5 Spinsters...3 Countries...2 Weeks...and 1 Spinstermobile!

The 5 Spinsters...me, Megan, Kate, Candace and Sarah

Thanks to Megan's monkey arms we got a good shot of us all!

Finally...I am posting pictures from my recent trip to Portugal, Morocco, and Spain with four of my spinster friends...Kate, Sarah, Megan and Candace. The trip soon came to be called the Sportugal trip as Kate kept forgetting which country we were in and saying Sportugal. We all took different flights from different parts of the U.S. and met up in Lisbon, Portugal. We all made it there safely and were able to find each other in Lisbon. The only thing that didn't make it there was my luggage, but I somehow survived. We rented a van...the Spinstermobile. It was my sixth trip to Europe but my first time road tripping Europe. It was so much fun and such a different experience than doing the train thing. I would highly recommend it.

We started out in Lisbon where we spent just a little time. We then took a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra which was beautiful and fun...and would have been even more fun if I hadn't been totally preoccupied with worrying about my lost luggage. We then drove the Spinstermobile down a beautiful toll road to Southern Portugal. The toll road cost us over 50 dollars! I guess I shouldn't complain about taxes so much. Kate was our main driver...I can't drive stick and luckily I was designated as the trip translator so I didn't have to be a driver. Kate did such a great job. She had to drive in really tight places and on a lot of hills and managed to not burn out the clutch (completely anyway).

Luckily the Spinstermobile had a GPS system which we named Lia (short for Liahona). We couldn't have gotten around without Lia. She only led us astray a few times...the first time being out to an abandoned hotel out by a lighthouse at midnight in Sagres (the town on the Southernwestern tip of Portugal where we stayed)...kind of freaky. Luckily I used my Spanish to communicate with some people in Portuguese and we found our real, un-abandoned, hotel.

Southern Portugal was so beautiful, clean and uncrowded. I loved it. The people were so nice and the weather was perfect. I could have enjoyed it a little more if I hadn't been wearing a turtleneck (from losing my luggage) but it was still fantastic. The next day was Sunday and we spent most of the morning searching for where church was held. Lia led us right to the address we got from mormon.org, but when we got there we found a sign saying that the church meetings had been moved to the next town over. So we went to the next town but never found church. It was fun exploring the beautiful little towns of Southern Portugal where they seem to only sell white paint. It makes everything seem so clean and beautiful. I was wearing a really interesting church outfit (due to my still lost luggage) of my turtleneck with a borrowed skirt from Megan so I was secretly glad that we didn't find the church meeting. I know, bad, but I felt like a total dork. Maybe my lack of faith and desire was the reason we didn't find it.

We spent the rest of the day (after I changed back into my pants) exploring the little towns of Southern Portugal and walking along the beaches and cliffs. At night we drove across the border and into Spain. We spent the night in Seville. The best thing ever happened when we got to Seville...that's right, my luggage was there! Air France flew it to Seville and even dropped it off at our hotel. I gave my suitcase a kiss and a hug and instantly changed clothes.

We happened to go to Spain during Holy Week which was both a good and a bad thing...we got to see a whole bunch of Catholic Processions in celebration of Holy Week, but a lot of things were shut down (like shopping) or more expensive (like hotels) or more crowded (like the streets) because of Holy Week. It was still way worth it though, because nobody does Holy Week like the Spaniards, nobody. In some parts of Spain people even volunteer to be whipped or hung on a cross, but luckily we didn't see any of that craziness where we were...just huge processions day and night with big statues (more like floats) of Christ and Mary moved through the streets by men wearing KKK or executioner looking hats and women wearing all black and veils. Little kids carry huge candles and there were wax drippings everywhere.

Anyway, we spent the next day in Seville at the huge cathedral there. We saw the tomb of Christopher Columbus and a lot of cool Catholic stuff. We drove to Gibraltar later that day and spent the late afternoon and evening there. We called Gibraltar "Wee Britain" in honor of Arrested Development. Gibraltar is actually owned by the U.K. so everyone spoke English there. All of the other spinsters were so used to me being the communicator due to the fact that I was the only one that spoke Spanish and a tiny bit of Portuguese that when we were in "Wee Britain" they would ask me to go ask for directions or something and I would go up to the person and ask them in English. It took us a couple of times of doing that for us all to realize that I didn't have to be the communicator in "Wee Britain." Gibraltar was really cool...you can see both Europe and Africa from Gibraltar...the views are great. And the Spinstermobile got attacked by monkeys, literally, so that was exciting too. There isn't much room on Gibraltar, as it is just a rock, and Kate did an amazing job driving those tiny, crowded streets and we didn't even get in a wreck.

