Southern Spain - Puerto Banus and Marbella

Dear Grace,


Even though we loved having beach and pool time to relax over this vacation, we also wanted to get out and see some of the surrounding towns in Spain.  The ones we visited ended up being absolutely beautiful and had fantastic shopping.  Your mummy and I love to buy different items from the cities we visit together so we'll always remember our time there.  Enjoy the pictures of the beautiful towns we were fortunate enough to see.


Love, 
Daddy

The first town we visited ended up being the beautiful coastal town of Puerto Banus.  It is famous for being the port that people bring their yachts to in order to vacation in the southern part of Spain.  Due to the fact that yachts frequent this area, you can imagine the high end shopping that went along with it.  We really enjoyed taking pictures of the fancy area, BUT this place was slightly out of our price range...haha.

Must be nice to get off a super yacht and then have your sports car sitting right there.  In case you needed to see what time it was you could check the Cartier clock posts everywhere.  

We left the port area and decided to walk out to the end of the harbor for some great pictures with the mountains in the background.

Once we finished touring the port, we headed towards Marbella, which is famous for its beautiful churches, courtyards, and fantastic local shopping.  We found out that this was the location that Mrs. Obama came to with her girls when they visited last year.  

The main area that we shopped around in was called the Orange Square.  It was absolutely beautiful and reminded us of Positano in the Amalfi Coast of Italy.  Flowers everywhere and different colors on all of the buildings.

We came across the main church in the square and happened to be there during a wedding that was going on.  We went in to observe the ceremony since the doors were open and it was a beautiful church.  Right when we were about to leave, they started going over the Readings, which were the same ones we had in our wedding.  What a neat experience.

Once the ceremony was over, your mummy had to go up and tell the bride and groom how beautiful the ceremony was and that we enjoyed watching the part of it where the similar Readings were done.  They were a couple from London and of course loved hearing that story.  Not only did they love the story, but they loved you too......as you were smiling and couldn't stop looking at them.

Since all of the stores close down for siesta time in the afternoon, we walked around taking pictures until we could finally go into some of the stores and make some purchases.

Stay tuned for the final adventures of our trip to Spain.

Southern Spain - Part 1

Dear Grace,


We ended up taking our first family vacation since arriving in London, and were invited to go on a trip to Southern Spain with the Blossoms.  Your mummy and I were looking forward to a nice week of rest and relaxation while soaking up some sun and spending time on the beach with you.  We lucked out with the house that we rented for the week as it had a swimming pool that we didn't have to travel far to in order to cool off.  You had so much fun throughout the week and the Blossom boys kept you entertained.  


Love,
Daddy


Since this was going to be the first day of the year that we were truly exposed to intense sun and heat, I went to the store prior to leaving to make sure that we had enough sunscreen for all three of us.  I brought these bottles home and your mummy just laughed at me.  We had completely different ideas of how much we were going to need.  In the end your mummy was right and I was wrong. See....I'm learning early in my marriage.  One thing though, no one ended up with a sunburn.  Come to think of it, we didn't get much color either.

We had a very easy flight over and showed up to the house we were going to be in all week.  We were so excited to unpack and then test out the pool.  Your legs were going a mile a minute under water.  Do I sense a future swimmer?  Perhaps a cyclist?  Godfather, Wilson.....yes, you have agency rights.

The next day we headed out for some time on the beach and towards the end of the afternoon decided to take some pictures.  We came across a sand castle that was amazing and Coltan was looking for buried treasure with his shovel.

There were occasional patches of palm trees on the beach and we just had to go over and see them.

This was our view to the left when we went to the beach.........mountains were everywhere around us.  If you look closely you'll see about 30 kites in the air from people kite surfing.  The mountain background makes it tough to see.

We decided to take some pictures with the sun starting to set while cooking dinner.  Sam Blossom was manning the grill cooking some fine steaks for us while Amber helped out.

Don't worry, we didn't just let them cook, we ended up making the mojitos with mint leaves and limes from the back yard.  We had to have refreshing drinks for the euchre card game that we played almost every night.  That's what I call smart planning for a house in Southern Spain!

What a fun place for Grace to learn the army crawl. 

 More posts of our adventures around Southern Spain will follow.  We ended up doing quite a bit more.

The Schultes in London

Dear Grace,


The Schultes must have really wanted to meet you since they flew all the way from Chicago to see you for the first time.  We could not have been happier to see your mummy's close family friends and show them a good time in London.  Dr. Schulte was very happy to just sit back and have a good time in London with us while seeing some sites.  They were such easy visitors to have around and part of the time they were here overlapped with The Godfather, Andrew Wilson.  What a fun week so enjoy the pictures!


Love, 
Daddy


Riding the underground tube transportation is a must for anyone visiting London.....as well as the double decker buses!!!

Part of the time the Schultes were here they took tours to Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle.  Since we had already visited those sites, we decided to hold off on seeing them again, but they were all amazing places to go and see.  


