So everyone said that you just had to go to Sintra if you visit Lisbon. Sintra is a day trip away, there are many buses, trains, and tours. We decided to go. It had been fairly warm in Lisbon, and the weather promised to continue in this manner. Even though we’d been told that Sintra […]
Évora is the capital of Portugal’s Alentejo region. I’d never heard of this region before, but having sampled a few Alentejo red wines, one can be sure that I will be seeing its name again. Unfortunately, Ellen was pretty knocked down with a cold when we arrived at this university town of about 56,000 residents. […]
We took the overnight from Madrid to Lisbon. It is the only train between the two cities, and runs on old, bumpy, slow, and uncomfortable track. One would think that Spain is not the largest trading partner of Portugal. As we arrived at 7:20 in the morning, we decided to head straight down to the […]
According to Wikipedia, “Spanish rain does not actually stay mainly in the plain. It falls mainly in the northern mountains. In Spanish, the phrase was translated as La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla (The rain in Seville is marvellous). The lyric about Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire implies (but does not entail) that hurricanes ever occur […]
Nancy, Ellen, and I did a daytrip to Toledo. We took the high speed train, as it takes 30 minutes, vs. 90 on the bus. It was another whirlwind, but would like to go back sometime. We didn’t get to see many of the panoramas from a distance for which Toledo is famous. It’s also […]
To be fair, we did Cordoba in a whirlwind. We drove from Sevilla along the impressive Spanish highways. It took maybe two hours. Nancy’s phone had Google GPS and it generally helped us find where we needed to go. We had rented another Airbnb and the map showed that is was located within the walls […]
Sevilla was founded by Hercules about 3000 years ago. He did a fine job. It is now one of the coolest places in the world. (It seems we’re saying that quite often in Spain). Sevilla is about 100 km up the Guadalquivir River from Cádiz, and it is a inland shipping port (container ships, etc.). It was where […]
We decided to stop in Cádiz on the way to Sevilla because Ellen’s family had hosted a social worker from Cádiz many years ago. When Ellen and I went sailing in the early 80’s with her parents, they had some work done on the boat in Gibraltar, and we took the bus to Cádiz to visit Maria […]
The Alhambra is a place that it seems all Spaniards are proud of. Every Spaniard to whom we mentioned our visit to the Alhambra was excited for us and bursting with pride. I visited about 42 years ago and things have changed a bit. Now you need to get tickets ahead of time, and it […]
Cruise Update The cruise ended in Barcelona. For us. Which is a good thing. Not that we didn’t enjoy it, we had a fine time. The night after they left the ship ran into some serious seas. A “rogue” wave hit the port bow deck three (where our cabin was), and knocked out the windows […]
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