Cartagena, Spain was a beautiful city. In addition to the amazing and rich Roman history, the city today is just beautiful. It was exceptionally clean, which we noticed immediately and kept noticing. The street cleaners were out at the crack of dawn to sweep and wash all the streets in the city centre. And there were constantly cleaning crews all […]
We knew there was a lot of Roman history in Cartagena, Spain. What we did not realize due to our ignorance before we came was that the original, Roman name was Carthago Nova, or in English New Carthage. I went to see the Carthaginian Ruins in Tunisia almost 20 years ago and can remember that visit well. Between that trip […]
We booked four weeks in Cartagena, Spain, which in hindsight was not nearly enough. This area is unbelievable! Katia summed it up well one day on our way home from a hike when she gave a deep, contented sigh as she stared at the gorgeous landscape around us and randomly said, “I could just live here!” We were right on […]
We are NOT big city people at all. We prefer smaller cities, villages, and rural areas the most. We love to be surrounded by nature as much as possible. None of us feel all that comfortable in big cities where there are tons of crowds and people. But, we have our exceptions. And Barcelona is definitely one of them! There’s […]
Our time in Oria and in Spain (for now) has come to an end. Compared to Portugal, the Spanish lifestyle was definitely more challenging to adapt to. Our hosts concurred and did mention that it took them a good year when they moved to Spain from the UK to adjust to that lifestyle. For example, almost every store in town […]
In Oria, we are mainly in a small town and rural area. One of the main features of living in such a place is the cats and dogs everywhere! Here at Shepherd’s Rest, they alone have three cats – Patsy, Livvy, and Evie – as well as four dogs – Taffy, Saffron, Lucky, and Ivy. The girls are completely obsessed […]
We love learning about the history of the places we visit. And we were incredibly intrigued when we learned that the earliest evidence of human life was found less than an hour away from here, in Orce. Some friends we met here earlier in August went there and we decided we would love to go there ourselves. We drove out […]
In summer 2022 we read the entire series of Harry Potter as a family and watched each movie as we finished the corresponding book. The girls LOVED this series, and I’m pretty sure it’s still their favourite book series to date. A particular favourite of Katia’s was Hedwig. She has since gotten a stuffed Hedwig and lots of other owl […]
The Spanish lifestyle (combined with the Spanish heat and lack of AC) has been a real struggle for Jon and me to adjust to. We are trying our best because it is important to us to live authentically in each place we visit and live temporarily. But it’s been hard here! Everything is closed from 2 p.m. until around 6 […]
This is a term we had never heard until January 2023 when another mom at the girls’ school told us what we were planning to do sounded like worldschooling. She told me to check out the Facebook group. Not being much of a Facebook user, it took me a couple of weeks to do so, but the information in that […]