Today our port was Cartagena. Cartagena means little Carthage (I think).
Whatever the meaning it was the port for the day. We didn’t have a tour
for this city so we went to walk around after we had had our breakfast.
We made our way on a pedestrian street and then down a side street to
get to a Roman theatre. We couldn’t figure out how to get into the
theater area so we satisfied ourselves with just taking pictures from
the top. The theater was pretty big, probably fifty to seventy-five
metres (and about the same in yards) across. The structure was very
incomplete but it was the first Roman theater that we have seen so far
on this trip. Even though you can’t see it now it must have been the
coolest thing in the time of the Romans. Just the scale of the project
must have been awe inspiring. We then made our way to a castle. I was
more just walls that used to be something but we did find a neat little
playground and stayed there for a long time swinging and see-sawing. It
was really nice because it was breezy and cool up there on the hill (the
theater was built into the hill and the castle was on top of the hill).
From this vantage point we could not only get a good view of the city
but see many other sites of where ruins of Roman or even Carthaginian
buildings still are. All around almost wherever you look there were
ruins. Of course we didn’t have a guide to tell us what the ruins where
from but it was just neat to see them. After staying at the castle for a
while we went to go find the cathedral. We walked to the place where it
showed it on the map but it was not there. We gave up because we won’t
have any shortage of cathedrals on our trip. We then made our way back
to the ship for lunch and after that we went back off to go to Burger
King for free wifi. Unfortunately it didn’t work but we went back up the
pedestrian street to see how much a museum that held some ruins of the
city. It wasn’t worth the cost so we went back to the Burger King and
this time the wifi worked, maybe it had less traffic but regardless we
used it because anything is cheaper and faster than on the boat. We
decided then to go back to the boat for a swim. I swam for about two
hours actually, the last part of that time was with the Balderson boys.
After we were finished swimming Colton and I played some ping-pong. We
had a lot of fun but then we went back to our rooms to get dressed for
formal night. After dinner we came back to the room, Hannah went to Club
HAL and mom, Oma, and I watched some of Ben Hur together. We didn’t get
very far and I don’t know where it’s going but I do know that it is
about chariot riding and that there as been no mention of that activity
at all during the first fourty minutes of the movie. I decided to go up
to the theater to try to catch Colton as he was coming out and then we
nt to go play ping-pong. Of course we were still in suits but hey, a
very formal game of ping-pong it was. After that we went to bed.
Today we started in the port of Malaga, Spain. Like yesterday we went
with a semi-private tour group with basically the same people as before.
Today we went to the Alhambra (al-haw-m-ber-uh; just add a little accent
and you are good. The Spanish however do not say he H sound so it is
pronounced something like this al-ahm-ber-uh). Anyway we went on her bus
to the Alhambra and with us on the bus was a lady from England. She had
moved to Spain because she married a Spanish guy and she learned the
language and everything. She explained some of the things that we saw on
the way. The drive to Granada, the town where he Alhambra is located,
was a two hour drive with a ten minute stop with forty-five minutes left
to go. By the way, the air conditioning worked, almost too well I
actually turned off my vent. I slept a great deal of the way to the
Alhambra but I was told that he scenery was beautiful. I’ll just take
their word for it. When we arrived at the Alhambra we met our guides at
the main meeting place that everyone uses so there were a lot of people.
Our guides name was Miguel. (Remember hat there were two groups, we were
in group one and the slow complainers were in the other one. I must say
though that no one complained today. What a relief!) We were given
headsets so that we could hear what he was saying without him having to
talk to loud. I felt like a tourist being shoved through the sights en
mass. It was kinda go in, explain the stuff, take pictures and get out
of the way of he next group. But hey, I’m thankful that I got to just
go, not many people have that opportunity. So anyway where was I… Oh
so our guides name was Miguel he took us about 600 metres, or at least
that’s what he said to a building that was circular on the inside but on
the outside it was square. We only peeked at this building for a moment
because we had to got to the gates to the Alhambra before our time
expired. We made it and then we went to he oldest part of the Alhambra
called the Alcazaba (I won’t even bother telling you how to pronounce
that because I don’t actually know how you do). There were some really
nice views of the city from the walls. We went as well to a watch tower
in this area. Then we went to another palace. We went through lots of
rooms and courtyards in the palace. I will tell you about them in
general and then I will pick the most spectacular ones to describe
separately. If I described all of them I would be writing until I get
back to the States. The palaces were all built by the moors the Muslims
who ruled in Spain from around seven hundred AD to fourteen hundred AD.
