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Taking a pause in Barcelona
The last few days in Barcelona were great. Very nice to stay in one place a little longer and have the chance to recover from all the hopping around. In the last few days we: Basically we did a lot of normal life stuff and it was really nice. As we spent more time there,…
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New place! Barcelona 5/4
After a few great days in Gerona, we took the train the rest of the way to Barcelona. Jen and I have both been to Barcelona briefly in the past (not together) and generally have positive memories. We’re interested to explore further. Also, it will be nice to be in a big city again after…
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A few days in Girona, Catalonia, Spain
After 5 days in France, we were VERY excited to be headed back to Spain. We stayed our last night in Arles and the plan was to take a train to Narbonne and then switch trains to Gerona – a roughly 3 hour trip. It poured rain the night before we left (leaking into our…
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New place! Girona, Spain 5/2
France was weird… will post more thoughts on it, but Provence felt sort of sad and half dead. Not sure what the deal was, but was not enjoyable. Because of it being so weird, our hotel had seemingly never been asked to call a taxi before and was completely unable to assist, uber didn’t work…
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Thoughts on Madrid
Awesome, except for the hostility… Initially we were super impressed by Madrid. It’s one of the 5 largest cities in Europe (~5M people) and the capital of a country that once controlled ~13% of the world’s landmass, so it makes sense that it is a great city. We were surprised at how modern and cosmopolitan…
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New place! Madrid
Rick Steves was maybe a bit extreme, but we did not love the Costa del Sol and decided to shorten our stay by a night and catch one of the ~15 daily trains north to Madrid. I’m sitting on the ~3 hour train as I write this and will say that it is the most…
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Nerja and the Costa Azul (the Southern Coast of Spain)
Apparently the southern coast of Spain is famous for sun – and very popular with British tourists looking to get away from the perpetual grey weather (we know something about that). We wanted to see where our new British neighbors would be vacationing, so we drove down to the Costa Azul after our time in…
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New place! Nerja, Spain (by way of Marbella and Malaga)
Done with the white hill towns, we headed south to the coast. Rick Steves does not like the coast… the direct quote from him is “Much of Spain’s south coast is so bad, it’s interesting. Anything resembling a quaint fishing village has been bikini-strangled and Nivea-creamed. Oblivious to the concrete, pollution, ridiculous prices, and traffic…
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Ronda and the White Hill Towns of Andalucia
We had heard and read that the white hill towns of Andalucia in southern Spain were pretty cool, so we spent a few days in that region after Sevilla. Based on advice from my ever-trusty travel advisor Rick Steves, we based ourselves in the town of Ronda, itself one of the white hill towns, and…
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New Place! Ronda, Spain
We rented a car at the Sevilla train station and headed ~2 hours west (and a bit south) to Ronda, Spain. Jen’s “friend” Rick Steves suggests that Ronda is a great base to explore the surrounding “white hill towns” of the Andalusian country side. We’re here for 3 nights and eager to check it out.…
Where everything is Fuller