Sonya's Patates Braavos: Edition #15 💌🥔

TLDR: Spain week two

welcome note 👋 

Hello, brave patates! 🥔 Wrapping up week two in Spain over here. It’s about 10:42 pm.

travel blog 🇪🇸

On Monday, we went to Cordoba and saw the Mezquita-Cathedral (mosque-cathedral dating back to the 7th century with 856 Roman pillars). After traveling Europe for a bit and seeing 100500 churches, I’ve gotten a bit tired of it. My main purpose of going to Cordoba was because I read a trilogy by Dina Rubina about the Sephardic Jews who lived here prior to the 1492 exile and inquisition. Well, what do you know, the 1315 synagogue and the Sephardim museum were both closed on Monday so I didn’t even see a single Jewish star. Hope to rectify this during a day trip to Toledo next week. Then we had a delicious lunch at an Arabic teahouse and then pondered the Roman bridge with a gorgeous view of the town.

Tuesday was our last day in Seville, so we worked, did laundry, and had dinner with David’s sister Anna. Spain is kind of weird for food - some places have amazing reviews, lineups, and well-dressed chefs but the food is… meh. Not seasoned enough, lacking flavour. My squid at this fancy place still had its guts full of sand which was unpleasant to find out as I was eating it and a big faux pas of seafood… We did see a gorgeous park with swans, ducks, pigeons, turtles, and random local ducks I haven’t seen anywhere else! I’m very impressed with the Spanish dedication to landscaping and gardening.

On Wednesday we picked up our rental car to drive to a resort for a week, during which I began listening to my Exponential Coaching Academy opening meeting! It’s an 8-month program from Misha Saidov where I will learn to be an Exponential Coach - combining emotional regulation with cognition to have meaningful behaviour change. First, we learn what programs and patterns we operate from. Then we can help others find home - the calm and light not coloured by any experiences. It’s only through recognizing what limits are holding us back, and what mindset we are operating from, that we can make change. I will need folks to practice with so reply to this email if you are interested in a free introductory session in 5-6 weeks!

We are now at the Barcelo Conil Playa resort on the Atlantic Ocean coast - it’s absolutely stunning with turquoise water, rich beige sands, and tall cliffs. Oh, and many Spanish women are topless on the beach, and it’s totally normal here and not sexualized (like nude saunas in Finland and Sweden) - it’s refreshing to see all bodies and after you see a lot of boobs it’s not that mystical... Idk why North America makes it so weird.

Anyways we have breakfast and dinner included at the resort which is pretty sweet. The beach is a short walk away and it’s all public - it’s not allowed in Spain to own a private portion of the beach. The food here is decent, with some stuff questionable, and some really good. Thankfully, it’s quiet - a lot of older Germans (all food signs are in English, Spanish, and German lol).

Yesterday, we drove 1.5 hr each way to Gibraltar! We were thoroughly disappointed by the British capacity to make signs and maps for the Gibraltar Nature Reserve and their not maintaining trails despite sharing 20 euros per head for entrance… Regardless, it was cool to do simple customs from Spain to Britain and then walk across a live airfield to get to the Rock! We saw old tunnels all throughout the Rock. Gibraltar survived 14 sieges from the year 1704 when the Anglo-Dutch alliance won it from Spain. The mountain advantage allowed just 7,000 British to withstand the Great 4-year Siege by the Spanish and French armies comprising 65,000 people. We saw the St. Michael’s Cave, which the British thought was bottomless (it’s 700 feet deep) and it now hosts concerts with an auditorium in the cave fitting 400 people! We saw the famous macaques, who were very calm, walked 25K steps, and saw three countries from the Skywalk! It was an intense survival-level exercise in the heat but we made it, with two stops at McDonald’s (they have affogato here).

till next time!