Santiago de Compostela--we´re in España!!

Well hello to all of you who are bored enough to be checking our blog on a Friday afternoon...we survived the trip with only one stalker, whom we dubbed "no personal bubble boy" since he systematically destroyed our personal bubbles by being no more than a pinky´s length away from either of us all the way from Toronto til we managed to ditch him in the snaking corridors of Heathrow airport (we had to do some professional maneuvering to lose him though!).
after 27 hours of traveling (most of those hours were spent trying to sleep or staring blankly at the walls of whatever random airport we were in...) we finally arrived in the northwest part of spain--a city of about 100,000 called Santiago de Compostela. It´s claim to fame is that it supposedly hosts the remains of St. James, the apostle. It´s absolutely beautiful--nick and I kept wandering around thinking we were on a movie set. This is a picture from the balcony of our hotel room.

Last night we ventured out through the beautiful, narrow streets and discovered that, after he finished his stint on "Full House", John Stamos retired to Santiago where he is a waitor at a Tapas restaurant (not really...our waitor just looked exactly like his twin...). Oh, and it stays light here until 11pm...

I am trying to speak spanish, although this is complicated by two factors...1) Spanish in spain (castellano) sounds WAY different to me than the latin american version i am used to and...2) the official language of this region is Gallego...an odd mix of spanish and portugese (or so it sounds to me)...but we are floating by okay. So far I haven´t felt too stupid (the spaniards aren´t exactly the most outwardly friendly people in the world...although the taxi driver we had yesterday was great-i asked him one question and he didn´t stop talking the entire ride to the hotel!). Well, we are in the process of uploading some photos to snapfish. you can access them at:
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=44222807/a=53866009_53866009/t_=53866009

I promise that our entries will become more interesting and (hopefully) witty and entertaining to read once we get over the "dumbs" of jet lag (my head feels like it´s captured in jello). In about an hour we´re off to the Costa da Morte (coast of death....just to scare our parents) for a few days of walking along the Atlantic Ocean...take care!