One of our goals while living in Spain was to also see what we could of Europe when the kids had vacations from school. We figured Portugal should be included since it is one of Spain’s neighbors. Portugal’s turn came during Semana Blanca, which translates as “white week.” I got curious what we were celebrating during Semana Blanca and did a little research.

In Spain, holiday calendars are not the same across the country. Each region, even each town, can have its own holiday calendar. One way this is apparent is each town has different patron saint days as holidays. We found this out when we biked to a neighboring town’s grocery store (just a 10 minute bike ride) and found it closed, because that town had a holiday, while ours was business as usual. Well, it turns out that Semana Blanca is another example. Each region has a weeklong “Féria (festival)” at different times in the year. The Málaga region Féria is in August when people are already on vacation, so to make it fair, there is a week off in February to compensate.

So with Semana Blanca, we decided to take a road trip to Portugal. None of us are fans of driving too much in a single day and try to do no more than around 3-4 hours in a day. So to break up the drive to our main goal, the Sintra region, and to see more of the country, we made a few stops on the way. Our first stop was Doñana National Park, which is actually still in Spain.

Doñana is a nature reserve in southwestern Spain, and the largest roadless area in Western Europe. It is home to many kids of migratory birds. Birds are attracted to the park because of all the water bodies, In an otherwise dry landscape, many of which are rice fields that get flooded.

It is also one of the last two homes of the endangered Iberian Lynx, despite our hopes we did not get the possible rare glimpse.

Because Doñana is so large, most people take 4 hour tours in 4X4 vehicles. Since we were trying to take a break from driving, we hoped to ride bikes. For a variety of reasons this didn’t work out, but we did do a few walks on some of the great trails that are found throughout the park. We explored just a small portion of this huge park.

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Doñana is a great place for bird watchers.

One of Doñana’s most exciting inhabitants are the flamingos. We were lucky enough to see them twice. Unfortunately, they are shy of people and kept their distance, but with binoculars we got a good look at them.

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What we saw the most of were the white cranes. They were everywhere!

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Even after we left the park we continued to see the white cranes along the road, even into Portugal.

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In the middle of the park is the little town of El Rocío. This old town looks like something from the Wild West, with only sand roads and lots of horse drawn wagons. Once a year there is a pilgrimage of a million people who come by horse carriage to visit the church in the center of town. The rest of the year the town is basically empty.

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Also in El Rocío, next to a church is a building made just for lighting prayer candles. I can imagine with so many pilgrims, it would be too many candles in the church.

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Representatives from a variety of “hermandades,” Catholic brotherhoods come for the pilgrimage as well. Each hermandad has a building to house their pilgrims during the celebrations. They identify themselves with color coded ropes holding medals that are worn around their necks. Part of the pilgrimage includes carrying the statue of the virgen around town, The hermandades compete to be the ones to carry the statue at the end of the procession into the church.

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Doñana is definitely somewhere we needed more time.

The upside of Mom breaking her leg was that she got to spend a little more time with us.

We were able to set up a bed for her in the living room, and we had a bathroom on that level, so she was able to get around in the house pretty well. Unfortunately, there were several steps to get in and out of the house, so Todd and I took turns helping her hop up and down the steps to get out.

In general, Torre Del Mar was easy to get around with a wheel chair. The weather cooperated with day after day of sunshine allowing us to walk everywhere we needed to go. The boardwalk along the beach had great ramps to get the wheelchair on and off. And the hard packed sand on the beach path was a favorite for all of us.

The boys were great helpers pushing Mamo around in her chair.

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We got creative trying to entertain and include Mamo.

She even made us soup twice (unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures).

Bathing was a little challenging, since the bathtub was upstairs and not really set up for easy access, but, again, we got creative.

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We did get her some crutches,

but she had to be encouraged to use them.

The boys had lots of fun using Mamo’s equipment when she wasn’t.

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Coincidentally, Leo had a visit at school from a local organization for disabled people called Amivel. He thought Mamo would find it interesting, so we came to check it out. It was actually really fun. The kids got to experience being in wheel chairs and play basketball and races.

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Hopefully she feels sufficiently prepared to get around since she is on her way to go home.

Thanks to the travel insurance that she bought, she is being taken care of very well on her way home.

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By Mamo

I learned something very important in the hospital.   You can do a great deal with a smile, a touch, and a very small number of Spanish words.  My words were “Hola” (Hello), “Como se Llama” (what is your name), “Dolor” (pain), “Gracias” (thank you), “Muy Bonita” (Very beautiful), and “Pi Pi” (no translation needed). Later Michele taught me “despacio” (Slowly) and “hija” (daughter).
The first night of the broken ankle I kept grabbing the workers hands and hanging on.  Usually I would get a kind response back.  Then in subsequent days, I would greet every worker with “Hola” and a smile.  Especially in the public hospital in Granada there would be kind of a grudging “Hola” back on graveyard.  Then I would pat them and say “¿Como se llama?”  No matter what that person’s name, I would say “Muy bonita”.  And it usually was.  Everyone liked that.  Spanish sounds so musical.
They were a little rough in Granada and moved my leg too fast.  So Michele taught me “despacio.”