For their time they were very advanced in mathematics, astronomy, and
just learning in general. They had preserved many of he writings of
Aristotle and Plato and all of the other great philosophers of the
classical age. Their advancement in the architecture of the buiddings of
the Alhambra was evident here everything was mathematically correct,
there are all sorts of cool little mathematical algorithms that they
used to construct the buildings, unfortunately the guide didn’t go over
that so even though I know they exist I don’t know the patterns that
were used all over the building. The archways were all in a horseshoe
shape, not he semicircular or pointy ones characteristic to the
renaissance and gothic periods of architecture respectively. They also
had stalactite like points on the underside of the arches. Water was
also an integral part of he moorish architecture. This was because ha
Arabs came from a place where here isn’t much water, the Sahara desert
therefore water is rare and if you have lots of it, as needed for pools
of water and little fountains, water is a symbol of wealth. The last
thing that I will tell you about is the designs on the walls. Everywhere
there were Arabic script mainly from the Koran which because Arabic is
so pretty in the first place looked really nice. Now I will tell you
about some of the individual rooms in the palace. One courtyard had a
rectangular reflecting pool of water down the middle with small
fountains on either side at the end of the pool. These flowed into the
big pool. If you’ve seen anything about the Alhambra you have seen a
picture of this. It is a classic photo that looks great, even with an
amateurs camera. I probably annoyed some people by sitting down and
taking a picture across the pool right behind the little fountain but
hey, I got a pretty good shot. Another place which I was looking forward
to seeing but unfortunately they were restoring, is the lions courtyard,
this courtyard has a fountain with twelve (at least I think there are
twelve) lions decorating it this is the second most common picture that
you see of the Alhambra. We went through some other rooms of lesser
importance but they were still really neat. A little side track. If you
read our blog about our trip to Vietnam you probably read about the
ruins of a palace in Hue. I thought to myself that if the Vietnamese had
preserved the palace that it could be as grand as the Alhambra,
unfortunately they probably won’t ever be able to restore it because of
lack of funds. After those palaces we walked through some beautiful
gardens with some great views of the city. I think that Oma thought that
she was in paradise (she likes gardens by the way). The gardens were
made by some king during the Rennaisance period as a way to make it more
contemporary. Once we walked through the gardens which were extremely
beautiful but which I don’t have enough time to describe we went to
another palace. This was built by the kings of Granada as a pleasure
vacation spot. It was built by a Moorish architect so it had some
moorish influences in its design. As we were waiting for the bus to
arrive we ate our sandwiches that we had fixed at breakfast this moring
and then we we left the Alhambra to go to the center of Granada for a
little while. We went down a pedestrian street, much like sixteenth
street mall in Denver. And went into an ice cream shop for a little
break. Not a word of English was spoken, all of the communication was
done in Español. It is really hard when they speak to you at a hundred
miles an hour though, I should have though to say speak slowly please
because I know how to say that but hindsight is twenty-twenty and
unfortunately I didnt ask. Anyway we made our way back to the bus to go
back to Malaga. No one complained on the way and I slept for a good
chunk of the ride. That was about all, of course we did all of he normal
evening and nighttime activities but I will not tell you about those.
