October 17,18 - Madrid

We woke up early today to catch the AVE high speed train from Malaga to Madrid.  The train ride was really great.  We surpassed 300km/hour.  Just for fun I turned on the GPS and clocked our speed at almost 190mph.  Good thing Garmin is not linked to the police since he thought we were driving.

It looks fast because it is fast.  Really freaking fast!

We tried going to the Royal Palace on Monday but it was closed due to a special event and someone forgot to tell them how special Tom and I are.  So we just meandered the streets of Madrid and, like Barcelona, we are very impressed with this nice city. 

A small sample of the beauty of Madrid.  There is so much more.

On our final day we made it to both the Prado Museum and the Royal Palace.  Both are extremely impressive and overwhelming.  The Prado was great, but two and a half hours in a museum with countless Catholic paintings makes Brian’s head spin.  The Royal Palace is another experiment in uninhibited opulence, but again, it was impressive and worth seeing.  We enjoyed the amazing chandeliers most. 

The outside of the Royal Palace.  Too bad no pictures were allowed inside.

It’s time to sign off for this trip and for this portion of my travel blog.  We fly home tomorrow and are both ready to get home to the furry fearsome five-some.  Enough hotels, enough driving in Europe (although, it does suit me quite well... too well), enough eating out and enough walking everywhere and seeing everything.  It has been thoroughly enjoyable.  So until next time…

Ciao!  Au revoir!  Adios!

Brian (author) and Tom (contributing editor)

October... something - Costa del Sol

Lost track of time a bit, which seems to be the way on the Costa del Sol of Spain.  This is our two days of downtime to catch our breath before finishing in Madrid to see the Prado Museum and Royal Palace.  We did take a day to go to the Pileta Caves, which have drawings up to 30,000 years old.  But before I get to that, the trip up was just as memorable and much more scary.  Garmin, our tour guide, did a great job of getting us around this trip but he is now on probation.  We arrived in the town of Benoajan and Garmin directed us into the town instead of around it.  This was fine at first but then the streets got narrower and narrower, the turns got tighter and tighter and the hills got steeper and steeper.  Once the tires of our car spun in place the hill was so steep.  This all came to a head when Garmin told us to turn on a "street" that turned out to be a walkway with steps.  What?!  We then had to back down a hill through a tight opening between a building and a car (about 6 inches clearance on each side).  I was so close to the side of a building I had to fold in the driver side mirror.  BUT... we made it unscathed.  No new scratches on the car (there were already plenty of scratches so no one would have noticed anyway).

The town of Benoajan.  I will always remember this town and probably have nightmares for a long time.

 A VERY relieved (and smug) Brian

On to the caves.  The caves were another unforgettable experience.  They are not as well known as the caves in Lascaux, France and Altimira, Spain because the drawings are not as detailed but this cave does not have replicas built.  We saw the real deal.  The reason they are still open to the public is that they only allow about 100 visitors per day into the caves.  It is pretty mind blowing to see 30,000 year old drawings.

Our guide waiting for the tour.  The scenery from the caves were great.

The cave entrance

Getting ready to spelunk (kind of)

Of course no photos are allowed past the cave entrance so that is all for now.  Only one more destination left:  Madrid.  Should be fun.

October 11 - Gibraltar

We climbed the rock today.  OK, by climbed I mean paid 15 pounds sterling to ride a cable car to the top.  We did walk down though, which no one else did.  From this perspective, Gibraltar feels like a mini-Hong Kong with the hills shadowing the high rise buildings that are built on reclaimed land in a British territory (or former British territory as the case may be).

The Rock of Gibraltar.  There are 30 miles of tunnels dug out inside the rock for long past defense purposes.

Can there be an English territory without a pub named The Angry Friar?  Definitely not!

 We were lucky enough to witness the operation of one of the most bizarre airports in the world.  Below is the picture of a plane taking off.  Notice that traffic in and out of Gibraltar is completely stopped for this event.

October 10 – Barcelona to Tarifa, I mean, Gibraltar, United Kingdom

Very interesting journey today.  The only thing we knew for certain today was that we were flying to Malaga on the Costa del Sol in the south of Spain.  On the flight we surveyed the options for getting around and decided to rent a car.  Great decision!  Once in the airport Tom consulted the reluctantly helpful tourist agent (she was forbidden to say too much about each town, call hotels, etc. for favoritism).  After coercing her a bit she told Tom that Tarifa was a nice place to visit and has a nice beach.  She was exactly half right.  Tarifa is much closer to a run down Mexican town than a Spanish town, especially when compared to Barcelona.  We stayed only long enough to find a hotel, eat spaghetti-o’s (really, the spaghetti Bolognese tasted exactly like spaghetti-o’s), walk along the pretty, but too windy and too unappealing when looking back towards town beach, cancel our hotel and leave two hours later.  The only picture I got was on our way out of town high on a point towards Africa (at least we saw it).

