Sideria Pouring

All over the region of Spain we were in (Austurias, Cantabaria) they drink Sidra, a hard apple cider. The pouring of the drink is the thing.

The first restaurant we visited in Austurias was really a nothing special, a practical hole in the wall type of place. But we were hungry. The food turned out great, even though we didn't really have a clue what we were ordering. All the dishes were tapas, which is kind of like ordering food Chinese style. I love to eat this way. One tapas was largish mushrooms fried in a tempura like batter, topped off with a sweat cream with black small fish roe laying in the cream. It was delicious. Another tapas was tomatoes, stuffed with cheese and drizzled with a honey sauce. Also very good.

Our waiter was a funny guy. In between serving our dishes he hung around the bar eating Pringles chips from the can. His other trick was pouring the spanish cider, Sidra. Basically he assumes the stance of a matador, head up, legs straight, chest out. He takes the Sidra bottle in one hand and raises his arm straight in the air as high as he can reach. The other hand holds the drinking glass, and he holds the glass slightly tilted and as low as he can. Then he looks away toward the wall and begins to pour from the bottle held high above his head, and attempts to hit the glass held down by his knees. Of course, it's practically impossible to do this without splattering Cider all out the glass, and pouring a fair amount directly onto the ground. The whole time the Cider is spraying all around the waiter doesn't move hardly an inch, just a little with his bottom hand to better catch the Cider. Second thing: you don't pour your own glass of Cider, the waiter is constantly hovering about and will fill your glass before it is empty always by the matador method. There are Sideria or "cider bars" everywhere in Austurias. To handle the cider pouring business in the busier bars they have little "machines" on the tables that will pour your cider for you. So.... when in northern Spain, don't pour your own cider - either your matador-waiter will do it, or the machine will.

Beach Terrariums and Cannons

We had a certain routine at the beach. Show up around 10am - the beaches are deserted because the Spainish like to stay up late in the night. Anika starts collecting snails, little to medium sized crabs and hermit crabs. She digs a hole in the sand, fills it with water, either by the tide or a bucket, decorates the premises and places here animals in their new pen. Pascal helps a little, and when there is a bit of surf he gladly plays for hours jumping over the incoming whitewash, karate kicking the foam, etc. He was in the water so long he needed to take a rest more than once because of blue lips.

A typical beach. Mountains in the background, little coves and wading pools. Fine sand all around. Not many people out before noon.

Anika digging a pen for her creature collection.

Anika's dugout pen with a bunch of hermit crabs.

Nice wading pools, and we weren't the only ones poking about for crabs and the like. I think these folks were collecting crabs to eat later. By the way Spanish food is really good. I'm sure they have a delicious preparation for the little rock crabs found all around.

Pascal's penguin ready to be shot out the barrel of a rusty cannon.

A Stickbug!

It didn't move a millimeter, looks like it is missing a leg, and there it was on the stone wall to our vacation house. I thought these bugs were only tropical. Guess not.

Wild Horses

In the mountains, in addition to cows and horses are free ranging "wild" horses. We found some grazing alongside a lookout stop, and in the mossy forest below. They look a little smaller than your average horse, and behaved more like cows I guess than what I might think is gallopy horse behavior. I'm not even sure they are truly wild, but there was no fence, and the horses were roaming about freely.

Arrival in Northern Spain!

We made it to Spain! The ocean! The beach! The air! This picture above is Pascal jumping off the sea wall in Biarritz, France actually. It's a tony town for sure, but a nice beach and real surf. For your ferrari driving caviar snacking surfer to be sure. The car garage was the best: we drove down, down, down in this cave-like garage to level -7. Opened the car doors, stretched our car-sitting tired legs, turned the corner and at the end of the exit tunnel is a perfectly framed view of the beach and ocean of Biarretz. Stunning! And so welcome after 6 hours in the car.

Above is our main beach in the town of Ribadisella, not far from our vacation house. We went here maybe 4 times. I rented a surf board and went surfing twice. The guys renting the surfboard were so apologetic about the waves that they let me surf for free the second time. The waves weren't actually that bad, also not that good, but it's summer afterall. I had a really fun time surfing, no crowds, pretty comfortable water temp in a 3/2mm wetsuit, and even some fun little waves (better than Pacifica, CA my old home break).

The air temperature was perfect, a modest 75 degrees maybe a little warmer in the full sun. The water temp was bracing at the beginning getting in, but actually you could swim in the ocean for a good 1/4 hour and feel comfortalbe without chilling down too far.

