Day 14 To Malaga

We headed southeast from Zafra. It was about 120 miles to Cordoba. We were on back roads but we were going about 80 MPH most of the time. There was next to no traffic. We were again going across the plains past scattered towns.

We arrived in Cordoba and it was like most of the cities. They warned us in our tour book that there are no parking places in all of Spain and they were right. In the inner cities people park everywhere and it is still hard to find a place to squeeze a car in. Many people double park. They make the road so narrow that it is difficult to go down some of the streets. It took us a good hour to find a place where we could put the car. This is when it would be nice to be on a motorcycle because they park on the sidewalk or anywhere else they want.

Cordoba is another old Roman town but has little to show for it. It is the center of art and romance. We felt right at home. It has Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities in its history and that continues today. We walked for 3 hours through the old section of town. The old buildings give us a lot of photo opportunities. This is one of the tourist centers so there were a lot of people. It is a mixture of young people and old. In the major tourist towns huge quantities of old people exit gigantic tour buses. We hope we are never that old.

Then it was off to Malaga. We were going over rolling hills covered with olive trees for almost 100 miles. There is olive oil on every table and olives with your beer. They must consume a lot of the stuff. Malaga is on the Mediterranean Sea and is a very popular beach town. It is a big city. We are staying in the Parador that is high on a hill overlooking the sea. We are going to stay here two nights. Tomorrow we are going to Gibraltar.

This is the Parador and a view from our balcony.

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Day 13 In Zafra

We stayed two nights in this Parador. We wanted to explore two towns north of here. This is an area that tourists normally don’t come to and there are some Roman Ruins that are some of the finest in the world.

The town with the ruins is Merida. It was established by the Romans in about 30BC. It was on the crossroads of two major trading routes. One road is from Madrid to Lisbon and the other from Leon to Seville. The Romans built a great city that later went to ruin when the Moors took over. It never achieved greatness again. It was not until early in the 20^th century that restoration began. The entire city sits on Roman ruins. We walked to several of them. We saw the Theater, the amphitheater, a long Roman bridge and an aqueduct. Right in the middle of downtown they are restoring the Temple to Diana. It must be a huge jigsaw puzzle played with big cranes as they dig out and reassemble all the pieces.

The second town is one of the nicest ones we have seen. It is a small town called Trujillo. The old town is on top of a hill and the old buildings have been maintained as they were without the addition of any new buildings. We started up the narrow roads not knowing if we could get though. We found a place to put the car on the side of a hill and started walking and taking photos. Eventually we found the main square and had a late lunch there.

This whole area is one of my favorites. I really like the wide open spaces. It reminds me of  Arizona and most of the west. The towns are far apart with open range between. The towns here however are mostly located on the top of hills with a castle and a large church surrounded by old stone buildings.  

Day 12 to Zafra

Today we left the far southwest point of Portugal and headed back to Spain. We stopped in one little beach town, Tavira, along the Portuguese coast as it sounded real interesting. It was a jewel. It was a Saturday morning and the town was really bustling. We climbed up to a castle on the hill overlooking the town. All the houses are white with red tile roofs.

Then we went back into town. There was a large group of Harley riders from an adjoining town. There were all full dressers. They even were wearing their colors. They were all clean cut older guys. A Harley here is around $40,000 so we have not seen many.

Our next stop was Seville. It is one of the must see cities in Spain. It has the third largest cathedral in the world. It is so big you really can’t see it all or photograph it all at once except from an airplane. The town is a great town to walk and being Saturday it was full of people. Once we found a garage to put the car in we spent 4 hours seeing the sights. We like to just sit in the squares and watch the people.

Our Parador tonight is in Zafra. It is further north in the Extremadura. It is inland near the Portuguese border. It, like most of central Spain, has rolling plains and a very big sky. Not many tourists come here. There are a lot of Roman ruins near here. It is hard to understand why the Romans came either. The Parador is an old Castle and is outstanding. See the photo.

Day 11 to Sagres

We left Lisbon in the early morning traffic. In Portugal that is 10am. Just south of Lisbon there is a peninsula that stretches out to the west into the ocean. There are 5000 foot high mountains. There are really no towns of any size. We drove out along the edge of the water. It was like the Big Sur coast. There were sheer cliffs  and we would wind up the mountain and then down to the water again. It was a great road and no traffic. Coming back east we followed the upper road that followed the ridge, again with many curves. We had views of the ocean to the south and all the way to Lisbon on the north.

We had the choice going south to take the expressway or smaller roads that went through the towns. Some places we had little choice as the small towns were full of traffic and stops. This time we chose the small road; it was a delight. The tolls on the expressway are about 25 cents a mile so we try to avoid them. On the back road the towns were spread out, there was no traffic and they went through some of the nicest countryside we have seen. It was all farm country with pretty little villages. As we got closer to the south shore of Portugal we started seeing more palm trees.