Today we started early, went to breakfast and then got out in Cadiz
(cad-ese; with an emphasis on the s), our port for the day. We had a
simi-private tour to Sevilla (seh-vil is the English pronunciation but
if you want to be more proper and use the Spanish version it goes like
seh-v-ee-yuh) today and it started in Cadiz. As we drove out of Cadiz
the guide, Francisco, talked over the intercom about the city. It is one
of the oldest cities in the world and was settled by the phonetians, the
Carthaginians, the Romans, the Visigoths (I think), the moors and now
the Spanish. Cadiz was the starting point for Columbus’s journey to
discover the new world. It used to be an island and Sevilla was on the
coast of th sea. It has a long history of being a sea oriented city as
well as an aerospace center. It was an hour and fourty-five minutes
drive to Sevilla. I slept a good deal of the way. The countryside that I
did get to see was beutiful, nothing like anything at I have seen in the
States. Anyway when we got to Seville we drove down the main avenue and
saw all of the beautiful buildings. Then we stopped at one of the
squares in the city. American square I believe was the name. This park
was made for the world exhibition that was held in nineteen twenty-nine.
In this park was a nice fountain and a lot of pigeons. The pigeons were
a gift from someone, maybe the king of Spain or something like that. On
one side of the square was a renaissance style building made by
Seville’s equivalent to Gaudi. There was also a moorish style building
on he opposite side. The next thing that we did is get back on the bus
and go to the old Jewish and Muslim quarters. The first quarter that we
went to was he Jewish quarter. This area was very nice with lots of
small streets and alleys with hole-in-a-wall shops and buildings that
were built in very tight spaces. We went all over going down streets and
through small squares. It was nice because the whole area is pedestrian
only. So we didn’t have to worry about being run over by cars or
motorcycles like we did in Vietnam. We went to a palace called the
Alcazar. This palace was built b the moors (the Muslims in Spain) and
hen taken over by the Christians in the reconquest of Spain for
Christianity. Inside there was much moorish influence in the
architecture and in the decoration but in some places the Christians had
Christianized the buildings. One such place was a courtyard that was
moorish on the bottom but on the top they had put a renaissance style
floor. It didn’t look good. It was really hot, 44 degrees centigrade,
112 degrees Fahrenheit and though it was really neat it was always just
where’s the next shady spot! I need shade! Etc. After going to the
Alcazar we went to a square in between the Alcazar and the cathedral.
This square was called Plaza del Something I forgot the name of the
square but it had a statue of someone (descriptive, eh?). This was to be
our meeting place after a little free time in which we could go and do
whatever we wanted. We decided to go walking looking for an ice cream
place that we had seen. We didn’t find it but we found a different ice
cream shop and we went inside. We used our Español (Spanish) to order
our ice cream. You should have seen us trying to communicate, there was
lots of pointing and attempts at using the other persons language. The
main language that we communicated in was Español though. We made our
way winding through the streets back to the square where we were
supposed to meet to go to the bus. Like I said it was 112 degrees
Fahrenheit (44 degrees centigrade) and some of the peoples tempers were
as hot as the weather. I will back up just a little and tell you that
there were two groups of people going on the tour with two tour guides.
One group had organized themselves through Cruise Critic and the other
didn’t we don’t know where they organized themselves. Regardless of
where they did, they obviously didn’t get the memo that there was a lot
of walking involved. There was one person with a cane and another with a
walker in their group which held everything up for them. When we were
about a block from he bus the husband of the woman with the walker came
up to the guide and had a mild explosion “You have to slow down and wait
for the people who can’t keep up!!! La de da de da…” anyway this went
on for a while because some other people got involved as well. One of
the people from our group said that he was going to go tell the guide
that we were going to walk to the bus by ourselves. That made the
caravan get moving. When we got on the bus it felt like a sauna it was
like a greenhouse! Some people were complaining about how hot it was and
it resounded like these seventy and sixty year old people had just
gotten out of preschool! On the way back I do not know if the complained
any more but I do know that the back of my eyelids are very black.
Today we were again in Lisbon, Portugal. Today though we went out intro
the countryside to a town called Sintra (center-uh; without the “r”
sound at the end of center). We met Susanna in the same place as
yesterday and then got into her van to drive to Sintra. On the way to
Sintra we saw suburbs of Lisbon. The suburbs here are nothing like those
in the States because all around there are tall apartment buildings. All
around you couldn’t see much of anything except for apartment buildings.
