Flamenca in the street

Seville is very nice. We’re staying in the old-town area, and there are many sights in easy walking distance, which is fortunate – driving here is not easy. As usual there are lots of narrow, twisty streets, mostly one-way traffic, if vehicles can get along them at all. The street where we are staying has a narrow point where the mirrors touched the walls as we drove through. Parking, as usual, is at a premium. Amazingly we did manage to find parking in a public parking place – the alternative is a commercial parking house, and that gets expensive.

Rio Guadalquivir

Lots of sights to see here. Here are a few. The city is on the Rio Guadalquivir, somewhat like the Yarra in Melbourne.

Street art in Seville

There is some spectacular street-art adorning the walls here.

Metropole parasol

And there is some interesting architecture, like the Metropole Parasol, a  pubic space that seems much loved by Sevillians.

Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla

By chance, on a random walk, I found the Museo de Bellas Artes. It had such an unassuming enterance, but inside it was huge and full of fabulous art work.

Alcazar

We visited the Alcazar palace and gardens. Spectacular.

Reflections in pool at Alcazar

Seville Cathedral

And the Cathedral is huge, with amazing flying buttresses and ornate stonework.

More photos at

https://goo.gl/photos/T9vTEiuHKYyGinbr8

Seville to Sintra is almost 500 km, but the first few hundred metres were the worst. Seville, like many old towns, has narrow, one way, twisty streets. One wrong turn and you spend half an hour finding your way back. And the GPS has trouble locating the satellites when it is down a deep ravine between multi-story buildings. We finally found the way out to the freeway and then it was 120 kph roads all the way. However after crossing the border we started to hit tollways. It seems there are two different toll systems, both run by government departments, but different departments. It is all very confusing. On the 300 km from the Portugese border to Sintra we think (not easy to tell) that we clocked up about 30 euros in tolls – about 10 eurocents per km! And it will take about the same in tolls to get us back into Spain.

Sintra is a beautiful, historic town a few km west of Lisbon, with UNESCO world heritage listing.

Castle of the Moors, Sintra

Sintra is overlooked by a Medieval castle. It was started by Moors in the 8th and 9th century and underwent various additions and alterations over the millennium after. Given its age it is in spectacular condition. It sits high above Sintra town on a steep, craggy hill, dominating the skyline. We had enormous fun wandering its walls. Unlike in Australia, the Portugese are not over-protective, so there are lots of unfenced high places and other lovely things.

Pena Palace, Sintra

Nearby is Pena Palace. Although this started from a chapel build to honour Our Lady of Pena in the middle ages, it has been transformed into a romanticist castle that dominates the skyline. It is an amazing place.

National Palace, Sintra

We also visited the National Palace, one of the best preserved royal residences in Portugal, that was in use by the royalty from the 15th to 19th century. It is one of the major tourist drawcards here. It has a unique double kitchen chimney that outside looks like a pair of white witches-hats.

Nature strip, Portugese style

We took opportunity to consider differences in the attitudes to ‘nature strips’ between Australia and Portugal. Here, for example we see a Tree ‘feature’ in a footpath. The only way to pass it is to step on the road, or squeeze sideways between the tree and the fence of the adjacent house.

A little reminder of home. Tasmanian blue gums in Potugal

We found lots of gum trees scattered through the forest. This image shows an informative sign that, I believe, says they were introduced in the 19th century and have become one of Portugal’s most important trees economically with the expansion of the paper industry. However the expansion of eucalypt forest has had a significant impact on the biodiversity of native forests.

Lots more photos at https://goo.gl/photos/9cXTsnGfsst8ygdH8

Fuente De Teleferico (cable car) disappearing into the mist on its 800 m near vertical ascent.

The Picos are a stunning range of mountains on the northern Spanish coastline, with mainly limestone mountains, heavily glaciated, and peaks up to 2650 m and some of the world’s deepest caves (~1600 m). Needless to say we only explored some of the surface features.

Local crow

We started from Fuente De where there is a cable car (Teleferico) that rises 800 m from 1100 m to 1900 m in 4 minutes. Much easier than walking up with our heavy camera bags. Since the clouds were thick, we pottered around the plateau about 1 km from El Cable, had lunch (flocked by optimistic crows).

Track to Torre Horcados Rojos

In clearing weather we then we headed off up the valley for a few km to about 2250 m or so for some sights before it was time to head back. We got on the very last cable car heading down for the evening.

