I'm almost done with posting the vacation photos, which is crazy considering we left Europe over two months ago. Anyways, we decided to end our time in Spain with a roadtrip. During the planning phase of this vacation, a roadtrip seemed like a brilliant idea (okay, so maybe brilliant is an exaggeration). Most of the Spanish trains originate from Madrid, so the eurorail map looks almost like a starburst, with very few trains connecting smaller cities. Thus, if you want to see a lot of the country in a few days, it makes sense to drive from destination to destination, rather than taking trains back and forth to Madrid.
BUT, I clearly didn't think this whole plan through, as traveling with three young children crammed into the back of a small European car was sort of a nightmare. How many times can you hear, "mom, [insert one of three names here] is touching me! He/She is in my space! Make her/him move!" before you lose your mind. I also never consulted a topography map, so I didn't realize that we'd be driving up mountains then down mountains then up more mountains, etc. etc. I've never been so grateful for Dramamine.
But on the upside, we traveled to a few places where trains don't go. Or as the kids like to say, "we've now been to the middle of nowhere, which is in Spain." Seriously, the absolute middle of nowhere. Anyways . . .
Our first stop, after 5 hours on the road, was the walled city of Avila (we actually planned more stops but the kids were so fussy we just kept driving, plus Enterprises' neverlost system kept losing us). Those walls were built over one thousand years ago and stayed intact, crazy huh?
On the upside, walking on medieval walls is crazy awesome. On the downside, we arrived in Avila around 4 pm, during the peak of the day's heat. The temperature on the walls was well over 100 degrees. I felt like I could melt.
After Avila, we drove to our middle of nowhere destination, Hotel Garabatos. During the drive, we lost cell reception, the roads turned super rural, we passed cows and sheep and kept our fingers crossed that the car didn't break down as we went for over forty-five minutes without seeing another person or dwelling. All while navigating switchbacks.
We arrived in a town where nobody spoke Engligh (yay! for google translate). Liters of (fairly good) red wine cost less than $10. And horses were on property. The rooms were large with wonderful views. The food was mediocre but reasonably priced. All of us could not have been happier. Dan and T even found an English-speaking TV channel and watched some dog movie into the wee hours.
Who know that there was a discoteca in the middle of nowhere?
The next morning we tried hiking. There's a National Park nearby with a lot of trails and the scenery was stunning. But P COULD NOT STOP COMPLAINING, so eventually we turned around and started the drive to Toledo.
In Toledo I decided to surprise everyone with a fancy hotel (mainly because it came with a pool). Unfortunately, the hotel was almost impossible to find, so by the time we arrived everyone was super cranky. And, although the hotel had two or three on-property restaurants, they were all crazy expensive and had nothing that my kids would eat. T opened the minibar and said "don't worry guys! there are tons of snacks in here!" And I proceeded to lunge across the room yelling, "don't touch anything! that food costs more than college tuition!" URGH!!! So we piled back into our rental car in search of food. After becoming lost AGAIN during a crazy series of roundabouts, we ended up in front of a cheap grocery store (serendipity), where we all piled random food into the cart.
We became lost about 30 more times before we making it back to the hotel. We had planned on spending the night checking out Toledo, but we were all so scared of becoming lost (plus the hotel's free shuttle was always booked solid) that we watched TV, napped, read books, swam (in the freezing) pool, and chilled for the night.
We spent the morning at the hotel pool, which was sadly so cold that my kids couldn't swim (I hate when things look nice but are basically non-functional). And finally, room on the shuttle opened up so we could tour Toledo!
Toledo is probably an amazing city (or so says every guidebook), but we didn't have enough time to really appreciate it or see much. We spent most of the morning at the Alcazar, which contains an ENORMOUS military history museum. T was completely entranced - guns, swords, fighting, etc. But I found it one of the most boring places I've ever visited. And then we tasted some of Toledo's famous marzipan (yum!) and headed to the airport for our flight to Paris.
Madrid airport's Chocolate Factory was a huge hit with all three kids. Lots of allowance money spent on edible mustaches. Unfortunately, upon arriving in Paris, we learned that the airline lost my luggage. Oh well, at least we were leaving for home in two days. Though it wasn't very fun to try and find things like toothbrushes late on a Sunday night in Paris, when almost all the shops had closed. On Wednesday, I'll post on the final leg of our trip - Disney Paris.
HAPPY MONDAY!!!
- The idea of this novel is intriguing - everything you learn about the narrator is revealed through ten conversations she has while traveling to teach a creative writing seminar. And the writing is really good. But several of the conversations didn't seem "real" to me, after awhile I kept asking myself, "who talks like this?". Still, an interesting read, which made me wonder what I reveal about myself when talking to strangers. 
- I'm so glad someone finally wrote a novel about how hard early parenthood can be and how little modern medicine/ society seems to care. But the narrator is such a bitch, really an absolute bitch, that I became sick of listening to her rant after awhile. 
- I keep going back and forth on whether to star this (I don't want to star everything). It's an intriguing novel, in which a somewhat-routine dinner between two brothers and their wives becomes completely horrific. I found the end a little over-the-top awful, but, still, I couldn't put this book down. And the plot makes you think about how far you would go to protect your own children (though hopefully never as far as one of the brothers). It also makes you wonder if some people truly are just born evil and then find equally evil people to marry them. 
- READ THIS BOOK. It's about family dynamics and mistakes people make and, basically, how life goes on. The story, while told well, isn't necessarily original, but the way in which it is told (half way through the novel you learn "the end") makes this book different than anything else I've read. 
- I need to tread lightly here, because I know so many people who love this book, which tells the stories of a blind French girl and a German orphan during World War II. And I can see why people like it - Doerr writes well, the characters are likable, and each chapter carries an element of suspense - but I I found it a little cheesy, with main characters who seemed inordinately "good". (Plus, as I mentioned last month, I loved Doerr's memoir, 
, and found it disappointing that I didn't find his fiction as compelling). 
- READ THIS BOOK. On the overnight train from Paris to Venice we shared our compartment with a German au pair named Sophie who was writing her thesis on Irene Nemirovsky, an author whom I had never heard of (and nothing irritates me more than not knowing about a well-regarded author). And now I'm a little obsessed with Nemirovsky. First of all, her writing is beyond amazing. And this novel - which deals with Nazi occupied Paris during World War II - is good, really good, we're talking War and Peace good, even though Nemirovsky never had a chance to finish the third through fifth sections. Nemirovsky died at Auschwitz as did her husband. Neighbors and friends saved her children by hiding them throughout the war and her oldest daughter, Denise, carried a suitcase full of her mom's writings everywhere she went. But it wasn't until Denise turned 50 that she opened the suitcase and started reading her mother's undiscovered masterpiece, hence how Suite Francaise came to publication. If the background story alone isn't enough to make you read it, then trust me, the book stands on its own. So so good. 
- READ THIS BOOK. Similar in some ways to Girl on the Train and Gone Girl, Her is a you-can't-put-it-down thriller. The plot being that one woman befriends another woman, but her intentions seem sinister. You know something bad is going to happen, you're just not sure what or when. Or, really, even why. But the thing that makes this novel stand out is that the writing itself is so so good. Harriet Lane perfectly captures early motherhood and how it feels to lose some of your own identity when creating a family. 
- Every bookworm's summer needs at least one guilty pleasure and this was mine. The characters are underdeveloped and the excess is over the top, but wow was this fun to read. And it made me grateful that I'm not crazy rich. Or even slightly rich.
