Category Archives: Life in Spain

New Year’s Eve in Spain!

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Every country has its own traditions and Spain has some pretty fun ones.

New Year’s Eve is no exception and this is one of the Spanish traditions that you can do in your own home!

If you are in Spain on New Year’s Eve you will find pretty much everyone in a square or plaza hanging out with friends and eating and drinking.  When the clock strikes 12 everyone eats 12 grapes (ideally one for every strike!) and you will have luck all year long.  The grapes here are crazy big and generally have seeds, but you’ll see cans of grapes (conveniently 12 grapes!) for sale that are smaller and easier to eat.

This started one year (many many years ago) with a bigger than normal grape harvest.  The farmers couldn’t get rid of their grapes so they  basically started the tradition! A great way to get rid of the grapes and the start of a fun tradition.

We are generally boring and stay home with the kids because its a bit insane to be out with the kids (although it’s pretty normal to see kids running around that late anyways) but we like to have our grapes at home anyway.  Thankfully I can get some smaller grapes from the commissary so we can actually eat them!

 

Is it summer yet?

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I know we JUST celebrate Christmas but I am done with winter.  It was 39 degrees this morning when I came to work. I know some of my friends (especially one friend in North Dakota!) would laugh at me, and I did live in North Idaho for 5 years but I am out of winter shape!  It’s cold! We are supposed to be in southern Spain!

Of course I am here complaining about the cold and my kids are begging to go to Germany again this year so they can play in the snow!  While I don’t know if we’ll get to Germany we might take a day trip to the mountains, Spain has its own Sierra Nevada mountain range near Granada.

I think I would have preferred moving to Hawaii RIGHT NOW instead of in the middle of summer! It seems a lot of people stationed in Hawaii complain about having a warm Christmas but it sounds REALLY good right about now!

Baby steps toward Hawaii!

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And I mean really baby steps, nothing big.

Last week I took the dog to get his second rabies vaccine so we don’t have to quarantine him when we get to Hawaii.  Next month he’ll have to go back and get blood drawn so it can be sent off and tested, making sure he is totally rabies free. Yay!

Although he had me rethinking taking him this weekend.  I noticed him acting a little funny so I let him outside and walked with him… What does this dummy do? Hork up a pair of my underwear and one of my son’s socks.  And yes barfing them is preferable to an intestinal blockage but dang it, stop eating everything!

 

The next thing isn’t REALLY even a step, but I had ordered a copy of Oahu Revealed (by Andrew Doughty) I have been having so much fun paging through and planning all of the awesome stuff I am going to be doing soon!

We have a book here in Rota that pretty much everyone uses, it’s called 40 Day Trips from Rota. It is wonderful.  While it doesn’t have as much information, it is so helpful on navigating some of the crazy Spanish roads, towns and customs.  I received my copy when a friend moved but I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay it forward, I want to keep it as a souvenir!

 

Rota… my home away from home.

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So our little town of Rota, Spain is pretty small. Maybe 25,000 people WAY more in summertime with all of the tourists that come in from  all over Europe.  From the main gate of our base it’s less than five minutes to drive to the marina where you can park for free in the off season.  From there you can walk to past the lighthouse to an awesome beachfront promenade that spans almost the whole length of the town.

There is also a great rock pier that is great for photo taking opportunities:

Lighthouse from the pier. Marina is on the right, Hotel Duque de Naranja is straight ahead, beach to the left

We also have a wonderful old Moorish castle as well as a beautiful church right near the water.  The castle is called El Castillo de Luna and was built while the Moors inhabited this part of Spain (during this same occupation is when the Moors built the Alhambra)  The castle went through a few different incarnations, including a school, and is now a government building.  Thankfully you can still tour it.

And on the inside is a beautiful courtyard with a sunken fountain:

The walls still have original Moorish artwork from the 13th century *swoon*!!  The artwork was uncovered during renovations and they were able to keep much of it intact and have veeeeeery carefully tried to match the patterns in areas that had been removed.

