Lots of parents will recognize the situations that arise with a McDonalds. With a little guy it is sometimes difficult to avoid. If you are walking on the street and you encounter a colorful place he just needs to enter it. As a parent it is sometimes difficult to say no and at times you just give in.

Once inside you ask for a happymeal, but he does not want any happy meal. He wants to be supersized. A nice big cola, fries and a burger. This results in this photo.

We had it all. A new apartment and a nice parking space for our car underneath the building. But is was not meant to be. We can still park our car, but the elevator has broken down. We now need to go from -3 to +2 by stairs. Five floors and this is noticeable. The worst is going of with bottles of water (containing 8 liters each).

Taking the kid for a walk is also a bit more difficult,but at least I only take him down (and up) two floors. The good thing is that Alex seems to love being carried across the stairs.

The origin of the problems is a bit strange. On this very dry island the elevator shaft slowly filled up with water. Now we have a problem with all the water and for sure it will be solved in the Canarian way. At least one more month of taking the stairs.

Well, this is what you get with en enthusiastic kid, a stone floor and a father wearing glasses. Luckily I had the foresight to get me a set of spare glasses and contact lenses.

Today we celebrate the day of the Canarians once again. A festivity on the Canary Islands that translates to a day filled with typical Canarian activities. Yesterday it already started with all the children going to school in a typical Canarian outfit. The outfit is not so difficult. Woman/girls wear an enormous skirt and men/boys wear dark pants, a white shirt and a long sash around their waist, worn like some kind of belt.

For us it is really a perfect day because our holidays start today. Tomorrow we will leave to Madrid and afterwards we´ll visit Holland! Even Alex is looking forward to it!

The Spanish bank Bankia has gotten into some problems. Just one week ago the bank has been taken over by the state and it has become public that since then more then a billion euros has been transferred by clients of Bankia to somewhere else.

I used to have a Bankia account (it used to be called Caja de Canarias), but I closed the account due to an extremely unfriendly attitude towards their clients. Now the rest of Spain is also closing their accounts. Probably not because of their attitude towards their clients but more likely because of the huge amount of properties that the bank owns. Properties that are almost impossible to sell and that keep dropping in value.

According to the bank there is (of course) no reason to worry. These are seasonal fluctuations in the amount of capital they have. Sure, what else are they going to say. Where is all the money going? Other banks, other European banks outside of Spain, or even farther away to different currencies or even valuables like gold? I just don’t know so I’ll just keep observing the situation from a safe distance. First see what happens and then I’ll figure out what to do.

Or vacation was not filled with activities. Hanging around the pool and a few short trips with the car. Still we had a nice adventure. A hedgehog came to visit our apartment in the middle of the night.

Yesterday Spain was in protest. A lot of people were on strike the entire day (a day that gets subtracted from your paycheck) and during the evening there were protests. The reason for the strike is the deterioration of employee rights. Shortly it will become (much) easier and (much) cheaper to fire people. The politicians think that this will stimulate employees to employ more people, because getting rid of people will be easier and cheaper. Employees simple fear unemployment. The fixed contracts and job security will loose its value. More than 8 days ill? Fired. More then three month loosing money? Fired. Fixed contract? Fired with a small compensation.

In Las Palmas the protesters started their march around 6 o clock and there were a lot of people! A protest with a lot of noise and chaos. I estimate around 20.000+ people were protesting and this is quite an achievement for an island where the people usually just wait and see what happens in the Spanish mainland. Now we wait and see the aftermath of this protest, but usually the end result is a quiet acceptance of the changes.

It’s always nice to eat a tasty homemade hamburger. We bought some buns and a package of hamburgers. The hamburgers were all beef, because pig is bad for you. But what’s in a hamburger except for the meat? I looked at the list of ingredients and knew directly that checking the ingredients was a mistake.

Our hamburgers contain beef, but they don’t specify how much beef. In addition they contain grain, rice and oranges (!). Together with some additives for flavor, color and smell. It does explain the low price, and the burger tasted okay. Still, next time I will think twice when buying this ‘meat’ and probably get real meat.

Being Dutch driving a bike is as normal as walking. It is a part of my heritage. A part that I neglected a little bit here in Spain, but finally a perfect excuse arose. My work moved to a new office and the new distance was to far for walking. I immediately thought a bike would be the perfect solution.

The only problem is that in Spain the average car driver does not take into account the existence of bikes. They are not used to bikes and a bike path is very rare. This results in a high risk when you move around on a bike. Luckily a campaign is going on to rise awareness about bikes and they even prepared a couple of bike paths.

I’ll just go ahead and give it a try. I bought a folding bike so I can store it without to many hassle inside the office.