Francine has had the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias [the City of Arts and Sciences] in Valencia on her hit list for some time. We’ve formerly braved the Spanish trains and travelled in to the city centre but…

Prior to becoming somewhat familiar with Spain, we used to say that the Austrians would have a fest [festival] at the drop of hat. On our journey back from camping in Italy many years ago, we crossed the Dolomites into…

Last year, on our car trip over to Spain through Bilbao, on our return journey we chose to stop overnight at Miranda de Ebro. Our chosen hotel was a converted convent or monastery (too many bottles of wine ago) and…

You really cannot move in La Mancha without being confronted by Don Quixote and his faithful servant, Sancho Panza: every wall of every hotel is adorned with Quixotic images; entrance ways feature statues; fountains in town squares are covered in…

We’ve arrived in La Mancha, where Cervantes created Don Quixote’s adventures. There are several known episodes of the Don’s imagined chivalry but the most well known must be his tilting at windmills episode. Francine’s research had shown two main locations…

Our ultimate goal on this road trip of four days is to go tilting at Don Quixote’s windmills in La Mancha. Given our relative locations, the town of Cuenca made a logical intermediate stopping point. There is a reason, of…

We’re on the road exploring for a few days, splashing out on some hotels. Francine has come up with a 4-day itinerary and our first overnight stop is Cuenca, where there are some famous so-called “hanging houses”. Before checking in…

Elche lies a spit south-west of Alicante. In fact, the airport there is known as the Alicante-Elche Airport. Touristically, much is made of the Palmeral de Elche, the Elche Palm Grove. We fancied being tourists and going to investigate. Elche…

We have a couple of friends in the valley who enjoy going out to lunch. Lunches in Spain tend to be significant affairs with the local fondness of Menu del Día, consisting of at least two courses, and often running to…

Butterflies, some species at least, indulge in hill-topping; individuals tend to aggregate at the tops of hills. It is apparently a mate location behaviour. A couple of kilometres down our Spanish valley is the village of Senija overlooking which is…