Catching up

written by Matt

Hi family and friends! It’s been almost 3 months since we last sent one of these, so it’s time we caught up.

We have a whole post to write about our New Year’s trip to Berlin, Cologne, and Brussels, but I’m going to skip over that one for now. Since then, we explored new Andalucian pueblos blancos (white towns), voyaged to Madrid, hosted an Italian dinner party, started local art classes, and escaped Semana Santa in Bilbao, San Sebastián, and Barcelona.

We also made a huge life decision: Katie and I will both pursue MPhils at the University of Cambridge this fall! We applied to a combined 12 graduate programs in the UK and Europe and crossed our fingers that we would get accepted to at least one together. Thanks to a lot of hard work (and a little luck), we both earned our way into Cambridge. We’ve taken this whole process very seriously and considered countless options for our next steps — we’re so excited for this opportunity.

Katie will study Public Policy with an eye towards community organizing and improving access to the arts. I will study Economic Geography with a focus on the dynamics shaping regional inequality in the US. The coursework and the environment will challenge us and make us miss our sunny days in Sevilla. But we hope the payoff will be worth it.

With that out of the way, here are some photos from the last few months in Andalucia, Madrid, and Sevilla.

Pueblos blancos

We discovered one of our new favorite places in the world in Sanlucar de Barrameda. Delicious food, beautiful surroundings, cheap wine, and plentiful sunshine. What more could you want?

Zahara de la Sierra is right up there with it. The town slopes down off of a hill topped by a medieval defense tower standing guard. For a cheap entry fee, you can explore the tower (with no fear of archery fire from above). There’s even an active archaeological dig inside the tower!

Madrid

During a long weekend (known as a puente in Spain), we made our maiden voyage to Madrid. The churros were delicious and the sights pretty, but we both agreed that a few days wasn’t enough to fully understand the city.

Italian food!

Last month I hosted a small dinner party which featured eggplant parmigiana, chicken piccata, plus a charcuterie board with regional wines selected to match friends’ ancestral homes in Italy. It was delicious!

Art

In the meantime, Katie and I have been attending art classes in our neighborhood. I’ve been up-cycling furniture and Katie is making prints out of linoleum!

This post is already running long, so even though we have a backlog of photos to share, I’ll save Bilbao, San Sebastián, and Barcelona for another time. We got to meet with my parents in Barcelona, which made the trip much more special.

Bonus: Nahuel is getting cuter with age and these pictures are the proof! We’ve had him for over 1 year now and we love him so much 🥰 We’re already making strides towards finding him a forever home in Spain while we move to the UK.