The Rain in Spain...

The Koalaman and I took the two-hour flight to Girona, Spain, just outside of Barcelona, on a Thursday in December. We drove to Barcelona and spent the next day looking at all the incredible architecture there, mostly the buildings by Gaudí. We also took in the touristy sights as we walked down some of the main streets in Barcelona. There were lots of buskers, mostly people dressed and painted to look like statues. There were also a lot of street vendors, selling everything from fresh flowers to artwork to pets (turtles, parakeets, pigeons, rabbits, guinea pigs, lizards, fish, chickens, etc).

On Saturday, we drove down the coast on the way to Valencia, stopping in a little town called Amposta for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. On our way out the door, the people working there gave us a can of lychees in syrup. They would have made a good pie, but we never ended up using them, unfortunately. We spent the night in Valencia, and the next day drove down to the teeny tiny village of Mojácar. It's a white village perched on a little hill overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The Koalaman had rented a flat there for one week, and we had a wonderful time. The weather there was beautiful, and we spent some of the time just sitting out on the deck, reading books. In fact, we ate Christmas dinner on the deck.We also walked around the cobblestone streets of the village quite a bit. Every once in a great while we heard English being spoken, as some people from England have vacation homes in Mojácar. But mostly it was Spanish, so we didn't have too many conversations. My Spanish from only two years of it in high school is very rusty, and the Koalaman doesn't know any at all. But we managed, even when the rental car ran out of fuel. But more on that later. We went to a couple of village markets, which was so much fun. Each village has a day for their outdoor market where they sell everything from clothes and shoes to ready-to-eat food and kitchen items like pots and pans. We also went on a couple of small walks into the hills above Mojácar, where we found this donkey staked out.

We spent one day driving along the coast and going to all the beaches. When our week was up, we drove farther along the coast and a bit inland to Gaucín, another white village, this time in the mountains. On a clear day, we could see the Rock of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Sea from our window, which was about an hours drive away. Unfortunately, we only got one clear day during our week-long stay there. We went to Gibraltar twice, since we didn't get everything in the first day we were there. Gibraltar has actually been a British territory since 1713, but people have been living there since 950 BC. We learned a lot of history while we were there. We went through a Moorish castle that was built sometime in the 1100's. We got to walk through some of the miles of tunnels that were dug out of the rock in WWII. We saw lots of Barbary Apes, which were probably imported from North Africa as pets or for hunting. Some of them are pretty aggressive since tourists like to feed them. One of them jumped on my back! There's a wall that runs up to the top of the rock, and there are stairs in the side of the wall. Yep, we walked up all those stairs. I was soooo tired. Then when we were at the top, we could see a heavy rain storm quickly heading our way across the Bay of Gibralter from Spain. Sure enough, it hit while we were up there. We were both wearing waterproof jackets, but we got soaked from the waist down.

Another trip we took from Gaucín was to a town called Ronda, where the oldest bullfighting ring in Spain is located. We took a tour of the ring, but weren't inclined to watch a bullfight.
There's also some beautiful architecture in Ronda, including part of the original town wall, and an amazing bridge over a deep ravine that splits the town in two. We were in Gaucín for New Years, but I'm afraid we didn't do any partying. Instead we went to bed and set the alarm for 11:45. How lame is that!? I think we're getting old.

From Gaucín we drove just over the border into Portugal where we toured a beautiful old castle and went to the beach and then to Seville. We spent the night there and drove to Madrid the next day - the Koalaman's birthday! Unfortunately this was also the day we ran out of fuel. Asking for help in Spanish is not easy when you don't know much Spanish. Eventually we found a guy who would help us. He only had room in his vehicle for one person, but it was so tough for him to get that point across to us poor Inglés-speaking people. He took the Koalaman to the nearest fuel station. Unfortunately, the Koalaman didn't bring back quite enough diesel to get the car to start, so we had to walk back to the station to get more. Thankfully, on the way back someone saw us walking and offered us a ride. And we were on our way again. We spent the night in Madrid and drove to Barcelona through a little bit of snow the next day. After a night there, we hopped on a plane back to London and here we are!