What a wonderful country Spain is– varied scenery, an amazing history, friendly people and mouth-watering food. We began our Spanish leg in mid-June by flying from Milan to Barcelona and then driving north about 100 kilometres to Girona. Inland and on a river, Girona is the gateway to the Costa Brava, an area of small towns along the northern Spanish coast. Its church is most impressive, sporting the widest breadth of any church in the world. Besides that, the city is an open sculpture museum, featuring a fun exhibit of ten-foot heads of women in hats or strange hairdos. We spent just a few hours there before continuing up to France where we met friends and stayed overnight.
The next day we started down the spectacular Costa Brava coastline, with winding roads high in the mountains showcasing tiny whitewashed and red-tiled roof villages by the turquoise sea. We drove a long way and eventually stopped at Sant Feliu de Guixols, a bedraggled town with six big hotels recently closed. Besides a fabulously ornate old Moorish casino and wide treed boulevards, it’s a miss. The next day we drove onto Lloret-sur-Mer, a much busier resort town, with a big beach, an “old town” and lots of tourists. We paid a 78 Euros fine for parking in a commercial zone, had our car towed, and drove out of town in a hailstorm, but other than that, we liked the town. It would take several days to explore the Costa Brava well, but we had a taste of Northern Spain.
The following day we met our friends Clive and Sarah in Barcelona. Sarah and her travel agent, Julia, had planned and booked the next ten days, and it was wonderful to go along with their schedule. We were happy to see our old friends and spend time catching up on their past year and telling them our adventures.
Barcelona is a wonderful not-too-large city of under two million, and is the home of Antonio Gaudi, the famous Spanish architect who designed the Sagrada Familia. Gaudi’s architecture is like no other – free forms based on nature, and this church is similar to a forest. The excellent church exhibit explained the architectural principles and natural symbolism that define his work. This amazing church has been under construction for over 100 years and will not be finished until 2030. We also visited a house Gaudi built was between 1904 and 1906 for a local wealthy family. The Casa Batilla has no straight lines, excellent natural lighting in every room, blue tiled courtyards within the home and a wavy-fronted exterior. That street has many other famous buildings. Barcelona is filled with many charming buildings, wide boulevards and old plane trees. We strolled along the famous Ramblas and saw snippets of city life: open-air shopping, birds, turtles and other animals in cages, people in costumes, and lots of restaurants.
The food in Barcelona is fabulous. We loved tapas, traditional Spanish food. Each restaurant prepares its specialities and we could simply point at which little taste treats we wanted. Three or four make for a wonderful meal. After a couple of days in Barcelona we picked up the Stockdale’s full-size BMW rental and headed down the coast. Clive did all the driving and Sarah navigated using the GPS, which was amazing, especially in narrow-streeted old towns built centuries before cars existed.
We moved on to Tortosa, an ancient town with panoramic views built high in the cliffs along a river. We stayed in a paradore, one of several that were pre-booked. Paradores are government-run tourist accommodation, some new but mostly rebuilt castles or ruins on important historic sites. The next day we stayed in a modern paradore, El Salar, on a golf course and near a nature reserve in a small town about ten kilometres outside Valencia. We rented a boat and went around Lake Abufera, where we saw plenty of egrets, herons, ducks and terns. We had heard that Valencia is an industrial city but we were pleasantly surprised by its size and elegance. The town centre was lovely and the important huge cathedral there holds the Vatican-certified Holy Grail, so now we’ve seen both that and the burning bush in Egypt.
After a couple of days exploring Valencia and the area we drove the coastal highway for several hours but found ourselves stuck in a series of small towns so eventually took the main highway. Our destination was Granada, nestled at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Granada is an ancient city that was controlled by the Nasrid kingdom until 1492 and then became part of the Crown of Castile. It’s most famous for the beautiful Alhambra and Generalife gardens. The Alcabaza fortress, the Alhambra’s site, was built by the Moors in the 11th to 13th century and the Nasrid palace in the 13th to 15th century. Our stay here was in a paradore built on a monastery site in the Alhambra.
The Moorish castle is exquisitely beautiful with intricate tile-work and plaster motifs; lovely archways in the Nasrin style. With the rise of Christianity, the Moors were expelled to Morocco. Queen Isabella and Prince Ferninand gave permission for Christopher Columbus to “sail the ocean blue, in 1492” from this Alcazar or Castle. The Generalife gardens surrounding the palace area are very large and impressive, with spectacular views. Granada is difficult to drive because of the very narrow streets so we hopped a bus and explored the old Jewish quarter, on foot. Clive and I also explored the circular 16th century Palace of Carlos V, and the Granada Museum of Fine Arts housed there. After a dreamy couple of days here we moved on.