And one of the doors off of the courtyard…

The church is in the same square as the castle and while pictures of the inside NEVER turn out because you cannot use a flash in there I have taken many many pictures of the lovely doors:

                           

Oh yeah, I also have the cutest kiddos in the WORLD.

The start of the holiday craziness…

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The Christmas madness has officially started. 

Friday night we had our tree lighting ceremony on base.  It’s gotten MUCH better from our first year here, when it consisted of lights hung up in a tree shape in front of our PSD building.  We now have a real (fake) tree with lights, decorations and giant fake presents….  The girl scouts were handing out cookies and the boy scouts were giving out hot chocolate.  The high school band was there along with the cheerleaders and dance teams. 

Santa flew in on a helicopter.

That is always a showstopper.

At four years old my son really gets it this year and has gone from being PAINFULLY shy around strangers to actually talking when people talk to him! Yay! So I was AMAZED when he said he wanted to go say ‘hi’ to Santa by the firetruck.  We ended up not getting to talk to him but he did wave and smile.  We had a mini meltdown when the boy scouts ran out of candy canes but good thing the Commissary is 10 feet away! $1 later and all is well again and we had plenty extra to give out to some friends who also missed out on them.

I would post pictures but they were all taken with my phone and are craptastic.  I may update with some stolen FB photos later…

Sunday was breakfast with Santa at the galley.  We were expecting a crazy amount of people so got there about 15 minutes early…. aaaaand there was no one there yet. So we goofed around playing on this AWESOME tree outside that I always make M climb.

climbing on this crazy tree that I don't have a name for

When finally we went inside to get some breakfast.  It was a nice treat, we pretty much never go there to eat but its not bad. Less than $5 for each person, eggs made to order and some additional breakfast stuff to choose from. I was pretty happy with my tortilla con todo which is just an omelette with the works.  While they were trying to sucker me into letting them hit the soft serve ice cream at 10:30 in the morning we decided to do a quick photo with Santa while there was no line.
 

Yay! A smiling Santa picture!

Then home to finally pull out all of the Christmas stuff. I did it and it was as horrible and time consuming as I thought it was going to be.  The kids had fun helping me put up the decorations, I had a classic Christmas song station playing over the iPod. (Which drove my kids crazy. They were like Bing who?) Everything is cleaned up, empty totes put away and now have the apple cinnamon candles burning and the lights shining. Now I really need to get my butt online and get to ordering some gifts!
 
Merry Christmas!
~Reb

Cell Phones in Spain

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Here is a little informative post for anyone who stumbles onto this blog looking for information about living in Spain, specifically on Naval Station Rota (NavSta Rota).

Pretty much everyone here uses prepaid cell phones.  If you have a quad band phone (that is unlocked) you should be able to use it here. We accumulated cell phones quite a bit while stateside so we had a few to choose from, our blackberry works just fine.

The cell phone company of choice is Movistar, they have a small store in the Navy Exchange where you can go purchase a SIM card that includes some minutes. The SIM card is either $20 or 20 Euro, I forget.

If you don’t have a phone that will work here they sell phones in the store as well, you can get a pretty basic phone with SIM for $30-40.  They don’t have a huge selection, I don’t think there are too many phones with camera or any smartphones there to choose from.

After that you just have to keep going back to put money onto your phone, the minutes go pretty quick and you can’t let your balance sit at zero for more than a month or your number will expire.  We’ve never had a problem with the service, its worked great all over Europe.

Pretty much everyone goes through cell phone withdrawal when they get here. I didn’t have my own phone for the first two years, we had a cell phone for the house which we pretty much only took with us if we were going for a drive in case of an emergency.  To go from having unlimited talking and texting to having to pay for every single call or text sucked! I know there are plans available but I believe you need to have a Spanish bank account to get one. I don’t know anyone with a plan so I can’t give details.