Rota for 3 more days

Okay, Rota is very nice.  The beaches are fantastic, even in October, and the crowds are gone.  But, there isn't much for non-drinkers who don't para-sail surf to do here, except walk.  There are few historical sights to see.  The Castillo, the local castle, appears to now be used for the local government.  There are very few taxis and there are 3 small bus routes for getting around town.  It seems to be a rather picturesque bedroom community for the U.S.Naval Station.

Of course, there is always eating.  I love the stewed chicken at Bar El Espadero at Plaza de Triunfo.  Espadero is known for this meal and it is SO delicious.   In fact, this is a small skillet of the "Swordmaster" chicken with their fresh julienned potatoes (patatas).   But the first time I ordered it, the waiter brought out a long roasting pan full of chicken and potatoes, with that fantastic juice/gravy.  But, that would have served a table of 6 adults and this was just for me.  They were nice enough to take the big pan back and bring me this (pictured) small skillet that I thought I ordered.  (I felt pretty bad because the waiter looked so proud and triumphant when he presented that roasting pan. )  I always pair this sort of meal with a 2017 Coca Cola, an vintage.  Mmmm...

Every meal starts with olives and they are really tasty.  And, of course, you can't have fresh bread without some salted olive oil to dip it in.

Today is the second day of high winds and partial overcast weather in Rota.  The Bay of Cadiz is very interesting to watch now because the waves are huge, especially near the jetty, and there are several para sailors out there jumping way out of the water because of the almost gale force winds.   But, we have 3 more nights here in Rota and the weather predictions say it's going to stay overcast; in fact, tomorrow is predicted to have thunder and lightening.  Guess Fall is here.  At least, the temperatures are still in the upper 70s.

I swear this is the same sort of bush that I saw all over Arizona and they grow big and beautiful here.

Yesterday, I passed this statue while trying to find my chicken lunch.

Today, in high winds and overcast, we found the beach in front of the Castillo.  The surf was very rough.

I was curious.  This permanent street sign has the word for "kiss" in it.  It translates as "Kiss me on this corner".  Hmmm...  this must be the local "lover's leap".

Something important happened here, but I have NO idea what it was.

I did find the local shopping area, though, and I plan do some shoe shopping there soon (when it's not siesta time).  I need to be able to walk without any hurting and I'm still getting twinges on the left foot joint that I jammed a couple weeks ago.  It doesn't hurt when I walk barefoot, which tells me I just need the right pair of shoes.  I'm going for a pair of New Balance or Nike running shoes.  Then, one of my pairs of sandals is going to be going away.  Rule # 1, if you buy something, you discard something else from your luggage.

By the way, the fashions for ladies here (no matter how much you weigh) call for skinny pants - leggings or skinny legging-like jeans.  Those are paired with snug-fitting tank tops, designer Ts, or loose tunics.  The ladies here have style, I must say.  There are lots of scarves, beautiful shoes, painted nails, and pouty looks.  The waiters here take one look at me and hand me the English menu before I even open my mouth.  I was prepared for that, but my pouty look needs a lot of work.  Oh, I'm pouty, just don't have the look.

Current plans - we are leaving Rota by ferry (or if the water is too choppy, by bus) and heading for Cadiz again on Thursday.  We have reservations for 3 nights to finish our explorations of Cadiz.  We haven't seen the Roman theatre excavation or the archaeological museum.  Then, we plan to take the train to Madrid to see the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia - http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/visit.  That is the last museum that we had on our 1 year Paseo del Arte tickets and, after we left Madrid last time (without seeing the Reina Sofia), Steve discovered that the the original Picasso piece, Guernica, is there.  The piece in situ at Guernica, Spain is actually a copy.  So, since we have to pass through Madrid to get just about anywhere in the north and east, by golly we are stopping to see Guernica.  We will make reservations for two nights in Madrid to give us a whole day to see the museum.  Then, we are considering heading for Barcelona, if the troubles are over, or if they aren't we'll just transfer to a train to Marseille, see some of Provence and decide whether to head toward Paris then or into Italy.