Unfortunately it did not seem like a good place to live. There was
graffiti galore and you just looked at it and knew that you didn’t want
to live there. Another thing that we saw on the way was an aqueduct.
This aqueduct was built in seventeen or eighteen hundreds. It was made
using Gothic arches (the ones that are pointy). One of the arches that
makes up the aqueduct is the tallest in the world. It is also I believe
the widest. It did not take long to get to Sintra. When we arrived mom
commented, “Now we are in Europe.” It really was too. It was the typical
small European village with narrow streets that don’t have any pattern
whatsoever and quaint shops and hole in the wall restaurants in hidden
corners. There was a palace that we were going to go into but because
all of the big tours of like fifty people were going to the palace at
that time, we decided to walk around before going to the palace. As we
were walking mom commented, but not to loud so as not to make Susanna
feel bad, that the village looked like a little German village. We
walked down the side streets just taking in the beautiful buildings and
shops. One of the specialties of Sintra is their quark products. They
love to make stuff out of quark. They make everything out of the stuff.
There were purses, bracelets, and many other apparel including iPhone
and iPad cases! I was thinking that I might buy one just for the sake of
doing so but I realized that they aren’t any cheaper there than here.
They cost around 30€ which is somewhere between $50 and $60. When we
were done with our walk around the town we went over to the palace. It
was a grand palace for the Portuguese kings to go and have a nice summer
vacation. Even though Sintra is not that far frame Lisbon it has enough
difference in temperature that it was a nice vacation spot for the royal
families. And of course if the king does it everyone wants to do it so,
a town is formed. The scale of the building was immense. Just the
stairs leading up to he palace took up a lot of room it was easily fifty
to seventy five yards across. This part of the stairs was not covered.
It was open and the stairs wee on either side of a platform which was
probably thirty to fifty yards across. Then there was a covered part
with stairs in either side leading up to the main palace. It had that
old grandeur typical of the time which it was built. There were some
great view of the city from here and also there were some interesting
rooms with glazed tiles all around. It was in interesting mix of
materialism of the age of discovery as well as both the Muslim and
Christian religions. The chapel that was built in the palace was built
by moors (Muslims living in Spain) and had the glazed tiles typical of
the age. Oval the style of the building was the Manueline because it was
primarily King Manuel that built the palace. There we all sorts of neat
little fun facts like magpies that were ordered to be painted on the
ceiling of one of he rooms to represent all of the ladies in waiting
that we’re present when a secret was leaked an who spread the word
about this around through gossip. There was also one room on which was
painted the many coats of arms of the rich families in Portugal at the
time. King Manuel’s coat of arms was the biggest and the only one the
was carved and then painted. It had lots of symbolism but I don’t quite
remember them. Regardless whatever the importance of the different
symbolic things in the cost of arms it is important because it is the
coat of arms of Portugal. After going to the palace we made our way
thought the countryside to the furthest western point in continental
Europe. I enjoyed all of the scenery along the way, even though part of
the scenery was rather black, like the back of my eyelids. I wonder why
that is? ;) yes, I went to sleep. I do have the excuse that he roads
were very windy and I just was lulled to sleep by the movement. There
was a car show going near the monument so we had a hard time parking but
we did meet a man who we though was one of the car owners and got into a
conversation with him about how some island in the Azores was used as a
military base by the allies during WWII. He also said that if you went
directly west from that point you would reach NYC. Well in between NYC
and New Jersey he said. After getting pictures we got back in the car
and drove past many coastal villages or towns. They aren’t very distinct
towns because it has molded into one big town along the waterfront but
they were still called towns. Most of the way it was beaches with
restaurants serving seafood. She to,d us that it was expensive to buy
seafood in Portugal compared to the United States she said 50€ per kilo!
