On the way to our next hotel, we stopped off in Seville for lunch. A busy little town steeped in culture. We were able to see Calatrava' bridge, the bull ring, several of the down town streets and ended our break with the Cathedral. Amazing cathedral that houses Columbus' tomb and several priceless relics. We were only in the city for around 4 hours, but we gained a good feel for the area and a lot of the culture.

Lagos was the portion of the trip that suffered the most from our debacle. I had aggressively scheduled 1 day of travel, then a day in an area for the make-up of the entire trip in order to see as much as possible. Plus most of the travel was supposed to be 90 minutes trips to the next hotel. But because of the theft of Nikki's passport we had to venture back to Lisbon on our off travel day. So we didn't see as much of the tip of Portugal as we would have liked and we lost out on a prearranged sea voyage to swim with dolphins and tour some caves. Oh well. We did enjoy what we did see though and continued our string of eating good seafood.

From Sintra we started our drive south to Lagos. First we stopped off in Belem (basically Lisbon) for some pics of a couple monuments. Little did we realize that we would be back in Lisbon the next day. Then we had lunch near the first beach pic in Sines. After that stop, you can see a pic of the beach that we were at when we were robbed. I scanned the picture to see if I could see anyone running with a computer bag, purse and toiletries bag. We ventured on to Lagos after the break-in, but we waited on taking more pictures until the following day. I think we were just too worn out from the whole ordeal. More to come.

On with the pics. I forgot to mention how much we enjoyed the Spain's Royal Palace in Madrid. Definitely one of our favorites over here, but we were not able to take photos of it. Very well since they would have been stolen anyway.

Sintra, is west of Lisbon. It has a couple of Portugal's Royal Palaces, with the most famous one sitting atop the tallest mountain in the area. A hodge-podge of architecture, but very beautiful in its own way.

A pic of us per the request. Nikki heads the people pics dept. I'll let her know that her staff is letting her down. I tend to act like a little kid in pictures, I never sit still enough or something.

Wikipedia page for the Pena Palace above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pena_Palace

Finally I can post some pictures of the trip. The Madrid pictures were part of the stuff that was stolen, so we start the pics with Lisbon instead. The city had a good feel to it and seemed to be of decent size, even though we did everything we wanted to do in a little over a day. The old portion of the city had many pedestrian only streets which were filled with restaurants and vendors. I would recommend a trip here, but not sure that it is really worth more than a couple days. It had a good vibe though.

Slightly sad, but it appeared the dog was really enjoying his work. Sorry the video is so short. Someone stood up in front of me and for the next song the dog wouldn't sing.

A well timed concert definitely lifted our spirits a lot. Amazing show and well worth £10 we spent on it for charity. Tremendous energy from a bunch of old guys and the new songs sounded great.

Well first the bad...

As many of you know our car was broken in to on our 4th day out of a 1o day trip to Spain and Portugal. We had stopped south of Lisbon on our way to Lagos at a very public beach with tons of tourists and open surroundings. After about 15 minutes on the beach I realized that we might not be at the one I wanted to be at so we decided to keep moving south. Got back to car to discover the little side window broken out. So my work laptop, phone, keys, various other work things, Nikki's purse + numerous items in it, passport, money, and her makeup and toiletries back were all stolen from the trunk. To sum it up, they left our clothes, travel guides, and my toiletries bag.

Yes, it was frustrating (and still is) as you can imagine, but we persevered. I cannot thank the lifeguards, vacationers, police and hotel staff that offered help or helped us along the way. Hearing family's voices and concern at times like this also comforted us a bunch. We took a breath and decided to keep going. So we missed out on a beach day and a sea trip, and headed back to Lisbon to get Nikki a new passport. I can't think of much else we let the incident make us miss.

The next part was getting back into the studio. I had left messages with my boss/landlord about the keys, but he had mistaken my message thinking that we had found a set. So when we landed at 11.45 Saturday the real fun began. He had arranged for spare keys to be left outside his house. The next 7 hours were almost comical. First, after talking the border people through Nikki's lack of visa for school, we took our pre-booked bus trip back to Central London. Next, we tried to get a cab to my boss' house. Well that was going to be anywhere between $120-230, so we opted for the bus trip. After a stop to our storage shed in our garden to drop off luggage, we ventured on to Nick's house. A total of 4 buses, a lot of partyers, 45 minutes of walking and a lot colder weather than Spain/Portugal we made it to his house at 3.45 am. Turns out the keys were for the wrong Studio. We woke up his wife to see if she had a spare, I think I forgot to say Nick was in France on a holiday himself. All she had were office keys, in which I thought there may be a set. So we start the return. Another interesting point was that the buses switch schedules at 5, so our bus route didn't exist anymore, but we found another to the office. We made it to the office about 5.30 or so and low and behold 2 sets of keys that resembled ours. Back to the studio and we were in the studio by around 6.30, just in time for daybreak.

What an ordeal. A couple things to keep in mind. We left the Mediterranean Sea (Malaga) at around 8 BST. The whole path after between Central London and Nick's house is probably under 10 miles. Waiting for buses, walking to other stations and such took a lot of time. I told Nikki that we might have fallen to sleep and road a loop of the route the way it seemed.

After all of that 'fun' we managed to rest today and start to repair other things that were lost. Probably the worst bit is that I figure we lost between 11,000-12,000 pictures of all of travels, along with personal work things and emails. The advice for today kiddies, make sure to keep a separate drive of those things you really care about, even if you are roughing it in a foreign land for a year.

But next up all the fun we had...

Well actually is is raining a lot today and we had one day of rain over the weekend. Living here has definitely made me squash any dreams of living in the Pacific Northwest, at least until I grow some flippers.

We are quietly preparing for our trip to Spain and Portugal. It appears that we will have bright sunshine and few chances of rain. Smiles are starting already. We'll leave out Thursday for a much needed 10 day trip. We are both looking forward to the trip since most of our non-working trips have been under 5 days this year. The trip will be an exciting road trip around the SW of the peninsula. Can't wait. Hopefully I can send some pictures along the way.

Besides that, one of us has been frustrated by North American sport teams and the other has been preparing for school. I've told Nikki not to get so wrapped up in Cardinal baseball and MSU, because they tend to disappoint at times. Ha, I think her frustrations actually deal with my mood swings per game at this time of year and the fact that I am glued to the computer at all times of the night. I can't officially say RIP STL 2008, but I think they are about to pull the plug. Someone will have to explain Bulldog football to me, but I saw where someone joined our cellar dwelling in the SEC last night. I have never liked the color Orange.

So we are rapidly approaching our trip. Plus we just purchased £5 tickets to Metallica's release party when we return. I can't think of another concert where I spent so little. The next couple weeks should be fun.