Jerez, Spain - Miel de Rancho Cortesano

October 24, 2015

The Campo de la Miel has 25 years’ experience with beekeeping.  The farm has 2,000 hives where they collect the honey, pollen, and propolis to sell in their shop.  They make breads and lotions for sale from the hive products.  The farm also has a tasty vegetarian restaurant where we had lunch.  As part of our tour we got to get decked out in the beekeeping gear see a hive get opened.  I really enjoyed being around all the bees again.  Our last activity of the tour was picking out a pumpkin and carving it.  The lady giving the tour was very funny trying to explain the pumpkin carving techniques.  She would say that there was really no need to tell us Americans how to properly carve a pumpkin.  I think that Owen’s favorite part was the playground and chickens.

Seville, Spain - Bullfight October 12

October 12, 2015

I went to the Real Maestranza in Seville to see Antonio Nazare, Miguel Delgado and Esau Fernandez take on six Las Ramblas bulls.  These were large bulls from 525 kg to 590 kg (1155-1298 lbs.)  Real Maestranza is a 1st class ring so it only features tough, big bulls.  All three fighters were from Sevilla.  This was an out of season fight which was a fundraiser for the Cruz Roja.  Miguel Delgado earned one ear.  The memorable part of the night was a 4/6 of horses got taken down by the bulls.  Miguel Delago got trampled by a bull and this might have contributed to him getting an ear out of compassion.  The killing was clean except Esau Fernandez had to descaballo both of his bulls and his second took two escopardas.  The veronica work was unimpressive for all six bulls.  The muleta work got the band playing twice (Miguel Delgado and Esau Fernandez’s second bulls.)    It rained hard in morning and I wondered if the fight would get cancelled.  However, by 1700 it was a beautiful day at the plaza.  

Zurich, Switzerland

October 9 - 11, 2015

Zurich is a global center for banking and finance situated in central Switzerland.  While Zurich has the largest population, airport, and main train station, the capital of Switzerland is Bern.  More people travel through the train station than the total population of the city. The city has been permanently inhabited since the Roman times for 2,000 years, but there is evidence of human habitation from 6,400 years ago. The most notable church of Zurich is the Grossmunster built in the 12th century with twin towers.  In the early 1500s a sect of the Protestant Reformation was led from the church by Ulrich Zwingli.  Inside is a stone sculpture of Charlemagne.  Some of the windows aren’t made of glass, but instead very thin slices of geode stones.  Church of Our Lady Fraumunster has a slender blue spire that is very easy to spot in Zurich’s skyline.  The last church we saw is the St. Peter Church which has the largest clock face in Europe. The clock face measures 8.7m in diameter. There are five bells dating from 1880 in the tower – the largest of which weighs over six tons without its clapper. Some of its foundation walls are from the 9th century. We went on a day trip into the countryside to Lucerne. It site on the coast of Lake Lucerne. The Lion Monument is a beautiful carving into the face of a stone cliff that is dedicated to the Swiss Body-Guards of Louis XVI of France who fell during the French Revolution.  This was on August 10th, 1792 at the royal palace at the Tuileries in Paris. We also were able to walk across the Chapel Bridge.  This bridge was first mentioned in text in 1367 as part of the city’s fortifications.  The 111 gables were painted in the 17th and 18th century.  A fire in August of 1993 destroyed all but 47 of the paintings. Our main stop was Mt. Pilatus, which is 7,000 feet above sea level where we could see 73 alpine peaks from the peak.  Our visit had a significant amount of cloud cover that we went through while riding the cable cars.  It was very stunning to see the peaks looking like islands among the clouds. Going back down the mountain we went on the world’s steepest cogwheel railway with an average of a 40% slope. The guy who planned building that was very ambitious!