Category: Travels for Fun
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‘MENU DEL DIA’ IN OVIEDO
I thought I had never heard of Oviedo. But I was wrong. Years ago, I watched a silly Woody Allen called ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’. In one scene, Javier Bardem tells two American women that they will fly with him that evening from Barcelona to Oviedo and then make passionate love. The Americans rolled their eyes and said ‘Where’s Oviedo?’ That movie brought 15 minutes of fame to the capital city of Asturias. And the city acknowledged Woody by making a statue of him. It deserves a lot more fame than that.…
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WHERE THERE ARE NO CROWDS
There’s a big problem of travelling in the province with the lowest incidence of COVID in Spain. Everyone else has the same idea as us. Asturias is packed with holidaymakers. Almost all are Spanish with a sprinkling of French. No Yanks. No Poms. And probably just two Aussies. The hotels and restaurants are bursting with customers. The hiking trails are chock-a-block because outdoor sports are the safe thing to do these days during COVID. We wanted to take a hike in the Picos de Europa National Park. If you Google ‘hiking’…
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WINDOW TO ASTURIAS
Earlier in the year – the pre-COVID times – Padma and I started dreaming of buying a holiday home in Spain. All of the land agent websites seemed to direct us to the south of the country … to the classical hot and dry Spain with abundant sun. One day as we were looking at the map of Spain, Padma said ‘what about up here?’ No, I said, that’s Bilbao and Basque Country … way too expensive for us. She slid her finger western along the northern coastline of Spain ……
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BASQUE COUNTRY
A couple of days ago I had never heard of the Basque fishing town of Hondarribia. Padma and I needed a place to hang out for a few days near Biarritz, which is in French Basque country. But Biarritz is too posh and expensive for simple folks like us. So I brought up the map in booking.com and searched for places still available during this busy August holiday season. I got lots of availability in Spain’s San Sebastian but that’s kind of a party place on the beach. I scanned the…
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ANOTHER CHATEAU
There are about 1000 chateaux in France’s Loire Valley. Padma and I saw one and a half. That’s enough. Been there. Done that. We started our drive through the Loire with a stop at Amboise and really enjoyed walking through the chateau and the gardens and courtyards. Then we travelled south to the River Cher to Château de Chenonceau, which is labelled as ‘if you only visit one chateau, then visit Chenonceau’. We paid our 15 euros to get in but, give our fear of COVID, just couldn’t muster the courage…
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ON TOP OF THE (GERMAN) WORLD
Last Sunday was one of those frigid, yet super clear days that only seem to come around a few times each winter. We were showing Padma’s brother’s family around and were staying with our friends Karl-Heinz and Hiltrud Linke in their little village of Illerbachen. As the sun rose on a very frosty morning, Karl-Heinz pointed to Germany’s highest peak, Zugspitze, from his kitchen window. With visibility like that we just had to head for the summit. Upon arriving at the base of the mountain in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (the site of the…
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DROP IN IF YOU’RE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
Just a few weeks ago I received an email from a genealogist in Switzerland. He found a 1928 photo I posted online of some distant cousins in Wisconsin and wanted some details. I sorted out his enquiries and he was most grateful. He said ‘If you’re ever in the Bernese Alps, drop in.’ I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the ‘if you’re ever in XYZ drop in’ invitation or how many times I’ve said it. I rarely take up the offer and people rarely take up my offer. But…
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RESEMBLANCE AFTER 36 GENERATIONS?
Joseph, Padma and I travelled with our German friend, Volker, to pay our respects to our ancestor in Aachen, Germany. Charlemagne – or Charles I, the Emperor of the Romans, the King of the Lombards and the King of the Franks – was laid to rest in 814 in his imperial capital city of Aix-la-Chapell, now known as Aachen. Joseph is the 36th great grandson of Charles. It’s true. I can actually chart our ancestry to Charles via my grandmother. Charlemagne loved the spas of Aachen and spent his winters there.…
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TYROLEAN TREATS
You know, I’m not going to go into my usual long-winded essay with this post. Just going to share some pics of some of the most spectacular mountain scenery we’ve ever seen. Padma and I extended the German Reunification Day into a long weekend and set up camp at a guesthouse in the Austrian Tyrol village of Ehrwald, at the base of the Zugspitze. Some might say we had crappy weather as it rained a lot, but we thought the mountains looked even more majestic shrouded in low lying clouds.
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