Category: Europe Fall 2021

This morning we left Lleida and returned to Barcelona. We returned the car at the same place that we picked it up, Sants Train Station.

On our trip through the French and Spanish Pyrenees we traveled 1,413 miles and had lots of adventures. We never got lost but we made a lot of u-turns. We drove on narrow country roads and multi lane freeways. We saw a lot of sheep, goats and cattle. It was a wonderful trip.

After taking a taxi to our hotel and checking in we went out to explore. We needed to find a place for covid tests. Brian and JoAnn need them to re-enter the U.S. and since I still haven’t received my French vaccine passport that I applied for a month ago, I will probably need a covid test to board the train for France on Tuesday. We found a lab that will do the test pretty much anytime for $35.

We figured out our plans for tomorrow and then went to the Barcelona City Museum. We found out that if we made a reservation and entered after 3pm the museum would be free. After using our phones to book the reservations we needed to wait until our reservation time so we stopped for drinks.

The Barcelona City museum is one of my favorite museums anywhere. In 1931 when they were moving an old building to the site they discovered Roman and medieval ruins below ground. Archaeologists came in and the ruins were uncovered. The museum has a display on the top floor that explains how and why Barcelona was founded and grew. Then you go downstairs and walk through the remains of the Roman city and later the remains of the Medieval city. I’ve been to the museum at least three times but it always fascinated me.

For dinner we went back to Patagonia Restaurant, the Argentine steak house that Duke and I ate at our first night in Barcelona.

Our plan today was to stop on our way to Lleida and do a canyon hike that Duke had researched. Unfortunately today is Saturday and when we got to the trailhead they asked if we had a reservation. They told us the parking was full.

We decided to drive up into the hills nearby, survey the situation and make a new plan. We had driven almost three hours already and it was still about an hour more to get to Lleida. We couldn’t find any other good hikes nearby so we decided to just go to Lleida and explore the town

We have stayed at the Parador in Lleida before. It is one of the newest Parsdors. It is built in a seventeenth century convent.

Soon after we arrived we went out and explored the town. The Parador is right next to the old castle and church that sit on a hill in the middle of Lleida.

The old cathedral was probably built from the 12th century to the 15th century over the remains of a mosque. During the war of the Spanish succession it was turned into a military barracks. It was only in 1948 that it quit being used by the military.

The cloister is apparently one of the largest in Europe

We went to the very top of the old castle ruins

This will be our last night in a parador for this trip and our last Parador dinner. The restaurant is in the former chapel of the convent.

We had one of our best Parador meals.

The deserts were especially photo worthy. They called mine Oops I dropped “el mel i mató”. I wasn’t quite sure what it would be. El mel i mató means honey and curd in Catalan. It had honey ice cream, sugar crystal paper, something like cream cheese and cookie crumbs. It was really good.

Sunday we will return to Barcelona and turn in our car.

The drive from the house in Lónguida to SOS del Rey Catolicos was less than an hour. We checked into the Parador and went out to explore the town. SOS del Rey Catolicos was built in the tenth century as a fortress to defend against the Moors.

Duke asked the people at the front desk to recommend a hike and they suggested a hike in Foz de Lumbier. The trail follows the rail bed of the first electric train in Spain. We drove to the trailhead and walked through a canyon, along a River.

The canyon is a nature reserve especially for some endangered vulture species. We could seeing them flying and sitting on the cliffs.

Our card playing spot was one of the best of the trip.

We had an excellent dinner at the parador.

We are still staying at the house about thirty minutes east of Pamplona with no internet so this will be posted probably Friday when we next have internet.

A first for this trip, we had no rain today! We drove into Pamplona, parked and then explored the town. We stopped at the tourist office and got a map with English descriptions of local sites. As you probably know Pamplona is best known for the Running of the Bulls which happens in July during the festival of San Fermín. Ernest Hemingway wrote about it and helped make it famous.

We walked the path where the bulls run, from the edge of the old town to the bull fighting ring.

Nearby is a bronze monument to the bull run.

We had coffee on the Plaza del Castillo at Cafe Iruña where Hemingway used to hang out.

And we checked out the cathedral. Part of looking at the cathedral included touring the bell ringers house in one of the bell towers.

Before we left town we went grocery shopping for food to cook for dinner.

Today we drove from Argomaniz to a house we are renting near Pamplona. The house is not quite what we were expecting but it is perfectly adequate. The wifi at the house isn’t working so this won’t be posted for a few days.

The house is right across from a warehouse and the neighborhood garbage cans.

I didn’t realize that there is a bike route across Europe north to south. Today we crossed a section of it and stopped to stretch our legs.

Since the house we are staying in has a full kitchen we decided to fix our own dinner. We went grocery shopping in a nearby small town. Interestingly the grocery store hours were 9-2 and 5-8. Luckily we got there at 5. Back at the house we had a great dinner and then played cards. As you can imagine the volcanic eruption on one of the Canary Islands is big news here. The Canaries are a province of Spain.