Allie in the South of Spain

As a gift to my mother for her latest milestone birthday (45 years young, right??!!) my dad sent her, my sisters and I to the Big Apple for the weekend. And it. was. great. We left super early on Friday morning and came back on Sunday afternoon. In those 2.5 days we packed in just about everything you can think of in NYC including: Times Square, Rockafeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, FAO Schwartz, Barney's NY, Central Park, the MET, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the 9/11 Memorial and more. It was intense but LOTS of fun! We stayed in a hotel a few blocks away from Times Square which is always crowded and bustling with energy and people. We went both during the day and later at night to check it out. My sisters' and mother's reactions were mixed and in fact I think they might have been a bit disappointed with this, one of NYC's most famous sites. I get it. It's really just a place with lots of advertisements, ...

It's been a few days since Jose and I made it from Spain to Chicago and finally Michigan. We spent a couple of days in Malaga with Jose's aunt, uncle and cousins before getting our plane to Dublin and then on to the USA. As always, it was a long trip but luckily we had good inflight entertainment. I watched the entire "Gone with the Wind" film, all 3 hours and 40 minutes. I also saw "Grand Hotel Budapest," "Lego Movie" and "Labor Day." Long flights are always a good time to see movies I wouldn't otherwise. We spent the night in Chicago after arriving exhausted and then caught the Megabus to Grand Rapids. I had never gone in Megabus before but it was pretty awesome. Not too expensive, fairly quick and seemed reliable. My sister and my niece picked us up and we immediately went out to lunch. We spent a couple of days in GR with my sister, brother-in-law and my niece. We hung around with them and went to a few breweries. Grand Ra...

Castle-village of Castellar Castellar de la Frontera Jose and I recently went to stay a couple of nights in Castellar de la Frontera, a super small village close to Gibraltar. Castellar is located on the top of a mountain and is surrounded by walls. It is basically a converted castle, to give you an idea. It is so small that back in the 1970's the villagers decided to make a second Castellar at the base of the mountain because there was no place to expand. Now the old town is mostly rural houses and a hotel. It is pretty remote, no shops and a couple of small restaurants. We went in the hopes of some peace and quiet and that is what we found. Streets of Castellar de la Frontera Castellar de la Frontera was originally built as a defense point for the Muslims during the Reconquest. It is similar to a lot of other places here in the south of Spain in that they built a castle at the highest, most strategic point in the surrounding area. Castellar is now known for its wind...

Gardens in the Alcazar Palace, Seville If you know me well, you probably know that I have a slight obsession with "Game of Thrones" (both the book and television series). I mean, if you want to take theories for how this will all wrap up, just let me know. I've got a lot. Recently we had been hearing on the news that the HBO hit was scouting locations here in the south of Spain to shoot some of the next season. I always suspected they were looking to find the perfect place to set the kingdom of Dorne, Prince Oberyn's (did you see that head just EXPLODE???) home. The descriptions of this part of the seven Kingdoms always sounded Mediterranean to me and the actor (Chilean I believe) who portrayed the late Oberyn certainly had a Spanish-speaker's accent. Well, it has been confirmed via the U.S. ambassador to Spain that yes, Dorne will be done in the south of Spain and that more specifically some scenes will be shot right here in Seville!! (Read the article her...