The little bunny is growing rapidly! It has opened it’s little eyes and is very slowly starting to discover the world is a bit bigger then his little nest under mamma’s warm hair. Here some more pictures of the cutest little thing! :-)

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The triple. We never thought it was possible… We tried. We failed. We tried again. We failed again. But since Saturday evening we know it can be done!! Sally came all the way from Down Under, to dust of Julius Caesar’ famous “Veni, vidi, vici”; She came, saw and conquered like only Julius was able to do in his good days. Hope I am allowed to say Julius… even though I didn’t shoot marbles with him! ;-)

The triple is for us the ultimate meal at the Resident, and contains the following:

Bastiaan and I tried to follow in Sally’s determined lead (I even finished the Spare Ribs in record time!!) but yet again stranded halfway through the Soes… I guess we just miss that Australian determination to make it to the end… And making it even more impressive was the fact that Sally ate more then half of her salad along the way! Where we got the evil eye from the waitress for only eating one slice of cucumber and not touching the rest of the salad! :-)

For all of you sportfans out there who now feel comfortable, and think about giving it a try, be careful!! Although it has been proven it can be done, that doesn’t mean it’s easy! Even Sally was struggling through the last bites of the soes and didn’t feel her best after dinner… But again, nothing but respect for this Ozzie Ace! After that performance I even guess she had the right to call me a pathetic wuss for not finishing my soes! ;-)

A proud Ozzie chick!

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And the baby was a bit unexpected I may add! Snoes was calculated to give birth on Tuesday last week. So when that day arrived and nothing seemed to indicate birth, or anything related to that, we started thinking she had been “faking” the pregnancy again, like last time. So when I got up early on Friday morning to pick up Sally at the airport and looked out my bedroom window and saw Snoesy in the cage with a mouth full of her hair, I was very confused… Could she be pregnant after all?!?

Well, she sure could! :-) When I got to the cage and saw her up close, I could see that she had been pulling out a lot of hair already! She even had some big spots on her body without fur! That was exciting, as normally when bunnies start pull out their hair, they either just had her babies, or will have them really soon!

I couldn’t check straight away, because soon after I checked up on her she went into the “night”-cage and stayed in there for a long time… now we started to be quite sure she had babies already, because she would never stay in there just like that. Quite some time later, when Snoesy was out of the cage, my dad checked by sticking his hand in and he found what we already expected! A baby bunny! :-)

Just one, not normal, because normally bunnies have more then one baby, but Snoes only had one. An amazing little one. Taking the first look was very exciting! First the shock of all the hair that Snoes had been pulling out… Just unbelievable!!! Then moving the hair away searching for the little one. And finally finding it and getting surprised about how wild it was! Jumping, peeping and moving like crazy!! Probably hungry and expecting mamma’s nipple and not my fingers. But oi… the little one was so small!

Can’t wait till the day the little one will open it’s eyes and will start moving with mamma through the garden! :-)

Getting bald		The baby bunny!		The first movie (44.6 MB)

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Inspired by yesterdays heroes of Paris-Roubaix, I wiped the big layer of dust of my bike this morning and took the “steal horse” for a ride this afternoon. Inspired yes, but I was far from flying like Fabian Cancellara was doing yesterday over the cobble stones in the North of France…

I expected the first ride to be quite ok. I had been doing quite regular 2 times a week spinning in Barcelona, but that didn’t help much… I guess 30 minutes intensive spinning, with intervals, is still quite different from just cycling against a though cold wind for 30 minutes… Well, don’t have to guess here of course, I was the living proof today! :-)

So I returned after a short ride (just over an hour) slightly disappointed, but smiling as well. It was nice to climb on the bike again. A strange sense of freedom when riding (or in my case struggling) through the wind. Just me and the elements. Strange to believe a year ago I had already cycled more then 600km at this time! And Bastiaan and I were in serious preparation for the Amstel Gold Race. It will be hard to match the number of kilometres from last year, but the start is there! ;-)

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Yesterday I left Barcelona, to return home after 12 lovely weeks of studying Spanish and lot’s of fun! Before I left, I didn’t really know what to expect, but it has been a truely wonderful time and great experience!