I'm getting a little long here and I know that nobody will read my post if I get too long. So, I'm going to try to be a little more brief and then I'll add hyperlinks linking some of the words to Wikipedia articles about those places for those who want to learn more. Anyway, we spent the night in Tarifa at this cute little family run hotel where the next morning the owner of the hotel, who found us five spinsters traveling together to be quite an interesting and funny thing, drove us to the ferry dock where we caught a ferry to Morocco. It only takes 35 minutes by ferry to get to Tangier (the Tijuana of Morocco). We took a guided tour there because everyone had us so freaked out about five white girls doing Morocco on our own but after having been there we all wished that we had just done it on our own. It wasn't as scary/adventurous/dangerous as we were all hoping it would be. Oh well, I guess it is better that way... I can just see Kate or me doing something dumb and ending up in a Moroccan prison. Better safe than sorry.

That evening we drove through the beautiful white hill towns of Southern Spain and headed into Granada. Southern Spain is gorgeous. I could definitely live there. Granada is great too...it is a bigger city though and not nearly so charming as those little white hilled towns. I have always wanted to go to Granada though because I knew this crazy (for real) old lady when I was a missionary in Argentina who was originally from Granada and would talk and talk about Granada and how wonderful it was. She only had about a five minute track of conversation that would then repeat over and over and a lot of that track of conversation was about her childhood in Granada. At the end of the track she always broke into some song about Granada and would sing Granaaaaaaaaaaada, Granaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaada. She was right, Granada and really all of Southern Spain is worth singing about. The main thing we saw in Granada is the amazing Alhambra. That night we drove through Cordoba up to Toledo. The scenery is beautiful on that drive changing from mountains to hills and hills of olive trees to wheat fields. Gorgeous.

Toledo is a cool old town. We spent the next day there as well as in the Consuegra which is in the La Mancha region. Toledo was the first night we slept five to one room. It was Holy Thursday and the hotels were all taking advantage of that by completely ripping people off. So we showed them and all stayed in one room to save money. It was actually kind of fun and was an adventure sneaking in the three extra "guests." Think mission impossible...yes, we made plans, created distractions, and even thought about covering up security cameras. All of our sneaking in missions were successful.

The next day we went to Segovia and Avila which are north of Madrid. The drive was beautiful and so were those little towns. The next morning we had planned to go to the temple in Madrid but when we went to get into the Spinstermobile we found that she had a flat tire. Kate, Megan, Candace and Sarah tried to change the flat tire while I tried to get in contact with the car rental place so they could help us find somewhere to fix the tire since it was Easter weekend and the entire country of Spain was shut down. Lucky for me I was the translator and therefore didn't have to be a tire changer because I don't know how to change a tire. Yes, I can't drive stick or change a tire. I'll learn someday I promise. Well that tire was rusted on big time and the spinsters and several people that stopped by to help us couldn't change it either. So some nice immigrants from Central America called their mechanic friend who came by, greased the wheel up, and changed it for us...for free. I love Central Americans. So, we got to go to the temple in Madrid after all. I was glad because in the session we went to was a member from Italy that I taught in the MTC when he was preparing to serve a mission in the United States. It really is a small world when you are in The Church.

The next morning we went to church with my cousin Audrey's friend Luly and her cute little family that are living in Madrid right now. We spent the afternoon just exploring Madrid and the Prado. The next morning Kate, Sarah, and I flew to Barcelona (Megan and Candace drove the Spinstermobile back to Lisbon and went back to the U.S. from there). We spent a couple of days in Barcelona where we walked along La Rambla, ate tons of gelato, and saw La Sagrada Familia (a huge cathedral that has been being built since 1882 and is still not finished... and you thought the SLC temple took forever to build!) Barcelona was really great. I always thought I wanted to live in Barcelona and was a little disappointed to find out that Spanish isn't their primary language there...I want to live somewhere where they speak only Spanish so I can better my language skills. Oh well, I guess I'll have to live in Southern Spain.

Overall the trip was so much fun. We saw and did a ton and had a lot of great adventures and made great memories. I can't wait for our next spinster reunion!

The four older spinsters showing off our Spinster t-shirts that Kate made us

Lunch at the beach in Southern Portugal