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This summer, just before we packed our bags for Canada, we had a few groups of our very good friends from Canada come and visit us.
In May: Stu and Jen with their boys Fin and Parker came to Spain for three weeks, us being their home base for over a week. They are super friends and it was very exciting to us when, after a dinner at their Victoria home a year ago, they decided to book their tickets and come to visit us.
It was an epic visit: food, wine, touring, pool, padel... They explored Zaragoza with us and then they did a stint in Madrid, San Sebastian, Bilbao, Segovia and Barcelona. We loved having them in our place and having the opportunity to connect with their great boys. In fact our girls had instant play pals so it allowed us to have a bit of adult space. The visit was so natural and normal, that the only thing that seemed weird was when we were standing on our terrace and it was Spain and not Victoria. But these are nice weird things...
Highlights: visit the top of el Pilar cathedral tower, la Seo cathedral, padel tourneys between me and Stu, shopping puerto Venecia, chilling, Castillo de Loarre.
After Stu and Jen and the boys left in mid June, Cathy and girls packed up and left for Canada on July 4th. In the meantime I went to a Spanish wedding of a coworker of mine, visited a military base in Zaragoza to see C-130 Hercules planes and flew Hercules training simulator, spent a weekend on the beach in Valencia and made preparations to receive our other set of friends: legendary (in Spain, because of all my stories) Marc and his wife Heather and Maddie and Ben. They came mid July, traveling from France and stopping in our place for 5 days.
We opened with a Valencian paella, lots of Spanish and French wine and Pacharan, a Spanish sloe berry liqueur. Needless to say, Advil gel-caps came in handy the next day.
We had a super time. We cooked, shopped, toured, played, pooled and just talked. The weather was very hot and sunny, so Spain stereotype of summer delivered. It was especially a great opportunity to connect with Ben and Maddy, as they are now older and much more independent.
Highlights: food and wine, pool games, el Tubo tapas experience which included several glasses of very good but inexpensive sherry, shopping puerto Venecia and just plain ol' chillin.
After our place, they left for south of France and Italy.
Now time to pack bags and head for Vacation to Canada.