That’s like almost $75 for a two person meal! The areas that we went
through were used first by the royalty as a summer vacation spot. And
then the population caught on. We saw lots of people on the beach but
Susanna said that only tourists go to those beaches because the water is
so dirty but the locals stay away from those beaches. We got back to the
boat about thirty minutes before we had to be on the boat at two or so
and went up to the Lido deck for some lunch as we were eating we saw the
Baldersons coming on and then about twenty minutes later some other
people and then even though they were fifteen minutes late to the boat
they were just meandering along. Of course they could see that they were
raising the gangplank and making the ship ready to leave but they didn’t
step up the pace at all. Later Mrs. Angie commented that, and I quote “I
would have been bookin’ it!” some people just don’t know when it is
right to speed up just a bit. That was about it for the day and I assume
by now that you know the drill, make up the rest of the day because it
was the same as all the other afternoon/evenings. ~Sumner
Today started out at ten thirty when we woke up. Mom, Oma and I went to
the Vista Lounge to listen to a talk about the architecture of Rome
and then I went to the Lido Deck to see if anyone was there to play
ping-pong. Nobody was so I started back down to the room. On the way, I
saw someone who had just come from the bow, which was opened so that
people could watch as we went under a bridge that spans the river that
Lisbon was built by. By this time it was about time to go to lunch do I
went down to the room to go with the est of my family. They also wanted
to go to the bow to get a view of the bridge so we went to the Lido deck
for some food. The Baldersons (Colton’s family) came with us and we sat
together for our meal. After lunch we went back down to the room and got
ready to go into Lisbon. We have a guide for Lisbon for this afternoon
and tomorrow. We met this guide outside of the dock station. Her name is
Susanna. The first thing that we did is drive up to a place where you
could get a good view of the city of Lisbon. At this point there was a
monument to the Revolution in which the Portuguese threw off their
dictator. There was also, on either side of the monument, a pillar the
two together symbolized the treaty/alliance between Great Britain and
Portugal. This treaty is the oldest in he world. The view from the
monument was very comprehensive of the day. You could see the old Muslim
quarter as well as a valley and another hill that was part of the city.
Much of the city had been destroyed in the earthquake of 1755, this
earthquake was a major event in he history of Lisbon. The next
destination was the old Muslim quarter. On the way to that quarter, we
stopped at a park with all sorts of nice plants and it was really
pretty. Anyway, when we got to the old quarter, we went to a cathedral.
Outside, before we went in Susanna told us that we should watch our
things. There are lots of pickpockets she said, as she was saying so she
said, “See there, they’ve been robbed already.” She said this pointing
to a police car that some tourists were getting into. They had obviously
not heeded he warnings on every Internet site that knows anything about
Lisbon or about most of Europe for that matter. I thought that it was
rather iconic that, even though it is a cathedral where things are
supposed to be holy, the pickpockets play the part of a tourist and, as
they are professionals, you don’t realize that you’ve been robbed until
you try to pay for something. Besides the pickpockets there was another
interesting thing that you don’t see much of in America. Tram cars. They
were all over the place, two of the lines went right in front of the
cathedral. We got to saw some go past as we were standing outside of the
building. The cathedrals construction was interesting because it was in
two styles. Romanesque and Gothic Romanesque churches have the same
design as a Roman basilica, or law court. This means that enemy have a
large nave in the center and small hallways on either side. It is also
characterized by semicircular arches where the height of he arch is half
he width, it has to be or else it isn’t be a semicircle. He main body of
the church was made in this style but, as the cathedral was built over a
few centuries, the old style went out of he fad so they changed styles
to the Gothic style for the back of the church behind the part where
people go to mass. This area was for people to go pray to the relics and
such. To get to this area there’s a Gothic arch it is interesting
because you can also see the Romanesque arch which the Gothic arch was
built into. Then we walked around the area and saw lots of facades with
glazed tiles covering them as well as many other charming sights. As we
were walking we went down a street where people were decorating he
streets, our guide said that they were preparing for a celebration. It
was still a month away but, like us in America preparing for Christmas,
they start decorating early. The celebration is because some children
had sworn that they had seen visions of the Virgin Mary and in doing so
they made this area a big pilgrimage area for he Catholics. Then we kept
on walking and we passed a few fadu (fahd-zoo) restaurants. In these
restaurants you go and eat while people sing to you. Hen we went through
a neighborhood which was really nice but the buildings weren’t in good
shape because the owners didn’t have enough capital to restore the
buildings. Part of this is that they can’t raise the rent if the owner
stays the same and the rent is sometimes less than 50€. One € (Euro) is
about 1.4 dollars, the exchange rate though makes it more like 1.5
dollars. Therefore 50€=$75. Sort of there was a nice hotel that was
really nice one of the nicest in the city, a five star. It was investing
however that nowhere on the building did it say that it was a hotel. In
the front of the hotel on the street side was a fountain that used to be
a public fountain with water from the aqueducts coming into the city.
