Sylvia's Scenario

Over the weekend, we headed south where Bruce and Nick wanted to played golf and where we could see the Rock of Gibraltar that I showed in my last post here .   It was perfect timing because we escaped a heat wave and it was nice and cool at the Bay of Gibraltar.  Below is a photo during our drive back north with Africa behind us and the Strait of Gibraltar.  Nick made reservations for dinner at a quaint little hill town that we passed call Vejer de la Frontera and it turned out to be the most wonderful time yet.   Vejer has very strong Moorish roots and has a very distinct Moroccan (and Greek Island) flavor to it. How can you NOT love that!   The Moors were muslims and lived in Spain for 800 years until they were forced out for political and religious reasons in 1492.   They resettled in Northern Africa but you can still see their mark in much of Spain from the remains of their mosques, architecture, art, sophisticated irrigation systems that they ex...

I debated about putting up this post because I know we will be seeing more small towns but Bruce and Nick are golfing today so I have time.   Here they are golfing with the Rock of Gibraltar in the background. We have been spending our time in Spain mostly in small towns because that's the area where Nick lives.  We did go to a main tourist destination of Seville but honestly, I love just living the way locals do and being in small towns. You really get a feel for a place and it's people that way.   We have now  traveled south this weekend from where Nick lives in El Puerto de Santa Maria to the Bay of Gibraltar which is about 1-1/2 hours drive.  There is a festival going on plus they wanted to play golf. Nick also wanted to check out this town called Barbate where it's main export is yellow fin tuna to Japan. Who would have guessed that? Needless to say, we had an exquisite dinner last night full of tuna dishes. Are we in Spain or Japan? The Spanish do eat ...

Nick did it again.  During our first trip to Japan in 2014, he arranged a dinner party with his co-workers so they could meet his parents and we could get a feel for the people he works with.  He said, "Don't worry, they all speak English."  Well, I couldn't understand a word any of them spoke. The Japanese accent is so strong that it's hard to understand when they try to speak English.  Not the case in Spain.  For one thing, Nick only works with Americans here in Rota, Spain.  In Japan, his whole team were local Japanese engineers.  Half of the Naval Base Rota, Spain are Americans and half are Spanish.  It's a Spanish base and Nick says the Americans are guests here.  We toured the base yesterday and even though it is geographically larger than the base in Japan, it is a lot smaller in population, so it definitely has a more spread out feel to it.    The Americans live on one end of the base and the Spanish live in a totally separa...