Tuesday, December 9th "Guests in a small apartment; Rain"

Having a one bedroom apartment means your entertaining options at home are fairly limited. A good thing that custom in Spain differs from the U.S. and other countries where having guests at home is more of a common practice. Still, when you have family in town and you are trying to get your family together with your significant other's family you have little choice. So we managed to fill our kitchen/living room/dining room/office (it's all one room!) with 8 people, even thought it required pulling out everything that could pass for a chair. We prepared with two trays of little pastries from San Buenaventura, a few pots of coffee and a lot of cleaning. All went well, but I must say I'm happy not to do this that often.

We've braved 5 days of rain with my mom without much of a problem. Of help was the fact that she's been here maybe 10 times, so the regular tourist agenda didn't force us to be out in the street every day, taking in the sites. We did spend plenty of time shopping for gifts to send back home with her. We bought as many as we could in the malls and dry places, but we always ended up somewhere around Tetuan and Sierpes trying (unsuccessfully) to keep from getting wet.