We’re going to have to see how this shakes out but some reports are saying maybe a week until most of the power is back. That’s devastating to a first world country. It’s hard to imagine they’re going be in tourism shape any time soon. There’s going to be disruption and backlogs for supply, etc. I doubt they want to start travel season in the middle of all that. I may need to change my plans entirely.
Italy and Greece come immediately to mind but I have zero research and planning there
If you need to make an emergency change of plans, I cannot think of a better destination than Italy. Soooooo many amazing places to visit. You would be spoiled for choice.
Yeah, based on this Italy will tick a lot of boxes. Rome and Florence and the bigger tourist destinations could still be pretty busy by now but Bologna, Siena, Brindisi etc. probably less so. Basically, the number of available hotel rooms/ air BnBs will be a good guise as to how busy places are.
If you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, Slovenia and Croatia will also offer a lot of what you’re looking for - lots of great food, beaches, culture etc.
Yep. I suggest that you head directly to Split. From there you can take a ferry to Hvar, Korčula, and Dubrovnik, or head the other way to Zadar and Opatija. Also ferries to Italy if you want.
I’m glad I ended up staying a couple of extra days in Amsterdam. It’s an amazing city and the weather was great. But I’m flying into Madrid today. I’m keeping my planning loose. Probably too loose. I have notes on where to go and a general schedule but I only have the next 2 nights booked. I need to start booking things at least a few days out
Enjoy! We thought the Prado was terrific, and El Retiro Park is a great place for a walk.
Interested in your thoughts on Madrid.
I just found pretty low cost direct flights to Lisbon over Thanksgiving, so I guess that’s where we’re going be on Turkey day.
Don’t miss Picasso’s Guernica at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. It’s one of those pieces of art that mere reproductions can’t do justice to.
Ended up taking a detour to rest. I was very active in Amsterdam walking 15-20km per day, which is quite a lot for me, especially since I had a foot injury a few months ago that has kept me from walking normally until recently and my walking endurance is crap. It was also an unexpected stay because I had planned on being in Madrid earlier, so I was scrambling to find a new room every day – I couldn’t find a block or 2-3 days at reasonable prices, so every day started off with lugging my 2 suitcases + backpack to a new hotel on public transit (I’m trying to minimize Uber costs by using transit as much as I can an Amsterdam was very accommodating)
I ended up trying to fill my day with as more exploring as I could, and by the time I got back to hotels I just slept instead of planned, so this whole trip has been very last minute. I have a broad idea of where I want to go and what I want to see in spain, but the day to day planning (and booking) hasn’t been there. Which ended up working out in my favor – had I booked everything a week or two out, the power outage and flight cancellation would’ve been a huge hassle.
Anyway, I wanted at least two days of taking it easy and doing some planning/booking for the trip and since I arrived on Friday, staying in the city center of Madrid was (relatively) expensive. So I looked around and found San Lorenzo De El Escorio about 45km NW of Spain with a nice hotel at a reasonable price (and a convenient bus route) and booked a couple of days. I may end up booking a third day.
It’s a small city in population but it’s still quite dense, it has narrow city streets and dozens of restaurant and bars (quite highly rated). There’s way more of a dense city feel than any other town of 20k people I can think of - even though it’s not terribly geographically compact it has a pretty big downtown area. It was built around a giant Royal Palace and monastery from a few hundred years back. I’m enjoying it.
I give a very enthusiastic endorsement of Amsterdam if you can go when the weather is nice. I talked to some locals and they told me I was lucky to come when I had as the weather was unusually perfect for this time of year. The city design was amazing, at least to my American eyes. I know a lot of what I like about Amsterdam is just generally how European cities are better than American cities rather than being Amsterdam specific, like the much better public transit, the outdoor street seating being extremely common for cafes / bars / restaurants, and the preservation of historic architecture, the mixed zoning (with shops on the bottom of every building with residence on top).
Still, Amsterdam is beautiful, historic, aesthetically cohesive, probably some of the best transport in the world, nice people, huge variety of food, great cafes/bars/restaurants with nice outdoor seating wherever you go. Quite a lot of museums. The canals are very cool and IIRC one of the tours said more than Venice. The canal tours are cheap and very pleasant.
I thought the Red Light district was rather tame. I was expecting nudity but everyone is clothed in relatively skimpy bathing suits or lingerie. Nothing very shocking; a lot of people walking around with their entire families. The district gets very crowded at night, to the point of being kind of a hassle to walk. I walked through a bit just to have experienced it but I avoided it after that. I was surprised by how little police presence there was anywhere – I probably saw any police 6 or 7 times in a week of constantly exploring. It seems safe, but you’d think there’d be more police to break up bar fights and deter petty crime like pickpocketing. But I also didn’t see anything that would require police while I was there.
