Drive to Jaca

We drove to the town of Jaca today - finding a good parking garage to park our car in that was pretty central to everything.  We walked along pedestrian streets looking for a place to have lunch and ended up at a hotel that Guillermo and I had looked at several months ago, thinking that would be a good place to eat.  So, we had lunch there and our food was good but we had to sit inside and it's always nice to sit outside when the weather is nice but they had no outside terrace.

From Jaca we drove to the San Juan de la Peña Monastery that had been built into the cliffs.  This monastery started with a hermitage church that was in a monastery that had been originally been built back in the 10th century.  A newer monastery was built further up the hill after a fire to the older one in the 17th century.  We did not visit the new one.
It was all very interesting.  Narrow winding roads on the way to this monastery, which pretty much seems to be the norm for roads in northern Spain on their way to interesting places.

The view from the monastery.  They were very isolated here!

For dinner, we walked from our hotel in Sarvise to Meliz again.  We had a nice dinner out on the terrace. 

August 15

We stayed in Sarvise pretty much the whole day today.  Guillermo and I went into Broto to pick up some things for lunch, which we ate at a little table under an umbrella in front of the hotel.  In the evening, we had dinner at the Hotel Pradas in Broto.  

El Grado and Sarvise, Spain

August 11
So, today we drove from Girona to El Grado.  The apartment we had reserved in El Grado was nice enough but we were dismayed to find there was no wireless in the apartment.  Which meant if we wanted to use the computer, we had to drag our laptops across the parking lot to their restaurant and use it there.  So, even though the apartment was fine - it had everything else that we needed - we knew we wanted to move on.  Not just because of the internet, but also because it wasn't very pretty around El Grado and there wasn't much of interest in the area.  We walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner.


August 12  Today we drove further north in Spain looking to see if there was some place better we could move to.  We drove through some fantastic scenery once we got close to the town of Ainsa.  We also drove through a canyon after passing through Ainsa.  Part of the road was one-way (thank goodness - because the road was so narrow) and we found it to be an absolutely beautiful drive.

This picture didn't come out so well, but that mountain is called Peña Montañosa.  It looked so majestic over there.  There is also a big bird flying on the left in the picture.

Now we're getting into the canyon.

 We had lunch at a little cafe along the way and this was the view from where we ate.

Then we got to the town of Sarvise and Broto.  We made some phone calls and walked into several hotels and apartment places asking if they had any availability.  In Sarvise, Fernando went into a hotel to ask about apartments and when he came out he said they had an apartment for one night and then for the next night we'd have separate rooms.  We kept that as an option as we went into Broto looking around.  We didn't find anything so we went back to that hotel and reserved the apartment for the next night.  We drove back to El Grado for our last night there, satisfied we had found a good place for the next few days.  We drove to the city of Barbastro to have dinner.  It was weird in Barbastro - the town itself wasn't particularly interesting and the streets seemed empty and gloomy.  We walked around quite a while trying to find a decent place to eat and settled on an outside terrace.  Not the greatest view from there of anything, but the food was ok and we enjoyed sitting out there on that balmy evening.

August 13 - Left El Grado behind today.  We stopped in Ainsa to have breakfast then drove on to Sarvise again and  moved into a really nice apartment - except this apartment is only for this one night.  The next day we had to move into two separate rooms.  Oh well, we made the most of enjoying the apartment for the one day and having a refrigerator to put our stuff in.  The view from the windows of this apartment was amazing!

We went to Broto for lunch and were disappointed with our meal.  But for dinner we walked to Meliz in Sarvise, sitting at a nice outside terrace with lots of plants and flowers and the best part is that the food was good!

Fernando in front of the windows.

Said goodbye to Eva this morning

Early!
And in the late afternoon, we went to get ice cream again (3rd day in a row but this time we missed Eva being with us) and then we walked to a nearby park but we weren't too impressed with it so we walked a little on that side of the river and took a few pictures of the river from the bridge.

If you look close at the picture below, you can see where our first apartment was - the Historic Apartment.  You see two red buildings just to the left of center, with a short yellow building between those two red buildings.  Our apartment was on the top floor of that short yellow building - where you see the big windows.  We had a nice view to the river there.

