May 22, 2011

Day 5 and 6: Western Spain and Portugal

Intro - The Tour
Days 1 & 2 - Getting to Bordeaux
Day 3 - St. Emilion
Day 4 - Rioja Wine Region

Day 5 started with a mediocre Spanish hotel breakfast (no chocolate croissants - grr) and some cold, rainy weather. I usually tough through the cold because it typically doesn't last long. You know how road trips go - lots of weather changes. However, this particular day it was either just extra cold or I was being a weenie, because I made us pull over only 45 minutes into the drive so that I could have some hot tea. But it definitely helped to warm me up!

About an hour later, the skies cleared, but man the drive was kinda boring! It felt like we were driving through Spanish Kansas - lots of flat fields and only a few tiny, run-down towns.

We stopped in one of the towns for lunch, and it felt like something out of an old western, but in Spain. Do those even exist? We didn't fit in at all with our motorcycle! But they served up a good fish sandwich and paella.
Old Spanish Western town :)

As we continued on, we hit some crazy winds! Luckily, as we got into more hills, the winds died down. The hills grew more dramatic and beautiful as we went along. In those hills, there were tons of small towns that seemed completely deserted. They were really cool looking because they were all old, rustic stone buildings. It was really interesting and made us wonder what had happened to have people settle towns like those and then leave.

We saw a few of these huge Spanish bulls. It's hard to tell in this picture, but this metal bull is probably 30 feet tall

We stopped for coffee at a hostel in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, and the lady working the counter thought Brian was Spanish. We concluded it was because of his unshaven face :)

Our B&B for the night was really cool! We had to take several tiny roads to get to it, and the structure was extremely old, but the inside was refurbished really well!

Check out our room!

We spent the evening sitting on our porch, listening to a stream nearby, drinking wine, listening to jazz, and just relaxing. It was so nice to unwind and reflect on our great day of driving.


Dinner that night was prepared and served by the B&B owner, and it was really tasty! Great red wine (of course), croquettes, pork, barbecue rice, and flan with celery for dessert! I wouldn't have thought to pair celery and flan, but it was really good.


The next morning, the B&B owner was back in the kitchen and served us fresh squeezed orange juice, eggs, and crepes.

Time to head out

The weather that day was SO much better! Lots of sun and warm temperatures. It didn't take us long to hit our first good roads for the day. We spent a couple of hours driving through a national park on the border of Spain and Portugal, and it was gorgeous!


We were the only ones on the road (literally, we saw one other car), and the road was surrounded by lush vegetation and cool rock formations. For a little while, I thought maybe we weren't supposed to be on that road? What if it dead-ended? But we cruised right along without problems and just enjoyed the view! And the smells - they were so fresh and sweet. We drove by tons of really cool picnic areas with solid stone picnic tables - I wish I had packed a lunch!

The road we followed

We saw lots of these!




There were tons of orange trees (right side of the picture)

After the national park, it wasn't too much further to Porto, and I'll save Porto for another post!

2 comments:

  1. How beautiful! ...flat like Spanish Kansas - love that description. The B&B was beautiful - how do you do that - find the good ones? So fun.
    Love,
    Mom

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