The best food I had actually ended up being a Turkish fast food shop built into a convenience store. Paid $6 for an amazing schwarma wrap. I actually have an oddly good track record at restaurants in weird places, like if they stick a grill in a gas station or a convenience store – chances that the food is good is really high in my experience.
The food prices were relatively high (maybe not so much for a tourist city) but you have to factor in two things that I love about Europe – the tax is already built into the price, and there’s very little tipping expectation. So even though the Euro is worth more than the dollar, if you buy a $20 meal in the US, you’ve got to add tax (9% +/-) and tip (20% +/-) so you’re looking at a $20 meal being about $27 whereas a 20 Euro meal is actually 20 Euro, so only about $23.
Biggest flaw? They hate letting you be hydrated. There’s no free tap water in restaurants as is ubiquitous in the US. You can buy water, but you’re going to get tiny bottle (like 300ml maybe) for like 3-4 euros, definitely not enough to stay hydrated. There are no water fountains anywhere. I travelled with a bottle and I could only fill it up in the sink of a hotel. The only way you can stay hydrated is buying overpriced designer water at convenience tores at like $4/liter. And they hate water going the other way too – there are almost zero public toilets anywhere. It’s awful and the US is way better on this issue. I was dehydrated most of my time in Amsterdam because of being very active and sweating and hardly getting a chance to drink water.
But I think that was the only thing that wasn’t better than pretty much all US cities.
So I have to make a travel decision today about Spain travel plans. The Seville Fair is this week, Tuesday through Sunday. I was originally hoping to catch the tail end of it, as I drove from east to west. But since my plans all got significantly delayed, there’s no way I’ll catch it travelling with my original plan. But there are high speed trains from Madrid to Seville and the price is reasonable. So now I’m thinking I’ll take the train from Madrid to Seville to see the fair this week – but then what? Take the train back to Madrid and resume my trip as planned (time in Madrid, then train to Barcelona, then drive east to west). Or explore Madrid now, take the train to Seville later in the week, maybe Thursday or Friday, and then continue my trip from there? Maybe instead of driving east to west (Barcelona to Seville), I’d instead go the other way and start in Seville and make my way towards Barcelona. But then I’d have to take a flight to Portugal once I reach the end of that. Which isn’t such a big deal I suppose, but an extra hassle.
Anyone ever attended the fair in Seville? Are there any particular events I should attend? Is it better to catch the beginning or the end of it? Is it worth bothering to schedule around?
Hi there!
Spaniard here, and although I live in the Netherlands I will be in Spain for 6 weeks between May/early June.
The high speed train is a very good idea to go from Madrid to Seville and back. Now - be aware that the April Fair in Seville is CROWDED.
Also, the Fair is organized in a rather particular way. There are lots of “casetas” (tents where people have fun and party), but the vast majority of them are private. If you are not a family member or have not been specifically invited, you cannot get in.
There are some public tents, organized by the City Hall or perhaps some corporation, but be aware that there will be a bunch of people there. It will depend on how you feel around crowds.
If I were you, I would go towards the tail end of the fair, because it can be very very very overwhelming.
Seville is a wonderful city very much worth visiting. The only thing is that, during the fair, as I said, it is going to be chock-full of people. The city ends up duplicating its normal population. Keep that in mind.
If you are going to be in Madrid on May 5th, we could actually meet in the evening and I could take you out to some nice place for dinner, and tell you about Madrid in person (I have to be in Madrid on May 5-7 because I have an appointment in a clinic there).
BTW, be aware that mealtimes in Spain are LATE for people from other parts of the world!! Lunch is late, dinner is also late… Today, for instance, I had lunch at 2:30PM, and usually you have dinner around 9:30PM or thereabouts. Keep that in mind! 
If you are in Madrid on the 5th of May and you would like to meet, please send me a private message and I will give you my contact details.
And, of course, if you have any particular questions about Spain, just send me a private message and I will gladly answer them!
Thanks for the info, especially about the crowding. I generally enjoy cultural fairs and such, but I also very much don’t enjoy absolutely packed to the limits situations for cities, so I may end up skipping it. (I would still see Seville, but later in the trip). Not only is the crowding a pain for transport (busses, ubers), but it usually means hotels will cost 2-3 times what they normally do. I’ve been just relaxing and not thinking too much about it during my time here in San Lorenzo de el escorio. I’ll have to start making some decisions tomorrow.
I won’t post a lot of pictures to this thread but I wanted to show you guys what a beautiful palace and mountain town this is here. I took these tonight just before the rain started coming down hard. The lighting could be better but the sun set behind the clouds.