We wandered the streets and ate a great local meal in Puerto Llumberos, a small hot dusty town where spent one night. The next day we drove along the coast, had sardines and drinks in Gandia, and lunch in St. Joan de Alicante. We saw a slice of the famed condo overdevelopment in Alicante, although much of this is lower down the coast in the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol regions. Apparently one million Brits have moved to Spain over the past several years to escape the rainy, Vancouver-like British climate.
We drove into Seville with the GPS taking us right to the door of the most charming Casas de la Juderia, a hotel made up of fifteen old houses. Sevilla is in Andalucía and has a much different flavour than the other cities. Horse culture is predominant. We enjoyed a classic flamenco experience in a tiny venue. Seville has the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, and our old friend Chris Columbus is buried there. The gold altar and silver altar are most impressive. The Alcazar Real, or Royal Palace next door is a combination of peaceful Moorish style and heavily tiled Christian rooms, with enormous wall hangings. We explored fascinating exhibitions such as elaborate fan and mantilla displays. Many major decisions were made by royalty at this location and map-making was done there, presumably when people such as Columbus came home. Unfortunately Seville was extremely hot – around 40 degrees, so it was hard to move. This town needs a lot more time, but better in the early spring. I was in Seville several years ago during Santa Semana when the Feria or horse fair is held and it was an amazing experience.
Our last stop with the Stockdales was in a beautiful paradore just outside of Seville – in another ancient town, Carmona. We stayed two days, enjoyed the luxurious atmosphere and said our goodbyes to our friends.
Next we headed south in our newly-rented Citroen to explore Donana National Park. We got stuck in sand dunes in El Rocio, an amazing Spanish horse town with sand streets, hitching posts, horse coaches and riding gear for sale. It was 43 degrees as drove through the park before heading to Matalascanas. This town is on the Atlantic Ocean, quite close to Portugal so the water is colder and not as blue; again a lovely town with a long beachfront and golf courses. It’s quite a family resort area, as it’s only one hour from Sevilla.
We took a detour and went to Algeceras because we wanted to go to Gibraltar. We had our passports stamped “Welcome to Gib”. Besides the famous rock, it’s an awful town, with winding roads with no views, and lots of construction slowing things down. Gibraltar is loaded with tourists like us, in cars, with nowhere to go. We saw docks and terminals, dozens of ugly tenement buildings and got the impression that poor Brits could move here and live on the dole, but in the sun. Oh well – we saw the Rock of Gibraltar but not the famed tail-less apes. Just five minutes away the town of La Linea in Spain was rebuilding its waterfront with wide roadways and walkways.
We pushed on to Marbella that evening and landed in city centre at the lovely, old-fashioned little Hotel Lima. Marbella is famed for its awful overbuilding and the fact that the Mayor and Council are in jail for giving illegal building permits on national sites and connections with the Russian Mafia. Indeed, for several miles along the coast were condos and high-rise apartments. Marbella is supposedly more “high-class” than some of the other areas, and we could see why it’s a popular place. It has lovely parks, old squares, such as the “Plaza de las Naranjas” with fragrant orange trees, good shopping, many excellent restaurants and a wonderful long beach. We didn’t see the fish-and-chip shops or meet Brits looking for cheap vacations. We were sorry to leave although we would probably go again at a cooler time of year. We spent the night in an airport hotel before taking the fast train to Madrid, where we stayed for three days before flying to Morocco.
Ken lived in Madrid over forty years ago after finishing University and so he was anxious to see how the city had changed. He didn’t recognize anything of his old stomping grounds at Santa Ana Plaza. All the old houses are converted to restaurants and shops with hostals on the second pisos or floors. Our location right next to the Puerto del Sol was perfect – we walked everywhere. Again, the food was excellent and we enjoyed wandering the old streets, visiting the art galleries, such as the Prado and Museo Thyssen-Bournemisza and shopping at El Corte Ingles. Madrid covers its main shopping streets with huge flag-like fabric which blocks the sun. We felt right at home in Madrid.
We returned to Madrid in late August for two last days before we completed our last leg of our round-the-world ticket and flew back to Quito. We walked the old town again; saw the Puerta de Alcala, built in 1769, lovely Retiro Park, the Paseo del Prado and the Botanical Gardens in the city centre. Much of Madrid seems under construction at the moment with many streets dug-up, especially near the Puerto Del Sol.
On the whole we love Spain. The people are friendly, the food excellent and we didn’t feel any of the “tourist-rip off attitude” present in some countries. Apparently unemployment is around 20%, due specifically to the collapse of the construction sector, but we found it interesting that we met food servers from Cuba, Peru, Ecuador and Uruguay. Apparently in the past few years Spain brought in around one million workers from South America. At least they didn’t have to do Spanish language training! Spain is a huge country and although we saw many towns there is still so much more to explore espec
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