Spent our last day and a bit touring Gaudi’s buildings. Started with a Gaudí tour with Maria-Therese – the wonderful guide from our walking tour earlier in the week. She I has been a guide for almost 30 years and she and her family have been supporters of the Gaudi foundation.- her passion and knowledge made our visit especially meaningful.

We visited Sagrada Familia mid afternoon, The inside of the cathedral is now finished and being actively used. It was truly mesmerising with the afternoon light streaming through the orange stained glass windows casting rainbows over the roof and columns.

Second stop was Park Güell – the incredible landscaped garden originally designed to be a housing estate for the bourgeoise- but didn’t sell because gaudi’s designs were considered too ‘out there’.

And today we visited some of the Gaudi houses

Today we took the train to Montserrat, a Benedictine monastery that sits right on top of an enormous Rocky Mountain (about 1100 metres high) about 100 or so km north of Barcelona .

Navigating the busy Barcelona metro (Placa España) with its multiple was the first challenge but eventually we all found each other in the bowels of the underground and got on the right train. We needed two trains to get there – first the metro to Montserrat and then the ‘rack train’ or fennicular which winds its way up the mountain to the monastery, the whole journey taking about 90 minutes.

The Basilica itself is fairly austere inside and out, but it defy s imagination how they got the materials up here to build it – which would be a challenge even today with machinery and technology.

Took another (near vertical) funicular up to the very top of the mountain high above the monastery . We rode in the front with nothing but a pane of glass between us and eternity.

Decided to walk one of the mountain top walking trails which gave fabulous views, then realised it was easier to shinny the 40 minutes all the way down to the monastery than haul ourselves back up the hill to the funicular. Small steps and quads of steel got us there. Hats off to the few we passed walking all the way up – even one muscle bound jogger!

Got back down round 4 and the train was about to depart the platform so hot-tailed it rather than wait another hour for the next train and food. We arrived back in Barcelona round 6 absolutely starving – and very stiff from the long walk. Went to the closest tapas joint and sat salivating waiting for our first dishes to arrive.

Four hour walking tour of Barcelona today with a n absolutely fabulous guide. Probably 10 or so years older than us, our guide has lived here all her life, studied history and fine art back in the day and has been running personalised tours since the late 90s. She provided such an interesting journey through the streets., filling us in on the political history, including the recent (2017) attempt to secede (spelling?) which is rearing its head again with upcoming elections in May.

We started with the Barcelona food market – she walked us through pointing out the best places for each food- telling us how she prepared/cooked it and different Spanish dishes.

From the markets we headed down La Rambler- through the flower markets- just opening for the day, and on to the gothic quarter, full of churches and narrow streets and multigenerational businesses.

From the Gothic quarter we then moved into the ‘Born’ district – much more avant-guard -all about art and local artisans. In the little narrow side streets shops are only allowed to sell goods produced in Barcelona- many of the little stores had the artist in residence.

Lunched in a ‘stick tapas’ restaurant- a bit like yum cha, where you select the food you want (each item has a tooth pock in it) then at the end they count the toothpicks to calculate the bill.

After more sticks than we are prepared to admit we headed to Moco- the museum of contemporary arts then wandered down to the waterfront before meeting Rick, Bei and Rick’s family for yet another tapas feast.

Arrived back at the hotel 11 hours after we had left- absolutely exhausted having spent most of it on our feet.

Early breakfast then set off to station loaded with bikes/bags etc to catch the train to Barcelona. Arrived an hour before our train and we’re very glad we had. It’s survival of the fittest out there. With limited space allocated for luggage and almost every person with suitcase to say there’s a rush at the gate would be an understatement but we were up to the task! Taking a tram approach we lined up early and approached our carriage ina pre-emotive swarm. Our 30kg bags made it firmly to the bottom rack- and we were well and truly relaxed in our seats before the big luggage debarclle began trying to accomodate the other 30 or so suitcas s.

The scene early was pretty bland on the way over- green farmland mainly and pretty flat for most of it. Arrived in Barcelona just before 3 and in our hotel soon after. A short break the off to explore.

I can see we are going to enjoy Barcelona already- while a big city the thing that instantly struck us was the presence of street trees- even on the busiest roadways- something we haven’t seen a lot of since home. Being Sunday lots of families were out and about but most stores were closed.

Didn’t go too far afield. Finished with dinner at what turned out to be quite a fancy restaurant – BBQ pork mini tacos for me (delicious) and of course the mandatory Sangria – which we are all addicted to and seeking out the best recipes for when we get home.

Off to bed- have a 3 hour walking tour in the morning which hopefully will give us some ideas of places we want to go back and explore in more depth.

Set off on the early train to spend the day exploring Toledo. As we’ve come to expect the morning was foggy so views from the train were limited. The journey took only half an hour- with the screen showing we were travelling at up to 230km/he in some areas. There’s no doubt the European train system leaves ours for dead for speed, reliability and comfort.

Arrived in Toledo just before 10am to find the guide for our walking tour already waiting for us.

First stop was the ‘panoramic lookout’ – shrouded in fog but a teaser to come back once the fog had cleared.

We then spent a couple of hours walking the main monuments- reflective of the three main religions that lived side by side until the ‘cleansing’ by good old Ysabella and Ferdinand back in the late 1400s. From then on in it was all Catholicism.

