Riffs On Spain

Look, we make no secret that Spain is our favorite country to visit.  We’ve been a lot of fantastic places in this world, but Spain calls to us as no other does.  It’s not just the architecture and art, it’s not just gastronomy and vino, it’s not just history and culture, so it’s hard to say exactly why.  

If you are thinking of going to Spain, don’t hesitate to contact us for tips and suggestions, whether it’s Andalacia, Barcelona, Basque Country, the Camino region, or Central Spain, we’ve seen a lot of a beautiful country.

Now here’s some riffs:

“Lunch is hard.”  You wouldn’t think so, but there were plenty of times we struggled to find a place to eat lunch, especially in the smaller villages and towns.  Many restaurants are not open for lunch, so, as in Madrid the first day, the few that are open are packed.  There's also very options when driving through the country.  We had at least two lunches while driving, as Carol picked up meat, cheese, and bread at gas stations that had small grocery stores.

There are few things easier than driving the near-empty roads between Spanish cities, cruising along 75-80 miles per hour.   There are few things harder than driving the narrow, confusing roads within Spanish cities, when GPS flakes out and doesn’t know where to direct you to drive.  Those moments were among the most stressful we’ve ever had on a trip.

We really could have done without the late night city drinking/yelling in both Salamanca and Segovia.  Wouldn’t you know that our first night back at our house in Alexandria, we were woken up by the non-stop crying of a fox somewhere nearby.  As John Madden once said on a random football game I was watching back in the 1980s, “Irony can be so ironic.”

Being able to walk as much as we did was fantastic. Drove slightly more than 1100 miles, took two train rides, and walked 323,457 steps for 142.2 miles in 21 days, or 15,402 steps and 6.7 miles per day.  The lowest step count was 8,222, while the high was the first day (despite jet lag) of 24,590.  In terms of mileage, the low was 3.6 miles, while the high was 10.8 miles walked.

Europe is much more pro-pedestrian than the States.  And I don’t just mean how cities are clustered together, I mean in the way that pedestrians have the right of way at most crosswalks.  I trust European drivers to stop at a crosswalk, but it is not something ingrained in American drivers.

Ice is becoming the new normal at restaurants.  Often times now the drinks are cold, and you get ice to boot.

Drinking the local wine in Spain is fantastic.  I think I only ordered one bottle of Rioja on the trip.  It helps that we spent a bunch of time near Ribera del Duero, so that’s a great wine to default to.  To my surprise, most wine lists had no bottles of Priorat, so we didn’t drink any of that region’s wine either.