That's our house in the picture above. Look for the red roof in the right half of the picture just below the dark green and rocky hillside, and just above the light green hillside in the foreground.

The countryside in northern Spain is green, hilly and beautiful. Above are some of the views from our house. A huge mountain chain the Picos de Europe begins in this region, and right next to the coast. The air is fresh from the ocean, and when the beach is too hot, the mountains are only 10 minutes away. Our house was minutes up a one lane road snaking through pastures and little vegetable gardens. That's Sabine sitting on our patio overlooking a beautiful valley. In the mornings the mist would rise out of the valley to the clinking sounds of cow bells.

But Spain has tons of beaches right next to those mountains. Here's Pascal "not getting wet" this time. There are beaches, and beautiful ones all up and down the coast.

This is Carmalita the horse who spent the week in the field just at the beginning of the road to our vacation home. We pet her everyday on our way to and from the house. Several mornings, Anika and Tessa walked up the road from our house to feed Carmalita carrots.

Portrait of two clean, and ready for bed children.

On the Road to Spain

We left hot, tropical Wien Saturday morning for Salzburg. Unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse. Rain and wind all day. A steady rain in Salzburg - we got soaked walking around. We don't have proper rain attire. I grew up in California, so o.k. I'm not up on the latest rain gear. Nonetheless, today we could've used some proper gear.

We finally found a cafe/restaurant (almost all the cafes were full 'cause everyone was hiding out from the rain) and the kids took some black&white pix of each other.

The plan is to wake up early tomorrow and head straight off to Lausanne.

Pascal: I like the rain 'cause if I get my hair wet I don't have to take a bath and wash my hair.

Dean: I thought snow was bad, but rain is way worse.

Anika: The weather was bad, but therefore I had a good time.

Tessa: But I don't have any shoes.

Sabine: Today is today, but tomorrow will be different.

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We made it to Lindau on the Boden See today. Nice weather, nice lake, sunshine, pretty town and sailboats all around. Smells like vacation.

Lindau has a re-ocurring symbol of a tree with oversize leaves (sometimes with roots). Don't know what it means. Of course I couldn't say what the picture of the oak tree meant in Oakland, except that the city's name is Oakland so... get it: therefore a picture of an oak tree. Maybe it's the same thing for Lindau.

That's a model of Lindau, Pascal the giant is attacking.

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Next day, on to France. We stopped in a little town (Clemont-Ferrand) that had the name of Pascal all over it!! Was Pascal the mathematician born here? Don't know. But we ate at Cafe Pascal, and found a Rue Pascal.

The huge Michelin factory, or its decaying remains is near by "Town du Pascal."

The Green Woods around Wien

It's getting almost up to 90F in the city so we took an hours drive into the Wienerwald. Ahhh..... Very green, hugely green, all the photos had to be adjusted 'cause they were just too green. We walked up the waterfall and midway we took off our shoes and played around in the stream. I love the rocks and trees growing out of them. I love water.

The 'Disney' Schloss

Visited a non-crumbling Schloss. Pretty cool. But it turns out to be a fantasy of sorts. The castle was built on the site of an ancient castle, but was built more for the sake of art then accuracy. A very rich German coal magnate (from Schliesia where my mother was born) collected tons of medieval artifacts and wanted a place to pur them. So around 1900 he built up this castle to house his collection. Really beautiful stuff all over the castle, the coal magnate was certainly a passionate collector. Lots of film crews use the castle because of its appearance of authenticity and completeness.

It's almost cute little baby Jesus in Mary's tummy carved into a massive wooden door.

Anika's growing prettier by the day.

Also at the castle they had an awesome show of birds of prey. We saw them fly free and right over our heads. Here is the "Weisskopf Adler".

The castle is a mismash of different styles, but how cool a real drawbridge and moat!

Around Wien

Bands from around Austria came to Wien and marched around town. Very nice outfits.

Poor St. Sebastian.

Aggstein Schloss (again)

Ani clowning in the party room of the castle. This room was sooo cool. Huge wooden tables a open fireplace, wooden beamed ceilings, windows overlooking the valley below. Knights in armor, stuffed bears, elks, eagles, etc. lining the walls. I was thinking how great it would be to have a party of 50 or so people in this room. And then..... a funny coincidence: my colleague at work (who moonlights as a band leader) happened to have played at a party in this same castle the same weekend we were there. Why do I call all these castles "crumbly castles"? Well, my colleague parked his car inside the castle walls to unload his music equipment, and on his second trip back to the car he saw a huge rock fall from the castle wall, blatsch&*$ right through his front windshield.He confirmed that it was an excellent party room.