Toledo is renowned for its pottery and its swords. In fact the train line between Toledo and Madrid is the only public transport route on which one can legally carry a sword – made me scrutinise my fellow travellers on the way back!

heading to Barcelona tomorrow for our last couple of days – can’t believe our adventure is nearly over…..

Arrived in Madrid lunchtime Thursday after arguably the most stressful hour any of us had ever spent in a car. Madrid while not an enormous metropolis takes traffic/road chaos to a whole new level, while simultaneously defeating any GPSs ability to keep up. After being led by Siri round the same 6 lane roundabout 5 times in search of the Avis car return yard, we followed a raft of taxis into the central railway station -Therein followed a lot of negotiation (begging really) on my part to convince a taxi driver to drive me to the Avis car hire – a mere 300m but apparently in a google maps black hole- and allow David to follow him in our rental. Not sure if my offer of 10 Euro clinched it or the fact I was desperately clinging to his door handle but either way he agreed and we were there. Found out later Rick and Bei had the exact same experience but a Good Samaritan local did it for them for free.

Most of Madrid so far has been walking and eating. The hotel is poorly located for the attractions but extremely well located for food/eateries. We have been eating our way around the local restaurants like true Spaniards- 2 to 3 course lunch round 1, siesta, then dinner round 8, sleep then repeat.

Madrid has everything on a much bigger scale than the other cities we’ve been to – it’s a city of monuments, and wide promenades spread out over. a large area. Regardless we’ve done our darndest to see the major sights over the last day and a bit.

Spent the day following a self guided tour of the ‘old town’ today. Salamanca is a UNESCO world heritage town. Like most of the UNESCO towns we’ve visited it had layer upon layer of buildings from different historical periods – Roman, Moorish, Gothic etc. , and old and new cathederal (with a somewhat dodgy definition of ‘new’ – 15th century). All buildings and streets were well preserved – it seems like Spain has more $$$ to put into preservation than Portugal. The city is also much less hilly than other cities we’ve explored which made it harder to justify the ‘eat everything we see’ approach we’ve used to date.

Salamanca also hosts one of Spain’s biggest and oldest universities- so buzzes with students.

We’ve now adapted well to the Spanish eating patterns. Had an enormous lunch in a local restaurant – after much use of google translate we chose meals which ended up remotely resembling what we thought we were ordering. Finding the Spanish food tasty but quite salty – not sure if it’s just this region or a whole of Spain thing- will need to eat more to see!

Tomorrow we are heading to Madrid – last day with the car.

Retrieved our car from the public car park where we’d had to park it overnight round 9 , and putting our full faith in Google maps pointed our noses towards Salamanca (our stopover en route to Madrid). GM told us it was a 426 km journey (true) which should take 4.25 hours ( total porkies).

Once again we set out in light fog with the promise of a sunny day. As has become the trend, getting out of the city was a bit hair raising, but once we were on the highway the early part of the trip was fairly unextraordinary – on wide interlinking highways with all towns bypassed.

We had organised to meet Rick and Bei in Ourense, what looked on the map to be a relatively small country town about an hour out of Santiago. Turns out it was a city of about 250k people (don’t know how we missed that small detail). First challenge was to find a park – and navigate the parking instructions in Spanish- challenge two was to find each other! Challenge three was to navigate the route out again to continue our journey.

David and Rick took the opportunity to get some manscaping done – they popped into what looked like a barbers- turned out it was a ladies hair and nail salon – they had a vacancy and so – job done. There was lots of lively chatter among the girls working there – no idea what they were saying, but were pretty sure it was about us!

By 1.30pm we were back on the road, fed, coiffed and good to go.

Heading into central Spain meant mountains, and much of the afternoon was driving above the snow line. It was a beautiful mix of snow and sunshine. The roads were pretty rough and ready – lots of potholes, likely from the high volume of trucks using them. It took it.s toll on the running board of our rental – which vibrated loose. But we are nothing if not resourceful – with a bit of jiggling and Rick’s masking tape we were able to stick it back on – let’s hope it holds!

Arrived in Salamanca round 6.15 (so much for 4.25 hours!). Too tired to explore, opted for an early night instead and exploration tomorrow. Pretty sure we’ll need our winter woollies.

Today we set off by car (thank goodness) to Cape Finnisterre – which is on the far west coast of the Galicia region and the very end point of the Camino for those who want to go beyond Santiago de Compostella to where the body of St James first landed in Spain.

Wouldn’t you know it the one day we are NOT on the bike the sun shone all day! It made for beautiful views of the countryside and coast.

We explored the fishing village of Finnisterre and lunched right on the waterfront. Paella for two was enough to feed a small village but we were up to the task (nearly)

Got back to Santiago in time for siesta followed by yet another amazing late night (for us) seafood dinner. No idea how our bodies are going to adjust back to normal eating hours when we get home.

a quiet day today. Walked through the cathedral – which was surprisingly way less ornate than others we’ve been through . Being a Sunday the organist was playing .

wandered the streets – with newly purchased umbrellas, window shopping as all except souvenir stores were closed. Then headed back to the hotel for the big bike pack up. Split the bikes up, bought them to our room, showered them to get the dirt off – only marginally easier than showering the dogs- dried them (on our towel no the hotels) and re-did the giant jenga. Amazingly cases weigh a bit less than coming over even with the few items we have purchased – but we were able to dispose of a few things no loner needed.

Finally cleaned the room/bathroom to leave no trace of dirt/bike muck. What they don’t know……..