We are less enamoured of settling down in Spain.  Our language skills are still pretty pequeno and it's wearing on me, for one.  Why is English only spoken in cold, wet places in Europe, I ask you?

Rota, Spain

Rota is a lovely little town with several beautiful beaches.  After our 35 minute ferry trip, it wasn't a very long walk to our apartment (thank goodness).  This was a scenic walk along the a very wide and clean promenade next to the coast, with golden sand beach beside it and the Bay of Cadiz beyond.  Our host met us in a small park across the street from the apartment house, let us in, and showed us around.  Amazingly, we have 3 bedrooms, 5 beds, a living room with dining room, bathroom with shower, entry area, large kitchen with washing machine and gas hot water heater, plus a beautiful tile-lined rooftop terrace with table and chairs and lines to dry the washed clothes.  All of the rooms have air conditioning except the kitchen and bathroom, every room has a door, and all the windows have "peek-a-boo" sea views.  You can hear the waves gently breaking at night if you leave the window open.  All of this, an entire apartment, for 45 euros per day in Rota!

Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is not a whole lot to do in Rota, at least after a day and half it appears that way.  There is the gate to the U.S. Naval Base at the top of the main street.  The weather is great, the sun is shining every day, the beach is just gorgeous and there aren't really that many people packing the streets.  Cadiz seemed more interesting, but we came here to relax and what better way to do that than without distractions.  So there has been less walking and more appreciating; less sightseeing and more catching up on our news and take care of some phone business. [Tip: To make wifi calls and not pay 20 cents or more per minute for talk, you can't just find an app that will make wifi calls and use it, you have to actually go into your settings and TURN ON Web calling.  Until Tmobile decided to refund the money, that was a $26 lesson (just once).  I'm told that you have to literally remove your SIM card when you are on a cruise, too.  $7/minute calls have cost people hundreds of dollars in extra charges.  Just sayin']

Here's Rota, so far:

That's our catamaran backing out from the Cadiz dock to head to Rota; actually, it's the trip before ours.

About to land at the terminal in Rota.

There are some lovely stone benches here to watch the world go by.  You see all kinds of human groups, especially families.

More about Rota later, if we can find something new to say about it.  :)  Until then, we will be discussing our next destination.  Steve is all about going back to Cadiz, but I don't know.  If we are rested up enough, why not check out The Algarve (southern coast) in Portugal, or Gibraltar, or head over to France or the island nation of Malta?  Of course, those last two would probably involve traveling through Barcelona, if only at the airport.  

Catalonia is on notice from the PM of Spain that Spain needs clarification of what the leader of Catalonia just said.  Puigdemont appeared to say he wanted to have discussions with Spain about Catalan independence and then he proceeded to sign a declaration of independence in front of his parliament; immediately suspended it, but signed it.  Spain has given the Catalan leader until Monday to clarify whether he declared independence or not - yes or no.  If he did, Spain intends to start the process, Article 155 of the Constitution, to take over Catalonia all together, no more autonomy like the other regions of Spain.  Catalonia would then have 3 more days to reverse that decision.  If they don't, it could get really ugly, really fast.  So, we know we don't want to be there during that time.

Therefore, our travel plans depend on the leader of Catalonia over the next 3 to 6 days.  Portugal is looking better all the time.

Driving the coast of Oregon and Washington

Okay, I'm tired of the road trip now and I suspect Steve is too.  It has been almost 2 months since we hit the road on July 5.  I think we are probably both in Europe in our heads now.  We fly out on September 18, 2017 and land at Gatwick Airport,  London at 7am on September 19.  No more road trip; we'll be walking and riding from then on.

But,  we still have to get back to Tacoma.  So, today, we drove up the coast, across the Astoria bridge, and landed in Long Beach, Washington.  But, the motels in our price range were pretty iffy.  So, here we are in Longview, Washington at the Quality Inn.  The view is not much to talk about.

On the way up in the Tillamook, Oregon area near Garibaldi, we discovered Barview Jetty County Park where we stopped to stretch our legs.  It has a beautiful beach and a campground that many people don't know about and we found by accident.  There was also an interesting flock of gulls that I became slightly obsessed with, as you will see.