I’m realizing I’m a bit overwhelmed. My vacation style I usually to go hard and see and do everything I can, but this trip is too big and too long to do that. Especially when I procrastinated on planning it and under planned it. The thought of going to Madrid and spending 2-3 days exploring all day there, and then taking the train to Barcelona and spending 3-4 days exploring all over there is feeling a little overwhelming right now. So I’m thinking I’ll do Madrid - I’m very close and I’m now rested – but after that maybe I’ll take a train to a less busy part of the coast and find a cheap hotel in a little coastal town for a few days, then head over to Barcelona and get back to exploring. Any suggestions for a small to medium sized town with cheap accomodations on the east coast? Doesn’t have to be big, but a couple of restaurants in walking distance at least. I’d like to take a train, but it doesn’t have to be a high speed one. Busses also work.
Been a busy few days but I wanted to update the thread from time to time – both to get more recommendations as my plans change and/or crystalize and just as a mini trip blog I suppose.
Madrid was very cool. It feels like a very, I don’t know, important city. It’s big and hectic and has a lot of history – in some parts it’s kind of intimidating, like there’s a giant 600 year old church around every corner.
Amsterdam was what you’d get if you gave someone a computer game and asked them to design a perfect city from the start - it looks like everything is centrally planned and cohesive. Madrid in comparison feels more like you’d expect a great and old city to look like – building things alongside each other for centuries, replacing some stuff, keeping some. Where I first stayed in the southern part of the central district, the buildings were a lot older and it had that old city pre-car feel where streets were more like alley ways that could barely fit one way lanes for cars and IMO cars probably shouldn’t have been driving on some of those. But what felt very much like back alleys were lined with storefronts. It was odd for my American eyes to see. Some of the two way streets were kind of crazy – the road network was like “you’ve got a little space between these incredibly old building, figure it out”
But once I started exploring out, I saw some of the newer parts of town and they were built in a much more modern way with wide streets, complex but well designed intersections, bus lanes, etc.
I was there for 2 and a half days and so I only got a little taste of the city. There were pedestrian friendly districts that were awesome to walk. The dining culture is incredible in terms of quality, variety, and venue. Lots and lots of beautiful outdoor dining everywhere. Any time I felt like taking a break from walking I’d just pick the next cafe or restaurant and have a coffee or a glass of wine in some public square. I love that. Noticibly cheaper than Amsterdam, though Amsterdam was surprisingly reasonably priced.
Very good variety of food but probably not quite as much as Amsterdam – which had a huge variety of food from all over the world.I think this is probably because Spanish food is amazing and varied and therefore there were a lot more Spanish restaurants in Madrid than they were Dutch restaurants in Amsterdam, as the Dutch aren’t generally known for their cuisine.
I met up with JoseB after he reached out in this thread. We went walking through the Puerta del Sol which is both the political heart of Madrid and a really nice pedestrian walking/eating/shopping district. He gave me a tour of the central areas of Madrid like the nearby Plaza mayor and some of the history. It’s always nice to see a place with someone who clearly knows and loves it. We had a very nice dinner at a Spanish restaruant along the streets of central Madrid. I had a really good time and he was very kind and generous to give me that tour.
I decided Barcelona was next, but I wanted a little bit of of a break before going directly from Madrid to Barcelona as these were going to be the two biggest and most hectic cities on this trip. I looked in google maps and I saw resorts with nice pools and facilities near the coast offering unbelievably cheap accomodations. Like, $45 eur a night with meals included. I decided I’d hit one of them for a few days while I took it easy for a bit and do some more planning for Barcelona and ended up picking Peñíscola, about halfway between Barcelona and Valencia. When I got here I kind of had it pegged as just a soulless stretch of resorts along a beach sort of like Cancun or Myrtle Beach, and I was fine with that for a couple of days because it would mean a nice big bedroom for cheap, and somewhere to sit by the ocean and do some planning. But after touring the castle here and the little town in it, as well as the main part of downtown, it definitely has some charm. Theres a 7km stretch of promenade along the coast that’s pretty nice – I’m going to try to rent a bike tomorrow and ride up and down it.
But it’s also clear why it’s so cheap – it’s quite a bit colder than what I expected on the coast and still very much in the off-season. It feels like the place is operating at 1/4 capacity. A lot of the restaurants weren’t even open on weekdays. I bet this place will be vibrant in a month, but right now there’s not even anyone using the beautiful pool and definitely no one in the beach, although I’m going to try to do both before I go.