For dinner, we ate at Zanzapan again, and had a dish with little baby eels in them.  Hmmm, it actually was quite good.  It was just the idea.

Girona, Spain

August 8th
Guillermo, Fernando and I walked a little around the old section of Girona, along the walls and by the castle.

The apartment we stayed in was through that arch that is to the left of middle and then we would walk down a narrow alley to a green door.  The apartment was up two flights of narrow steps.

August 9th

We walked around the old town section checking other places we hadn't seen the other day. 

 We alll got ice cream again in the afternoon and later Guillermo and I walked across the river to see what was on that side.  In the evening, we ate at an interesting restaurant where they had set up tables all along some steps.  It was a nice evening and it was nice sitting at tables out there on those steps, but the food wasn't anything special.  After eating there, we went to a little crepe shop and watched the man make us the crepes we ordered.  Then we walked back to our apartment, sad knowing Eva was going to be leaving in the morning.

We have left the Spain/Portugal border

Our goal was to make it to at least Zaragoza, Spain, but when we got into Zaragoza, we passed up a hotel we thought we might stay at and there wasn't anyway to turn around or get off the expressway for quite a long ways so we decided to just keep on going.  We got to the town of Al Finden and since it looked big enough to maybe have a hotel and there was an exit, we decided to try our luck there.  As luck would have it, we saw a hotel just as we were feeling it was hopeless.  We had gone through practically the whole town and there a hotel was, almost to the outskirts of the town.  It turned out to be a very nice hotel and one we are glad we just so happened to find.

August 6th
Today we drove to Girona, Spain.  Beautiful countryside as we drove through the area around Vic, Spain.  It took us longer than we thought it would to get to Girona because there was construction for most of the way and it was very slow going.  When we finally get to Girona, the GPS led us into the old town section where our apartment was supposed to be.  We got on such narrow streets that with the big car we had, it seemed at times that for sure we were going to scrape the walls.  We never did though which was amazing.  Anyway, the GPS couldn't get us to where we needed to be so we called the people at the hotel and they met us in front of another hotel and we followed their car to where we needed to go.  Really, we would have never found it on our own - especially with no map.

Our apartment called the Historic Apartment was on a narrow street, so we had to unload all our luggage and then go park the car somewhere else.  We followed the directions the lady gave us but again, we ended up on the  wrong road and got into such narrow streets it was scary.  We asked along the way which was the way out of the old town and finally we got out and found a parking garage and then walked back to our apartment.  It was a nice apartment but we couldn't keep the windows open because of the traffic noise and so it got hot in the apartment and there were no fans.  It was hard sleeping that night without a fan to circulate air but the good thing is that we moved to a different apartment for the next 4 nights.

August 7th
So, today around noon we walked all our luggage over to the new apartment (which was named the Sleeping Girona) and it was in a much better location (quieter), was set up nicely and had FANS in the rooms so we were so glad to have moved.  This apartment was several flights of narrow stairs up, though, but once all our luggage was in the apartment we relaxed.  That evening we had dinner at a nearby restaurant.  We sat on the terrace outside and it was fun choosing our cold tapas from the bar inside or waiting until the servers came around with the hot tapas.  All of it was delicious and we had a great evening!

Video from Fusch

Here is a link to the video made while we were in Fusch.  I think some things are wrong in it - like I think the little stream that runs by Oma's old house is not called the Fuschach.  And also, where Rebeca is standing by the bigger stream, I don't think that's the Salzach, I think THAT stream is called the Fuscher Ach.  When I finally figure out the true names to all of those streams, I will correct the video.  But for now, here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_m1Mnps1qs

Cute town of Evora, Portugal

Drove to Evora this morning.  When we got there, we looked around first for a place to have lunch and then we walked around the town a little bit.

We saw this plaza back in April, too, and back then the weather was very cold.  I remember thinking that the plaza is probably full of people eating outside during the summer and sure enough, it was.  We stopped at  a little cafe to have ice cream in this plaza.

Fernando wanted to climb that wall to see if water was still flowing on top.

This arch is over a street, but it's not high enough for any vehicle to go through.

Homes and business have been built in some of the archways.