Going to Andalusia

We have been planning and eagerly anticipating this trip for months. We left on Dec 26th at around 9:30am. We all packed light, so that it wouldn't be too difficult to walk from our house to the tramvia, from the tramvia to the metro and then on to Sants Estacio where we would catch the AVE (high speed train). The kids were pretty good about carrying their own luggage. When we got to Sants Estacio, we found out that our train was cancelled. No one from Renfe (Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Españoles) seemed too concerned even though we would miss our connection to Málaga in Madrid.

So we sat at the station for an extra hour and caught the next train to Madrid. Fortunately we were able to get on another train for Málaga right away, so we arrived only about an hour late. We picked up our rental car, a neat little Fiat 500 L. It was nice to be able to fit the whole family in such a little car.

We were to meet up with the owners of the house we were renting for the week at a gas station in Casabermeja, which is a small town about 30 minutes north of Málaga. I thought it was strange that we had to meet up at a gas station and not the actual house, but after following them up the mountain to the house we quickly realized that we would never have found the house on our own, the road is not even on the GPS.

The house was the perfect size for us. 3 large bedrooms, two bathrooms, big kitchen and living room. The only problem we found was the cold. These country houses don't have central heating, and basically no hot water (it got sort of warm). Over night the temperature dropped below zero. Fortunately they had heaters in each of the bedrooms and the beds were very warm. There was also a heater under the table in the living room so we sat around that table every moment that we were not in bed, and we drank a lot of hot chocolate.

The next morning, we discovered the beautiful view from our house. Bob even saw a mountain cat!