I’ve still been just “go go go” on this one without that much time to sit and plan anything so I’m still kind of winging it, barely planning where I’ll be in two days. If anyone wants to make any additional recommendations for Barcelona, please go ahead, I’ll be heading there soon. I will probably keep it to two days. I’m realizing this trip is already quite behind schedule and while I have no set date I need to get back, and and as long as I keep the costs manageable, I’m okay. But I want to see so many places that I can’t spend 3-5 days at each, I would be here for months.
Just a sampling of everything, not a deep dive. I keep putting pressure on myself to do everything I can. When I’ve got the vibe of the whole place then future trips could support a deeper dive.
11 days later. Spain has been awesome every place I’ve gone to. I don’t recall if I mentioned it in this thread, but in another recent thread I talked about looking for a place to move outside the US, and this trip in addition to a just being a great vacation was also a scouting trip for Spain and Portugal, and Spain has definitely passed the vibe check. About a week ago I decided that I’m leaning towards moving here (or Portugal) and, if not, at the very least coming back for another trip, so it wasn’t so essential that I saw the great historical sites and rather that I should sample the various sorts of places one might live, both regionally and in terms of big city, medium town, small town, etc. So, for example, I was going to see the Alhombra in Grenada, but I’ve spent a lot of time already on this trip wandering around, and that will probably have to wait for a follow up trip. That applies to a lot of the areas inland of the coast in Andalusia that I originally intended to visit.
Shockingly to me, I’ve only rented a car for 2 days so far. I had planned to have one for most of the trip. But the transit is so good here that it’s a hassle to have a car in the cities themselves, and the between-cities transport is good enough that while there are definitely advantages to renting a car, it’s not necessary. That said, I’ll probably rent a car for most of the rest of my trip so I can visit more small towns along the coast and since Portugal is less urbanized I’m guessing there will be fewer transport options.
Observations about driving here: pedestrians in crosswalks have behavior that would be considered suicidal in the US. At major intersections, of course, the crosswalk pedestrian lights are synchronized with the traffic lights, but there are plenty of uncontrolled crosswalks along every street in cities. And the pedestrians just walk out into them fearlessly. They often don’t even look to see if a car is coming. They are completely confident that cars will stop for them.
In the US, we have similar right of way laws in a lot / most / all? places that would allow people to do this, but people never would, you’d be hit by a car within a couple of days. Whether our drivers are stupider or it’s just a difference in driving culture, apparently drivers in Spain are always ready for people to jump out into the street. When I was driving, there was a woman who just briskly walked into a crosswalk from behind a van parked on the side of the street, so there was no way for me to see her and no way for her to see me, and she didn’t even look my way. Just darted quickly out onto the street without a care in the world. I didn’t come close to hitting her because I was driving slowly, cautiously, and alert, but that sort of thing regularly gets pedestrians killed in Las Vegas where I live. But, hey, kudos to them – it must mean drivers here are better, more aware than drivers in the US, and the priority on pedestrians, though nominally the same in both countries, is completely different in practice.
They also drive what would be considered bizarrely slowly on the highways. The speed limits are reasonable - 80, 100, or 120 kph depending on what’s along that stretch of road. But the behavior is very different – people in the left lane go the speed limit, and people in any other lane go 20 kph below the speed limit. Consistently. Sometimes even 30-40 kph below the speed limit. On US highways, that behavior would indicate someone is 104 years old and terrified of driving or really high. But it’s the norm here. Granted, I’ve only rented a car for the costa del sol – it may be a regional behavior, I haven’t exactly done a thorough survey with 5 or 6 hours of driving under my belt.
More in a bit.
After Peñíscola I headed up to Barcelona for 2 days. In retrospect I should’ve spent a third day there. I just had decided I can’t keep spending 3-4 days everywhere I go or this trip would drag on for months. There’s a lot to take in there and I didn’t do a great job of it in 2 days. I wish I had used the hop on hop off open roof busses as someone suggested earlier in the thread – I find those to be a good way to see the different neighborhoods of a city and they stop at most of the major attractions. I tried to book Segrada Familia tickets when I remembered to about a week in advance of going to Barcelona, but the earliest opening was in 12 or 13 days, so I wasn’t able to get tickets. Still, even seeing it from the outside was impressive. It’s one of those places that you have to see, pictures don’t do it justice. Next time I’m in Barcelona I’ll plan ahead better because the inside looked incredible too.
I walked up and down La Rambla and Passeig de Gracia which is a fairly touristy thing to do, but they’re great for pedestrians and people watching. I went to the gothic quarter at night where a lot of the alleys seemed like the perfect place to get Jack the Rippered. I found a little hole in the wall Kebab place in the bottom of a dark alley and it was some of the best food I’ve ever had for like $6. Then I walked a couple of blocks and there was the Cathedral de Barcelona.
