The Spanish Belén – The most, ummmm, "interesting" nativity scenes in the world.

This blog post is going to be short and sweet.  One of the most, ummm … we will use the word “interesting” ways the Spanish celebrate the Christmas holidays is through their much coveted nativity scene, Belén, which is Spanish for Bethlehem.

Almost every family in Spain has some form of a surprisingly elaborate nativity scene set-up in their home.  It’s the typical nativity scene with a mother Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, however, these nativity scenes will usually include over 100, sometimes up to a thousand, different pieces.  Most are built on a massive scale – but they can be found everywhere from banks, to schools, to a family’s home.

A large Belén -- Spanish nativity scene.

However, the interesting part of a Belén is how the Spaniards illustrate their, shall we say, sense of humor...

Most Belén nativity scenes will include a secret cagón (literally translates to “a huge pooper”).  So, as you might gather, somewhere included in the nativity scene, usually hidden along a building or in a corner, the Spanish have included their own personal touch!

Allow me to introduce you to Señor Cagon…  Hello, sir.

A Christmas Vacation in Europe

  Vrolijk Kerstfeest!

That's "Merry Christmas" in Dutch.  This year we will be spending Christmas in Amsterdam!  The funniest thing about planning a trip to Amsterdam is telling someone you're going to Amsterdam.  No matter who it is, you will be met with a chuckle and a knowing 'smile'.  Immediately most people think of hookers & weed. 

Bier en chocolade.   

La bière et du chocolat.   

Bier und Schokolade.       

"Beer and Chocolate" in Dutch, French & German.

Where can you go to get some of the best 'blonde' beer in the world?  Belgium.  Where can you go to get some of the best chocolate in the world?  Belgium.  Need I say more?  I have to admit, I am slightly embarrassed that beer and chocolate were the main inspiration behind our desire to visit the country of Belgium.

Bonne année!

 

That's "Happy New Year" in French! 

Geographically it just made sense...  We would be in Belgium, heading south and what city "happened" to be on the way home to Spain?  PARIS!!!  What an incredible place to spend New Years Eve!  

And to make the trip even better, two of our best friends (and the people responsible for Todd and I being introduced 4 years ago) - Liz and Mike Stanton are flying to Paris to meet us for 4 days!

<--- We hope to have pictures of our own (just like the one to the left) to share when we return !

* I apologize in advance for any misspellings or errors in translation.  All translations were made using Google Translate.  Todd and I are not fluent in Dutch, French or German... still working on the Spanish!

The island of 'eternal springtime' - One week in Tenerife

First, we decided we would be going to ‘Tenerife’.

Then, we decided we would be calling it ‘The Canary Islands’.

Finally, we settled on calling it ‘an island off the coast of Africa’ – in order to make it sound as majestic as possible.

Even though it was all the same place, we were so excited to have the opportunity to spend a week in such a ‘far away’ island.  The more we thought about where we going, and when we actually located the island on a map, the more excited we became.

Honestly, I couldn’t but feeling like I was John Locke on the LOST, arriving on this mysterious island, ready for a ‘walk-about’.

The Canary Islands are an official territory of Spain, but in our opinion, they should really belong to Africa.   It’s kind of like French Polynesia … how does France get to claim a group of islands that is literally half way around the world?  But, I digress.  Tenerife is referred to as “the island of eternal springtime”.  The high was in the low-70’s every day with the low in the mid-60’s – pretty enjoyable for the first week of December.  It is also tagged “the friendly island”.  The island is full of British people that have settled there (that have a strange love for ‘The X Factor’) and eastern European tourists escaping from their less than warm winters.

Thanks to Sharon and Amanda Perzel for their help in making it possible to book an entire week in Tenerife on a discount.  Our room even provided a balcony view of  ‘Los Gigantes’ which are (as the name indicates) a series of gigantic volcanic cliffs – very similar to the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.

We invited two friends, who are also auxiliares with us in Linares, Kelsey and Alex to join us for the week.  We took a 4 hour bus ride to Seville, a 2 hour flight to Tenerife, rented a car, and we were off to explore every inch of this magical island.

From the middle of Tenerife, the volcano Teide towers over the entire island.  In fact, this volcano (mountain) is the tallest point in all of Spain and the third largest volcano in the world!  The last major eruption was in 1792 and you can literally see where the lava flowed and how the new vegetation has only recently started to grow around it.   

The more we drove around the island the more we realized that every single feature of the island -- mountains, hills, valleys, ravines were influenced by the ever-present Mount Teide.  I think we were amazed by just about everything we saw.   

The idea that an island can completely sprout up out of the ocean from a volcanic eruption was completely foreign to us – but this is exactly what you see on Tenerife.  Never having been this close to a volcano before, everything about the island seemed different, from the vegetation, to the geography, to the weather.  According to the statistics, there are 15 species of plants on the islands that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. 

The Tajinaste flower.  It is a true indigenous species of Tenerife.  It flowers from late spring to early summer and is red in color (see picture below).

 
 And the volcanic rock was surreal.  The idea of “dirt” didn’t exist on the island.  The ground was covered in volcanic rock of varying colors.  It was amazing to see how many different colors of rock were created by the same volcano.   

Much of the terrain of the island reminded us of what you would see on Mars (at least how I would imagine it) rather than the typical Caribbean island with white sand beaches.  In fact, our favorite discovery was the black sand beaches that were created from lava getting into the ocean and then being eroded away, resulting in black sand!  While all of us were enamored with the idea of black sand, all of the locals look at it with disgust, as if it’s the inferior, “red-headed step-child” of the sand family.  It was the first time we have ever seen a black sand beach, so we were loving this “red-headed step-child”.  Just to prove our point, some of the ‘superior’ white sand beaches in Tenerife were actually created by importing sand from the Sahara Desert in Africa – a strange affinity for this white sand.

For me personally, it was absolutely one of the best week-long vacations I’ve ever experienced.  Everyday brought something completely new and foreign.  At night, the tunes from the touristy karaoke bars below our resort would float up into our room, to serenade us, while we went to sleep.

One specific highlight from this week was our first live viewing of a UGA football game.  Of course, if we had only known that we needed to travel to an island in the middle of the Atlantic to watch UGA play, maybe this wouldn’t have been our first trip.  Because of the amount of tourists in Tenerife, way more than the non-existent amount in Linares, the island has several bars with … wait for it … ‘satellite television’.  Apparently, it doesn’t exist in Linares, Spain yet.   Anyways, we were able to find a British sports bar that happened to have a channel called  “ESPN America” which happened to be playing the SEC Championship Game (UGA vs LSU).  Side-note:  Thank you ESPN America.  You call it luck, I call it fate.  It was the most fun I’ve ever had, or probably will ever have, watching UGA lose a football game. Even though we were being respectful, I’m pretty sure we quickly cleared out the bar with our cheering and shouting.  I’m sure we seemed crazy as everyone in the bar had previously been watching the UK’s beloved show… “The X Factor” in silence.  No joke.  I’m talking about the most crowded, most silent bar you’ve ever experienced.  The show is treated with so much respect; it must be revered in some religious sense.  So, there we were, 4 Americans at a British bar in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, watching UGA football, in English, with beer, chicken tenders and tequila shots.  Even losing quite badly, it was a special night.