Grandmother in Spain & Portugal

Not good about posting this time, no internet and no time. We've been to Cambridge, York, Edinburgh, Melrose, Cardiff, Bath, Stonehenge, Avon on Stratford. I just can't keep up with it all. It was very old and windy in Edinburgh but it's been ok since then, just cold. You can see some snow in my pictures, it snowed before we got there and snowed after we left but I saw nothing but a few flurries. I'll caption my pictures so maybe that will help. Leave in the morning for Munich, Prague, Vienna, Budapest.

Today was the city tour - saw lots of royal family stuff, plus all different sections of London. Will attach pictures with captions and video of changing of guards (if I can get it to work).

Cordoba is another old walled town but this one has the largest mosque. What is unique about this mosque is that there is a catholic church right in the middle. When the catholics ran all the muslims, jews, and christians out of Spain, they build their catholic church here. Both the mosque and the church are beautiful. Then we drove through La Mancha (man from la mancha) - an old spanish area. Got back to Madrid about 6:30 pm. Will tour Toledo and the rest of Madrid tomorrow. The next day I leave for home. My hotel pickup is at 3:15 a.m. so I may not post tomorrow. See you soon! I have about 1,000 pictures - get ready! By the way, Tracy and Beck everything here appears to be older than what we saw in Begium and Germany. The oldest castle we saw there was from 1200's. These are all 700's or earlier, unbelievable!

Toured Italica in the morning. Italica is Roman ruins outside of Seville dates back to b.c. Most of buildings are dated in 700 a.d. Then toured largest cathedral in the world and yet another castle. You can see all my pictures when I get home. I have been through at least fifty eleven churches and even more castles. If you need to know anything about the Spanish Inquisition, Queen Isabella or Christopher Columbus, just ask. Seville is beautiful.

Today we traveled back into Spain from Portugal. Most of what I saw was from the bus window. Cork trees (very long term investment - 30 years before can cut cork and then it can only be cut every 10 years) Portugal supplies 90% of cork to the work. Alyssa - see the olive trees, 50% of the olives come from Portugal. At lunch, we got to wander into a real village, not a "tourist village", have some pictures of children who were helpiing their mom clean walk in front of their house. Also see the church, that is a stork next on top - the storks make their nest of top of anything they can find, light poles, etc. Also see the swallow nests in the eaves of the church. See sheep picture, this is just a few but there are usually hundreds in each group - never saw so many sheep. Orange trees are everywhere covered in oranges, front yards, back yards, roadways. Then check out the Flamenco show. Music is wonderful, dancing is intense. The Spanish are just a tortured people, they are unhappy even dancing. Off to tour Seville, more later.