I accidentally left my passport at my hotel in Peñíscola and so I had to backtrack there (I had considered going from Barcelona directly to Malaga on the high speed). The town next to Peñíscola, where most of the resort workers live, is Benicarlo (with an accent on the O but I can’t figure out how to do it on this keyboard). When I first rode through it on the bus, it looked a little worn out, sort of like a rust belt city in the US. Past its prime. But when I made the quick trip to pick up my passport, I ended up exploring the city and it had beautiful squares and very walkable streets and some great bars and restaurants and I totally changed my mind. Even a city that seemed rougher and poorer than the cities I’d been visiting was actually very cool.
To get back on track, I planned to take the commuter train to Valencia and then the high speed to Malaga. I get to Valencia, go to the train station, try to board my train and — woops, my ticket was for the next day. I realize what I did - I was booking my trip around midnight and it was like 12:05 and I was thinking “tomorrow” and selected the next day. Which actually ended up working out great – I decided to spend the day in Valencia rather than try to get the tickets rebooked and it’s a very cool place. I actually stayed in an apartment designed for off-campus student housing – so it’s mostly students, but I guess if they don’t fill up for the semester, or maybe the semester is over, they rent out the rooms. Man, I would love to be 20 again and live somewhere like that – I had a ecute little studio and it had all sorts of cool facilities, a nice pool, a game room, a little cinema, lots of hangout and studying spaces. Valencia itself is also very cool – I didn’t get to see that much of it but it has a giant and nice beach all along the coast and they turned the old river they redirected into a huge park.
High speed to Malaga where I only stayed for a day – I was booking last minute and it was the weekend, so the cheapest hotels were relatively expensive. I decided instead to stay about 70km west in Estepona in a beautiful resort with great mountain and sea views for the weekend where it was 45 euros a night (compared to the worst hotels in malaga for 70). I tried to explore the coast a bit with the rental car there and saw some beaches and Marbella, which is one of those vacation/second home/yacht towns for the rich and famous. It does have a very nice walkable old town district.
After that, I was looking around and saw an incredible hotel with a rooftop jacuzzi in the perfect spot in the middle of the old town square in Nerja for 45 euros and decided to check that out. Absolutely amazing. Nerja is adorable. It’s very touristy but not to the point where it’s totally inauthentic. Great restaurants-- I had a $12 menu del dia of the best Indian food I’ve ever had and I’m eager to go back in about a half hour when it opens for lunch. Great bars – it’s common in Spain and particularly Andulusia to give a snack when you order a drink. Usually it’s something simple like olives, peanuts, candy, or popcorn, but this bar cranked out 25 different tapas all day and you’d get one free with a drink, even a beer, so it was an incredible value, and the food was really good too. Good beaches (they’re pretty but very pebbly/rocky). They make really good use of their rooftops here, hotels have a nice area on the roof sometimes including a pool or jacuzzi, lots of restaurants and bars on rooftops, etc.
It’s clear the costa del sol caters to Brit tourists and expats. Some of the menus are even in English first, Spanish second, with a clear British bent in the menu (full English, chicken tikka, etc). The tourist price you pay is not neary as steep in the US. In the US, if you go to a place that gets a lot of tourists, you tend to pay 2-3x for things like meals compared to a similar place that doesn’t have a lot of tourism. In Spain there’s definitely a price increase but it’s not as severe.
I’m glad I came in the shoulder season – the weather is amazing, it’s been 23-25c in the day and about 18-22 at night. But it’s nowhere near capacity and things are still cheap. In my opinion too many people wait until it’s too hot to vacation, but hey, works for me. I’d much rather come here in May and October than July and August, and you get some killer deals doing it.
I’ve spent more time than I planned alredy in Spain and I really need to see more of Portugal, so I may cut the rest of Spain relatively short so I can spend more than a week in Portugal.
Sounds like you’re having a blast! Thanks for the updates. I’ve been to Spain three time and you’re making me want to go back…
I am indeed having a great time here. Minor problems and lots of great things about it.
Unfortunately 2 days in during my time in Nerja I got sick. For about half the time here I’ve had some mild symptoms of being sick like sore throat and cough but nothing serious – I chalked it up to being exposed to new bugs. But then it got much worse and spread to my ears, so I went to see a doctor who prescribed some antibiotics, but I’m not sure they’re doing the job because I got better for a day or two and I’ve sort of plateued and moderately sick for 4 days without much improvement. I’ll probably go back tomorrow if it doesn’t improve.
