Spain has a seemingly endless amount of culture and history. There’s still much evidence of the former kingdoms and occupations scattered throughout the country, especially in the cities. Prior to Spain being what it is today, there was a plethera of influences that shaped who they became.
Roman occupation still has some remaining physical influence, such as the Aqueduct in Segovia. There’s also Toledo, which at one time was a strategic city. Bull fighting used to be one of the favorite sports, drawing thousands in attendance.
What’s really fun is the Spain’s cities are very walkable. The Centro regions of Madrid and Barcelona for example are small enough to walk without much problem. Inside there is everything you would expect – restaurants, shops, and history/architecture in the form of buildings, numerous plazas, and the Palacio Real de Madrid (Royal Palace of Madrid).
Something else that Spain is well know for is their wine. Part of that is due to a period of time where the water was undrinkable. Wine (albeit was deliberately made with a low ABV) was more readily available and didn’t make people sick. How crazy is that?
Why did we go?
We went to Spain for two reasons.
Reason #1 – we were going to Italy, but that year Italy was having a year long celebration. Timing is important as we knew this would cause our trip to be significantly higher in cost. Not to mention the more popular sights like the Roman Colosseum and Vatican would be more crowded.
Reason #2 – our costs going to Spain flying into Madrid would be cheaper than going to Italy without the celebration.
We ended up using about $600 in American Airlines vouchers which pretty much paid for one of our tickets.
What did we decide to do while we were there?
Since we were diverted from our Italy trip, we had to figure out a brand new itinerary on the fly. It wasn’t too difficult because we already knew that we were looking to do some wine tasting, see some history, and maybe spend some time with nature doing some hiking. Plenty of that all around.
Before we left we talked about a basic plan.
Madrid
Fly into Madrid, spend a few days there. Utilizing a couple of day trips for some history and wine tasting. We booked a day trip for some wine tasting and a tour of Segovia, that has a stunning Aqueduct. Since we’d been successful Finding Souvenirs in Argentina (knives), we thought we’d go to Toledo and get “Knives for the Children?“. The Toledo excursion was not fully planned before we left so we had to buy train tickets the day we went. The ticket salesperson suggested we buy tickets to return while buying our ticket going there. We found out why when we went to leave. The return trip was booked out and people were having trouble getting out of Toledo. But we had our tickets so it worked out for us!
Barcelona
From there we decided to take a train to Barcelona to see the Sagrada La Familia. The Sagrada La Familia is a church conceived and mostly designed by Antoni Gaudi, The church has been under construction for over 100 years. Clearly he’s not part of the more recent process, but he set the tone for the now full foundation to complete his work. An entire board now operates to interpret his vision and construct it. The work is slated to finally be complete in 2026.
There’s also other sites in and around the city, like the Park Guell and the houses Gaudi designed. We also booked a day trip there before we left. To Montserrat, a monastary on the side of the mountain overlooking Barcelona. After Montserrat would be a wine tasting. The countryside alone was georgeous, let alone the Mediterrian beaches.
After Barcelona, we figured it would be fun to rent a car and drive up into the Pyrenees thinking it would be fun Hiking the Pyrenees in Andorra. Getting To-Through-From the country of Andorra turned out to be interesting in and of itself.
Back to Madrid
Then we returned to Madrid to finish out our final day there, walking the streets to see what we could find. It was there in the Centro Region of Madrid we ended up stumbling into an “Accidental” wine tasting just walking around.