Trip Summary

We thought that we would list some of our impressions of Spain and Portugal.

It was a great trip. We saw places we had never seen before. We learned more about Spain present and past and met many interesting people. I love driving in Europe and this trip was no exception. We put 6674 km (4140 miles) on the car. here will be a shock when the 3 credit card bills come but it will be worth it.

Favorite places….

All the Paradors

Walking Barcelona

The roads in the mountains of northwestern Spain

Santiago

Roman ruins in Merida

Trujillo and its streets and square

The Alhambra in Granada

Cuenca and the hanging houses.

Segovia and its Alcazar and aqueduct

Things we liked about Spain…

Great roads.

Except for the cities next to no traffic.

No highway patrol. People drive as fast as they please. Sometimes very fast.

October is the time to come. Great weather.

A real variety in terrain and scenery.

Loved staying at the Paradors.

People watching.

We liked not having to pay tax on everything or having to tip anyone.

Both countries have many electrical generating windmills and solar panels.

There is so much history. Many towns went back over 2000 years. Spain had its times when it ruled the world.

Everyone we met was friendly.

The country is very clean and neat.

No junk cars, mobile homes, ghettos or homeless people.

The Spanish are very relational and spend a lot of time socializing with friends and family. They seem to live at a slower pace than we do.

Craig really enjoys the asian tourists.

Things that did not excite us….

Very few people could speak English. We did not meet a single person fluent in English. It made it hard to find out how they felt about things.

Very expensive. Almost everything is twice what it is in the US. How do they afford it?

Many smokers.

Everywhere we went we couldn’t find a parking place.

Little Engish TV and no English papers.

Toll roads. About 25 cents a mile. Who would pay $25 to drive to Phoenix?

We didn’t like any of the food.

The hours we could buy food didn’t fit us at all. Dinner at 10 PM?

Day 22 in Madrid

We stayed two nights in Madrid so we could see the town. We are in a small Best Western hotel right in the middle of downtown. It is nothing special but works. We are a little spoiled after the Paradors. We were slow getting out again. We did not do the hotel’s breakfast. I was ready for a Starbucks.

We spent all day walking the streets. It is a fun town to walk in. There are plazas everywhere. They are all a little different. This is a lovely city with a lot of cars, motorcycles and people. There seemed to be more motorcycles and less scooters but still a lot of both. Like everywhere else parking is almost impossible and the motorcycles and scooters park anywhere they want to. Madrid is a relatively new city compared to most the places we have visited but there are still many interesting building even if they are only 400 years old.

Our choice for lunch was Burger King. It tasted great. We never eat there at home.

We ended up at the Prado. We are really not fans of classical art but we felt we had to go there. We had been there years ago but another trip was needed. It is a very popular place to visit both for the locals and the tourists. We enjoyed walking through the halls but it would take more exposure than that for us to appreciate it.

We are out of here tomorrow. We have a 1 pm flight and following the sun we get into Tucson at 5pm the same day. We are both looking forward to the plane ride and to being back in Tucson.

Day 21 to Madrid

From Toledo to Madrid is only about 50 miles but we took the long route. We wanted to see three sites north and west of Madrid.

Our first stop was Avila. The old town is completely enclosed by a huge 11^th century wall. It is one mile long about 60 feet high and 10 feet thick. It had 88 towers and 9 gates. It has all been restored. They also have a Gothic cathedral/castle that is part of the wall. We walked most of the wall and visited some more shops.

Then we went to Segovia. The town dates back to the 1^st century AD. The Alcazar castle was built in the 14^th century. It was used in the film Camelot and is everything you would envision a castle to be. They also have a Roman aqueduct that is one of the highlights of our whole trip. It is almost a half a mile long and it crosses the main plaza 90 feet in the air. It is still used to move water to the city. The structure was built with huge granite blocks and no mortar. It is beautiful and still there after 2000 years.

On the way to Madrid we wanted to stop and see El Escorial. It was built by King Philip the second. It has a monastery, mausoleum, chapel and palace for the royal family. It was completed in 1584 and has 340,000 square feet. It was closed when we got there but we walked around and took photos of the exterior. It was impressive but you really can’t call it beautiful.

We did not get to the outskirts of Madrid until about 7:30 pm. We had some Google maps but no Madrid city map. The traffic was terrible and we got lost. I stopped and bought a map and stopped for directions twice. I like to stop and ask as no one speaks English but they all want to help. More people just keep joining in trying to help. We ended up driving through the entire city in heavy traffic for about an hour after dark down narrow dark streets. Jan does not like big cities and this adventure did not help. She has a lot of experience navigating however and we got to the hotel. She said it would have helped if they had signs with the names of the streets. 

Our hotel is simple yet expensive. $50 to park the car for 2 nights.

A view from our window.

Day 20 in Toledo

We stayed two nights in the beautiful Parador in Toledo. We had a great breakfast and then drove into the city. From the Parador the layout of the city is obvious as it sits on a hill within full view. Once in the city it is a maze of small streets with the one way direction always in the wrong direction and do not enter signs on the streets in the direction we want to go. We found a parking garage to place the car and walked into the city. We always seem to use these garages with uncertainty. We sometimes stay for several hours for 2or 3 Euros and sometimes, like in Barcelona it was $35 overnight. They got us for $14 for the afternoon in Toledo.

