Since our beach day in San Sebastian was rained out, we decided to spend a day at the beach our first day in Barcelona. After traveling a little farther out of the center of the city we found just what we were looking for: a nice quiet, not-so-crowded, beach where we could rent towels for the day, and enjoy the sunshine with a nice breeze. The beach and water were beautiful.
As we toured Italy and Spain there is one thing Lindsey wanted to do that we just could not fit into our schedule: take a cooking class. As we passed several cooking schools, Lindsey just wanted to stay and join the class. I would not be surprised to see Lindsey return to Europe at some point in the future for some culinary training.
We will let you go Lindsey as long as you promise to cook for us when you return!
San Sebastian (Donostia in Basque) is a coastal town in northern Spain with a long, beautiful beach. Our plan was to have a quiet, relaxing day on the beach. Unfortunately, light rain filled our day. We made the most of our visit after a brief search for four small travel umbrellas.
Due to the rain, we cut our visit short, jumped on a bus, and headed back to the Bilbao airport for our evening flight to Barcelona.
Our new umbrellas
Kelsey visited the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain during her trip as an exchange student in 2013. Unfortunately, she did not get to see as much of the museum as she would have liked, so we decided to incorporate a visit to the Northern shore of Spain into our trip. We looked forward to also having some cooler weather.
Inside the Bilbao train station.
After 5 hours on the train, we reached Bilbao and spent the afternoon at the Guggenheim Museum. The architecture for this building is amazing. The modern art inside the museum was not really our taste, but it was a neat experience.
From Bilbao we took a bus an hour east to spend the night in San Sebastian, a beautiful coastal city with a wonderful beach and a neat place to celebrate Lindsey’s birthday.
Evening in San Sebastian.
After saying good-bye to our Madrid friends, we spent one more day seeing some more sights in the city. We explored the Palacio Real de Madrid (the Royal Palace), the Mercado de San Miguel (a historical central market) and the Parque de Madrid (a large, beautiful central park with a pond and rowboats you can rent). It was a wonderful place to sit in the shade and enjoy a breeze on such a hot day, the hottest of our trip at 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit).
To cap off our last night we took in some flamenco dancing and one last serving of churros con chocolate at Valor Chocolates, serving chocolate since 1881.
One more serving of churros con chocolate
The weather in Madrid continues to be hot and humid, so Teresa and her parents led us on a fun day trip to cooler temperatures. 30 minutes away on a high speed train lies Segovia, a charming little town north of Madrid that still has a Roman aqueduct standing.
In addition to the aqueduct, this small town has an amazing castle (Alcazar de Segovia) and a large cathedral. The castle looks like it was taken out of a storybook, complete with towers and a moat. The cathedral has more chapels around the outside of the sanctuary than any other cathedral I have seen.
It was a fun and enjoyable day, especially with a little cooler temperature.
One of our reasons for traveling to Madrid, Spain was to see Teresa, the Spanish exchange student we hosted in CT, and her family, who hosted Kelsey in Madrid. Kelsey enjoyed getting to see Teresa again and we enjoyed having her parents be our local, Spanish speaking, guides to the sites around Madrid while having an opportunity to get to know them.
Teresa and her parents guide us through Madrid.
During our walking tour of Madrid, we spent some time in the Prado art museum and visited the Plaza Mayor, the Catedral de Santa Maria, and the Royal Palace of Madrid. It was an enjoyable day that ended with churros con chocolate at one of the oldest establishments that has served it since 1894.
And if that was not enough, we found a bubble tea shop in Madrid! Kelsey was able to satisfy her bubble tea withdrawal.
On the way to dinner, we came across a procession of a patron saint from a church out to the main square. A band accompanied the saint, carried on a large, very heavy float like structure. You can’t see them, but there are people under the float carrying the entire thing on their shoulders. After our dinner, we saw the same saint procession return to the church.
We are off to Madrid, Spain.
