Spain

I'm back in the United Stated and am finally getting toward the end of going through my pictures from Europe.  I've decided to finish them based on countries and will upload them in the order I visited each place.

First a little about our trip, as most of you know Nickie and I got to europe by boat so we were fortunate enough to port in Spain.  This was awesome because we weren't going to visit Spain if we had flown to Europe.

It took us nine days at sea to cross the Atlantic and we've never been so happy to see land and so sick of water.  The ocean is vast and beautiful with an emphasis on vast, while the beautiful part wears thin after about five days.  We stuffed ourselves with Garden burgers and pretty bad pizza during the day and ate pretty well later in the day when we dined in the formal dining room.  The on board entertainment was your garden variety off the strip style cheesy, but it was fun in a kitschy kind of way.

We finally docked in Malaga and got our first taste of Europe, which included a visit to a the Picasso Museum, he grew up in Malaga.  The exhibit was pretty thorough  running from his early years as a formal style painter to the point where he started to create his own style and well into his cubism years.

After the museum we walked around downtown Malaga and decided to hike up the fortified wall, which about half way up I kind of regretted until we got to the top and could see the entire city and into the bull fighting ring.  After 30 minutes of rest and picture taking we made our way back to the ship to relax and get ready for dinner, it was Valentine's Day and I figured I should smell nice at dinner for Nickie.

After another sea day we docked in Barcelona and explored La Ramblas, a cathedral and found a couple really cool punk and metal themed shops.  Then we heard a loud commotion a few blocks away and if there's one thing you do as a photographer it's go toward the loud noise.  What we happened upon was a large protest of the Spanish government entertaining the idea of decreasing funding for public education.  There were costumes and probably close to 1000 plus people out in the streets in a peaceful demonstration.

Well enough of my babbling on here is what you are here for anyways, the pictures.

MALAGA

BARCELONA

Coming Next Italy!