Category: Spain

This is a big place.  We thought Lisbon was big, and it is, but Madrid, together with its outlying metropolitan areas has roughly 6.5 million people, making it the 3rd largest city in the EU behind London and Paris.  It’s nice here though, hustle and bustle with great energy. We arrived here last week after a 5-hour train ride from Santiago (we had to get up at 4am) and walked straight into market day.  Our airBNB is in the La Latina area, an older neighborhood with the usual narrow streets, antique stores, and bars, cafes, and tapas joints everywhere.  It’s also in the middle of El Rastro.  According to the…

Actually, it’s more like ‘The End’, at least for most pilgrims.  A few of the diehards go on to Finisterre, ‘Earth’s End’, on the western coast, for another 80km hike.  We had at one point considered doing the ‘walk’ and I have a good friend from school days who not only did it a couple of years ago but is doing it again as I write this, with his spouse.  They are our age.     The El Camino de Compostela is a centuries old pilgrimage from various places to Santiago where supposedly the martyr St. James is buried. There are many ways or Caminos to get there (the German…

    I was going to title this one ‘Hordiz’, but you probably are getting a little tired of that spiel.  Too bad, it’s a cute title.  And the tourists here aren’t quite the same as the ones that are trekking thought Spain like us to check out castles and monuments.  They are forcibly brought here by big-ass f****g cruise ships!  So, a small town; a 4000 – 10,000 strong invading army wearing shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops; and…well, you get the picture.     Cadiz, (pronounced CAD-ith) is considered to be, the oldest continuously inhabited city in western Europe and the oldest port city in Europe dating all the way…

    I think I’m done with ‘parts’. . . Boring .  So, I am going to start labeling the posts as something different. Right now we are in Tavira, Portugal (more on that later) but I still need to write some things about Jerez, although the weather here is super nice and it’s getting harder to find the motivation to write as opposed to eat, drink, and take in the ocean view. Anyway, this one will be about Horses, one of my favorite subjects, as the people at my ‘ex’ work will tell you. One of the things that one needs to check out in Jerez is the Royal…

  So, we’ve been a little slack in the blog department.  The last few days were perfect for spending time on the computer, but they were also perfect for NOT doing anything else.  It has been a cold, wet, and windy week here in Ronda and Jerez.  The temperature is 10 to 12 degrees below normal so instead of 25 it’s 13.  And wet.  But change that to was.  Today, Saturday, is a balmy 20 with brilliant sunshine and endless blue sky.  It’s not that we didn’t do anything, but we had to pick our battles between the downpours.  It was reminding us of the wet coast but I think…

  Yes, you get a part three.  Because we like it here 😊.  More pictures and lunch, or dinner, or whatever it’s called here.  We went to our hosts’ casa for mid-day meal today, almuerzo, consisting of an egg/potato tart, bread, and paella all washed down with really good local Ronda wine, brandy (which I was told was one of the best in Spain), and some kind of national liqueur which tasted a lot like Jägermeister.  All in all, a damn fine meal.     The casa, on the outskirts of Ronda, was a nice home, large yard with a swimming pool, a Labrador Retriever, and up until last year,…

    After a couple of days of taking it easy here, we wandered around the city, as in a-round.  The weather has cooled off a bit and we’ve had a little rain.  We went down into the valley from where we are staying and walked along the base of the plateau through pleasant farmland and pastures.  The route took us along some narrow cobblestone streets and over the old Roman bridge where we could look up at the old walled ramparts and the Moorish castle.     We made our way over to the gorge spanned by the Puente Nuevo and started the hike up to town.  Some great…

  Well, it’s just like the google images I originally showed everyone back in Vancouver, awesome scenery.  After an easy bus ride here, Ronda is a breath of fresh air.  Literally.  A magical place and definitely more relaxed than Seville.  There are still tourists of course but the numbers are less as most seem to be here on day trips.  And it’s definitely worth that trip here from Seville, Malaga, or Jerez, with old mountains, rolling hills, and a beautiful 100+ meter deep ravine, El Tajo, cut out by the Guadalevin river many millennia ago. Ronda sits above the gorge on a plateau overlooking the green valleys below and it…

There may only be a part one as we are only here for 3 days.  But wow, just wow. Seville or Seh-vee-ya as it is pronounced here, is just amazing.  Stunning architecture and picturesque vistas along the Guadalquivir river that runs through the city and where Columbus initially sailed from to go to America.  It’s Spain’s 4th largest city and like Cordoba it is spread out and dotted with cultural relics from Roman, Moorish, and medieval Christian times.  And like any place here with relics (not us I just want to be clear), there are a LOT of people wandering about.  Our airBnB host told us that it’s the start…

Yesterday was Good Friday and being a very important holiday here, most things were closed.  This is important to note, especially if you are living day to day like we are.  Often things are closed in this country on Mondays.  Often things are closed in general everyday from 1:30pm until 5 or 6.  Sometimes, things are just closed.  Proper planning is required.  Unlike North America where shopping 24/7, 364 days of the year is a religion, the pace here, as I’ve mentioned, is a little different.  Lack of planning means getting to the grocery store Friday morning, like we did, and saying ‘Oh S***T’!  Change of dinner plans, drinking plans,…