Eight years after our first journey around Europe Kim and I are making a rare *return* trip to a place we’ve already been to! A couple of them even. When friends of ours announced they were going to be married in Spain we jumped at the chance to accept an invitation. If you read any of our previous posts about Spain, you’ll see we had a little trouble in Madrid and Barcelona. I really felt like a combination of being newbie travelers and bad luck (ok, planning, we really proved you make your own luck) made for a less than stellar experience, and maybe the country deserves a second chance. Now we’re a little more seasoned, have planned a little better and have a little more traveling coin… but the inflation of the Euro against the US Dollar means we are still kind of traveling like college kids. We are still staying in 1 and 2 star pensiones, and even relying on the hospitality of friends’ spare beds.
Our last trip to Asia earned us enough frequent flier miles to go to Europe for free, but the restrictions on our dates for the wedding meant we could only get to London, so we are going there first and taking a cheap intra-continental flight to Valencia for the wedding. We will be there for several days, celebrating with our friends and seeing Valencia (the groom’s hometown). Then we’re planning on going back to Barcelona and Seville for a second chance each before renting a car and driving around Andalucia. We’re hitting up Gibralter (UK territory, and the rock on the southern tip of Spain with Europe’s only wild monkeys – and tax free booze, yay) before flying back to London from Seville.
London also gets a second chance from us, since we didn’t really see the city when touring through there with my band. We are spending four days there thanks to the generous hospitality of our new friend, Louise, from our India trip.
It might not be another 10 week tour around Europe… hey we just took 7 weeks to cross Asia about 9 months ago… we are excited to be able to visit with friends, revisit some of these cities, skip the touristy stuff we’ve already done, and get a deeper more focused experience. Next post will probably be from the road… cheers!