We arrived in Gibraltar and were immediately refreshed by an English speaking community.  It is nice not to waste valuable brain cells (better off killed by beer and wine) trying to understand another language.  There are very little accommodations here but we did find a barebones, shared bathroom in the middle of town for only 42 pounds.  Good enough for 2 nights.

October 8,9 - Barcelona

After surviving 100km/hour (steady) winds on our way from Les Baux via Narbonne we arrived in Barcelona.  The Metro in Barcelona is very impressive.  It is well signed, efficient (the trains run every 4 minutes in each direction), cheap and safe.  Easily the best subway system I have seen.

The very clean and efficient metro.

Once checked in to our hotel we walked to Guelle Park, which is home to Gaudi’s planned, unfinished and failed housing development turned city park.  The architecture and style are right out of a Dr. Suess book.  There’s no other way to describe it… just look...

Gaudi's style.

Finally, for dinner and an evening stroll we braved the fascinating La Rambla street with it’s endless people, shops, restaurants, market, artists and “other” things.  We had our first tourist tapas and the worst Sangria in history.  Let’s move on.  

La Rambla has an energetic vibe that is infectious.  It was great to stroll slowly down the street to take in the atmosphere and people.

Today we started with an open air, double-decker tour bus around the city.  This would allow us to see a large portion of the city and it would give us transportation to the Sagrada Familiga, the still unfinished church by Gaudi.  When we passed by the chuch the lines to get in we over one block long.  Crap!  We, along with the rest of the tour bus, decided not to disembark and settle for pictures from the moving bus.  Too bad. 

October 7 – St. Remy and Provence countryside

Today we set out with no destination in mind other than to visit a winery or two and perhaps an olive grove.  Things just seem to always work out when we meander and not choose specific destinations.  The common theme for the day was that when we finished with one destination we consulted the Garmin GPS for the next; herein referred to as Garmin, our tour guide.  Our first stop was only a mile away at Sainte Berthe winery.  This is directly beneath Les Baux in a very scenic location.  I took a few pictures, we tasted two unimpressive red wines and left. 

It was worth stopping at but we have learned in the past that visiting wineries is a quick stop for us and we only need to see one or two per day to get our fill.

Next, Garmin led us to an old rock quarry.  There didn’t seem to be much else there other than more views of Les Baux so we moved on again.  We asked Garmin where to go to next and he told us to go to the Glanum archaeological site.  On the way to Glanum we saw a handful of tourists at an estate so we pulled in.  The estate turned out to be Vincent Van Gogh’s insane asylum and the place where he ended his life.  There was more to this estate than a mental hospital, but that was the highlight.  The entire place, inside and out, was decorated with statues of Van Gogh and prints of his works. 

Van Gogh looks older than Tom, yet he died in his late 30s.

Somehow I thought an olive grove was going to be more attractive looking for no other reason than olives taste so good.  I will tell myself that it looks much nicer in the spring.

This poor olive was left behind during picking.

After lunch Garmin finally took us to the 2800-year-old ruins of the Glanum archaeological site.  The first inhabitants settled here from the Hellenistic era around 6^th to 7^th century B.C.  It eventually became a Roman city and survived for about 1000 years total.  Tom was in heaven.  This was not in the preserved condition of Pompeii but the period was much earlier.  Good job Garmin.

Tom is thoroughly enjoying this archaeological site.  He wants to be reincarnated as a history major.

Not only are the ruins interesting but we saw them on a beautiful day.  For the record, these are the first clouds we have seen since we have been here.  Not that I’m rubbing it in to everyone back in the Pacific Northwest.  ;-)

Remember when at Glanum, no smoking, no littering, no leaning on the ruins and absolutely, positively no stinking cheeseburgers.

October 6 – Arles

We decided to visit Arles today because it is close to Les Baux and it has Roman ruins and an archeology museum.  We went to the museum first because it would give us a good overview of the sites in Arles we saw later.  The museum turned out to be the highlight of the day.  The stadium and the amphitheater were both relatively unimpressive compared to the aqueduct we saw yesterday and the Roman ruins we have seen before.  It was still enjoyable but not worth writing about, frankly. 

The Ampitheater

 The Coliseum

Streets of Arles.... yawn.

Before heading back to Les Baux we stumbled upon Paddy Mullins Irish pub and had our first European Guinness.  Our hope was that the beer would taste much better (as we have heard) since it may not have the formaldehyde preservative in the beer since it was not being imported to the United States.  Alas, the Guinness tasted exactly like we both remember, but it was still a Guinness.  

 Tom McGowan, our savior, in his element.