Alpine meadow

Next day, with lots of low cloud, we opted for a lower level walk up an adjacent valley and round some local mountains. Very pleasant mountain scenery, some lovely wildfolwers, and we hardly got rained on at all.

Wildflowers and mountains

We could have spend much longer … We will return.

More photos at: https://goo.gl/photos/5q4evuyUjRy9VoAK8

The road from Picos winds down through a spectacular gorge towards the coast. Alas, there was nowhere to stop to take photos, but amazing scenery. We stopped for lunch and a leg-stretch at a tiny coastal town

Sonabia, small cove to the west. panoramic montage.

Sonabia coastline looking south east from near the point

Sonabia, which had interesting contours on the map, and an old church. Quite a pretty spot for lunch, with coastal views. It was grey and showery so we left the cameras in the dry car, but I snapped a couple of pictures on the phone.

See https://goo.gl/photos/diyzdRQsyHSLgPwY7 for larger images.

Guggenheim Museum at night

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Spider sculpture outside Guggenheim Museum

We came for the Guggenheim Museum, and Wow! what a building. We spent hours wandering round it, enjoying the sensual curves, the play of light, the changing colours. The Guggenheim is closed on Mondays but that did not matter, there was so much outside.

Guggenheim Museum at night

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Interior

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Interior

On Tuesday we went in and explored the innards. Some lovely works, and some of the art is on a massive scale. We also did part of the “bridge” walk, along the river. There are lots of bridges and lovely riverside walks including lots of great street art and sculptures. The old town is also interesting. Lots to see when we go back.

Reflections on sculpture outside Guggenheim (detail)

Have a look at more photos here

https://goo.gl/photos/UvQhGxPmq39Ttgbu7

San Salvadore, in Torla against a backdrop of the Pyrenees

We stayed for 3 nights in an apartment on the edge of the Ordesa gorge park, with a fantastic mountain view from the terrace. The village is lovely and the view of the old church agains the mountains is amazing.

Early morning. Old mill in the valley mist

These mountains are STEEP!

Down in the valley there is some arable land, and old mills and farm buildings that made for nice photography … all before breakfast on day 1.

Ordesa valley waterfall

Then we went for walks up the valley where we found spectacular waterfalls, wonderful beech forests, and, once above the treeline, superb alpine-type scenery with the steep gorge

Beech Forest, Ordesa valley

walls prominent.

We had a ball there. And the next day we went up again and took more photos. This is definitely a place to return to.

I’ve put lots more photos online at https://goo.gl/photos/
pJtgPrkDMekJYF2r7

Upper reaches of the Ordesa gorge

South of Andorra

Approaching Andorra from Spain we encountered some lovely weather. The rain in Spain does not fall mainly on the plain.

Andorra is one of the pocket-handkerchief sovereign states of Europe, nestling in the mountains between Spain and France. It may have a small surface area when drawn on a map, but the actual surface area is much bigger because most of the land surface comprises steep slopes. We had no fixed plans, and stopped at what we thought might be a suitable town, Ordino, because it looked like there may be some nice walks in the mountains nearby (ie very WiGgLy road with lots of hairpins up to a place with lakes and tracks marked on OSM). The main industry of Andorra seems to be tourism – holiday hotels and apartments filled the valleys and the mountains had lots of ski areas. Luckily we were there in the off-season so it was comparatively peaceful.

castellers of Andorra

After dumping bags at an apartment-hotel we headed off to the local supermarket to get food for dinner and noticed a crowd in the village square. The supermarket was rather small, with scant supplies of carnivory so I popped outside to see if I could find a larger one using open street maps on my phone, and realised why there was a crowd – we’d managed to spike the day and time of the first ‘Castellers d’Andorra’ competition they had ever had there. The castellers build fantastic human pyramids. As you can imagine, we dumped shopping and rushed back for cameras. We spent the next hour being entertained by castellers of various nationalities competing, I suspect, for fun and honour. There was lots of merriment, and thankfully the ambulance crew who were stationed at the edge of the square were not needed.

Lakes in NW Andorra

Next morning we headed up the wiggly road and had a pleasant walk round some lakes through some lovely alpine scenery. Lots of other walkers and fishermen were also enjoying the area. We could have spent much longer there, but we had a vague schedule to keep, so after lunch

Fisherman – lakes in NW Andorra

we jumped back in the car and on our way. Andorra will definitely be on our ‘Places to revisit‘ list.