After that we got back in the ban and went to the monumental area. We
were planning to go to the cathedral but as it was closed for a funeral,
we walked to a bakery first. We had seen the bakery in a video from Rick
Steve’s it was called Pastries de Beliem or something like that. The
pastures are very popular and secret. There are only four people who
know the secret receipt and, though they try, anywhere else but this
restaurant that serves the pastry just can’t do it right. I have no
other words to describe the desert other than it was extremely
delicious. After we ate our pastries we walked back to the cathedral and
went inside. This one, like the one in the old quarter, is in two
styles, Manueline and renaissance. Most of he building was in he
Manueline style but the front altar is in the renaissance style.
Manueline is a style unique to this area and it was named after Manuel,
the king of Portugal when this style was popular. The actual structure
is much the same as the Gothic style but the major difference between
them is the decoration. In the Manueline style there are lots of
decorations with a seaward theme. By this I mean ropes, ships, oriental
leaves, etc. Because people couldn’t just learn about what their
explorers were finding on tv, they carved it into their cathedrals,
creating the Manueline style. He renaissance style is much like the
Romanesque because the renaissance is characterized by the
romantification of the classical Roman arts. After we went to the
cathedral we drove to another site where there is a fortress that was
used for the defense of he river in the times when pirates would
sometimes come to rob the people of Lisbon. It had a tower and then on
he side of the tower toward the river there was a platform that was
lower down from the tower for cannon possibly. This tower used to be in
the middle of the water but when the earthquake of 1755 happened, the
water level for the river went down making this tower become the side of
the river. After this tower we went to the Explorers monument this
monument was to all of the great explorers from Portugal. It was kinda
neat because it showed some of the people who where important in the
development of world history. After going to this monument we went back
to the boat and because we did nothing of note, I will not bother
describing the rest of the day because I think that you can piece
together the rest of he day from my earlier posts.
So as you can see I didn’t do very much of a post on Day 9 but I will do
as a promised and write about the plan of the ship. I will take you from
top to bottom, stern to bow (back to front) and I really need not
specify this but dust for the sake of it starboard to port (right to
left).
Today was our first port day. We stopped at the island of São Miguel in
a port town named Ponta Delgada. Before commencing our journey inland we
went up to have some breakfast. While there we saw some of the city from
the vantage point of the boat. Once we were ready to go into town, we
went down to A Deck. Not a deck but A Deck, this is the bottom most
level of the ship that the passengers are allowed to be on. They checked
our cards as we went out and then we were free to do anything we wanted,
we just had to new back at the boat by four thirty in the afternoon. We
were planning on walking around the town but we decided to get a taxi
tour of he island instead. The tour cost the same as if we had gone with
the boat but we were able to stay in any location for as long of a time
or as short of a time as we wanted. From Ponta Delgada we rode in the
car for a few minutes to get to another town on the island, the name of
which escapes me at the moment. He took us to what you might consider
the middle/center of the town. There was a small square with little
pathways going throughout. The trees had a peculiar plant or something
hanging on it. There was a path down to another larger park. This park
was near the side of a river, well a river for us Coloradans, maybe not
for those of you who consider a ten foot wide flowing body of water a
small brook. Anyway the bridge over the river upstream a little bit was
the bridge that we went over to get to the town center. The river that
was running underneath it was the river that the aforementioned river by
which the park was located. His park had some very nice flowers and
paths throughout. Some of the water from the river was diverted to form
a small channel of water going thought the center of the park. After
seeing this park we went to a small church. We guessed that it was
baroque or classical in style (Mrs. Duncan if you are reding this) it
was our first of what will be many visits to cathedrals around Europe. I
think cathedrals are to Europe as temples are to Vietnam. (For those of
you who did not followed us on our trip to Vietnam about every other
stop on the tours that we went on we stopped at a temple. Or at least it
seamed that way). After the church we went for a little walk, about a
hundred yards down a street until we got to a place where there was a
traffic jam and we deemed that it was necessary to turn around. We
circled around and went back to the taxi. The next thing that we went to
was an overlook over which you could see the sea all the way to the
horizon, or at least until you could no longer see because of the fog.
