It’s Friday evening and we’re back from our short trip to Spain. Our trip was made even shorter because Fleur has a flute rehearsal early tomorrow morning for her exam next week—and I also forgot that I was selling a car and had to be on standby to recieve calls. Thank you to those who commented and emailed me on advice on where to visit and what to eat while in Spain. After 24 hours of scrambling for maps and information we decided to go ahead and visit Bilbao—not because we’re die hard fans of The Lord of the Rings series who believe that Tolkien really based his story of middle earth in Spain and that his inspiration for the Hobbits came from a small ancient folk distinguished by their long ears (the Basque) or that he named Bilbo Baggins after Bilbao—but because we learned about a building that reminded us of the Sydney Opera House. As a tidbit, when the Sydney Opera House was taking form, the Australian people were upset to see their tax money going towards building something that they thought looked like a huge elephant on their harbour.

If Bilbao’s Guggenheim was built on Sydney’s harbour the people of Australia would have probably thought that their harbour was being overrun by elephants. Needless to say that the Dutch architect Jørn Utzon was ahead of his time for designing what has now become one of the world’s greatest icons.

Whether the two architects had elephants in mind when designing their now famous contributions to society, to be up close and personal with these monstrous forms can make one feel pleasantly insignificant.

But the Guggenheim is what the Basque people wanted no matter how it looked. If no-one were to visit their monument, the pilgrimage would be made regardless by those who wanted to see their roots stamped and archived.

I just found out that the children have Thursday and Friday off from school so I’m thinking of spending a couple days in Spain. I know I have to go to San Sebastien and feast on the tapas, but has anyone have any advice on what else I should do there? Where to go, What to eat, What to do? I will be travelling with three children.

It was Mother’s Day in France yesterday. Chase surprised me with a poem (that he had copied onto a cut out heart) and a flower he borrowed from the neighbour’s garden). Then he gave me coins that he had found in my purse (presented to me all wrapped up in his sister’s special collection of notebook paper).

The children and I spent Sunday afternoon with a friend (and her children) baking fondant au chocolat. The recipe asked for 150g of chocolate and I bought a packet containing 180g. Instead of using 150g from the 180g packet my friend suggested using the whole lot so I wouldn’t waste anything—which meant that I had to change the amounts of all the other ingredients too. I’m not one for messing around with the quantities—if I have more chocolate than I need I’ll usually slip the remainder into my mouth or tip all of it into the bowl—but she told me that to make French desserts the quantities have to be exact and that changing the quantities of the ingredients in a recipe isn’t difficult to do at all (I thought it was until she showed me how).

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