After arriving “home” in Dubai we spent 2 days with the family then headed off for Spain at 7:40 in the morning of the 26th February. We arrived in Barcelona around midday. Interestingly, most international airports that you arrive at in the world you are normally confronted with a number of money exchange options plus ATM to get some local cash. Not in Barcelona, we found an ATM with a line up and then eventually after fair bit of hunting around we found a money exchange, also with a line up. The process was also tedious and took some time (welcome to Spain).
Once kitted out with some cash we headed for the Taxi rank and consequently arrived at our hotel at around 1:30 pm. Lovely small hotel near all the action in Barcelona. We were very excited and eager to go exploring, grabbed some advice and maps from reception and headed off on foot to discover Barcelona. It was a 10 minute walk to La Rambla, the heart of Barcelona, a broad long boulevard, focussed on pedestrians. Restaurants, shops, stalls, buskers. Throngs of pedestrians and plenty to see and look at.
Impressive make up on this fellow – La Rambla, Barcelona
Chris gets chummy with a local on La Rambla
After a wonderful half day wondering around Barcelona we found a restaurant near our Hotel and had an early dinner. Traditional Seafood Paella. Sensational.
Below – some images from Barcelona
Our favourite breakfast spot in Barcelona
The next day we tool a trip on the Tourist Bust, the traditional double deck bus that most cities in the world have for tourists. Hop on Hop off and check out the sites. I think we probably didn’t give ourselves enough time in Barcelona. While we had 3 nights accommodation we in reality only had 1.5 days of exploring as the morning of the 3rd day we had to pick up our hire car and head for Valencia.
We arrived in Valencia in the mid afternoon after a 350 km drive. The landscape from Barcelona to Valencia was dry, uninteresting, flat and nothing like we had imagined Spain to be like.
Our Valencia Hotel
We had only given ourselves one night in Valencia, and while it is a lovely city I don’t think we would have chosen to stay any longer even if we had more time up our sleeves.
Below – images of Valencia
When we organised to visit Spain we booked accommodation in Barcelona for our arrival and booked accommodation in Madrid, our place of departure. In between we decided to simply use “Booking.com” to book hotels on demand. We had not decided where we would go until we arrived. Spontaneity has a certain appeal to Chris and I so that is what we did.
From Valencia we booked a night in Granada. Granada was another fairly long drive of 500 km. One thing that was an absolute delight was the driving habits of the locals on multi lane highways, in extreme contrast with the habits of Australian drivers. One of my pets hates is the ignorance of most drivers understanding of good driving habits on our multi lane freeways in Australia. The idea of keeping left unless overtaking seems to go out the window as soon as there are more than 3 lanes or when the freeway is in a built up area. So driving on Spain’s highways was an absolute pleasure albeit that we were driving on the right hand side.
En Route to Granada
Next post – Granada and Cordoba
Hi Graham, great to read about your experiences in Spain. We are going over to Europe in August and spending 2 weeks in Southern Spain. looking forward to your next post on Granada and Cordoba! We are thinking of doing train/tour trip. David’s not keen on driving. i’m a bit like you prefer spontaneity. Anyway, love the photos. regards Connie and David
Depending where yo are landing but if it is Barcelona, it is boring between Barcelona and Valencia so a train is a good option.
I think there are good points for doing tours and good points for following your nose. You will have fun anyway you go. Be careful of your belongings. Thought we were home free and within 24 hours of getting on the plane home I had my wallet stolen. We had been proud of the fact that we had not had any problems then bang – 4 Credit Cards, Cash and drivers license gone in a flash by a team of pick pockets.
Must admit though, while Spain was fantastic, Jordan was simply awesome.
Anyway have fun and say hello to David for me. Tell him he is a wus not wanting to drive in Spain.