What to do with a family when it's HOT.

Ah yes, the daily question we ask ourselves. Pretty much every day. What can we do, since it's 95 degrees or more outside from 11-4 every day? We have tried the following, in no particular order. You be the judge as to which is the best...

1. Do nothing. Sometimes it's just easier to close all of the windows and keep the heat out. I know that it's a bit counter-intuitive for the Mainers reaing this, but apartment buildings here are really well made for keeping heat out if you like. At about 11:30 we close the persianas (big, horizontally slatted window covers that cover the entire window from the outside, lettling no light/heat in), and keep them down until 8 or 9. It makes the piso dark, but nice and cool. It's a good time to read, blog, and generally go stir crazy after 3 days of this.

2. Go to the local municipal pool. the pool is big, the grass is nice and shady, but the area around the pool is full of cigarette smoke and Andee gets in trouble at the pool. Also, it costs us about $14 U.S. to get into the recreation area. We could spend our entire salary doing this in July and August alone.

3. Go to the Basilica-Cathedral of Nuestra Señora del Pilar (this place will get it's own entry soon). It's cool, it's quiet, it's beautiful, but it's a 15 minute walk on hot streets each way, and by the time we get back home we're hot all over again. Besides, I can look at churches in Spain all day, but it's not an activity for everyone. In my opinion the co-cathedral of La Seo is a far prettier church (gothic arches), but they charge 3 Euros to enter.

4. Go to the supermarket and wander aimlessly, looking at the prices of things (this actually gives me a good idea for a blog entry. You can let me know if you think it's a dumb idea, but I think people would be interested in the differences in products sold and their prices). This can be a good way to beat the heat (all of the big supermarkets are air conditioned) but eventually all of the different olive oil options begin to blend together (blended olive oil?) and so there's only so much time you can waste doing this.

5. Like #4, go to El Corte Inglés and wander. This behemoth of a department store (we have found three in ZAZ) was begun in the 1930's in Madrid as a small men's clothing store, and has grown over the years to swallow every competitor in Spain. There is a Corte Inglés in every major and minor city I have visited in Spain, and even the small ones put Macy's to shame. The one 2 minutes from our apartment has 7 stories, plus 2 stories of supermarket and 2 stories of parting inderground for a total of 11 floors of everything you could buy. And this one is the small one. It houses a travel agency, restaurant, dry cleaners, café, hair salon, and kosher deli. Ok, I made the last one up.

6. All right, everyone who really knows us should sit down for this one. Really, sit. Now. Go to the mall. Ok, I said it. At the end of the bus #23 line is a 3 story mall called "Grán Casa." It is cool, bright, and filled with stores. In short, a mall. There's a McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, H&M, Claire's, Levi's Store, Nike Store, Foot Locker, and other typical mall stores. There's also Zara, the ultra-hip clothing store that began in Spain and can even be found at the Natick Mall these days. There's a bowling alley, 12-screen movie theater, and many food shops. Oh yeah, and a Corte Inglés as well as a HiperCor, the mega-supermarket chain owned by Corte Inglés. We had a good laugh at ourselves for going to the mall on hot day, but decided that "when in ZAZ..."

Of course, we could do what most sane people do in August, which is to go on vacation. Apparently the city basically shuts down for the next month as everyone who can takes their summer vacation together (there are signs on the door of many small shops saying, in many ways, "see you in September." Come to think of it, we ARE heading for Valencia next week to visit Ximo and his extended family. And his sister and her family live one block from the beach...