Note: This is part three of a four-part series about my 2016 vacation in Portugal. This part focuses on our brief side trip to southwestern Spain. Links to the other parts of the series can be found in the text and at the end of this post.
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“And now for something completely different” (almost).
The third phase of the trip took us away from the coast, beaches
and seafood and into the hotter, dryer interior of southwestern Spain. But it
was only for a day; we couldn’t wait to get back to the ocean again, even if
only for a few hours.
And during that brief excursion into the hills of Andalusia, I had
another “what must it have been like long ago” moment. Our one-day trip took us
only into the Spanish provinces of Huelva and Sevilla, with the main
destination being the city of Seville. But it was in the rolling hills near our
guesthouse that I got to thinking again about the past.
I am not a city person. I’ve mentioned it on this blog on more
than one occasion, particularly in this post. My heart finds contentment in
open space, wild country, places where nature still rules and where its power
is evident everywhere you look. So while Lisbon was a great city, and I truly
enjoyed taking in the sights and sounds (and tastes), I was actually happier
after we left Lisbon and spent time in more natural areas of the west coast and
Algarve.
The same was true in Spain. There are some interesting things to
see in Seville, notably the Plaza de Español, but overall, the city didn’t
impress me much, and I felt an almost constant low level of stress just being
there. It was like doing the obligatory city tourist thing but really just
wanting to leave and get into the countryside. And, except for one bad
incident, I did feel better when we got out of the city.
We began the morning in Portimao, as I mentioned last time, by
visiting a quaint café perched high above a picturesque stretch of beach. Then
we got in the car and set off for Seville. The drive took just a couple of hours
and was fairly scenic in its own right; for much of the drive, the ocean
remained our companion, looming off to our right. Then we were in the city.
(Crossing from Portugal into Spain)
Seville
This was one day in which, instead of helping us find the best way to get someplace, Google Maps was determined to make life more difficult. I had picked out one of the main points in the center of the city as our destination and had the navigator give us a track. But something went wrong when we got into the center, and GM sent us into a labyrinth of narrow alleys. They seemed to get tighter and tighter as we got deeper and deeper into it. We feared that we might get stuck or, even worse, scratch the car.
My friend was behind the wheel, and she did a great job getting us
through the maze. We tucked the mirrors tight against the car (we didn’t need
to see behind us anyway) and worked on finding our way out. Finally, we asked a
local how to get to a main road, and with his advice, we finally got out of
there. Whew!
Soon, we found the area where we wanted to be and located an underground parking garage. That done, we set off to see what we could see. We found ourselves near a small park called Jardim del Cristina and explored some busy streets and squares in the area. Our exploration took us to the banks of a wide canal that forms a branch of the Guadalquivir River. There, we took a short boat cruise on which some of the main sites were explained in several European languages.
After the boat ride, we returned to the area of the small park and square we had first discovered and visited some souvenir shops. We saw a lot of cafes, including two very familiar eateries: Burger King and Dunkin
From there, we went on a walking tour of some of the main attractions in the central area of the city: Catedral de Sevilla, Plaza del Triunfo, Patronato del Real Alcazar del Sevilla, Real Alcazar del Sevilla and Jardines Alcazares,
To be honest, there’s not a lot to say about these places, just
show the pictures. Yes, they were impressive in their own way, but they really
didn’t do a lot for me. The one place that was quite beautiful and definitely
got my attention was Plaza de España de Sevilla. The combination of the
architecture and color of the buildings, together with the water channels in
the plaza were quite unique and interesting. But I was a bit disappointed to
learn that it was not built in some historical time several centuries go, but
in the 1920s. As European heritage sites go, it’s just a baby.
There were some beautiful parks surrounding these places, the most
impressive being Parque de Maria Luisa next to Plaza de España. It was nice to
walk through the parks, and they certainly add a lot to the charm of the city.
But I was itching to go; I wanted to reach Hotel La Posada before dark.
Trying to Beat the Dark
We finally got out of Seville, and it was a lot easier than getting into the city had been. At first, the drive was really pleasant, especially as we left the city and suburbs behind and began to climb into the hills. We saw a lot of really beautiful scenery in these low, dry hills with their unique and open blend of low trees and shrubbery, and we passed through a number of quaint towns and villages.
In several areas, we saw what looked like Spanish fighting bulls
grazing on either side of the road. I confirmed later that the area is a prime
region for raising these powerful animals. I wondered how they safely collect
them for transport to the ring.
