A house in the country

Usually when I go on vacation, I like to choose one place to stay. When we've gone to Europe in the past, that typically meant that we stayed in a large city where we could depend on public transportation. This was my first trip to Europe where I stayed in a house in the country. In England, my parents-in-law rented a house in Oxfordshire which was large enough for them, my parents, Andrew and I, and his sister and her fiance. This meant if we could drive all over central England, to London or Oxford or Birmingham. In Spain (the second week of our vacation), my uncle rented a hotel/villa which had plenty of room for 7 different couples. These were therefore very different vacations than whatI'm used to. On one hand, I didn't feel like I was really part of the neighborhood and didn't get to experience what it might feel like to live in that area as a local. On the other hand, I got to see a lot more parts of the country then I would normally. Sometimes I wasn't so keen to spend two or three hours in a car on my vacation, but since I was with a big group in each place, I had lots of interesting people to talk to during the drive. And it's great to stay in a house rather than a hotel because you can eat some of your meals at home and lounge around. At the house we stayed at in southern Spain in Andalusia, we spent lots of time lounging on the terrace looking out over the city. Perhaps "city" is that too large of a word for Casarabonela -  while it is technically one of the white cities of southern Spain, but is really a village  of 2500 souls tucked up into the hills.

Almost every morning we woke up at the civilized hour of 8, since the sun didn't rise over the mountains until 8:30. We'd drink coffee on the terrace, and then head out for the day's adventures. In the afternoon or evening we'd be back on the terrace for drinks. One of the group in Spain was a gin and tonic master, and I learned a few secrets from him. One is to roll the lime until it's very soft, so the oils and juice are easily released into the drink. The second is to just use a heck of a lot of gin.