Here are a few more in a bit larger, portrait format.
Best viewed at full size…
Lizardo – King of our yard-o
I spotted Lizardo as he was leaping onto a palm frond in the front garden. It’s the first sighting of him since acquiring the new camera. I quickly affixed the Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di in the hopes of getting a macro shot of the big fella.
Oddly enough, he did not retreat as I moved toward him and took aim. In fact at one point he started to move toward the camera. I supsect he saw his reflecting in the lens and perhaps saw it as a rival lizard trespassing on his domain.
Whatever the reason, he allowed me to get quite close.
Long distance information
For the last two days Cynthia and I have woken up an hour earlier in the morning so we can make overseas calls to Madrid, Seville and Granada to book hotels.
Yesterday we secured our hotel in Seville but there were no vacancies at Los Tilos in Granada. Not totally unexpected as we will be in Granada during Fiesta Nacional de España or DÃa de la Hispanidad (aka: Spanish National Day; aka Hispanic Day) which is a Spanish national holiday commemorating the exact date when Christopher Columbus first set a foot in the Americas.
We went back online yesterday and did some more research and found Carmen de la Alcubilla del Caracol, a charming 7 room hotel on one of the slopes of the Alhambra. It’s rated #4 out of 132 hotels on Trip Advisor and all the reviews are quite glowing. We called them this morning and successfully made our reservations. I’m actually very excited about this hotel and am rather glad Los Tilos was unavailable as it lead to this discovery.
So far, not one of the hotels we have booked or tried to book have had any English speaking employees. This is not a problem since Cynthia speaks Spanish quite well, but it is something to consider if you are planning a trip to Spain. I am sure that any of the larger chain or luxury hotels can easily accommodate non-Spanish speaking guests, but getting a room in one of these smaller, private/family owned or “boutique” hotels could be a challenge if you don’t speak the language.
The proprietors of these places seem wary of non-Spanish speaking people seeking to make reservations, probably as a result of misunderstandings about rates, dates, services, etc. That’s understandable. The hotel in Madrid would not even take our reservation over the phone and will only work with us via e-mail. I am sure that is probably so there is a record of what has been agreed upon and way to avoid any misunderstandings that could be caused by the language barrier.
I have to say, it was pretty cool listening to Cynthia negotiate our reservations and doing it all in Spanish. I think her language skills are going to allow us to have an even better experience than we would if neither of us spoke the language.
Up next, finalizing Madrid hotel reservations, more research on Barcelona hotels, more research on rail passes and possibly booking a flight from Granada to Barcelona. No way I am taking a night train again.
Travel resources
One of the things I am liking about blogging our upcoming trip is that the posts are being quickly indexed into the main search engines. This is producing an increase in random visits to baldheretic.com from people all over the world searching terms related to travel to Spain. Besides the helpful and much appreciated comments from my friends and other known readers of this blog, I’ve also received some random e-mails and comments with suggestions about what to see and what to expect on our upcoming vacation from total strangers who seem eager to share their own experience, strength and hope.
It’s also resulting in people being able to benefit from our experience and efforts which is pretty cool.
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After a marathon planning session that lasted from 11:00 am Saturday morning till 5:30 pm that afternoon, we’ve pretty much nailed down our itinerary and are in the process of booking hotels in all the cities we will be staying in.
We have been using a fantastic web site called Trip Advisor. The feature most helpful has been the hotel reviews. Trip Advisor allows visitors to the web site to post their own experience with any given hotel directly to the site along with pictures.
This type of site can be subject to some fraud. I’ve heard of companies sending their employees or appointed P.R. folks to sites like this to write canned positive reviews and I am sure it happens here with some of the bigger hotel chains, but it’s easy to spot. Plus, we’re focusing on smaller hotels that are privately owned and don’t seem to have the where-with-all, much less the budget, for such chicanery.
On the site you have the ability to sort the reviews by best and worst. You filter through about a dozen or so of these and you end up with a good feel for the potential of the establishment.
Even if a hotel has several negative reviews you can often eliminate a good percentage of those when you read things like “hotel staff did not speak English” or “Inadequate parking” or any of a host of other so-called problems that just won’t apply to us or can be overcome with a little common sense.
The site is very user friendly and we have located most of the hotels we are interested in. Now it’s just a matter of getting up early and making some overseas calls. Fortunately Cynthia’s Spanish has gotten so good we should be able to negotiate our reservations without any trouble at all.
We’re going to get up early in the morning and call Hotel Los Tilos in Granada and and the delightful and musically themed Hotel La Musica in Seville for reservations.
We’ve believe we have found a suitable hotel for the Madrid leg and even our one night hit-and-run whirlwind visit to La Linea/Gibraltar. Barcelona is a challenge as it seems to be the most expensive leg of the trip with the most options. We’ll finalize those in the coming weeks along with a few others.
IT (special) Olympics
So my boss came up with the idea of having a team building exercise call The IT Olympics.
Basically we’ve broken into teams and are competing on a Nintendo Wii for bragging rights.
Jeana (my manager and teammate) prepares to knock one out of the virtual park
Home run!
To be honest, I was a bit sceptical of this activity, but I’m actually having a pretty good time.
Hope I die before I get old
Whoops! Too late!
The oldest and greatest rock band in the world meet The Zimmers and their amazing cover of The Who’s “My Generation”.
Alf (the lead singer) is 90 and he’s not the oldest – there are 99 and 100-year-olds in the band!
The Zimmers “My Generation”
First spotted on the Grooveblog
What if The Beatles were Irish?
Break’s over, back to work
As your sitting there lamenting the drudgery of your day job please take a moment to consider the plight of the unfortunate zoo veterinarian who is having a day far worse than just about anything you might imagine.
Crocodile severs zoo worker’s arm
A crocodile at a zoo in the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung holds the forearm of a zoo veterinarian in between its teeth, April 11, 2007. The crocodile bit off the arm of the zoo veterinarian treating it, an official reported. Picture taken April 11, 2007. REUTERS/Frank Lin (TAIWAN)