travel to Spain

This is the gnarliest walkway I have ever seen in my life. I would love to hike that. Beautiful and scary all at once.
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1438490562

Spain is fabulous! My friends and I rented an apt. in Barcelona for New Years in ‘05. We all just piled in! It was great because we had a little kitchen so we could make breakfast and there was no one cleaning up after us, no staff, so we could do whatever we wanted and when more friends showed up we just slept on the couches and floors. We went down to the beach for New Years Eve, fabulous. Every night we went out dancing. What a beautiful city too!

I have lived in Spain twice. I would have to say that Barcelona has the beauty, but the heart of Spain is in Madrid. There are pockets of little places everywhere that you could miss. Every turn seems to be a new beginning. If you are a tourist and don’t want to see other tourists, I advise you not to go in August. There is a traditional bar in the heart of the city near Plaza Mayor off the main street called La Refra. Tell them the 2 American Gringas sent you!

Visit Barcelona, Madrid and Sevilla

K, so I recently decided that “I WILL” backpack through Spain in August of 2008.

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to finally visit Spain, and I wish I’d gone here years ago.

Now, all this might just be colored by the previous stops on my trip, but Barcelona and the vicinity were absolutely wonderful. Now I’ve just got to find some reasons to go back…

So this trip took us to Barcelona (for only two days-a crime!) with five days in Girona, an hour and a half north of Barcelona. Both are part of Catalunya, an autonomous province of Spain where the most-used language is Catalan, a romance language that’s related to French and Spanish, but has words which don’t match either. Barcelona’s the big city-a million and a half people, cool, always active. Girona’s a small provincial capital that’s solidly Catalan-speaking, but with a medieval center of town where you can feel like you’re walking in the middle ages.

So what was so memorable about this trip?

• Contrast. We’d just been visiting Limerick, Ireland, and so went from rain and cold to Barcelona’s much warmer weather. Even the rain in Barcelona fell softer. Prices fell, too-Ireland’s the most expensive country in the EU for food these days.

• We survived speaking Spanish! I was a bit apprehensive; my wife doesn’t speak any Spanish (though she knows a fair amount of french), so I was going to be the one doing all the talking for a change. I hadn’t used my high school spanish for twenty years, but I was impressed that my very-rusty-and-not-conversational spanish got us safely through the trip. I only understood about half of what was said to me; the Spanish accents and Catalan languages messed me up even when my ears should have been able to understand, and even a mildly fast and fluent speaker snowed me within a few words. I now appreciate how much it can help you speak with a non-fluent visitor by using single words and very short sentences. I’ve gotten payback for the times I’ve tried to answer a tourist’s question with a long and rambling answer.

• Sights I wouldn’t see anywhere else. Between the Art Noveau / Modernista buildings (like Gaudi’s Casa Batilo, Girona’s medieval center, or the Barcelona Art Museum’s murals from romanesque churches), I saw plenty of sites that didn’t resemble anything I’d seen in Britain, France, or Germany.

• Roots. I was amazed how much the appearance of peopel changed. Part of my heritage is portuguese, and the typical spanish appearance-dark hair, olive skin, strong features-made me see my relatives’ faces whereever I went. I was even a bit freaked that one of the flight attendants on our return flight looked an awful lot like me. Christine suggested I ask him whether he also gets comments asking if he’s Edward Norton in “The Illusionist”.

I’m never going to forget wandering up and down stairs in the rain-soaked streets in Girona’s old town, or sneaking through the dusty and empty ground floor of our apartment’s building there. I’ll also always miss the sidewalk cafes we practically camped out in for a good fraction of the trip.

And I’ve still got to see the 90% of the Barcelona attractions I missed.

See the entire country by bus! (cheaper than trains)

You cannot miss Cadiz – or Seville … and go to La Linea, too..walk across the border into Gibralter and take the ferry to Africa! (Morocco).

Where else can you be in three countries – two continents! at the same time [almost].

First went to Spain with my family, as my mum has always wanted to go to Granada. The Alhambra palace is just amazing, the architecture is spectacular. Last time I went was as part of a music tour, had a great time with my friends but the audiences set up for us were underwhelming at best, and the 24-hour coach journey isn’t something I’d jump at the chance to repeat.

Yeah. Spain is pretty awesome. I’ve been to Madrid, Toledo, Avila, Salamanca, Barcelona, and Sevilla.

My favorite was by far Salamanca. I think everyone should visit Spain. Beautiful cities, and gorgeous countryside.

Spain was amazing.
I can’t even think of anything else to say.