Fini - 2022
So here it is - short and sweet. Since we had visited both Tuscany and Rome before, I admittedly didn’t seem that have the desire to do another post. But I really have to finish this one before I move on to new travels. And, we did experience a few new things along the way. We started by flying from...
A Few weeks in Sicily
We flew from Split to Palermo (with a stop in the Rome airport) with about three weeks to spend in Sicily, visiting four spots around the island. Palermo was our first stop and we spent our first morning jumping on the “Hop-on Hop-off” Red Bus to get a feel for where we were. It was a short walk fro...
Some Sea Time in Croatia
From San Sebastián, it was about a 3 hour flight (2 flights) to get to Dubrovnik. We love the Sheraton just outside of the old city. You can take the water taxi in when you want to - or not. The Sheraton has a beautiful pool and beach and some good walking in the area it is in. Since we have been a...
More Festivals and the Basque Region
We decided to spend just one day/night in Bilbao to give us a chance to visit the Guggenheim Museum there. Researching online, it really didn’t appear there was much else to see there. Of course we were surprised when we arrived to their annual festival - “The Aste Nagusia”, or “The Big Week”. The f...
More Wine…This time in Spains Rioja
OK - Let’s just start off by saying this was probably our favorite area to visit so far on this trip, and one of our favorite wine regions (and we have seen many) in the world. A couple great things happened that helped - mainly, we just by chance happened to be staying in Laguardia Spain during the...
Douro Valley Portugal to Northern Spain
We left the Douro Valley and headed northwest - about a 3 hour drive - to Santiago de Compostela. This is the home to the Cathedral of Santiago, where "pilgrims" from all over Europe (and the world) hike to, using various old routes across Spain. The most well known of these is the Frances route, st...
Whoops, I forgot - CORK
OK - my bad - how could I forget about cork and Eileen's 2 favorite things - trees and wine! Just a short post, with a few pictures and a video. It really is quite incredible to see this process and the fact that these trees have been protected since the 1200’s because of their amazing ability to re...
On to Portugal
After being in very hot Seville, we decided to change our trip to avoid other interior cities in Spain, and head for the coast instead. We rented a car in Seville and will return it in about a month up in northern Spain. We’ll make three stops in Portugal, first visiting Lagos in the Algarve region...
Costa del Sol to Seville
We had a couple weeks to spend in our (Marriott) timeshare in Estepona Spain, and treated this mostly as a “get in shape for the rest of our trip” stop. the goal was to use the gym, swim laps, and generally try to get into “swimsuit shape” before heading on. Well…you know how that went. A few Happy...
Getting Back to Normal
While we enjoyed our travels in 2021, it seemed we were constantly making adjustments as COVID Red Flags were raised in different countries. This year - fingers crossed - things should go much smoother. It is great to be traveling again, and it seems most of Europe (or at least Spain) is getting bac...