2025 – Europe

The plan for today was to drive out to the Douro Valley for two nights, stopping in the picturesque town of Amarante for lunch. But first, a booth to booth exploration of the Bolhão market and an Über ride to the airport to pick up our rental car. We never did find a restaurant but…

Today’s Secret Foodie Tour of Porto confirmed my own secret: I’m not really a fan of lots of Portuguese food. (Salted cod, salted cod/potato fritters, tinned sardines and an abomination of a sandwich called a Franceshina which they alleged, WRONGLY, was an improvement on the French croque monsieur.) IMHO only! We did have a good…

Up and at ‘em much too early for the drive to the Asturias airport and our flight to Porto. Had to check our bags as they were 2 kilos over the “bring onboard” limit. We had a connection in Madrid but while we made it and arrived in Porto as scheduled, our suitcases did not.…

Crappy weather – again, inaccurate forecast – again! Went ahead with our planned itinerary – again. Drove to the famous blowholes of Bufones di Pria on a high cliff but the tide was too low for them to be blowing. Still, it was interesting to look down into them and hear the water WAY down…

The Spanish weathermen failed us again. Forecast was for partly cloudy and we got completely cloudy with intermittent drizzle and mist all day. From a video we’d seen, we had an itinerary in mind so we decided to follow it, weather be damned. First stop is the pretty little seaside town of Cudillero, then to…

The best laid plans… Our plan was to head up into the Picos de Europa National Park for a hike, lunch at a cidreria and a ride up a funicular. While the drive and the Park were beautiful, many, many people had a similar plan and we had to park about 1.8 kilometers from the…

Spent the morning in the very pretty Botanical Garden in Gigón. Struggled to find some place open for lunch at 12:30/1:00 – they definitely keep different hours here. Long walk to the not too pretty Old Town then struggled to find some place open for dinner at 7:30. Plenty of bars open and if we’d…

So long San Sebastián, hello Hee-hone (Gijón)! On the way we stopped at a scenic overlook above Bilbao and enjoyed the beautiful views. Drove in to town to visit the enormous Ribera Market but were failed by the Parking Gods so continued on to Castre Urdiales where supplemented our supplies and had a picnic at…

A fun morning and early afternoon of eating and urban hiking. At 1:00 we meet up with Anouk as planned, the actual meeting time being the only thing we know about what we’ll be doing with her. She takes us to the market where we purchase some supplies and get some education about things Spanish.…

Al fresco breakfast on a pretty square. Walked along the marina then hiked up Mount Urgull to the enormous Sacred Heart statue for stunning views of the city. Pintxos (Basque equivalent of tapas) crawl for lunch then some downtime for rest and laundry. We quickly adopted the tradition of having pintxos around 7:00 although we…