For the first 2 days I was sick I mostly just sat in my hotel room in Nerja, on the roof there, and sometimes outside dining away from other diners. Then back to Malaga for a day – I mostly rode the big red double decker open topped city tours tourist busses. I find that’s a fun way to get a feel for a city and it was cool and rainy enough (until later) that I was alone up on the roof most of the time (didn’t want to get anyone else sick). There’s a castle on the edge of Malaga called Gibralfaro which is both cool in and of itself but has amazing views of the city. I definitely recommend checking it out. I might post some pictures to the thread later, I’ve got some good ones, I just haven’t had time to organize them very well or post much. I’ve been busy every day and when I have a moment to relax I’m usually planning the next day’s stay/transport/activities.
After malaga, I rented a car and headed out to drive the white villages of Andlucia, which were of course beautiful. The actual drive on the country highways was amazing – the roads were very well kept, the scenery was beautiful all around. It was a lot of farmland, but there are huge hills all over the Spanish country which give it a fairly unique look compared to boring flat agricultural lands.
The driving in the cities was … challenging. Cities and towns in Spain are very dense no matter the size. @JoseB, who is an encyclopedia on Spain, explained that there was a period of pretty much constant warfare from various factions from around 700 to 1492. Scattered homes would be vulnerable to raiding, so even small rural villages are compact enough to put some city walls up and be defensible. So even rural towns of 200 or 300 people have dense housing (apartments and townhomes) along narrow streets, just like the big cities. They pretty much have the same density of Madrid, just very small. That’s EXTREMELY different than the relationship between urban/suburban/rural in the US. They barely even have anything you could call suburbs (that I’ve seen) – it’s just how big your dense urban area is and how many people live there.
Anyway, Ronda was mentioned a couple of times up thread and it is unique and beautiful. It’s surrounded on all sides by rolling hills and forests and farmland, and the city itself is pretty unique. There were streets there that had insane levels of slope, like seemed like a 30-35% grade. Walking them is more like walking up stairs than a street. And there was only street parking in the entire city and it seemed like it was at capacity everywhere. To walk through the part with the famous bridge over the canyon I probably would’ve had to have parked a 20 or 30 minute walk away. So I only ended up seeing the city while driving it. If I came back there, I’d arrive by bus.
It’s also a tight, narrow, challenging drive with sloped, narrow alleyways that I wasn’t sure were actually roads even though my GPS maps said they were. I made a wrong turn when I was trying to leave, and I ended up going through a crazy tight area where it was only about 1.2 to 1.5 car widths wide, but it was a two way street! If you ran into someone going the other way, one of you was goijng to have to back up until you could find somewhere that you could pull off half the road. I went over a bridge where people often go to take selfies and they have to push themselves against the wall while you drive by giving them like 2 feet of room from the car. I was so nervous I was going to scrape up my brand new rental. So I had some of my most pleasant and more unpleasant driving of my life in the same day.
Went to another couple of the white villages that were very beautiful and headed towards a very isolated little town called La Muela where I had booked a stay. It was 5km from anything with a few hundred (?) residents but it had the narrowest streets that were verrrry difficult to drive. I read too late that the host had sent me a message saying eat before you come because there’s no food available in town after 3pm. Not even a convenience store or gas station or even vending machines. (Vending machine “stores” are a thing here). Fortunately there was one exception – apparently on Saturday nights the local bar keeps making food at night, so I lucked out on that one. I wasn’t going to go driving 5km to the next town over after it’d been such a pain to drive those streets and park.
Some of the people there had such strong accents that I couldn’t even recognize it as Spanish. Apparently rural Cadiz has some of the strongest regional accents in the country. I ended up having a problem when the bar I went to didn’t take cards (so far, everyone Europe took cards, apparently being cash-only is something you really only see in rural areas) and I didn’t have enough Euros on me to pay for my meal. This was my mistake, I should always have cash, but using cards is so ubiquitous here I wasn’t in a hurry to refill my Euro stash. It was… quite difficult to try to negotiate with the owner of the bar who I couldn’t understand at all, and who had no patience for what might be the first American he’s ever met, but eventually he took double the bill in USD.
Early the next day there was a mechanical issue with the car – I called the roadside assistance and it was a simple issue but they just sent a tow truck and no mechanic and took it with them. The guy told me to call the rental agency, that they would send out a replacement car or at least order a cab for me, but when I did that, they said oh you didn’t book through us, go through the site you booked with and see if they have that service. So I was stranded at some gas station on a country road in the middle of nowhere. There were few busses from that area back to a city, and I would’ve had to walk with my luggage a few kilometers in the heat to get to the next town over. I ended up checking blablacar and there was someone going my way and kindly picked me up from where I was.
First time using blablacar and I may have mentioned it before in this thread but I gotta say it’s an amazing service and I have absolutely no idea how we don’t have it in the US. The name is dumb, but once someone puts a good idea out there usually there’s 10 competitors instantly trying to copy it. It’s actual “ride share”, not like uber which is just an unlicensed taxi service. People that are going from one place to another post their trip on the site, and other people who want to go the same way chip in some cheap amount to help with gas, and you meet up and share the ride. Such an obvious business, and so useful, and it offsets some of the costs for the driver and is usually cheaper than a bus/train ticket for the passengers, and you meet new people (which, granted, can be good or bad).
So anyway, the driver is very kind and offers to pick me up where I was, and she texts me and says “ok, I’m going to be there in 40 minutes, I’m in an unpainted van license plate ####” and I’m like, oh, great, I’m getting picked up by a sketchy van at a rural gas station in the middle of nowhere, I’m gonna die. But it turns out I didn’t get murdered at all. It was actually much more of a Cadiz hippie van than a rural murder van, and the driver and my fellow passengers were very kind and it was a great experience.
I made it to Jerez de la frontera. It’s where most of the sherry in the world is made. In fact the drink is named after the city – somehow “Jerez” became “Sherry” when the British translated it. It was late so I just stayed there for the night. It took me a few tries to find a bar where I could try sherry. Apparently a lot of bars in Andalucia close early on Sunday in some sort of religious observance and so the rest of them can be packed.
The person at the rental agency told me that if I can make it back to any of their rental agencies, they’d give me a car for the duration of my rental. There was a rental station in Jerez, but they told me they had no cars available. So while this should’ve been day 2 of me having a rental car, I don’t have one, and there were no reasonably priced auotmatics available in this whole area of the country. (If I could drive manual, I’d have my choices of cars at like $20-30 a day). So I need to figure out what to do about that – I still do want to drive around this coast, but it may not end up being practical after this delay and the limited availability of cars here.
It was quite hot in Jerez. Though it’s only like 30 or 40 miles from Cadiz, once you get away from the cooling influence of the sea it gets hot fast here. It was about 87f when I was walking through town to the train station. Oddly, even though it’s quite a large town, there was no uber there, no bolt, no lyft, no cabify. You could hail a cab, but I didn’t see one on my way.
Now I’m in Cadiz and I wanted to cool down a bit before I explore the rest of the city. Look at Cadiz on a map – the central district of Cadez is on a very narrow peninsula. It’s not at all where you would expect a dense city. I’m staying at the very end and I’m about to head out to walk through the city and check out the beaches.
Cadiz is a cool town. I stayed at the end of the peninsula and spent a lot of time at the only beach around the center of the city. But on the long narrow strip connecting Cadiz to the rest of the land mass the ocean-facing side is basically a giant several mile long beach that looks pretty nice. Very walkable, cool restaurants, nice ocean views. It’s one of the poorest cities in Spain but I wouldn’t have noticed.
I went to Seville the next day and quite frankly it was too hot to enjoy it much. It was a nice 78f/25c degree day in Cadiz around noon when I left with a nice sea breeze coming on. A 100km train ride later, I get off in Seville and it’s 96 degrees (36c). I realize now it was stupid of me not to take an Uber from the train station to my hotel given the heat, but I’ve been so used to using public transit for everything that I dragged my luggage across town in that heat and by the time I got to my hotel I was pretty overheated. I ended up just sitting in the AC for 2.5 hours just to cool down. I tend to get very worn out from heat – I’ve been doing a ton of exercise throughout most of this trip and holding up well, but exposure to that heat just sucked the life out of me. It ended up going to 100 (37) the next day.
I stayed in the oldest part of the city, I think the maps said it was the old Jewish district. Narrow alleyways between buildings in weird directions. That’s common in all old towns all over Spain but this one felt particularly cramped. People were actually riding scooters and small motor bikes through these super narrow streets/alleys that were like 2m across. I ended up just wandering around and accidentally discovered one of the nicest pedestrian districts I’ve ever seen. It’s a street full of very good restaurants with great seating along the street with the very impressive Cathedral of Seville at the end of the street. It was a beautiful place to have dinner and despite the amazing location the food price was quite reasonable.
I can’t recall if I mentioned this in a previous post, but in general it seems like Spain doesn’t gouge tourists or even charge much more for high traffic, beautiful areas. Quite frankly that doesn’t even make sense to me – if you’re in a very desirable place, with tons of foot traffic, and you’re always busy, you’d raise your prices. But they just don’t. The restaurants in beautiful places like on the beach, or in areas with great food traffic, more or less have the same prices as less desirable places. That doesn’t make any sense but it’s certainly to the benefit of the consumer. You get to pick places that are both amazing and cheap.
