New Years Bullfight

Reflecting Pool at the Alhambra
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The week with the family went quickly... started out here in Marbella at a great hotel on the beach, spent a few days playing Blokus (one of the all-time great board games, as far as I'm concerned), then headed off for Ronda, Granada, Nerja, and Malaga before coming back to Marbella.  We saw Moorish castles, the Alhambra, a Picasso museum, and all sorts of great scenery while making a big circle around the province of Andalucia.

The real coup fourre of the week didn't come until last night.  Usually, my New Years Eve plans are pretty tame. Usually, I hang out with friends and watch the ball drop on TV. Usually, I try to keep things low-key.  So naturally, when we were driving around Marbella yesterday and a guy with a wooden box and a wrinkled poster asked us if we'd like tickets to the bullfight that would be taking place that evening, our instinctive reaction was, "We'd be crazy not to."

The family at the Alhambra
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Yup, bullfighting.  Like with swords and guts and little feathery darts that they stab the bull with to weaken it before going in for the death blow.  My father, brother, and I spent two hours watching matadors drive spikes into the neck of an exhausted, bloody bull.  As if that wasn't enough, apparently the reward to a matador for a job well done is the ears of the bull he just killed.  Someone takes a dagger, hacks off the ears, and gives them to the matador as a trophy.  Well, apparently even the matador is nauseated at the prospect of taking home furry, bloody bull ears as a prize, so what does he do?  He throws them into the cheering crowd!  Yup, like a baseball player might toss a ball to a little kid during batting practice, except instead of a baseball, the kid is getting something slightly more grotesque.

"Ole!" Riiiight...
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So now I'm thinking, "Maybe Spanish kids like this.  Maybe they're going to hope and pray that one of these little furry things comes their way."  I thought that until the matador chucked one up to a little girl about five rows from where we were sitting.  It hit her on the shoulder, left a blood stain, and fell to the ground.  This poor girl--who couldn't have been more than four--picked up the ear with her thumb and first finger, regarded it with curiosity, and broke out into tears.  All I can say is that it's a damn good thing they put EuroDisney in France instead of Spain.  Mickey wouldn't have stood a chance.

So that's that.  I said goodbye to my folks this morning and they headed off to catch their flights back home, and now I am, once again, flying solo.  The question of "Where next?" is still kind of open at the moment.  I would absolutely love to do the camel riding in the Sahara, but it means running all the way down to southern Morocco and then back up to make my flight.  I could spend the next month just around Spain, Portugal, and Andorra, but it remains to be seen.  Doing research online right now.  Will know soon enough.

Oh, and pictures are up at http://community.webshots.com/user/marcswatson3