Quick update on our travels in Europe. Our original flights home through Frankfurt yesterday were cancelled thanks to the ash cloud and we were rebooked back to the U.S. on the soonest available flights — next Sunday! After thinking hard about heading to Paris for our bonus week of vacation, we decided against going deeper under the ash cloud so instead are heading as far south and west as we can in Europe, to Portugal, which hasn’t yet been affected by the ash cloud and seems to offer the best hope of getting home despite ongoing volcanic activity. Yesterday we made the long drive south from Barcelona to Granada, and today we visited the Alhambra. We’ll go to Sevilla tomorrow, for the annual Feria de Abril, and then on to Lisbon. We feel a bit like Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo from Casablanca, who wanted to get out from under the Nazi cloud in Europe and took a slightly more southern route to Lisbon thru Rick’s Cafe.

Grandma Judy, who has been traveling with us, was on a non-stop flight to the U.S. from Spain. The Barcelona airport opened up Sunday so she was able to get home yesterday.

Now that we’re done sorting out our travel plans, we’ll try to get caught up with pictures and other stories from our trip.