There are two jetties and a dike here to protect and support the entrance to Tillamook Bay.

This is the US Army Corps of Engineers' lookout tower at the entrance to  Tillamook Bay.

The Danger sign in front of this rock means that only seagulls can sit on the jetty.

The mist hung over the whole area, holding down the smoke in the air, I think.

Fishermen leaving Tillamook Bay on their way out for the day.

It was a beautiful drive with many more beach views.  We stopped at Tolovana Beach State Park just south of Cannon Beach, walked the beach, had a delicious lunch at Mo's, and saved two children from disease.

The rocks of Cannon Beach are just next door.

This sign over the opening of a rusty pipe at the entrance to the beach says, "Warning: untreated drainage water may be contaminated with animal waste.  Do not play int it! Wash hands throughly before eating."

 We read the sign and then walked alongside the "drainage" onto the beach and noticed 2 children (about 8 and 5) in their bathing suits happily digging in the sand on the edge of the drainage stream to make "drainage" pools and sand castles with their buckets and shovels.    [I ask you, what the heck is contaminated water doing draining onto a public beach where children play?  Sometimes, I truly wonder what goes through people's minds.  One little sign is not enough, either.]

The drainage that many of us thought was a small creek entering the sea, like many Oregon beaches.

So, as we passed them, I stopped to ask the oldest child, a girl, if her parents had read the sign above the stream of water.  If not, I said, she should point it out to them because this water probably has animal waste in it.  I pointed out that meant animal poop.  We kept walking and, when I looked back, an older lady (maybe Grandma) was gathering up the children and moving them away from the drainage.  Maybe I saved a life today.  "All in a day's work, Ma'am.  We librarians are purveyors of information."

The view of the Astoria bridge from the Washington side on the road to Long Beach.

We crossed the Astoria Bridge twice today.  Tomorrow, we will probably be driving back up I-5 towards Tacoma.  We have two more nights before our AirBnb reservation starts there.  Until then, we'll follow the clean air and see where it takes us; maybe Olympia or Gig Harbor.

The Oregon coast and inland - Corvallis is special to me

Beautiful Lincoln City, Oregon, with the sound of the Pacific crashing outside our motel room!  We traveled to Corvallis, OR today and took a whole lot of photographs (those were for both you and me, Mom).  Then, we headed through Philomoth, OR and on to the Oregon beaches.

Corvallis, OR, the home of Oregon State University, was where we spent last night.  I was exhausted because of all the smoke in the air and the asthma it triggered.  Our trip from Weed, CA was fraught with thicker and thicker smoke from at least 6 wildfires to the north and east of us.  I-5 was never threatened, but the burning of those poor forests made the air quality very bad.  I wore a filtration mask and we ran the AC on recirculate and that helped.

We stayed at a nice motel in Corvallis, OR - the University Inn - and both of us zonked out after the grueling drive.  When we woke up, there was a little smoke in the air, but not any where near as much as we saw on the trip up. So, this morning, Mom, we drove around Corvallis and I took some photographs.  I have nailed down the place where Grandma and Grandpa lived, either 11th and Jefferson,

 which looks like this now.  Across the street to the right is a large parking lot next to a tall dormitory building.

Or, it looks like this, the very large parking lot next to the tall dorm which is where 10th St would have been.  I remember that the University had built a tall dorm across the street from their house the last time we visited before they moved, when the U bought them out.

The campus is still really beautiful, retaining a large number of the gorgeous old buildings that were there when I was young.

They even have a few conifers whose branches go all the way to the ground for children (or students) to hide in and pretend.

This green house on, 12th Street, looks familiar somehow.

Are these houses you remember, Mom?

After the trip down memory lane, we drove to the beach and found this:

Depoe Bay, Oregon

Our motel in Lincoln City on the right, Beachfront Manor Inn - Lincoln City.

Steve is a water guy.  The beach suits him.  Too bad it's so darn cold.

Tomorrow, Seaside, Cannon Beach, Astoria and probably back down to Portland for a couple days of AirBnb before Sept. 1 in Tacoma.