Krista & Brian's Amsterdam Travels: June 2009

Like I said before, I have no intention of making this a dog blog. But I figured there was no harm in adding a few updates!

Our dog is growing up quickly - she's getting much bigger, and behaving much better. We can now (finally!) sleep through the night without having to get up and go down five flights of stairs to let her outside, and we can actually take her to restaurants without having her get restless or pee on the floor. Basically, she's starting to act more like a dog than a puppy... making her much easier to be around!

Here are a few recent photos:

Rocket chewing on her favorite bone

Rocket getting mauled by other puppies at the kennel when we went to Spain

Rocket laying in her favorite bed

A random picture of Fishstick making a scary face - just thought I'd throw this one in too!

- Krista

Since it might be a while until Brian gets another month off (ok, this may never happen again), we decided to make the most of it and get out of town. We decided to go to the South of Spain, since Brian had never been there and what we both wanted was a beach vacation.

We flew into Sevilla, a moderately big, interesting city Southwest of Madrid. We had read that the temperature was going to hover around 100 degrees when we were there, so we made sure to get a hotel with a pool and decided to stay only one night.

Sevilla was great, and we swam, walked around the city and had some lovely vegetarian tapas (I've always been in love with Spain, aside from their food - they put tuna or ham on anything that might otherwise be vegetarian). The only bad thing was that I got my wallet stolen! I was pretty bummed about it, since I had absolutely everything in there - my U.S. driver's license, Dutch ID card, library card, credit cards (we canceled these before the thief got to them), etc. But it could have been much worse, and I was incredibly greatful to have my passport still, since going to the U.S. embassy during a trip is never a fun thing.

After Sevilla we took a train down to the city of Málaga, a beach town that relatively few Americans visit but is well known by British and German holiday-ers. We didn't feel like traveling around a lot, so we booked the hotel for four nights and just decided to do a few day trips to keep ourselves busy.

We had a really fun, relaxing time - exactly what we needed. We went to the beach a lot, and even made it to the nearby waterpark, Aquapark, which was a blast (wave pool, intertubes, slides - just like when I was a kid!). We took a few day trips to the nearby town Torremolinos, which was much bigger and nicer than I expected, and had a great beach.

By the end of the trip we were ready to come home - which is always a good thing - and it was nice to see the animals and the familiar surroundings. But we hope to travel again soon!

Here are a few highlights from the trip: