After a few days in France, I’m back in Spain (for the third time on this trip). In Bilbao, where I spent three nights, I met the full group I’ll be traveling with until we get to Porto. I’m now in Pamplona, so before I get too far behind, I want to share just a…
In better weather I would have spent at least a good part of the last few days gazing at the Pyrenees as we made our way from Carcassonne to Bayonne, in the heart of the French Basque region. But there was a lot of rain and overcast skies, so we didn’t get to see any…
This is just going to be a short post to share a little about our group’s day trip from Carcassonne to Narbonne. There is normally an optional excursion to Albi, which is the birthplace of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, but since the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec is closed on Mondays, Cyril, our trip leader, felt it would be a…
What happens when you visit a city that is so picturesque that you can’t stop taking photos? In Carcassonne, you just take a lot of photos. I’m so in love with this city. It’s just too pretty to believe it’s real. It’s like leaving the real world and entering a fantasy. I didn’t know anything…
I arrived in Girona late Wednesday afternoon, and I had two full days, Thursday and Friday, to explore the town. To be honest, it was more time than was needed to see what there is to see here. Some people do it as an easy day trip from Barcelona. But I am glad I allowed…
Barcelona is the fifth most visited city in Europe (after London, Paris, Rome, and Istanbul). I’ve spent the past six days learning why. Here are my stories about the things I’ve seen and done. I started to write this post at a halfway point in my time here, but I have decided to make it one…
I ate some oranges in Valencia, and they were delicious: sweet and juicy. What else can I say about Valencia? I’ll start by sharing my photo album, which captures all the highlights. Beyond that, here are a few things that stand out for me.
I realized I gave short shrift to my final days in Morocco, and there are a few things I want to write about before I move on to more posts from Spain. In particular, I didn’t say anything about Ramadan, which began about two weeks into my visit to Morocco. I arrived in Valencia last…
I’m now back in Casablanca, in the same hotel where I started my Morocco Sahara Odyssey just under three weeks ago. Since I last posted I’ve been to Ouarzazate, where I got sick, Marrakesh, where I saw a doctor and got all kinds of drugs that made me feel 95% back to normal, and now…
If I have one takeaway from my visit to the Sahara desert, it’s that I have so much, and there are people with so little. They seem to require so little to enjoy life, so why do I require so much? I’m talking about nomadic people who live in tents or mud shacks, who survive through…
Yesterday we took a field trip that was an optional add-on to the tour (at an additional cost). We visited the Roman ruins of Volubilis, and then we went to the former imperial capital of Meknes, of which we saw very little.
In Fez there was so much vibrant color and interesting sights around every corner. But it was a joy to experience in every way: the sounds, the smells, and some great food. And until you have touched leather goods made from the belly of a camel, you have no idea how soft leather can be. I…
