper.  Yes, it was nice to get away from the family for a hot second, but we were staying in the city in a nondescript apartment with no attached parking lot.  It was meh . But we got up early to meet Jesus at the bullfighter statue for a three-hour tour of Ronda. Let me just say this: looking back on the entire trip, this tour ended up being one of my favorite moments. Ronda is a spectacular city.  Turns out, it's one of the smaller ones in Andalucía, but one of the most visited.  And thankfully Jesus had encouraged us to start the tour early because once the tour busses started to arrive, it was almost impossible to walk down the street. We started with the gorge, and it's one of those moments where it doesn't matter how I try to capture a photo of it, it just doesn't do it justice. Then we headed to the bull-fighting ring of Ronda.  It is only in operation one week a year (during the festival), but this let ...

 Our last day in Grenada.  Hard to believe. Glo's request for the trip was for us to visit the chapel where Isabella (Queen Isabel de Castile) and Ferdinand were buried: the Royal Chapel of Grenada.  To her credit, she arranged the tour and everything (for which I was very thankful).  Tours aren't usually given of the capilla  so she had to arrange a private tour. We checked out of our AirBnb and actually got the cars out of the parking structure easily.  It was the first time I had seen them tucked away, and to Mark and Trevor's credit, they had parked them perfectly.  We found a parking structure fairly close to the capilla  which made me question if we could've driven everyday....but where's the fun (and steps) in that? We met our guide (literally can't remember his name), and we were off.  Just standing outside, waiting to get in, Glo pointed out the F and I running around the structure, something I wouldn't have even noticed.  Can y...