That part of the drive was nice, but as the light was fading, the
troubles began. Google Maps put us on the wrong course toward the guesthouse,
and we wound up on a “road” that turned into little more than a path. As I
wrote in Part One of this series, we got stuck in a bad spot, and
maneuvering out of it was very difficult, especially in the dimming light. In
trying to turn us around so that we could head back to the main road, I wound up
scratching a corner of the BMW.
It was on me because I was behind the wheel, and this made me
angry. If my friend had been behind the wheel and the same thing happened, I
would have been a lot calmer about it and done my best to make her not feel bad
about it. I could have excused it if she had been driving, but for me to do it
was inexcusable. And to make matter worse, it was getting dark, I was already
frustrated at being lost, and we were no closer to figuring out how to get to
the hotel.
We ran into a couple of local people who were able to tell us how
to find Hotel la Posada. It turned out that not only had Google Maps let us
down, but the signage for the hotel was terrible. The irony was that the access
road to the hotel was right next to a place we had stopped at in the last
village before we turned off the main road. There was a tiny sign pointing to
the hotel, but we had been unable to see it.
We found the place and got checked in, but tension still ruled the
moment. There was nothing to do but shower and go to bed – and hope that the
next day would be better.
I didn’t sleep well, partly due to the stress and partly due to a
bad cough I had developed the day before. At some point before sun up, I
couldn’t take it anymore, so I went out for a walk. Walking in the quiet of the
predawn dark was calming. It helped.
I also made a friend: a local cat decided that he liked the way I
pet him and decided to follow me around. He followed me back to the bungalow
and even came inside for a while. But he was disappointed that we didn’t have
any food for him, so he left.
A Morning Walk into the Past
Hotel la Posada’s breakfast was pretty good, and after that we took a morning walk in the hills. For me, this was the best part of the side trip to Spain. It was a warm, sunny morning, and the morning light easily filled the spaces between the low, sparse trees. At the start of our walk, we encountered a flock of sheep being brought in from the hills. That was a nice start, but a bit later, the screams of pigs being slaughtered on the other side of a hill took a bit of the charm off the morning.
There was a point in the hills when I again got to thinking about what the place might have looked, sounded and felt like hundreds of years ago. I imagined that it was probably a quiet place populated mainly by simple farmers who, like today, raised their sheep and hogs and probably cultivated olive trees and other crops. I suspected, or perhaps hoped, that war and other kinds of conflict rarely visited those hills. Naïve, perhaps.
I imagined travelers on horseback or leading a loaded donkey
making their way through the hills. Perhaps they were carrying goods for sale,
or maybe they were just moving on to a new place. The possible reasons were as
open to the imagination as was the vision itself. But to journey through these
sunny hills in those days must have been wonderfully peaceful.
After a while, we made our way back to the bungalow; it was time
to pack up, check out and head back to Portugal. We were in a hurry to get back
to the ocean, so we drove straight through, pausing only for a few minutes to
take some pictures at the border between Portugal and Spain.
And Back to the Ocean
We wanted to find a great beach in a place that would afford us a reasonable drive back to Lisbon. We found it in Porto Covo, which is just south of Sines where we began our love affair with Portugal’s southern coast. When we got to Porto Covo, we found a good place to park, checked out the surf and beaches, then walked into the town to shop for some souvenirs and, of course, have lunch.
The rest of the day was for the beach. We chose a small beach
called Praia do Banho, which had few people, wonderful views, and excellent
surf. Like so many of southern Portugal’s beaches, millennia of pounding by the
Atlantic surf against sedimentary rock formed even before dinosaurs roamed the
Earth has carved beautiful little beaches with rock formations jutting out of
the water and interesting little “cave” passageways under the cliffs and even
to adjoining beaches. One can only marvel at the creative precision with which
nature has crafted these magnificent formations.
On the beach, I found myself able to just let any stress from the
past day slip away. We were already more than halfway through the vacation, and
I wanted to savor it. The cough I had developed a few days earlier made it
prudent to stay out of the water, but I was still able to enjoy the sun, salt
air, and just the feeling of the ocean and everything around me.
Finally, it was time to pack up and drive to our overnight
guesthouse in Lima. We managed to catch part of the sunset off to our left as
we drove north to Lima, and we also got a great view as we drove across the
Vasco de Gama bridge into the city.
The next morning, we would be off to the airport and on our way to
the Azores.
In Part One: Lisbon, Sintra and Cascais
In Part Two: The Southern Coast and Algarve
In Part Four: Sao Miguel in the Azores.
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In Part Two: The Southern Coast and Algarve
In Part Four: Sao Miguel in the Azores.
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