Puppies & Spain

Shiraz’s litter is doing well. So far so good. Kaylee’s litter has moved up to the living room and is having a ball. They’re a really fun bunch. I like having only six in a litter as they are much easier to take care of for both me and their mother and you have more time for each one than you do when you’re trying to cope with ten plus puppies. I need to get some pictures of both litters.
I’m thinking that I’ll start my Spanish adventure next in here. I promised to do a website as we have tons of photos and I actually kept notes of where we went, etc but I just can’t seem to find the time so perhaps I can do this instead.
I went to Spain last July with my nephew, Jacob. The idea grew out of my realization early last year that, since Jacob was getting older (he turned 17 last July), he wasn’t going to want to come back and spend summers with his grandparents and aunt every year. Instead he’d do normal teen things – get a job, earn some money, girlfriend, maybe go away to school, etc. I was worried that the coming summer would be our last one together and I decided that I wanted to do something with him that he would always remember.
I can’t really explain how I feel about Jacob other than to say that I love him and his brother Alex more than anyone else in the world and words don’t really describe the emotion very well. So, this was really important to me. I would end up promising Alex that I would do the same with him when he was old enough (he’s 13 now).
Why Spain? Years earlier when I had more money Joanna and I had discussed doing a driving tour of Spain. As Europe goes, Spain is on the less expensive side and it had the added appeal of being close enough for visits to Gibraltar and Morocco. I’m not sure if I’ll ever have enough cash to go to Africa so the possibility of even a day trip was a not to be missed one.
After that it just became a matter of doing the booking. We would start in Madrid, move down to Jerez (pronounced Heref in Castilian) where we would stay in an apartment, and then on to Granada before heading back to Madrid and then home with tons of day trips along the way. We would be staying in hotels in Madrid and Granada and the apartment in Jerez. In retrospect, it would have been nice to be doing an apartment the whole time as it was easily our favourite place we stayed.
I spent weeks learning how to drive standard as automatic cars are not easy to rent in Europe and are usually much more expensive. By the time we left I was bearable at it but you wouldn’t want to be behind me in heavy traffic.