Last day in class was a strange one. First class I skipped to say goodbye and have breakfast with Magnus and Marta, who have been very sweet for me during my whole time in Barcelona! The second class we planned to surprise the teacher with a present and I didn’t bring any books or other school stuff to class, just champagne! It was not just me leaving yesterday, Florent (French) and Sandra (Icelandic) were also leaving, causing our “old” class to be split up to other classes next Monday. So yesterday was really the last day of our fine group being together. I think I have wrote this before, but I praise myself so lucky to have been in such a fun class, with such great teachers! Class was always a lot of fun. Ok, we might not have been the best class in school, but we were for sure the most fun class! :-)

Which also proved itself on the last day. The present we bought our teacher was Vicky. Vicky the blow up doll. Our teacher Pepe always love to talk about sex and sex related subjects, so it seemed the perfect goodbye present for him! We used Vicky as a card, with everybody writing a little goodbye text to our teacher on her. Halfway during our last class we talked the teacher into leaving for a moment and when he was gone we put Vicky on an empty chair and all waited smiling for Pepe to return! :-)

And yes, he loved it! :-) How could he not!! Afterwards we made some pictures with the class, this is my favourite! The smiles on the picture are typical for all the great times we had in class, and the way I will remember everybody!

My wonderful class		A classic moment

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My time in Barcelona is running short. The last week has started. There is many things I will miss here. The sweet local people I got to meet, the weather, the city and last, but not least, the Friday afternoon spinning session with Pablo. Such a special event to finish the week! I have done a lot of spinning while I was working in Stockholm, but spinning in Stockholm was never as much fun as with Pablo in Barcelona!

Pablo is the spinning instructor on Friday afternoon and the 23 people that fit in his class are there to start the weekend with a big smile. Spinning at Friskis & Svettis in Stockholm was fun as well, but so different. The crowed never got very excited when sitting on the bike. Here it’s a different world. With any good song, movement to go out of the saddle or when reaching the top of a mountain, people scream, whistle, start waving towels, or go crazy in their own way! It’s the best! What better way to enjoy your exercise!!! :-)

First Friday afternoon class I joined was quite a shock… was used to the quiet Swedish classes, so was expecting more or less the same but they almost broke down the house here!!! :-) But as often I can adjust myself quickly and by the second time I went I was screaming happily along! ;-) By now I found my way to the front row, where the most excited people are, and would never have thought I would make it through a very hard 45 minute spinning class smiling from start to finish! :-)

This Friday before I leave for home again will be my last class… I will go miss it for sure… But I will also enjoy it very much one last time!! :-)

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The day after the volcano trip was set for a wine-tasting experience. Magnus’ girlfriend Marta had made a reservation for us at the Torres wineries, the biggest wine producer in Catalunya. It was just a short drive south of Barcelona, through lot’s of wineries to the small town of Vilafranca del Penedés. Just outside of that town, in the middle of many vineyards is the Torres visiting centre.

When we arrived at the visiting centre it turned out we were a bit late but that turned out ok, as now we got a pretty girl to guide the 3 of us. The private tour started with a little 15 minute movie about the history of Torres family, their wines and some general stuff about wine making. After the movie we went into a strange tunnel where they had some high-tech smelling machine. They projected the different times for the wine on the wall and the machine sorted out the correct smell. So spring would show an image of a winery in blossom and the machine would spray out some blossom odour, so it was like we could smell the blossoms. Nice thing, but the projecting of the images on the wall was so bad, it was hard to follow the show…

After the indoor part, we went out and in a little van that drove us around the winery, with the girl explaining what things were and what they were for. We visited the fabric, where the big grape processing tanks are and the cellars where the wine was riping in the oak barrels.

The tour ended inside where we were actually going to taste some wines. We didn’t get further then the basic spinning of the wine in the glass, smelling it (trying to guess what we were smelling) and after rolling it a bit around in our mouth, drinking it. Strange or not, but the rosé we got to taste (Torres De Casta) was really nice! After that one, we tried 3 different glasses (the first glass of rosé was for free, the 3 extra glasses 10 euro in total) and were spinning and smelling like we did it for a living! :-)

Even though I still don’t know much about wine, it was great fun to have a day like this. Just very relaxing, having fun and drinking good wine! Lovely! :-)

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