From 15 PAX, to 5, to 4, we were now 2 and headed on a bus from San Seb to Logrono! A super cute old town in the heart of the Rioja wine region.  A perfect place for a stopover on our way down to Madrid.  We loved the bar lined streets, at a rate of nearly 1 bar per permanent citizen, albeit with about half shut down for vacation there were still plenty left for us!!  Highlights included:

• Cruising the bars, obviously
• Hanging out with a lovely young girl (that’s what we call 32 year olds now) from Minnesota and making the most of befriending a Spanish speaker (for clarity, that’s the same person….we didn’t go too crazy and speak to 2 strangers!!)
• A tour of a 125 year old Bodega born out of phylloxera’s introduction into France
• Once again having a hotel employee barge into our room, this time while we were actually in bed!! In clear violation of local laws stating: “If the bed’s Rioja-ing, don’t come knocking!”
  • To be fair, she didn’t even bother knocking.

Then, finally, to round out our first EVER non driving tour of mainland Europe, we needed 2 more trains over 4 hours to get to one of the most beautiful and underrated capital city’s in Europe, Madrid.  The impressive architecture, beautiful gardens, thriving culture, palaces, massive square, cute, bar lined streets with balconies for all, make Madrid a lovely place to finish off a great holiday.  We even had our first and only European pillows!  See previous blogs for more comments on these (specifically The Reich Stuff and The Frog Prince).  And James gained an appreciation for the gender imbalance, when, after making many loo rated complaints (see pretty much every previous blog) Lea talked of needing to check the waste-paper (in every sense of the term “waste”) baskets every time in order to make acquaintance with the local non-flushables. I’ll never complain again…at least until the next trip.

Highlights included:

• A walk along the Calle de Alcala to the stunning Palcio de Cibeles (once a post office!!) and through the Parque de El Retiro, including a free exposition at the Palacio de Velasquez
• A walk through the streets around Plaza Mayor looking for calamari sandwiches
• A walk around our local area sampling the bar scene (maybe a couple few of laps)
• A walk into a bar (already carrying a bottle of wine) because it was calling us in (before arguing with the server about whether we’d paid already – and being saved by a local who’d been keeping a close eye on us for some reason…)
• A walk to the Mercado de San Miguel on our last morning for some final snacks, before seeing the sweaty cheeses, mozzarella with flies, smoked salmon and oysters without refrigeration, plethora of deep fried options but no deep-fryers (?), before settling on some final bubbles, sherries and jamon rolls instead!

I guess just mostly a lot of walking…and eating (and drinking)…eso es españa.

Thanks PPS2024! https://europez2a.com/pps-2024/

PPPS: Europe – We’ll be back in a few months.

Not to be confused with the https://europez2a.com/2017/04/17/the-boozer-of-seville/ from 7 years ago.  This version is a lot older, maybe not wiser, but certainly more aware of the potential plumbing situations on offer in these parts.  Each morning begins with bargaining with one’s own sub-conscious to expedite the morning movement before exploring the almost millennia aged buildings whose owners are still thanking the Romans for their sewage systems.

From a max of 15, we were now 5 descending, somewhat broken, on the eternally beautiful, if not temporarily sleepy city of Sevilla.  The streets laden with cloaked penitents of PS2017, were replaced with a handful of tourists sweltering in the sun and a super chilled vibe.

We had a cruisey couple of days, explored the Alcazar again, finally made it into the Cathedral, went to an awesome flamenco show and luckily, avoided a trip to hospital as James had bread soaked in chorizo oil (and the remnants of the naphthalene it was likely cooked in) slapped out of his hand after only one mouthful.  And we’re still not sure if Lea’s mastery of food and wine vocab in almost every langauge ended up helping or hindering some fellow tourists who she saved from ordering 2 BOTTLES of wine instead of 2 GLASSES.  She’s just lucky she didn’t do that to us!

From Sevilla, one down, 4 of us flew onto Basque country.  A second attempt at what we’d expected to do in FFS2019 (https://europez2a.com/ffs/), but had to change last minute.  A lovely night out in Bilbao, where our concierge broke into our room and we watched the local punters heave metal discs at a metal frog, was followed by the well waited trip to the Guggenheim.  A truly spectacular building, that lived up to the weight of expectation we’d given it, if not just a little “Gehry-ish”…

From Bilbao we were shepherded through the Basque country by a local guide to San Sebastian (the guide advised us of the memory tool for saying thank you as “a scary Costco”, as can been seen in the photos thanks to AI and an absent friend).  Along the way enjoying a local winery, viewing the unique 90 degree tilted stratigraphy along the coast and enjoying pinchos in a fishing village. 