I took a bus from Seville to Faro in Portugal. Faro itself is the capital of the Algarve region and it’s.. eh. Kind of unremarkable. I wouldn’t recommend going there. It does have a barrier island with beaches on it about 8km away from the city center that’s pretty cool. You can take water taxis from the city to the nice beaches. But otherwise it’s a hub (airport, car rental) without much charm itself.
I stayed in Albufeira the next night and that place is certainly interesting and it really drove home something I hadn’t really put into words about Spain. Spain is full of tourists. People love to travel there. It’s the #2 travel destination in the world by number of tourists and it’s not that big a country. But it doesn’t feel touristy. It feels authentic, even in the places that clearly cater to tourism. Sure, you see some stuff like little street markets with clothes and swim gear and jewelry catering to tourist foot traffic, but it never feels like a place that’s more tourist trap than genuine city/town/village. There are always plenty of Spaniards around, too.
Albufeira is absolutely a place that feels touristy in a way that nothing in Spain does. It’s like a tourist carnival. The central district and some areas around it obviously exists to cater to tourists, and in a way that doesn’t feel like an authentic city. There are hardly any Portuguese people there aside from the workers. It has more British people than even the most British heavy parts of Spain that I saw, probably over 50% British.
That said, even though I found that kind of off-putting at first, it grew on me. It was a party town. I was staying in a hotel room above a bar on one of the main strips there (packed and loud music until 4am) and at night it basically looked and sounded like Mardi Gras. Tons of foot traffic, wall to wall bars, people dancing in the streets to music outside the clubs. I don’t think I’d want to live there, but if I lived somewhere else in the Algarve, I could see heading down there every once in a while to party. Pretty nice beach. Lots of food options.
Quarteira – didn’t spend much time there but it has a nice beachfront district, seemed like a nice city. Much nicer landscaping and general upkeep than Faro. It was probably the nicest looking part of the Algarve so far.
Portimao – I actually liked this city quite a bit. It’s pretty big for a Portuguese city and yet I had never heard of it before (I had heard of Faro and Lagos). It hard a few charming walkable parts along the riverfront and has a very huge and very nice beach. Aside from a relatively small old town, the streets were reasonable and fairly easy to navigate, probably more generous parking than most Iberian cities though still not nearly enough. Hardly any parking around the beach front area.
Speaking of which – I feel like there are only .7 parking spaces in the whole Iberian peninsula for every 1 car. There are entire Spanish cities where it seems like every single parking space is occupied at all times and there are hardly any sources of non-street parking. Like in Ronda for example, I wanted to park and walk around the city and I literally could not find one parking space in a 15 minute drive looking around for one. Same thing happened in Lagos. Most cities in Spain are like this but I didn’t have to worry about it since I didn’t have a car most of the time. At the very least, they could probably use park and ride type lots outside the cities – park in a big lot, take the shuttle to the bus station or something. It would be a huge headache to own a car and live in a city here.
Portugal was somewhat better here – Spain basically has highly urban areas and that’s it. No matter where you are, if there’s someone living there, it’s going to have narrow roads and only street parking. Even the small towns basically have the same level of density as Madrid, just smaller in actual area. And there really aren’t any suburbs. The city just ends. Portugal has areas that are a little more like suburbs, but nothing like American suburbs with endless streets of houses. But lower density. And sometimes those even have parking in front of shopping centers. Not huge parking lots like a Walmart in the US, but a row or two of spaces in front of businesses. I basically never saw that in Spain.
I’ll give a breakdown of Portugal vs Spain later but they’re more different than I expected. Unfortunately for Portugal, it seems like a pretty nice place, but I just spent a month in Spain which is awesome, and it doesn’t come off well in comparison. Spain is better in pretty much every way so far with the exception of beaches – Portugal has excellent beaches pretty much everywhere. Spain has some nice ones too, but Portugal is consistently better, at least in the small slice I’ve seen.
I was expecting this downgrade to be offset by better prices – everywhere says that other than rent (which can be highly local) the costs of living are lower in Portugal. Not by a huge amount, but 5-20%. But so far that has not been my experience. I’m paying more for hotel rooms, I’m paying more for meals. Drinks are similar but if anything Portugal is a little more expensive. Except for wine, perhaps. The wine in Portugal is dirt cheap. I went to a restaurant that offered a liter of house wine for 10 Euros, and at a grocery store I saw 3 dollar bottles of wine. But otherwise Portugal seems more expensive and my experience contradicts the stats and I’m not sure how to explain that.
