Alright, I know, I’ve been home 2 weeks already and should have written the blog by now. But I got the pictures done and up. Does that count for anything?

We were in Spain for two weeks on vacation. We stayed in the vacation house that friends of ours own and spent the time with our friends Timo and Ruth and their daughter. That’s the short version of the story.

Here’s the long version: The original plan was for us to drive to Denia, Spain and have about five days there on our own before picking up the Hacks at the airport. Then we would have another week with them before driving home. Our friends, however, the owners of the house, somehow got the dates mixed up and booked another family in there during the five days that we wanted to spend alone. So. We decided to make the best of it, throw our camping stuff in the car and instead of driving the 15 hours straight down to Denia, we would stop somewhere different each night and explore the Mediterranean coast on the way down. And that’s what we did.

The first day we drove to Domaso, Italy on the shore of Lake Como. Benni and Annka were camping there for a week, so we hooked up with them and spent a very pleasant evening. The next day, we drove to St. Raphael, France and camped there, having paused to go into Monaco and look at the harbor. The next day, we drove to Port Leucate, France and camped there. Now, by this time, I’ve become completely disappointed. I somehow imagined that we would have more time to see things along the way, even if they’re small, seemingly unimportant things. What we’d actually done was just drive on the highway and sleep. This is unacceptable to me. I don’t even mind driving the whole day if we’re on small roads and going through towns and seeing the actual country, but from the highway you don’t see a darn thing and I was pretty ticked off by this point. So Flo and I talked about it.

And on the next day, we made time to go sightseeing. He really wanted to see Carcassonne, which is a city in France. The unique thing about Carcassonne is that on a hill, above the modern city, is the old medieval, walled city. It is not in its completely original form, but was renovated sometime in the 19th century, I think. It’s full of shops and hotels and restaurants. The palace charges entry, but the cathedral is free. So we went there. We found surprisingly little tourist information in France, no matter where we went, so I can tell you very little about Carcassonne, actually. It was packed with tourists; it is one of the main tourist draws in that area of France. I liked it anyway. It doesn’t take much to impress me sometimes. I did have the feeling I would be cheated out of money if I wanted to buy anything that looked like it was of good quality (except the castle shaped blocks I bought for my nephew), but that could have more to do with my general distaste for the French than with anything else. (In my own defense, I really did try to keep an open mind concerning the French, but while no one was nasty to me this time, they really weren’t friendly or helpful either, so they still haven’t made a good impression.) Anyway, so really we just walked around for an hour or so. More details are included in the comments accompanying the pictures.

After we left Carcassonne, we drove on some small roads through beautiful countryside to Castelnou, which is essentially a much smaller version of Carcassonne. Castelnou is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and it still retains its completely medieval look. At the top of the hill is a tiny castle that originally dated to the 10th century. It didn’t take long to walk around there either, but it was definitely fun. And we saw real, live, wild mountain goats on the hill by the castle! Sweet! That area of France is actually known for having had a heretical cult flourishing there in the medieval times and you can go to different castles that the cult lived in, but we didn’t make it to any of them, although I wanted to. There are plenty of things for us to see if we ever visit the south of France again, but then, hey, how many chances do I really want to give the French to be nice to me?

After we left Castelnou, we drove into Spain and stopped at the town of Mataro, which is about half an hour north of Barcelona. We found a campground that runs a shuttle bus into Barcelona and back once a day, so we decided to do that the next day. In Barcelona, we did a classic Kristy-and-Flo-Blitztour. We started off by walking out to Montjuic Park, which is a massive gigantic park and the parts we saw of it were simply gorgeous. We wanted to see the magic fountain, but it only turns on at 9 or 10 at night, so we only saw it dormant. We saw the outside of one of the art museums and that was beautiful as well. I think the building must have been some sort of palace back in the day, because the stairs and statues and topiary and fountains surrounding it were lovely. Then we went in Poble Espanyol, which is essentially a World Fair exhibit from some bygone year. It’s built like a little village and each “neighborhood” in the village represents one area of Spain – Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia and so on. It was quaint, but either I missed something or there isn’t very much information to tell you what you’re really looking at. Afterward we walked back in the direction of downtown, finally reached the waterfront, walked along the boardwalk-type area… Then we went into the Ribera Quarter, which I think is one of the oldest sections, and looked around. I’d been reading a book set in medieval Barcelona and the whole book is about building a certain cathedral, so we stopped to see the cathedral, but couldn’t get in, which is too bad, since the building itself isn’t so gorgeous, but the play of light inside is supposedly amazing. Ah well, yet another thing to see on the next trip and believe me, there will be another trip to Barcelona. I really liked that city. So we just wandered around for a bit, then we went to the biggest (I think it’s the biggest) market in the city. One of the things we love to do is go to a market, no matter where we are in the world. They’re fascinating. I would never have guessed that you can buy a sheep’s head in Spain. I mean, what do you do with that? Eat the brains? I thought that was something reserved for Pakistan, not countries like Spain. By then we were completely exhausted and our feet hurt, so we sat down for a while in the shade, then we moved to a cafe and had an espresso, then we moved to the plaza where we should meet the bus again, but we still had time, so we people watched. Then, somehow, we missed the bus, so we ended up taking the train back to Mataro. By the time we got there, however, it was about 9 pm and we were starving, so we thought we’d walk into town and find some dinner. Well, there is nothing near the train station, so we asked a young woman and her mother if they could recommend a restaurant and at first they were stumped, but then they led us all the way to one that they said was really good and served typical cuisine. It was about 3 blocks; I was so impressed with their hospitality! The waiter was really fantastic. He spoke a little bit of English and was just really friendly and helpful and the food at the place was great. We asked him if there’s a typical digestif and so he gave us the Spanish version of schnapps – orujo. One was straight and one had herbs. I had the herb one and I guess it was good if you like that. So we finally made it back to the campground late that night.

The next day we drove to Denia and checked in at the house, then we went on to Alicante to pick up the Hacks. And from there on out, there’s really not much to tell you about. The house itself is glorious. It’s in a gated community and has been recently renovated, so everything is top. It fits 6, so with 4 adults and a baby, it was perfect. There is a pool just a few steps down a pathway and about 150 meters down the lane is the beach, which is beach reserved for that gated community and the few hotels nearby, so there weren’t throngs like on a public beach. A short car ride got you into downtown Denia, which is tiny and caters mostly to tourists, so we didn’t spend a lot of time there. It seems that activities abound, if you want to do that – hiking, boat tours, jet ski rental (way too expensive!), a little castle… And then everything else was a distance away again in the car and it seemed like none of us felt like driving much, so really, all we did was hang out at the beach, move to the pool, cook, eat, sleep, chat. And that was really the point of the vacation, so job well done.

But that means this isn’t the kind of report you’re probably used to seeing from me. Like I mentioned before, though, there are a lot more details in the captions of the photos, so click on this one here and it will bring you to all of them if you want to see how it looked.