The Wanderers Return - 10 Weeks in Europe - Part 7

Return to Spain
Upon our arrival in Madrid, we walked to another track and boarded Spain’s AVE high speed train for Seville! Paris to Seville was by far the longest leg of our trip, but we enjoyed it thoroughly. Seville is a beautiful city, another one that we wouldn’t mind revisiting for a longer period. We went to a flamenco performance, did a lot of walking, drank lots of coffee, and of course Sangria, ate tapas to our hearts’ content, discovered a used book store, and generally just had a great time, wandering around the little streets. After Seville, we bussed to Arcos de la Frontera, a beautiful

little white village, hanging off the sides of a cliff. We spent a couple of days wandering around this quaint old village, drinking beer, eating caracoles, being happy. We wandered into this busy little bar one afternoon and saw the signs that we had seen everywhere else that day in Arcos, “Hay Caracoles.” We also noticed that every time the server went to the bar to pick up more orders, he was yelling “Mas caracoles!” We didn’t know what it was, but had to find out, so we ordered “Caracoles Y dos cervezas, por favor.” We were served glasses of tiny snails in a hot liquid. Snails sounded good, but the liquid was, I thought, suspicious. Since it was necessary to drink the liquid in order to get to the snails, I bravely started drinking. Pretty good stuff! We hated to leave this little cliff-hanging village and their wonderful caracoles, but were off next for another cliff-hanger, Ronda. Beautiful Ronda! We had a memorable lunch at a little table sitting cliffside. Except it wasn’t really cliff-side; it was more like our table was on a rock that to extended out over the great ravine, the deepest I had ever seen. Since I’m deathly afraid of heights, I didn’t even think I’d be able to do it, but it was a beautiful day, and a fabulous lunch, and I’m ever so glad we were there! A young American couple at a nearby table heard us talking about the trains and busses and came over to talk. They had rented a car because they had been told it was the only way to get around to the villages of Andalucia. They hated doing all that driving, and didn’t even know about the busses, which go everywhere that the trains don’t go. The last time we saw them, they were off to find out where they could turn their car in.
By now there was a sadness seeping in on us, knowing that our adventure would soon come to an end. But we were excited about our next stop, Granada, and the Alhambra. We briefly discussed skipping it, in order to scale back our last week and relax more. Fortunately we talked ourselves out of that thought and spent two days exploring that magical place. Like Florence, the hillside villages and most of everything else we saw, it’s indescribable. You read about these places, you see pictures, but you can’t believe how incredible they really are.
I don’t know how many times I asked during our trip, “But how did they do that?” Majestic buildings of marble, some of which had taken centuries to build, domed roofs and other details that seemed to defy engineering possibilities, building details and art that had consumed entire lifetimes. And buildings which hung onto the very edges of vast cliffs. So many things that seemed to me unreal. I couldn’t get enough of it, and almost everywhere we visited, I really wanted to stay longer.
After Granada, we returned to Madrid, and it truly felt like a homecoming, returning back to the wonderful city where our adventure had started almost 70 days earlier! We spent our wonderful final trip days relaxing and wandering around seeing and doing a few things we’d missed the first time through, when it had been cold and rainy, and truthfully miserable, although we had tried not to admit that, since we were having so much fun in spite of it. We had lunch and drank sangrias at a cafe in the incredible Plaza Mayor. We strolled the beautiful paseos. We agonized over whether to buy some of that fabulous Spanish ham and hope that we could get through all the checkpoints entering England, the US and Costa Rica returning home. We decided it wasn’t worth the risk, and just bought some wonderful cheese and wine (by the way, did you know you can buy acceptable wine in Spain for as little as $1US a bottle?!). I’ve been regretting it ever since, since unlike our trip going over, we never seemed to get checked on the way back! I bought another tapas cookbook. And then, suddenly, and way too soon, it was time to come home. But we have so many memories, and so many dreams for the next trip. It was an awesome experience, and I can only wish we had done it much sooner. But then, we’ve both said all along that we’re trying to make up for all the things we never got around to doing during our “wasted youth!”