Travels made in the Iberian Peninsula so far

Here begins a small referate of travels that we have made in the Iberian Peninsula together.

In April 2006 we visited Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid, each for three days. We liked Barcelona, but somehow there was too much hazzle for our taste. We loved Valencia with it's funny houses and it's long park modified from a dried river bank.

Madrid was nicer than we expected but I remember wandering during a busy Monday morning that how could you ever calm down and relax if you would imagined yourself working there in the city centre. Too big, I thought, for a guy from the forests in the north.

I want to stress that we had no concrete plans, dreams yeah, on that time that we ever actually would live in Spain...

However, here we have been since Septmember 2007, and visited quite a satisfactionary list of 'sitios'.

Our first trip was to El Escorial, an old monastery village 20 miles from home. The first real travel was by a decent cheap and comfortable bus to Granada in Andalucia. That was in the beginning of November, during local bank holidays.

Specialities during that trip was the unprepared hike to the top of Sierra Nevada. In other words; climbing to 3400 m with NO drinks nor other food supplies. Next day, with sunburned faces entrancing mistakenly but honestly without fee to Alhambra. To be mentioned also that I succesfully joined a couple of international workmeetings online from the hotelroom with the prereservated ADSL.

In the first days of December we headed north, to Aragon. First to 'Monastery de Piedra' to admire its waterfalls. Then to Zaragoza, another huge, for us pretty 'unknown', city. After Zaragoza we headed the rented Skoda Octacia eaven more north to Pyreneés driving through astonishing, and wonderful mountain rouds to Monasteria de Peña.

Finally, we spent one night in a ski resort called Jaca, close to the French border. While returning home we spotted some deserted villages, where we stopped to have some unplanned but nice breaks. A planned brake with a proper spanish Sunday dining was held in Soria.

Story to be continued... and there will be revealed something about our first trip to Portugal, where among many nice things, some bad words were used in the Portuguese road toll...


soini