We were in Barcelona in 2007 and remember being blown away by the number of tourists from all over the world. Walking down the Ramblas, you can here many different languages while trying to stay in the flow of the mob of people. It seems like there are now twice as many people and we…
Tag: Europe
Sevilla and Granada, Spain
We know how to see cities in just a few days. We have been doing in most of our lives, because we had jobs that only allowed us to travel 2 or 3 weeks a year. We learned to see as much as possible while stopping in to a city in 2 or 3 days….
Madrid, Spain
We were in Madrid just 5 years ago and enjoyed it a lot and we really wanted to come back. It has 3 fantastic art museums, excellent tapas scene and lots of squares to sit and drink while watching the hordes of people. This trip there were hordes and hordes of people. I can’t remember…
San Sebastian, Spain
The Spanish Basque country has always been near the top of our destination list but we never got there on our previous trips to Spain. We never had enough time to get make it work because it is far from the other Spain “go to” cities. But we have enough time now :>) and Spanish…
Montpellier, France
During my last few years of working when I was dreaming of retirement, I was picturing a nomadic life, staying for 2-3 months in European towns that weren’t too touristy. I wanted to live in Europe, not be a tourist. Montpellier is the type of town that I had pictured. It has 300k people but…
Day Trips from Arles
The first week in Europe we try to take it a bit slow because we are almost always suffering from a bit of jetlag. A small town like Arles is a great first stop, because there isn’t that many must see destinations. We thought if we were able to conquer jetlag that we would be…
Arles, France – WTF?!?!?!
We are off on another adventure! First stop- Arles in Provence. It took us a bit to get here. British Airways overbooked us on our flight from Seattle and didn’t tell us until we just about to board. We ended up spending another night in Seattle and then accepting a 12 hour layover in London…
Rome and Home
The last stop on on the Europe22 trip is 5 nights in Rome. We didn’t really plan much before we got there because we have been there before and know our way around the big attractions. But this was a little problem because many of the places required buying advance tickets a couple weeks in…
Palermo, Sicily
By this time, we have stayed in 4 different Sicilian towns and visited several others and felt like we had a great feeling for Sicily, but to really say we have seen Sicily, we need to see the capitol. So, in our farewell to Sicily planned 8 days in the heart of the big city…
Trapani, Sicily
After our fantastic evening in Agrigento at the Valley of the Temples, we still had the rental car for another day to get to the other side of Sicily. Having a car enables us to find some off the beaten path things to do and M found us a good one. We went to Il…
Sunset in the Valley of the Temples. Agrigento, Sicily, Italy
We really prefer trains or buses for budget and carbon footprint reasons but sometimes they aren’t convenient to what we want to see. The Southern part of Sicily doesn’t have good transportation but it does have a lot of ancient Greek and Roman ruins that we really wanted to see. So we ended up renting…
Syracuse, Sicily, Italy
We just spent 4 days in an airBnB right in the old town of Syracuse. It was actually on the island of Ortigia which is where the pedestrian zone old town is. 2 bridges connect it to the mainland which is where the ancient ancient part of the city was. Syracuse used to be a…
Catania, Sicily, Italy
We have made it to Sicily! We took a train and ferry from Calabria and I mean we took a train onto the ferry. It was pretty cool. It was like a regular ferry boat but had no cars. Only trains. Our train split in half and the train cars that were going to North…
Paestum and troubles…
It has been a challenging couple of days for us but we are still smiling. It started with my first Italian haircut. My man Antonio and I had a little communication problem and he cut it a little short. I guess it it should grow back but at this point in my life I can’t…
Naples, Sorrento, and the Amalfi Coast
There is a lot of stuff do in Naples and the Amalfi coast so we scheduled 8 nights in Sorrento which is close to many different attractions. We could explore Sorrento, train to Pompei, train to Naples, boat to Capri, or bus to Positano and Amalfi and the other towns on the coast. We had…