Ljubljana Christmas Market

We LOVE the country of Slovenia. It's hard to believe that only 22 years ago, the borders were closed and it was on communist lockdown. Now it is open, thriving, and beautiful. We spent one night in the capital, Ljubljana (prounced loob-yah-na), so we could enjoy their Christmas market. It was wonderful!

A few shots before it got dark...

Castle up top.  During the day, an antique market is here.  We haggled and got a deal on a bronze sculpture.

The Ljubljanica River.  Couples put locks on the bridges to "lock" their love in Ljubljana.

Scenic spot in the city -- we bought a watercolor of this scene.

We each have our Christmas market favorites. For me and Bryan, it's the hot-spiced wine, called Gluhwein (pronounced gloo-vine). For Andrew, it's the meats and for Sara it's the treats!

GLUHWEIN!

SAUSAGES!

COTTON CANDY!

When it gets dark and the lights come on, it is a whole different place...

The castle, looking over the town

HOT CHOCOLATE!

There's simply no better way to get into the Christmas spirit than a European Christmas market! With all the lights, food, drink, people, and music, this town was a big, cheery party!

Spain: Segovia

We took a train about a half hour north of Madrid to the town of Segovia. The main thing that draws people to Segovia is the 2000 year old Roman Aqueduct that was still in use until about a century ago. It is an amazing structure. It was once 9 miles long!  Now the exposed section is 2500 feet long, 100 feet high, has 118 arches, and is made of 20,000 granite blocks with no mortar holding them together!  Aqueduct aside, I think that my shots in Segovia are just about the prettiest I've gotten in Europe. I guess that depends on if you like the look of Spain.  I really loved the old architecture.  You be the judge!

Andrew LOVES to visit Roman ruins!

This thing is huge!

The main town square, Plaza Mayor, was once the scene of bullfights, town meetings, theatrical presentations and executions.

The main square, Plaza Mayor

Plaza Mayor

Spain's last major Gothic Cathedral

The cloisters in the cathedral

Sara the sphinx and her sphinx buddy behind her!

The Roman castle, the Alcazar

Another side of the castle

View from the city

View of some interesting trees, from the castle

This is the view we had while we sat outside and munched on lunch!

We spent one more short evening in Madrid and headed home the next morning. Spain goes way up there on our "like" list even though the food was not our favorite. It was nothing like Mexican food AT ALL and had a LOT of HAM! I got sick of ham! And the restaurants don't open until 8 or 9 pm, so that was more difficult. But the people were super friendly and the country is just GORGEOUS! Bryan and Andrew did a great job speaking Spanish for us, even though Castilian Spanish is also a little different from Latin American Spanish. We have to go back to see Barcelona, Seville, and Granada someday!

Spain: Madrid

We spent the next 2 days and nights in Madrid, where we flew in and out of. We only spent one of those days actually in the city, and went on a day trip on the train out to Segovia for the other. The old, central part of Madrid was beautiful, because of the architecture. Everything was big and ornate.

The three greatest palaces in the world today are Paris' Versailles, Vienna's Schonbrunn and Madrid's Palacio Real. So here are my lucky kiddos completing the experience of seeing ALL THREE. We've already hit the other two!

We were pretty excited to tour the Prado Museum. Once again I'm floored at what we are doing ... our lucky kids have been to the most famous museums in the world -- the Prado, the Louvre, the Vatican Museum, the British Museum, the Smithsonian. Jeesh! Now we just need to hit the Met!

I struck it big with the apartment again. This time it had a loft for the kids, another bedroom for us, a kitchen, bathroom and living room.

We were up a few floors so we had a great view of the city.

This was a cute little cafe where we had an amazing breakfast. It looks very Spanish -- including the hams along the wall!

The big eating treat for us was the churros. If you find a place that fries them fresh, they are amazing. They are a long skinny doughnut and you dip them in a rich hot chocolate pudding! YUMMY!

Hee, hee. I guess since they spell it "jamon" for ham, they think we spell ham with a "j" too!

Next up ... day trip north of Madrid to the old Roman city of Segovia.

Spain: Toledo

Holy Toledo! That's what we kept saying over our Thanksgiving trip to Spain! Toledo (pronounced toe-lay-doe in Spanish) made us feel right at home! It used to be the capital of Spain. A walled city, built up high on a hill, surrounded on three sides by the Tajo River, 2500 years old, and rich with Jewish, Moorish and Christian history. They are preserving it as well as they can, and don't allow any modern construction. Here's what it looked like with the Watsons in front of it...

The main gate to the city

The main square ... Zocodover

A model of the cathedral, made of marzipan candy!

Here's Bryan, posing with Spain's famous "Don Quixote" author, Miguel Cervantes. Sara thought we were saying "donkey hotey" and she didn't want to know what that was!

Toledo's Cathedral

El Greco paintings in the cathedral

Sara played her iPod while we toured the cathedral

Andrew listened to the audio tour and took it all in

I liked this particular Madonna and child

The cloister garden in the cathedral

I found us THE BEST place to stay for our two nights in Toledo. It was 16th century home that had been made into apartments. It had modern amenities, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen, but it also had original 16th century columns and arched doorways and beamed ceilings left intact.

Outside the front door to our apartment building ... Andrew fills the doorway!

Inside the front door was a foyer courtyard ... we headed up the stairs on the right to our apartment

Looking up from there ... our apartment was at the top of the inner courtyard

Andrew, in our living room, with the original columns and arches

An original piece highlighted by the owners

The view from our outer windows

Up next in the blog, we head back into Madrid to tour the big city...

Me and my SANGRIA!