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Geo: 44.9332, -123.043
We rose at 4:00 AM to get ready for our 5:00 AM taxi to the airport for a 7:15 AM flight on our Granada-Madrid-Dallas/Ft. Worth-PDX trip home.
24 hours from takeoff, we'd be back in Oregon, doggies in our arms, and arriving home in Salem.
It's always great to be home!
What did we enjoy and learn on this trip?
1. The people of Spain are warm, friendly, inviting, and for the most part accepting of those with limited Spanish language skills.
2. The trains in Spain, as well as the cities' Metro systems, are fabulous ways to travel, comfortable, efficient, affordable, fast, and always on-time. The US and US cities have missed so many opportunities to build trains into our transportation infrastructure.
3. The food in Spain is delicioso, even for people like us who navigate around red meat. We rediscovered gazpacho and its thicker cousin, salmonrejo, finally found a great paella, enjoyed our forays into the grazing world of tapas.
4. Absolutely loved the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the day trip to Toledo out of Madrid, but the highlight of the trip was our time in Sevilla and Granada in the Andalucia region of southern Spain.
5. We stayed in wonderful hotels: the Hotel Banys Orientals in Barcelona, Hotel Europa in Madrid, El Rey Moro in Sevilla, and Hotel Anacapri in Granada. All were centrally located and walkable to most sites in their respective cities, and each was staffed by friendly, helpful employees. Thanks to Rick Steves and TripAdvisor for steering us correctly.
And, on the flip side, not so much:
1. Traveling to Europe from the West Coast of the US takes a long time, is generally overnight on the way to Europe, and is quite physically constricting and draining.
2. American Airlines has sub-standard seat back media centers on its long-haul flights, with pixels in its monitors the size of legos, making any kind of media viewing arduous.
3. London Heathrow security is a bear to go through, almost single-handedly ruining our trip. We will never return to that airport, city, or country, the experience was so disturbing.
4. There is cigarette smoke everywhere where people gather in cities, so you just have to deal with it.
5. Since there are so many other places in the world we still want to see and experience, and because we limit our trips to about 10 days because of how long we can be away from our dogs and home, we did this 4-city blitz in 11 days, meaning we had three pack-up-and-travel days during our time in Spain. Probably not the ideal.
6. And lastly, we struggled at times because of our limited Spanish language skills, such as at restaurants where menus didn't include small print English translations, as well as at other times during our planning for this trip when we'd wind up on Spanish language web sites. That's just part of the learning experience of foreign travel!
Big picture, though, traveling abroad is mind-expanding, enriching, immensely stimulating, comfort zone stretching, life-affirming, perspective broadening, challenging, and an adrenaline rush.
Gracias, Espana!
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