We had a walking tour in one of our books. It started at the cathedral. Like most the cathedrals we have seen it is so huge and so surrounded by other large buildings that it is hard to appreciate or even see well. We walk around the high walls, look at all the portals, stare up at the figures projecting out from ledges high in the air and photograph the high steeples.

From there we tried to follow the walking tour map. We usually manage to find everything but few of the streets are labeled and they go in every direction. The walking tour covered several places where El Greco lived, where he worked or where his paintings now reside. There are many churches and museums on every walking tour. Today we admitted that they are all starting to look the same. Every town seems to have a cathedral, a fortress and a castle.

Jan likes to look at all the things in the shops. Today was Sunday and the only shops open are those for tourists.

Today we spent a lot of time sitting in plazas watching people. In a tourist town, and this is one of the most popular, there are always large groups of people following their tour leaders with a stick or umbrellas raised high.

We never hear any English as there are few Americans. We met our first American tourists today in the hotel. They were Asian  but they were from LA. It was nice to hear someone speak English. We have met very few people that know any English and none that can speak it fluently. We are still amazed at how young the children here learn Spanish.

After a pizza in a sidewalk cafe we came back to the Parador. With the classy bar and beautiful patio looking over the city it is a popular place for locals to gather on a Sunday night. We enjoy watching all the activity. The Spanish people like to spend time socializing with their friends and family.  

Day 19 To Toledo

We were slow getting out this morning. We have been sleeping very well. It doesn’t really get light until about 8:30 so we sleep and sleep. I guess that makes any vacation a good one.

We headed north to Cuenca. It is known for the Hanging Houses. Our tour book told us that is one of the “must see” places in Spain. It was a beautiful small town. The town was built on the edge of a huge ravine cut through the flat plains by a river. They built many of the buildings and houses right out into the rocks that form the sides of the ravine. It also had a nice cathedral and a big “Plaza Major”, the main plaza. We spent a lot of time walking the narrow streets and then across a bridge to view the hanging houses. Some of these towns have such steep streets that we get a lot of climbing and descending. It is a good workout.

East central Spain has a lot of rolling hills and as you head west it flattens out to a plain. Here, different from further north, it is all planted with crops. There are also some olive trees and grape vines. This in the Castille La Mancha. The big tourist draw is the Man from La Mancha and Don Quixote. They have restored many of the old windmills. It attracts the tour buses. We managed to find some windmills on a hill and were all by ourselves.

Our Parador in Toledo is located on a hill across from the city. Toledo is on a hill surrounded on three sides by a river. From the Parador we can see the whole city. We sat out on the patio and had a beer and a glass of wine and watched the town light up as the sun went down. It was so romantic.

Day 18 Granada to Alarcon

This was a driving day. After maneuvering ourselves out of Granada we headed north. After about 50 miles we got off the expressway and headed east on smaller roads. The country for the first 100 miles or so was again nothing but olive trees. They plant them everywhere. They are in the flats and covering the hills. In Spain they put olive oil on everything and serve olives as bar snacks. Some tres are younger but even though they are all about the same size, maybe 10 feet tall, many have huge old knarled trunks. We remember the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane n Jerusalem that they said were 2000 years old. I am not sure I believe that but some of these are very old.

The terrain then turned to crop lands with sectioned fields. Then we were on some nice winding roads up through some canyons to the top of a plateau where it was flat and open again. The towns here look just like Nebraska with tractor sales and feed stores.

It remained flat until about one mile from our Parador and then it opened up to view a large castle on a hill and a deep ravine with a river and small lake. We are really out in the middle of nowhere. This area is popular for outdoor sports like hiking. Our room is rather small. It is up in the castle with a small window looking out over the valley through 3 foot thick walls.  The castle was originally built in the 8^th century by the Arabs and then destroyed in the 12^th century and rebuilt in the 14^th century.  It has obviously been updated since then. There is one photo of the dinning room which was originally the chapel.

Day 17 at the Alhambra in Granada

We have got used to sleeping in until 8:30 or later. It is so dark in the morning and we stay up late. This morning we had to be at the Alhambra at 7:30. We caught a bus and we were the only ones to get off in the dark. There was a huge line waiting for them to open at 8:00. We had bought our tickets over the internet and it was a good thing we did. We were the first ones into the castle.  In a couple of hours the place was packed. It is the most popular tourist spot in Spain and they only sell so many tickets for each time period to prevent it from being over crowded.

The Alhambra was built by the Moors staring in 1237 and was really never finished. It was abandoned when the Christians ran the Moors out in 1492. It was the last Moorish stronghold in Spain. It is an unbelievable place. It is about a mile square. Located on the top of a hill overlooking Granada. It has elaborate palaces, castles, gardens and a huge fortress. It was declared a national monument in 1870 and is still being restored.

Being the first ones in we had the crowds behind us. We had 8:30 reservations for the castle and with a Japanese tour group behind us we were almost by ourselves. It was definitely one of the highlights of the whole trip.