As usual there are more photos in a gallery: https://goo.gl/photos/wNbrq4DFHnGQYcoC6

Why Millau, you may be wondering. The key attraction this time was its spectacular road viaduct. One of the engineering wonders. The thumbnail photo below does scant justice. It is HUGE. One mast summit reaches 343 metres above the base, making it the highest bridge in the world (according to wikipedia). The road is suspended 240 m above the valley floor and is around 2.5 km from end to end.

Millau road viaduct

Millau has a lot else to offer. It is a relatively quiet rural town  on the Tarn

Old water mill at Millau

river in Southern France, with a long history – settlement in the area dating back 3000 years, and with settlement in its current location from ~100 BC. The surrounding area has gorges, caves and other interesting things, which we did not have time to explore (something for next time). We did wander into the old town to explore the old architecture, sample the patisserie (Roquefort pie for lunch… yum), and generally have a pleasant time.

Church in Millau

As usual, more photos are available at https://goo.gl/photos/Z27tm5giNspNv348A

Versailles Palace

Steven and I reached Versailles and caught up with Judy and the dance group. Versailles, about 20 km southwest of the centre of Paris is famed for its palace. The palace is vast and opulent. All that glitters IS gold at Versailles. And there is a LOT of glitter!

Versailles Palace

Alas, there were fairly large crowds who also wanted to see the sights, which made photography difficult. We’d love to have the place to ourselves for a photo session… but I guess that will never happen. We can always dream. Fortunately the ceilings were interesting so we could get some photos without people in them.

Versailles Palace Model village

The grounds are huge, with amazing gardens, two more palaces, a farm, and an amazing model village that was built for Marie Antoinette to serve as a place of recreation and a meeting place for her friends.

We spent a day wandering about, jaw dropped by all the gold and over the top decorations of the palaces, and the gardens. We planned to return for more photos in the gardens the next morning. As luck would have it, the staff were on strike that morning so we did not get the chance 🙁

More photos at https://goo.gl/photos/adCTSj89D4w6B1tf6

Eiffel tower

Our whirlwind tour continues in Paris, where Steven caught up with Judy and the dance group, and I caught up with friends and colleagues. Paris is a wonderful city to visit. Alas, at the time of our visit a lot of other people also thought Paris was a wonderful place to vist just at that time – something to do with euro-football finals being in Paris. The hotels were in short supply and super expensive, and the whole place was rather busy, and some of the football fans were rather noisy.

One of the features of Paris is the lack of/expensive parking (the parking garage near the hotel charges ~36€ per day. But I found that there was free on-street parking near the Paris zoo, only about 5-6 km from our hotel. We dumped our bags at the hotel and drove out. We had not counted on it taking an hour to drive that 5-6 km, but such is the congestion on Paris streets. Once we had parked, and confirmed with 3 different, non-English-speaking locals (by aid of mime and my broken French and their valiant attempts with English) that this location was indeed free parking (the parking signs were rather confusing) we locked up and walked back along the Seine towards the centre of town and our hotel.

River barges on the Seine

The walk was interesting. We got to see a section of the Seine that was more industrial, with barges full of building materials and so on – it gave us a different perspective on the place compared to the usual tourist areas, but at 32C or more and high humidity, we were rather whacked by the time we got back.

Sacre Coeur

We managed to pack in our federal election votes at the Australian Embassy, and a lot of sights including  the environs of the Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, the Louvre … etc. There is always lots to see and do. And eat … we sampled some wonderful French cuisine (including a few

Escargot

decadent visits to the local patisseries). One aspect stood out relative to visits from some years ago. It became somewhat tedious to go through security check queues at every venue. Often you had to go through security before you could even get tickets to enter. Security police with high powered weapons were a common sight on the streets. But overall, I would rather have the extra security than the potential alternative.

Check out a gallery of photos at https://goo.gl/photos/HL7i5cyDHEgFzJB88

As for the free parking saga … yes, there was a hidden catch. We were heading out of town on Monday morning so decided to collect the car on Sunday afternoon and park it close the the hotel overnight (street parking in the city centre is free on Sundays until 9 am Monday, which worked fine for our plans). So we headed out (by train to the nearest station – much easier than walking). The car was fine. No fines attached. But there was a catch. It seems that the road we parked on becomes a no-car area closed off by boom gates on Sundays. Fortunately there was a policeman near the gates who kindly let us out. 🙂