2 women in Granada that came to bathe me and change sheets were having a furious argument.  No English at all.  One kept shaking her finger at the other with furious words.  The other kept slamming my leg around like a piece of dead meat.  Finally I grabbed the first and asked her name, told her it was beautiful.  It didn’t stop the argument, but she at last smiled at me and was nice.

Another weird thing about the bed baths in both hospitals; pretty good scrubbing of armpits, private parts and torso.  No washing at all of arms and legs.  The back would be washed but not dried.  Immediately laid down with open gown and wet back on clean sheets.
The bathers seemed to be untrained in handling the injured.

All that being said, on the whole I was well cared for by kind people.

I was hoping to not have to learn about the Spanish hospital system, but mom’s fall made it a necessity. In three days, we went to 3 hospitals.

The ambulance took us straight to the hospital. It didn’t dawn on me to inquire where we were until hours later. Turns out we were at the public Hospital Virgen de las Nieves in Granada.

There mom received an initial consultation and diagnosis of fractures in 3 bones in her ankle.

They also reduced the fracture (reset it manually, which was quite painful, both to experience and to watch). Since she injured herself on the weekend, she waited for surgery behind more urgent traumas for 2 days (one of which was her roommate with a broken pelvis. Yes, no private room). When the surgeon finally got to her, she was told that the ankle was too swollen to operate and that they would have to put temporary pins and wait 7-10 days. We asked if she had to wait, could she be transferred back near our home in Torre Del Mar. They said she could transfer, but to wait to do the pins in Torre Del Mar so that one surgeon could do both parts of the surgery and that she could safely travel with the half cast immobilizing the bones.

Mom was ecstatic to get out of the hospital (even though it was just for a 1.5 hour drive).

We checked into the emergency room at the Public Hospital Axarquia in Torre Del Mar. It was overflowing with very sick people (Mom stopped counting after 50).

After waiting 2 hours, mom said she wanted to leave and try later. As we started to leave, an orderly informed me that we could not leave. When we asked him why not, he just repeated that it was obligatory that we stay. So we slunked back to the waiting room for a while longer. When we noticed that the orderly was busy moving someone on a gurney we made a run for it!

One of Oliver’s friend’s mom works at the hospital, so I gave her a call. She told me that 9 am is the best time to go to the emergency room. By 10am it gets busy and by the afternoon it is horrific (as we now knew). So we made the executive decision to come back in the morning, just before 9am. The emergency room is a different place at 9am.

We were able to meet with a trauma surgeon right away. Initially he said that the wait for surgery would be two weeks. Then he asked if she had traveler’s insurance, which thankfully she did. Well, that changed everything. He was able to transfer us to a private hospital, Hospital Galvéz, in Málaga for surgery that night!

Our reception at the private hospital was very different. We were escorted right in and they immediately started pre-op tests, while one of the 4 international relations employees called the insurance right away. We had to wait a bit for a room to open up in the 40 bed hospital, but then we were escorted to a private room, where we were left alone to wait for surgery for many hours.

My biggest frustration was that the doctor did not come to talk to us to tell us what was going to happen. Eventually the anesthesiologist came in and we learned the approximate time of the surgery and the length of the surgery. When they eventually wheeled mom off to surgery, I still hadn’t been able to speak to the surgeon. We crossed our fingers and trusted that everything would be okay and sent her off to surgery. The surgery went well and I was told the surgeon would come speak to me, but apparently he went home. So I tucked her into bed and taxied home at midnight.

Mom stayed in the hospital for 3 days. She received wonderful care and was visited by one of the English speaking International relations agents each day. Mom was most impressed when the giant X-ray machine was brought to her room at 9:30 at night.

Overall we learned that you get more immediate service in a private hospital and don’t expect that anyone will explain what is happening or what to expect in any hospital. Oh, and shockingly, there was no soap in either of the public hospital bathrooms, but there were bars of soap in the private hospital.

Mom is very happy to be out of the hospital.

Now, how to get her back to Portland…

My mom returned for another visit, so we decided to take another road trip. This time to Granada.

Granada means pomegranate in Spanish. And there are pomegranates everywhere.

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The main objective of visiting Granada was to see the Alhambra.