We drove west along the south shore. The coast is one town after another of beach towns. We stopped at one that still had some of the old charm with narrow streets and old buildings and went for a walk. We like to stop at the small grocery stores and get drinks, fruit and cookies to eat in the car.

Our hotel is out on the very southwest tip of Portugal and of Europe. It is called the End of the Earth. It is rather a barren but beautiful place. It was just at sunset when we arrived. We could look out over the sea, the New World was out there somewhere. We imagined what the Portuguese and Spanish explorers must have thought when they sailed away from the mainland not knowing what was out there.

Our Pousada is a not in a real old building. It was originally a two story country house. It is by itself out toward the sea. It is a nice hotel.  

Day 10 - In Lisbon

We planned to stay a second night in Lisbon. We did not start the car today. We got up late, had breakfast and walked a mile to the train station for a nine mile ride to the center of Lisbon.

We spent the day walking to all the sites. The city, like all big cities, was full of people, sights and sounds. We walked from the train station and one of the main squares, the Rossio down a major shopping mall to the river. Lisbon has been a town since about 1200BC, the time of Moses. It has buildings and other artifacts from all stages of occupation from the Romans, the Moors and then the Christians. Two thirds of the city was destroyed by a huge earthquake and tidal wave in 1755. That is recent history for them.

Lisbon is on seven hills and a walk anywhere requires climbing and descending. We walked to the highest point, the Castle. There were a lot of stairs and steep roadways. The castle is all restored. It is a beautiful site and a perfect place to view the whole city. After walking down again and roaming through some more city districts we managed to find the correct train and get back to our Pousada.

Day 9 - To Lisbon

I was up early this morning. I was outside at 7 am and it was so dark you would think it was midnight. Jan stayed in bed until 8. We have been sleeping good and long every night. The Spanish and Portuguese live on a different schedule than we do. No one is up and around before 9. Breakfast will last until 10:30. They close the stores from 2 to 4 for lunch and siesta. Then they open until 8. Most people do not eat until after 10pm. Most restaurants are not open until 9pm at the earliest. That is a real problem for us because we cannot eat that late and then go to bed. We usually snack about 6, skip dinner and go to sleep around 11.

We were out of Porto and on the road south on the expressway. We first stopped at Costa Nova. It is a wonderful little beach town. It is off season and the beach was beautiful and with the exception of some surfers empty. The sand is perfect and clean. It reminded us of the southern California beaches, Huntington or Malibu, without the people. There are many summer cottages and high rises. It must be jammed in the summer. Jan even found a good collection of sea shells.

We then went to Coimbra. It is an old college town and before 1500 was the capital of Portugal. The buildings there are covered on the sides with tiles.

Then we went back to the beach and another beautiful beach town. Here all the houses were painted in stripes.

Before arriving in Lisbon for the night we stopped in an old fortified city, Obidos. They have kept it as it was in the 1400s (except for the shops). No cars are normally allowed in the town. It was a fun town to walk.

We are staying in the royal guard quarters next to the King's Summer Palace outside of Lisbon. I will have to get a photo in the morning.

Day 8 - to Porto Portugal

We had breakfast in the Parador as we do every morning. They put out a real nice spread of local foods. It is really by far our best meal of the day. Today Jan filled her purse with fruit, cookies, meat, cheese and rolls for our afternoon meal. It turned out, with the help of some chocolate, to be lunch and supper.

Our first stop was at Santiago de Compostela. This is the end point for the Pilgrimage to Santiago. Every year in July hundreds of thousands of people walk hundreds of miles to pay homage to the remains of St. James. While July is by far the main time people do it all times of the year. We saw them walking along the road.

In Santiago there is a huge cathedral where the remains are supposed to be buried. All the walkers congregate there to pray. There were people from all over the world. We talked to a couple from South Africa. It was a Tuesday morning in October and the place was mobbed with people from everywhere. Many of them had backpacks or bicycles. It was a very festive place with street performers and all kinds of sights and sounds.

Then it was off to Portugal. It is the first time Jan or I had been there. We had a real hard time finding the Pousada, a Portuguese Parador. It is in the town of Porta. It is a large very old town with a maze of small one way streets and terrible traffic. We managed to find it however and it is beautiful. It is the combination of a restored palace and a neighboring factory. The rooms are in the factory. We have the equivalent of a three bedroom apartment; a huge bedroom, bathroom and large sitting room. Everything is first class and very contemporary.  

We went out for a ride and I sort of freaked Jan out. We went down a series of streets that were so narrow we had to fold the mirrors in. With every narrow 90 degree turn between high dark walls the road got narrower. We were wondering if we were ever going to get out. We did.