Kate did end up attending a London bike tour with the Schultes, which took a small group of them all throughout London.  This was such a quick and easy way of navigating the city and seeing all of the major local tourist attractions.  I wasn't able to go on the ride since I was helping to watch Grace at home, but I heard that it was so much fun.

30 St Mary Axe, the Swiss Re Building (colloquially referred to as the Gherkin), is a skyscraper in London's main financial district, the City of London, completed in December 2003 and opened at the end of May 2004.  With 40 floors, the tower is 180 metres (591 ft) tall, and stands on the former site of the Baltic Exchange building, which was severely damaged on 10 April 1992 by the explosion of a bomb placed by the Provisional IRA.

The Lloyds building in London, which was specifically designed to have all of the duct work and elevators on the exterior of the building.  Quite a few of these unique business buildings are located in the Bank business district.

A trip to London isn't complete without a picture in front of Tower Bridge next to the Tower of London.

Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse in the London Borough of Southwark, located on the south bank of the River Thames, but destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt 1614 then demolished in 1644. The modern reconstruction, of the 1614 building, was founded by the actor and director Sam Wanamaker and built approximately 230 metres (750 ft) from the site of the original theatre. The theatre was opened to the public in 1997, with a production of Henry V. The site also includes a reconstruction of the Blackfriars Theatre.

Harry Potter fans will remember the bridge below.The Millennium Bridge, officially known as the London Millennium Footbridge, is a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians crossing the River Thames in London, England, linking Bankside with the CityLondoners nicknamed the bridge the "Wobbly Bridge" after participants in a charity walk on behalf of Save the Children to open the bridge felt an unexpected, and, for some, uncomfortable, swaying motion on the first two days after the bridge opened. The bridge was closed later that day, and after two days of limited access the bridge was closed for almost two years while modifications were made to eliminate the wobble entirely. It was reopened in 2002.

We ended the fun week by hanging out in some of the local parks, gardens and of course Covent Garden.  This is an area where a lot of shops, shows, restaurants and nightlife is located.

A big thank you to the Schultes for coming over to visit us for the week and letting us have fun with them around London.  We'll see you all soon enough for Libbie and Matt's wedding in November!

The Godfather

Dear Grace,


I didn't think it was going to happen, but one of my best friends came over to visit all of us in August.  You may know him as 'Your Godfather'.  Apparently, this trip had been in the works for over a month and I was one of the only people who didn't know it was going to happen.  Great surprise!  We had so much fun hanging out with Andrew in London and only wish that his wife, Amanda, was able to join, but she had just started the school year with teaching.  You were always so happy hanging out with your Godfather throughout the week and I'm sure you can't wait to eventually get back to Chicago so we can see them more often.  Enjoy the fun pictures of the week!


Love, 
Daddy


Your mummy and Andrew had it all planned out for how he was going to surprise me.  We originally had the idea to go out with one of my co-workers for dinner, but when I went to meet you both at the train station, Andrew came out from around the corner.

Yep, the picture below pretty much sums it up...."What the, I mean, are you serious?  Where the heck did you come from".  Andrew and Amanda were just in Indianapolis that weekend seeing friends and a brand new addition to the Spitzer family so I never thought that he was going to catch a flight out of Indy, to Chicago, over to London the very next day!

You and Andrew hanging out around the city of London....doing tourist things and just having a great time.

You can take the kid out of the small town, but can't take the small town out of the kid.  Andrew resides in a town of Indiana, which has under 1,000 people the last time I checked.  A bit different from London and its 9 million inhabitants.

Andrew is a true entreprenuer at heart.  He's in a family business back home that deals with auction and real estate.  He also likes to dabble on the side with different businesses....one of which is the local golf cart rental business. 


As you can see in the background of this picture, it looks like the Queen is interested in having golf carts on the property. Yep, the light bulb went off and a new niche market could be formed in London.  Wilson, you want to move here for a few months with Amanda to get it started up???

A picture in front of Tower Bridge once we finished up going through the Tower of London.

Our other pledge brother who lives in London with his family, Sam Blossom, was able to get Arsenal football (soccer) tickets.  This ended up being the first football match that we had attended.

We also tried setting up a dinner reservation at one of our favorite bars because it's supposed to have some amazing Thai food.   Well, we're still going to have to try it out on a future date because they never wrote the reservation in the book and term 'the customer is always right' doesn't apply over here.  Churchill Arms is still a fun bar to go to and as you can see is somewhat fond of flowers.

A trip to London wouldn't be complete for an auctioneer unless we stopped at Portobello Market.  It was a day when they had their antique items out, which is right up Andrew's alley.  He was definitely a good person to have with us in order to pick out good deals.

We finished the week up by hanging out in Holland Park by Notting Hill to spend time in the gardens and catch a glimpse of the wild peacocks running around.  Andrew also thought it was a good idea to start teaching you how to play chess.

We all had a great time hanging out with Andrew that week and can't thank him enough for coming over to say hi and spend time with us.