Spain

We’ve been to Spain four times together (once each separately). Our first trip was during our pre-blogging life and included visits to Madrid, Sevilla, Granada, Valencia and Barcelona. We loved the tapas bars of Madrid, the Real Alcazar of Sevilla, the Albayzin and Alhambra in Granada, Sunday afternoon with a huge plate of paella with the locals at the beach in Valencia and the architectural works of Gaudi, las Ramblas and the Sagrada Familia of Barcelona.

We loved Barcelona so much that we were planning to make it our European home and took Catalan lessons via Skype for a year before abandoning a home in Spain for one in Portugal after falling madly in love with our current European homebase.

Our second trip to Spain together was just for an hour or so when we visited Ayamonte from Vila Real do Santo Antonio in Portugal, and then we returned to Sevilla at Christmastime in 2023.

We had planned a larger Andalusian journey for the spring of 2024 but cut it back to only a little over a week to handle some unplanned home expenses, so it just included a tour of the Costa de la Luz and Costa del Sol including El Rocío, Matascalañas Beach, Cadiz and Marbella, and four lovely days touring the pueblos blancos (white villages) in the hills of Andalucia. This was a 9-day itinerary which we’d recommend (though we’d swap Matascalañas out for more time in Cadiz and Marbella).