After a morning of shopping at the various street markets in Florence, we left town on a short flight (2 hours) to Madrid, Spain. Unfortunately, Karen’s suitcase did not want to leave, so it stayed behind. This created a little worry and the need for some shopping in Madrid, but it did manage to catch up with us the following day. Our evening in Madrid started with some traditional Spanish food and drink. We had dinner at the Museo del Jamon (a popular restaurant chain called the museum of ham), Karen and I enjoyed some Sangria, and Kelsey and Lindsey had their first churros con chocolate (a fried dough treat that you dip in a cup of liquid chocolate, and yes, you do eat or drink the chocolate when you are done with your churros.)
Kelsey with her first churros con chocolate of our trip.
Our first week together in Italy was very enjoyable. As with any family vacation, we all had our moments of being tired, hungry, and little impatient, but overall it was a wonderful time. One of the things that I always find interesting is that when we spend time together on an extended vacation we start to develop catch phrases that we start to use frequently, bringing back a memory of a specific time or place. When you see Kelsey or Lindsey you can ask them about our hand signal that we have had “Enough,” “Zechariah,” or our 1-2-3 system of crossing streets without crossing signals.
We decided to spend a second day on a tour with a knowledgeable guide to explore other areas of the Tuscany region of Italy. Our day included visits to Sienna, the Fattoria Poggio Alloro (a family farm and winery), San Gimignano, and Pisa. It was a hot and busy day, but we were happy to leave all of the travel details to someone else.
Sienna is a nice small city with a large town square and consists of 14 neighborhoods, each with an animal as its symbol. Twice each summer Sienna has a horse race in which 10 of the neighborhoods are randomly assigned horses that race around the town square three times. There is a great sense of pride and belonging to each neighborhood, especially if your horse wins the race. Sienna is also the town that proclaims that it has the oldest, continually run, bank in the world. The cathedral has unique inlaid floors that took over 200 years to compete. Take a look at the detail; amazing.
Fattoria Poggio Alloro is a wonderful, all natural farm and winery just outside of San Gimignano. Our toured stopped by for a tour of their vineyard, olive grove, and cow barn with a delicious lunch and wine tasting. An interesting fact is that they plant an artichoke plant at the end of each row of grapes. They do this because the artichoke will attract insects first to give the farmers a warning if they need to treat the grape vines to prevent an infestation.
Some people refer to San Gimignano as the “Manhattan of Tuscany” because of the many tall towers that were built. Several are still standing. We had a wonderful view of the town from Fattoria Poggio Alloro. Besides being a cute town in a beautiful countryside, it also has some of the best gelato in the world.
Pisa was a fun quick stop, but there is not much to do there besides taking the usual Pisa pictures. The most memorable part of the stop was the small train (one similar to what you would ride in from the parking lot at an amusement park) that picked us up from our bus and drove us into the city. It is amazing and a little scary at how fast it goes.
Our trek was long, hot, tiring, and filled with beauty as we traveled on a tour to the coastline of Italy to visit Cinque Terre, a group of five small coastal towns along the Mediterranean Sea. Our trip included a bus to Manarola, a train to Corniglia, a three plus mile hike to Vernazza, a train to Monterosso, and a boat ride to Riomaggiore. It was amazing scenery and well worth the trip!
We took the train to Corniglia where we had a nice lunch and tried several delicacies, including octopus and sardine.
After lunch we started on our 3 mile trek across the hillside to Vernazza.
On another train to Monterosso, where we were able to take a dip in the Mediterranean Sea and cool off.
Leaving Monterosso we climbed aboard a ship to view the towns we had visited while taking us to Riomaggiore.
Besides a now thriving tourist industry, these towns survived over the years by terracing the hillside to grow grapes and other crops. The walls built to create the terraces do not use cement, only stacked rocks with small rocks used to fill the gaps. This allows the rain to filter through the walls without destroying them. All of the walls created in these five small towns, if put end to end, would be longer than the Great Wall of China.
Hammond Adventures 