¡Hola from Spain!

It’s been almost two weeks since we began our grand European tour. And boy, do I feel like a tourist. 🙄

Our plan for this trip was to slow down and savor the places we visited, to really get to know them. But that will come…later. We knew and planned for this portion of our journey to be a little more rushed, as we’ve whisked through four of Spain’s most famous cities in the past 12 days. I have a lot of backtracking to do to explain all the amazing things we’ve already seen and done, but I’ll simply start with a map & overview of our route:

We started off by flying into the glorious, colorful, cosmopolitan city of Barcelona. Why? Well, Amy had an obsession with Barcelona based on a 24-hour trip she had taken 20 years ago. And, we found a cheap non-stop flight from LAX. More on that later.

Three days later, we took the high-speed train south. Though I’m pretty certain that 300 kph (186 mph) is the fastest I’ve ever travelled on land, we were still able to appreciate the views of so much of Spain as it whizzed past our windows. We skipped right past Madrid, figuring we would take on that formidable city sometime later, and got off in radiant, patinaed, history-drenched Granada for three amazing days.

From there, we rented a car for a hair-raising drive to magical, gravity-defying Ronda for a couple of days, before heading on to imposing Sevilla. Along the way, we found our way off the main road into the little known but ancient towns of Archidona, Antequera, and Zahara, the last one especially making our short list for the most charming village on Earth.

We’ll dedicate some posts to each of these destinations, as well as our journey, over the coming days.

For now, I’ve say that Spain has enchanted us with her incredible history, beautiful towns, narrow cobblestoned streets, and breathtaking vistas. We’ve eaten our fair share of tapas, drunk plenty of sangria and cerveza, and explored more churches, fortresses, and quaint neighborhoods than I can keep track of. More on all of that later.

Amy’s mom Cathy joined us for this leg, and we’ve been glad to have her along as we all adjust to our new life on the road. Griffin was in heaven to have his dear Nana join us for the first part of the trip! Tomorrow, she flies home and we hop on a bus to southern Portugal for the next chapter of our trip, where we plan to slow down.

Stay tuned!