There are some things that I have few issues with. Here are the main ones:

The Work Ethic – Or should I say lack of. Here’s what I’m going to say about The Siesta: If it was a good idea, every country would do it. Sure, we would all like to take a big ‘ol nap in the middle of the afternoon from 2 to 5. But it’s just not conducive to business. Which is, I’m sure, a large reason why Spain is falling so far behind the rest of the European Union. What you end up with are retail stores and businesses that are only open for about 25 – 30 hours a week. They stroll in at 10, take off from 2 – 5ish, and then come back and work for a few more hours. IF they work on Saturday it's from 10 – 2.  The whole country shuts down on Sunday. And they take off the entire month of August.

Bread – It ain’t free. And nobody tells you that until it’s too late. We sat down at a place in Toledo, ordered, and the waiter promptly brought out a basket of bread. Naturally we assumed that since we had just ordered enough food to feed half of the impoverished nations we’ve now been to that it was included. It wasn’t. Each piece we ate out of the basket we were charged a euro for. Uncharacteristically, I actually challenged the waiter and said I wasn’t paying. I got the typical “stupid American” comment or whatever and we went on our way. Turns out that really IS how it’s done here at a lot of places. But not all. So you never know just how much bread to fill up on…

View Tax – We decided to hit up a pretty touristy place in the main square of the cathedral in Sevilla for a nice dinner. It was horribly over priced, but it had such a nice view that we figured what the heck. We had our subpar meal and asked for ‘el cheque por favor”. When it came, everything was 30% more than it was supposed to be, which was already a lot. Turns out that if you sit outside you get charged the extra toll for the privilege of gazing out upon the square. While the entire menu was in English, that little tidbit was buried at the bottom of the back page in Spanish.

Narrow Streets – Charming, yes , but only when they are not actually open to traffic. The streets here are so narrow that cars parked along them have to collapse their side mirrors so they don’t get sheared off. I’m a lot wider than a side mirror. (this is where my brother is inserting the fat joke of his choice I’m sure). So every time a car comes barreling down the street – and they don’t slow down just because it’s narrow and filled with pedestrians – there’s always the chance of losing an arm. I’ve been dying to take my contacts out and give my eyes a rest, but no way I can walk around here blind.

I don’t always mean to be the negative one. This really is a great country, and a lot of fun to relax in. As long as you’re not planning to get any work done it’s the place to be.