Photo Shoot

Today was Emily's last full day in Sevilla. We decided to go out to a park and get Rachel to take some family photos. Given the subject matter, some of them turned out ok:

No doubt due to her superb focusing ability.

When it wasn't the whole family on a timer, Rachel turned to Emily as subject:

Some shots were better than others. Some were just funny:

After pictures in the park, we went to a flamenco show. No pictures during the show, but they graciously posed/performed for photos at the end:

One last helado for Emily:

(she had chocolate mousse by the way, it was really good, I'll have to try it next time).

la Noche Vieja

Happy New Year!

Parque del Alamillo

Another low-key day. A lot of us catching up on work. Emily has a bit of a cold. She was interested in finding a place to do pull-ups, dips and other such exercises. We went to a little outdoor gym at Parque del Alamillo up at the north end of the river. She and I rode bikes up there and walked across the bridge to the park:

We found a water fountain:

The exercise area was populated with some very buff dudes doing all kinds of impressive things. Emily did a few exercises, but we decided to stop early and just walk around the park. The weather was beautiful and there were a lot of people out and about. We happened upon a pond that had a water ski course. Instead of boats, skiers were pulled across the water by a cable system.

Laura went to Costco and picked up some cranberries for her cranberry chicken dish. We had that for dinner and it was most excellent.

***

We finished the evening watching a John Mulaney standup show on Netflix. That's the first I've seen of him, funny guy.

Last night we watched the movie Eighth Grade by Bo Burnham. It was hard to watch at times, but wonderfully well-executed. It definitely made you feel for kids with acute anxiety.

Biker Gang

 On my walk/run along the river today, I saw this family of bike riders. Their bikes were decked out in a biker gang motif. The mom, dad and child were all wearing biker clothing too. It was kinda cute. The dad's bike was real work of art:

This evening a male flamenco dancer put out his hat on San Jacinto. This is kind of unusual since most of the buskers tend to go to the Cathedral area where there are more tourists. He was pretty good:

We went out for a walk to "Las Setas" so Emily could see them. Underneath, there was an ice rink. Watching some skate really well and others not so much was actually pretty entertaining:

We stopped in a clothing store on the way home called Pull & Bear. The words printed on the fronts of some of the t-shirts and sweatshirts were positively inane:

This one from "California Town" was particularly humorous. Rachel got a hoody with Pull & Bear on the front.

Work Day

Today we bade farewell to Ric and Kathy. They drove to Lisbon this morning to catch a plane back to the US. It's strange how time flies. Kathy started planning this trip about a year ago when she first learned that we were heading to Spain. She and Ric did a lot of the planning in Morocco and Granada. We had some adventures and enjoyed our Christmas together. Now it's in the past.

They made it to Lisbon without incident.

***

Today was a day of work for us. Laura studied Spanish. Rachel is studying basic economics in advance of an econometrics class she's taking this coming semester. Emily is reviewing a paper for a journal. I'm writing a talk for the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Baltimore next month.

This evening we walked up to Plaza de San Francisco and watched the 3 Kings Christmas light show with Emily.

We grabbed a pizza for dinner and helado at Villar for dessert. I have found, through a series of independent experiments and now very repeatable, that the brownie helado is the best possible helado.