The Rain in Spain....Sucks!

We awoke again to rain. At least we're not in Dagobert....at least we're not in Dagobert we keep telling ourselves. This isn't your usual storm and when we did brave the weather to get out of the house we found trees down, streets flooded and our previously beautiful beach full of trash and lumber from the sea. Fortunately, the kids are great at entertaining themselves, with Allie reading books and Noelle always creating something. Sundays in Spain are very quiet and every store is closed. If you are dumb enough not to have stocked up on food (we are) then you'll be scraping together a meal from whatever you might have on hand (we did). Fortunately we had eggs on hand so I attempted to fry some up for our Sunday dinner. I couldn't find a frying pan so I tried to fry some in a deep sauce pan--a tricky proposition under the best of conditions. When they were ready to flip I went to find a utensil and found that the kitchen had almost nothing with which to cook. I grumbled and struggled, eggs began to smoke, I frantically opened and closed each drawer a second and third time hoping that I had missed a drawer with a helpful tool in it. My complaining got louder and the eggs were almost ruined. Finally I threw in the towel, dumped the pan in the sink and told the kids we were having peanut butter sandwiches. Noelle didn't seem to care as she was too busy building something on the coffee table to look up. Munching on stale bread and peanut butter, I voiced my frustrations to Jolene about the poorly stocked kitchen and told her that I was going to write to the landlord and complain. Noelle, silent up to this point, pointed over to her table and grinned. She had cleaned out all of the kitchen utensils to use in her creation.




A few months ago you may remember me describing how awful the shifting of Dagobert was. While in Greece, I had emailed Dagobert's owner complaining of the shifting and I could tell that he just thought that I was a pampered American, used to cruising easy freeways with an automatic transmission. I let the issue drop, preferring to just cope with it instead of searching out a shop, paying, getting reimbursed, etc. I finally received my redemption in the form of an email from him. He couldn't believe that I had managed shifting that awful thing for 6000 km!

Budget-wise, Spain has been a treat! Finally, we have been pleasantly surprised when we receive a bill at the restaurant or bar. If I could give advice to anyone planning a trip to Europe I would say to make your budget and then double the price of everything. Even previously cheap places like Italy and Greece are very expensive for Americans. To make matters worse, it seems like Europeans charge for everything--to park, to pee, to view anything remotely interesting. It got so bad that we sort of just gave in and every time we got an inflated bill for something we would start singing the lines of that song from Les Miserables about the greedy innkeeper, "...two percent for looking in the mirror twice!"