San Sebastian was beautiful and the food was amazing, justifying its popularity.  The attention to detail where they skewered their patron with giant pintxo sticks on the side of a church was faith inspiring.  But it was definitely the most people we’d been exposed to on the entire tour. Despite the masses, the sight of us (or some of us at least) out the front of most bars caused many to wander in and James feeling we should be influencers….before being rudely/accurately corrected by a friend who suggested “under the influencers” might be more apt.

After a particularly intense few months of, ironically, trying to simplify our lives we said our final goodbyes and hit the skies, destined for Lisbon. Such was our excitement, that, despite the immensely disappointing start of ordering an Uber instead of the much hoped for “Olà!” from the airport, we had one of the best 24 hour stopovers we’ve ever had! It could have just been from several loads lifted off the shoulders in recent weeks, but also might have been helped by the random old ladies selling ginjinha in chocolate cups on the streets or even accidentally stumbling across a wine festival where 1 Euro got you as much as you could drink. Showing tremendous (and unusual) restraint after being awake for 36 hours, we tasted very few and chose instead to take some away for our balcony (where we still had to check if the prices were by the bottle or glass…in the good way). The extra Euros were perfectly offset by the priceless look on Lea’s face when asked if she’d like “fresh wine” and answering “no, I want a closed bottle”…to the guffaws of the surrounding Europeans who, for some reason, replace the word cold with fresh when wine’s involved. What a culture shock right!?

We had a lovely dinner and stumbled into a tiny Fado bar where we got to witness performances of at least 6 people as they popped on stage from out the back, from the bar and from where we thought were just fellow punters getting on it…it was all incredible to hear, even through the growing fear that at any stage it could be “your turn amigo”. Other than that, we saw as much as you can in the time we had, Lea got her tart fix (James was left wanting more), enjoyed the same hotel and the same room and the same view from our trip in 2017 in yet another once in a lifetime experience we got to repeat, and thoroughly loved our time in Lisbon…until the train station.

We knew the train station we chose was a while away, but about halfway there we did query the “Oriente” destination we had entered was still in Europe. Once there, we wondered why we would head to the Algarve because everyone else was off to the exotic “Com Atraso” until we translated it and realised we were off there too and had 2 hours to wait, com atraso. But everything went to plan from there….until the train platform changed, as the train arrived! And the train took longer on the journey than anticipated…which could have been anticipated.

On the train we made our way to the Algarve and a small, seemingly English, maybe German, town of Vilamoura for a week of festivities for a “young” friend’s 40th.

While in the Algarve we:

• Were reminded how modern builders still construct toilets to honour distant ancestors rather than the large, red English, German (and in this instance, Australian) populations and how the corresponding impact of not having enough space to perform a reach around has different impacts in different situations
• Discovered 1 “prawns” is really one prawn and it being “coocked” came the way we were hoping that typo was going
• Braved the rugged coast by wearing white shorts and ordering giant bowls of tomato and shellfish rice
• Grew a new appreciation for the proliferation of wet ones (see above comment)
• Enjoyed paying more for food than wine at dinners out
• Had an awkward run-in with toilet cistern in a bar where we were already not welcome, went in looking at number one but came out 2nd best
• Enjoyed using deci-litres when ordering wine and pretending we thought 5dL each would just be a glass
• Wondered what we’d eaten at “A do pinto” restaurant after translating the name
• Enjoyed an amazing Jeep safari of the region around Albufeira and soaking up a stunning sunset before being told how terrible it was we couldn’t actually see the ocean
• Went on an spectacular scenic cruise for bday boy
• Swam into caves
• Played “Happy birthday to ya” (and “I’m on a boat!”) too much
• Hiked the red cliffs of Quarteira
• “Marvelled” at Albufeira’s one apostle
• Reunited with and met amazing people from around the world and appreciated how very lucky we’ve been in life to have so many amazing friends we can travel the world with
• Broke into a beach club hotel for lunch…they ended up winning
• Tried various quality piri piri chicken
• And absolutely enjoyed being a long, long way from the real world!!!