The Alhambra is a Moorish fortress and palace built in the 13th century. Originally the buildings were white. But after years of baking in the sun, the buildings were baked to its current red color, leading to its name (Al-hambra means red). It is actually a gigantic complex with a fortress, palaces, towers, ruins and gardens.

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It is also a major tourist destination, requiring us to purchase our tickets 3 months ago. So when the weather forecast surprised us with rain, we put on our raincoats, boots and can-do attitude and set off in the rain. And it rained hard for hours.

Despite the rain, and cold, the Alhambra is quite a sight. The most impressive thing for us was the level of detail in decorations.

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Another special feature of the Alhambra are all of the water features. The fortress was built with an extensive water system with water channeled water from the nearby Darro River. There is a constant supply of water running throughout the complex through endless fountains and water channels. This water provided irrigation for the extensive gardens and orchards, as well as supplying water for the Arab baths and providing refreshing relief from the heat.

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I imagine we would have appreciated it on a hot and dry summer day.

Mom and Leo finished their visit a little earlier (the cold and wet became a little much, especially after Mom soaked her shoe in a deep, cold puddle), and Todd, Oliver and I headed to the Generalife gardens. Amazingly, the rain stopped and we finished our visit with quite pleasant weather.

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After a couple hours resting cuddled up in blankets or in a hot bath we headed to old town Albaicin for dinner and a flamenco show, which mom was especially excited about. The show was a high energy hour of beautiful guitar music and dancing. We all loved it.

The boys were inspired by the dancing and did a bit of their own as we headed home.

Then the trip took a sad turn. Albaicin Is a very old neighborhood on a very big hill with roads made of river rock. As we headed down the hill, my mom slipped and fell (the video above was taken just minutes before she fell, to give you an idea of what the road looked like). We could tell something was very wrong with her leg, so we didn’t want to move her. Many people came out to offer help. 3 calls were made for an ambulance or the police. We all hovered around her on the edge of a narrow road, while someone directed the steady stream of taxis and buses around her. Sometimes they came as close as 10 inches! Finally, after what seemed forever, but was probably 30-45 minutes, an ambulance came to take her to the hospital, where we learned that her ankle was broken in 3 places.

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Todd and I spent the next two days taking turns being with her in the hospital or entertaining the boys around Granada.

On one of my outings with the boys we happened upon a sign for the Camino de Santiago and decided to follow it I wherever it took us. I think we followed the signs for close to an hour.

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So that is where we left Granada and began our next adventure, the hospital system…..

The last leg of our winter vacation trip was to London.

Unfortunately, our stay in London was not all we had expected due to a horrific stomach virus that hit our family the morning we flew from France and followed us through London and back to Spain several days later, taking us out one at a time, managing to affect every day of our stay.

We did manage to see a few things from our wish list.

First was the Tower of London.

A castle built in the 11th century by William the Conquerer. Todd and the boys were very excited about all of the armor and torture devices.

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Some of the tower’s famous residents are the ravens. It is said that if the ravens leave, the Tower of London will crumble into a pile of dust. So there are 6 full-time yeoman warders, also known as beefeaters, to take care of the 8 resident ravens.

After a full day at the tower, we walked across the Tower Bridge.

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and along the River Thames.

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While Leo and a I spent an entire day down for the count, Todd and Oliver managed to get out to explore the huge Battersea park, a block from our Airbnb.

The next day we all got out to see the Changing of the Guard.

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Followed by a walk through St. James Park on our way to see Big Ben (which was unfortunately completely covered up by scaffolding).

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The Mad Hatter’s Afternoon Tea was beautiful, but the stomach virus made it hard to enjoy much more than the mint tea.

The virus finally, and suddenly, got to Todd part way through the day, so the boys and I had to send him back to the Airbnb in an Uber and went to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter tour without him.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but we were all completely enthralled for nearly 5 hours. We got to see sets,

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costumes,

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and props from the different movies.

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and learn so much about what goes in to the making of the movie.

After leaving the strike in France, all of the available transportation was refreshing. We got around the big city by train, underground and double-decker bus. I was just amazed at how they were able to make such a huge and elaborate system that works so well together and runs so frequently.

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One planned stop that we had to miss was Hampton Courts Palace. The last time I was in London, 34 years ago with my dad, we missed out on seeing the palace due to a fire that occurred just weeks before our arrival. Maybe I’ll try it again in 2054.

One place in France both Todd and I have always wanted to visit is Mont Saint-Michel. It is kind of out of the way, but we thought, why not?

Our original plan was to take a high speed train from Paris that would take 1.5 hours. Well, thanks to the transportation strike, our train was cancelled. Luckily, I had thought to reserve a rental car just in case. So instead of 1.5 hours by train, we drove for 3.25 hours. Since we would be driving ourselves, we had the opportunity to see a little more, or so we thought. We basically drove through fog for 3 hours.

