The Bean

Another quiet day. Saw this guy at the Mercadona when Laura and I went grocery shopping:

It's cold here in the mornings (relatively speaking), but the afternoons are usually sunny and in the 60's--works for me! I took this picture of the rowers working out on the river after my walk this afternoon:

The clear days make for some pretty colors at sunset. I took this while collecting laundry from the clothesline on the roof:

I continued to work my way through the pastry that Mario and Palma brought us. Part of the tradition of that pastry is that hidden inside is a "king" and a "bean". If you get the king in your slice, then you have good luck throughout the year. If you get the bean, it's bad luck all year. Rachel, damn her, got the king in her first and only piece last weekend. I didn't get anything in my piece yesterday. Today I got the bean. It's cute and ceramic. Hopefully the luck won't be too bad. I'm keeping it:

Old pastry

The zipper on my light jacket broke, so Laura and I went on a shopping expedition this morning for a new jacket. We went over to the new mall and made a perfunctory attempt to shop, all the while knowing we would end up in Primark. I found something light, but warm and maybe a bit water resistant for about 20 euros. Should get me through the rest of the season, though there could be some challenges in Baltimore and Delaware next week depending on how cold it gets while I'm there.

Other than that, pretty normal day. I did some math early. I've been computing centroids in different metrics. I keep looking around for references on this, but haven't found any yet. I went out for a run when Laura left for class at 4pm. The weather is usually warm enough by then to run in shorts and a light shirt.

I got back and continued with some math. Also, started a conversation with Russ Gordon via email and finished it with a phone call. It was good to catch up with him.

Laura got home and made refried beans. We had bean burritos for dinner. Very tasty.

For dessert, I remembered the pastry that Mario and Palma brought us the day before we left for El Chorro. I had the foresight to put it into an airtight container and then in the fridge. It held up amazingly well. The piece I had this evening was about as good as the day we got it. Yay! There might even be some left when Rachel gets back from Malaga on Saturday.

Return to baseline

With the Christmas holiday behind us and no visitors in the flat this week, there's a real sense of returning to normal. Rachel is in Malaga this week attending a conference. She'll be back here on Saturday for a day and a half, then we both fly to the US. Rachel will return to Miami and her fourth semester of graduate school. I'll go to a conference in Baltimore.

For some reason I was unusually cold this morning. I tried a number of different space heater configurations, but my office in the back room of the kitchen was just too drafty. Laura suggested that I move my office back into the guest room since Rachel will only be using it briefly on her transition from Spain to the US. The heater in the guest room is effective for that space and there are no drafts. I agreed and we moved all of my stuff back to the guest room:

It's almost like I never was gone. It was a vast improvement in warmth too.

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Laura's trying an afternoon Spanish class this week which is yet another return to the past. For most of the first few months of our time here, she was in the 4-7:30pm time slot. This time around it's to a more advanced class. She's just trying it out to see if she can manage it.

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The streets are a bit less sticky today. No rain in the forecast.

A parting of the ways

We passed a quiet morning at the hotel in El Chorro. It was breezy and chilly, so we didn't venture outside much. I did grab this photo of the back side of the hotel with the mountain face looming. It was a quirky hotel, but beautiful:

Rachel's train didn't leave until around 4pm. Ours, not until 5pm. We checked out at around 11:30am, but the hotel kindly held our bags while we went on a hike towards the mountain shown in the first photo. The trail was a bit steep and challenging, which made us grateful for the cool weather. The lower slopes were arid pine forest:

I went off trail at one point and found this beautiful flower in bloom. It's January, so we're definitely not in Walla Walla anymore:

As we approached the face of the mountain, we began to see numerous climbers on its face. My phone isn't sharp enough to show them, but there were a couple dozen folks up there at various heights. Not long after we noticed the climbers, we started seeing folks lower down hiking to the mountain and a number of cars parked along the track that also likely carried climbers:

After our hike, we returned to the hotel restaurant and enjoyed a long, slow lunch as we waited for Rachel's train. We even had dessert:

Eventually the parting of the ways arrived. The train station was a stone's throw from the hotel and restaurant. We headed out to the station and Rachel took the southbound train to Malaga for her conference:

After Rachel departed, Laura and I hung out in the lobby and read for a while until our northbound train came to take us back to Sevilla. I managed to snap this shot of the Caminito del Rey from the train window as we left El Chorro:

Because of railway construction, there's a 10 mile stretch of tracks that are out of service on the way back to Sevilla. About halfway through our trip, we had to get off the train and get onto pre-staged buses that drove the entire train contingent around the gap in the tracks to another rail station. A train met us there and took us the rest of the way to Sevilla. Here's a shot of the station in Osuna, Spain where we got back onto the northbound train. An abandoned engine:

An abandoned rail station:

Switch controls at the new train station. We watched an engineer throw the switch so that the train arriving from Sevilla could switch tracks over to the northbound tracks. When it arrived, all of the passengers got off and took the same buses we just used to go south around the gap in the tracks and continue their journeys south to Malaga:

We finally made it to Sevilla and walked home from the Metro station along streets that had yet another sticky, sugary layer of crushed and dissolved candy from the Triana parade that occurred yesterday. Yes, another parade with people throwing buckets of candy into the streets. The city parade being insufficient, the Triana neighborhood has to have its own parade the next day. 

I wonder how long the streets will be sticky. There's no rain in sight on the weather forecast.

Caminito del Rey

Somewhat fitting, but totally unrelated to the three kings day, today Rachel, Laura and I traveled to El Chorro, Spain:

To walk the Caminito del Rey, at times known as "the world's most dangerous walkway", though now it is a perfectly safe cliff hike in a Spanish National Park. This walkway is bolted to the side of a canyon that contains a number of hydroelectric projects for southern Spain. It's both a tourist attraction and a service corridor for the dam projects.

We caught the train out of Sevilla this morning, made it to El Chorro by around 10:30am, checked into the hotel and then caught the shuttle bus to the top of the trailhead. We met our guide and walked the 8km trail back down to the hotel.

Hardhats were required. Mostly to protect from falling rocks from above:

Much of the walkway was like this--bolted onto the sides of the canyon:

A look up the canyon:

An old bridge across the river from one side of the canyon to the other:

Our tour guide, Estella, spoke alternately in Spanish and English:

She was a good Spanish language listening exercise for us.

The sky was deep blue. There's an abandoned building along the way:

Another look up the canyon:

On the right, other visitors on the walkway. On the left, a railroad bridge:

We actually crossed the railroad bridge on our way to El Chorro on the train.

Here we see the new walkway above the original service walkway:

The last canyon opened out onto a reservoir. The town and our hotel are on this reservoir. To get there, we had to cross that bridge:

Here's another view of the new walkway above the old one:

Here's the walkway bridge across the canyon at the end of the hike:

Some video of the three of us trekking across the suspension bridge:



Here's Rachel taking pictures back towards the canyon from the reservoir:

Here's the special Christmas Cruzcampo beer I had at dinner: