Granada to Alicante

From Granada we drove through a very different landscape. Around Tabernas it is described as being the only desert in Europe. We stayed the night at Mojarcar where the campground had a tunnel under the road to the beach. We finally had our first swim and it was beautiful.

 

Our last day with  the campervan was good, driving to Alicante with beach stops on the way.

Granada

Queuing up at 7 in the morning for the Alhambra Palace was well worth it. We both queued in separate lines and luckily Brent managed to get tickets for the afternoon. Within 5 minutes they announced they had sold out.
We spent an enjoyable morning wandering around the city of Granada before heading to the Alhambra in the afternoon. The Nazaries Palace was amazing and the gardens beautiful.

 

 

 
 

We had a great night out in Granada. We went to a flamenco evening in Sacromonte where there are many houses in the caves. The caves have for centuries been the home of gypsies. Our meal was served on a balcony where we had a great view of the Alhambra. The cave setting added to the atmosphere of the flamenco show.the dancers and singers were passionate and their.performance was intense.


Sorry about the weird spacing of photos- unable to solve that problem.

 

Ronda & Nerja

Life has been very busy. We are now working hard at the World Veteran Table Tennis Champs in Alicante but here is a bit of an update from last week. I'll try & do a catch up as soon as I can.
After Gibraltar our next stop was the town of Ronda.
 The old town is surrounded by fortress walls and is separated from the old town by the towering Puente Nuevo ( bridge).  We also went through Ronda's Plaza de Toros, one of Spain's oldest and biggest bullrings in Spain.

 

 



We then drove  south with a beach stop at Torre del Mar before heading along the coast to Nerja. A walk through the Cueva de Nerja (cave) was amazing. The enormous 4km long cave complex was hollowed out by water around 5million years ago and is full of stalactites and stalagmites. The photos don't do it justice.

 

   

Gibraltar

Being on the coast in warm weather ghastly been great. we walked around Cadiz which we really enjoyed. We checked out a few beaches and one of our campsites was right on the beach at Zahara de los Atunes. after a lot of driving and walking it was great to relax on the beach for a while. Being the Atlantic  Ocean the water is freezing so we are not swimming!
Yesterday we had a fief stop at Tarifa and then carried on to Gibraltar. it is amazing that to get  from Spain to Gibraltar you walk or drive across the airport runway. We saw the traffic and pedestrians stopped twice while planes landed. We did a tour of Gibraltar which we really enjoyed, finding the history very interesting especially the Great Siege Tunnels and St Michael's cave. Of course we were entertained by the Barbary macaque apes.
Well, you can see we managed to get a few photos on this time!

 

Campervanning around Spain

We do get our facebook posts done regularly but for those of you not on facebook, sorry that we are behind, especially my class, Room 2 at Paihia School. We  have had ongoing problems trying to post photos so until we sort it please excuse us.
After leaving Ordesa National Park we drove along the northern coast of Spain, visiting medieval towns which all have very narrow cobbled streets.
We spent some time at beaches also, but no swimming as the water is freezing.
We then drove through Parque Natural Las Ubinas- La Misa. We wound our way up steep and narrow roads and the temperature dropped to 4 degrees when we reached the summit.
We loved our visit to Segovia. The highlight was the amazing Roman aqueduct, an 894metre long engineering wonder. it was built with no mortar to hold the 20,000 blocks together.
All the towns have beautiful, majestic cathedrals. The one in Segovia was started in 1525 and took 200 years to build.
We took a fast train from Segovia to Madrid, travelling at 225 kph.
We walked and walked around Madrid. We went through the Palacia Real (Royal Palace), another amazing place. The paintings and tapestries were beautiful but you could not take photos.
Our next stop was Avila. The old city is surrounded by walls with 88 watchtowers and several turrets. From there we drove through Monfrague National Park, which has a population of more than 250 Black Vulture pairs. We were lucky to see several. We drove past kilometres and kilometres of olive trees.
Our next stop was Carceres with more cobbled streets lined with medieval buildings. We then drove to Merida, founded by the Romans in the 1st century BC. We walked around remains of the ancient city, with the amphitheatre and theatre being very impressive.
Seville was next on our itinerary. At last we had blue skies and 27degrees. Although bullfighting has now been banned in many places there are still 30 shows a year in Seville. We did a tour through the Plaza de Toros (bullfighting arena). It was interesting to hear the history of bullfighting.

On the road in the campervan.

After the bustle of Barcelona we enjoyed the tranquility of Ordesa National Park. It was a rather chilly 13degrees at the higher altitude, when we set off for a hike but with our layers on we soon warmed up. The mountains are still snow capped.

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