You could also see the cliffs that the water dashed up on from the
aforementioned vantage point. Another sight that you could see was a
plateau which some horses were grazing on. It was actually more like a
ledge but…
Like I promised I will describe to you the nature of the ship today.
Hopefully it isn’t to convoluted for you to understand. I will hopefully
before the trip is completed be able to add a link to the website with
the plans of the ship and of the rooms. And as a picture tells a
thousand words… My posts will only be a helper as you look through the
pictures. Maybe I will post that in Lisbon, or… Maybe not. We’ll see.
[The rest of this posts will be posted under the title Day 11: At Sea]
I admit, I have been staying up watching shows etc. way too late and
once I get to the blog it is often eleven o’clock at night. Right now I
am writing this while waiting for a show to start. Now you can go to Day
11. See you there!
Nothing much happened different than the other days at sea therefore I
will not spend much time describing the days activities. Basically if
you take all the previous posts that I have written, mesh them all
together (give or take a few things) and then make a day out of them you
will get some idea of what happened today. Colton and I tried to solve a
sudoku puzzle (we didn’t succeed I think that we messed up one our logic
for one square which screwed up everything else. Oh well, maybe we’ll
succeed tomorrow.)
Today was another day with a late start. About nine o’clock. We were
going to go to a church service but because the room doesn’t have any
windows we don’t know what time it is by the sun. If we turned off the
lights, even at noon it could be midnight for all that we can tell.
Anyway going to the church service didn’t work because it was supposed
to start at nine. Oops. We decided to go to eat our breakfast. After
that Hannah went to Club HAL and I went to the pool to see if anyone
wanted to play ping-pong. Colton was there so we played for a while
until we went to a talk about Seville. At the beginning though, he went
thought the history of architecture. Much of this I already knew. Thank
you Mrs. Duncan! After the talk we went to go eat lunch and then I went
back to the pool and talked for a little while with Colton and his mom
and played a little more ping-pong (we are playing a lot of ping-pong).
Then I came down to the room and got my bathing suit on to go swim. A
little way through my bathe, Colton and his brother Sebastian came. We
played for a little while end then their other brother, Nathan came. We
kept on going from the hot tub and then to the regular pool and back to
the hot tub again. Then we got ready to go eat. (eat, play, sleep; what
a life). After the delicious dinner we went to go to watch people at the
karaoke room. There were a few pretty good singers but this one guy, I
felt kinda bad for him, just couldn’t carry a tune at all. After that we
came back to the room. When we go there though we had some chocolate
covered strawberries which we promptly ate. The people that cleaned our
rooms must have done it because Oma’s meat was not very good. I must say
thought that Oma didn’t complain at a all but they must have sensed that
she was not pleased, no wonder that they did, she only ate a tiny
portion of the meat. Anyway that was basically it but I must tell you
that if any of you have pets you probably should be wary of mom when she
gets back because each night the people who clean the room always make a
creation with the towels. The past two nights when the have done so mom
has murdered the creations before Hannah had come down from club HAL by
putting her jacket on it! Pets beware.
