Our family (me, Phil, and our rad teenager) spent the last month traveling– mostly in Spain, but also briefly in France and England. I wanted to share some of the amazing experiences we had, but I’m trying to wrestle the diary of my life out from the grips of problematic platforms like Facebook. I’m not much for personal blogging (most of my blog posts focus on teaching and learning), but I am trying it out to see if it seems like a workable alternative to sharing my life through mediated commercial channels. So off we go!
The plan was mainly to visit Northern Spain, in the area of the country that would be cooler during summer, so our kiddo could test out her language skills and we could enjoy the culture and scenery. We motored across the northern coast from Llanes to San Sebastian, and then headed down into the interior of La Rioja (wine country) and Navarre before entering the Pyrenees (and crossing into France for a bit). We then headed back to Madrid to fly to England, where we ended our trip with five days in London. We stayed in rustic and often rural apartments that we booked through casarurales and Airbnb, and we rented a tiny car. We generally ate at most one meal per day at a local restaurant, and prepared the rest of our meals from food from markets using our kitchens. We tried to keep expenses way, way down, partially so we could afford to splurge when a really extraordinary opportunity came across our path. We planned our lodging in advance, but other than that, we did not have much of an itinerary, so when we got to a new town, we started by researching the area and talking to locals to figure out what to see and do.
The family Fiat, in Arró
If you want to read about the trip, start with our first stop, in San Vicente de la Barquera. At the bottom of each page, you can click to the next stop or come back to the beginning.
Here’s all the stops in index form:
- San Vicente de la Barquera, Santillano del Mar, Llanes and the Meal of a Lifetime
- Bilbao, Andoain, San Sebastian, and a Brief Emergency
- La Rioja: Chooks, Dinosaurs, Monks…and Always the Wine
- Olite: Castles & Bulls
- Laruns, France: Bikes, Trains, and Automobiles
- Arró: The Spanish Pirineos
- The Pleasant Surprise of Aniñon
- London Layover!
Thanks for reading!