No Hablo Espanol

And that phrase was all I could remember from 2 years of Spanish in high school - very sad.

We just got back from a lovely week in southern Spain - flew into Madrid and made a big loop before coming back to Madrid for a couple days. It was soooooooo freakin hot!! Surprisingly it was quite nice if you were in the shade. It was an amazing country, I was really surprised by the Moorish influence throughout almost all their cities. It was rather interesting watching our guides skirt all mention of both the Inquisition and Franco. My favorite comment was when one guide commented that after taking over from the Moors, "the King and Queen wanted to make sure all the people were behaving well."

Grenada was my personal favorite, with a beautiful old Moorish quarter containing walled gardens. The streets were intricate and full of bazaars, I would have though I was in Morocco. This trip really inspired me to start thinking of that "dream house" I like to delude myself about building someday. I'll try and flesh this out a bit later - but here's a cool video from a flamenco show we saw in a Grenada cave house. These women were intense, it felt like they were mad at you!