The adventure continues

(I recently found out that some of you are posting comments that aren't showing up. A few show up, but not all of them. I am not really sure why, I will look in to it and see if I can figure it out.)

Antequera had a big festival to celebrate the world heritage site designation. It started at 10 pm (!) and the whole town came out. There are 25,000 candles lit in squares and churches, light displays on the sides of buildings, and food carts.
We made it to about 11:30 pm until the boys were too tired to continue, but the party continued, including toddlers and seniors out in the streets.
The next day we went to Lobo Park, a wolf sanctuary/reserve. They are breeding wolves and studying behavior and nutrition. They have a large property and have multiple packs, and they do their best to maintain natural behavior. They socialize pups starting at about 10 days old, but only enough so they aren't terrified of people (because they couldn't study their behavior if the wolves never came around). But they don't really cuddle and play with them, so they aren't "tame". They only need to do this with one generation, because the following generations learn from the elders that people aren't a threat.
It is amazing how much their behavior is like a dog's (of course it should be, it just is fascinating to me). They didn't seem a lot different than a scared German Shepherd in the clinic, I felt like I could read them pretty well, though wasn't about to try an exam 😟

My parents arrived, and Monte and my mom went off to Barcelona. The rest of us went to Ronda, a beautiful hilltop city. This is the "New Bridge", about 200 years old
 We went to the remains of the Arab baths, which were fascinating. They had an excellent video explaining everything, which really helps you understand what you are looking at. It was basically three rooms - the hot room was a sauna, the warm room was a massage area, and the cold room was cool water baths. It was an important religious and social location for many years.
They also had a great archaeology museum with well-done exhibits.

Jeff and I then started our solo adventure. We had a very early flight out of Málaga to Lisbon, Portugal, where we had a 12-hour layover to explore the city, then on to Prague, Czech Republic. Our flight to Prague was 90 minutes late, so we didn't get in until 1:30 am, making for a 22-hour exhausting day.

Lisbon is a beautiful city on a large bay. We did a hop on/hop off bus tour so we could see more of the sights. One of my favorite things about Lisbon was the fantastic sidewalk designs:



There was a very large earthquake/tsunami/fire in 1755, which destroyed a lot of the lower city.
We visited St. Jeronimo's monastery, the cloisters were beautiful

They also had a fantastic archaeology museum, with several Egyptian sarcophagi, we couldn't take pictures though.

And now we are in Prague. I have heard great things about this city, and it is certainly living up to the hype. Apparently Hitler loved Prague, and did not allow it to be bombed, so it is one of the few large cities in Europe that is still intact. Everywhere you look, there is some incredible ancient building. So many other cities had to be rebuilt after WW2, but not Prague, so we can see the original buildings.


Today we visited Prague castle and several churches, St. Vitus cathedral, St. Nicholas church, and the Church of our Lady Victorious. The last is famous for the infant Jesus, a 19 inch tall figure that is 500 years old. People all over the world have made robes for him, and he has more than 300. Pope Benedict visited him in 2009 and gave him a crown. He is behind glass, so photos are tough, but here is an image from the internet.

And here are some church photos




Thanks for following, we have about 4 weeks left, time is flying by! I have come to the conclusion that I could travel full time, I think Teo could also, I am not sure about Jeff and Monte. If only I (a) played the lottery and (b) won the lottery.

Kristi

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