We did make a stop in a the sweet little town of Vitré. Our main goal was to visit the castle, but since it was New Year’s day, it was closed.

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It still was a great place to take a break from driving to stretch our legs…

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and admire a couple gorgeous gothic cathedrals.

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We even discovered one of the shells that mark the path to the Compestela de Santiago that we discovered in northern Spain last winter.

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After stretching our legs we arrived in Rennes, which would serve as our home base for the next two nights. It was literally a breath of fresh air after crowded, crazy Paris. We stayed in the old town, which is so, so cute. Many of the half timber buildings date from the 16th and 17th centuries.

We went off in search of dinner, something that proved very difficult, since nearly everything was closed for New Year’s Day. We did happen upon a light show that was projected onto the Parliament building, that reminded me a lot of the light show that we saw projected onto the Alcazaba in Málaga.

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The light show was followed by some street performers that were a lot of fun. Leo especially enjoyed them. It was so refreshing to be treated to such a fun spectacle without feeling like sardines in a can (which, unfortunately was how it felt a lot of the time in Paris and the light show in Málaga)..

We ended up finding some fantastic burgers (even a veggie one) near the Rue de la Soif (Drinkers’ Alley). The town didn’t seem quite real. I felt like I was walking through some kind of medieval set in Disneyland.

We got to stay in the attic of one of the 16th century homes. To get to our apartment we had to go up 3 flights of the most warped and slanted stairs.

Rennes was just a home base from which we could easily get to Mont Saint Michel and to the airport, but we really enjoyed the time we spent there and wished we had had a day or two more to explore this cute medieval town.

Mont Saint-Michel sits on a small island off the northern coast of France in Normandy. It is said that Archangel Michael directed Bishop Aubert of Avranches to build a church on the top of the hill in the 8th century.

To arrive we had to walk 1.6 miles on a causeway across the bay.

On the way to the abbey we passed through very narrow cobblestone streets with shops and restaurants.

Although Mont Spain-Michel has been a destination of its own pilgrimage, we found another shell signifying that it is also a stop on the pilgrimage to the Compostela de Santiago.

The abbey sits at the very top of the island.

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And provides a some very stunning views.

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The abbey is still in use today. We came across a mass in progress.

Tides can vary in height by 46 feet at the base of Mont Saint-Michel. At high tide, the island can become completely surrounded by water. It is said that tide comes in at the speed of a galloping horse. When the tide goes out, the island is surrounded by mud flats and marshes that we had to explore. You have to be careful not to go too far since the silty mud can become quicksand.

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And with this last stop we bid adieu to France and head on to our last destination for this school vacation…London!

Todd and I carefully planned our winter vacation back in October. A transportation strike effecting most trains and métros, and consequently many attractions, for all of France was not in our plans. But of course France had other ideas. We carefully watched the French news for the three weeks before we were due to arrive in France. We seriously considered changing our plans, but in the end, we decided that we would make it work.

We arrived in France by a Swiss high speed train, that was completely unaffected.

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We thought visiting Paris in the low season and during a strike would mean small crowds. We were wrong. There were crowds, big crowds, for nearly everything we did.

First was the Eiffel Tower. We actually made three trips, thanks to the crazy crowds, before finally getting to the top.

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We treated ourselves to a chocolate tour of the St. Germaine des pres neighborhood. This was one of the few things that we did that didn’t include huge crowds.

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We visited the sad site of Nôtre Dame and wished we had come a year earlier. Leo wondered if it would be fixed in time for him to bring his children here.

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We spent three hours in line to visit the Paris Catacombs, despite getting there a half hour before it opened as recommended. Luckily we stood in line with the nicest mother and daughter from North Carolina. They helped make the three hours almost enjoyable.

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We ended up getting crêpes together afterwards in Paris’ crêpe hub of Montparnasse.

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We “strolled” along the Champs Élysée to the Arc de Triomphe. It felt like Las Vegas, but even more insane.

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No trip to Paris is complete without a trip to the Louvre, but we weren’t sure how the kids would do looking at an art museum. We ended up spending 6 hours! Todd made it fun by making a treasure hunt for the kids to find a few important pieces.

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It was nice to get out of city one day and venture to Versailles. The palace was closed due to the strike, but we spent hours walking around a small portion of the immense grounds.

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Despite the strike we were able to get just about everywhere we wanted to go, although we had to get creative since the metros and trains were all closed.

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And we walked, a lot, some days 10 miles!

Paris was not the same as I remembered it from my last visit 34 years ago. The crowds seemed endless and there was security reminiscent of the airport at every attraction. I’m glad we saw what we did, but I’m looking forward to heading out of the big city and to a couple smaller towns in France.