Category: Jane’s Journal
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Ronda and Caminito del Rey
One of the reasons that I picked Cordoba as a home base was because I knew I wanted to take a road trip to some special places: the town of Ronda and the hiking trail Caminito del Rey. Early one morning I rented a car and hit the Spanish road. Ronda Ronda is most famous…
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Cordoba
After a two hour train ride from Granada, I reached my next destination: Cordoba. I decided to stay in this city because it had an underdog feel (not as popular as Seville or Granada) and I love me some second cities. After several days here, I came away really happy with my decision. I really…
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Granada
When I was planning a trip to Spain, I knew that I would need to stop in Granada. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to see the Alhambra, the large complex where rulers lived looking over the city. Granada is in the Al-Andalus, or Andalucia nowadays, area of southern Spain that…
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Toledo
I arrived to Toledo after a painful exchange at the Madrid train stations. I arrived at the north Madrid train station and needed to get to the south one. No problem, I thought foolishly, I’ll just take the metro. Bad decision: I felt like one of those commuter trains in Japan with people crammed in.…
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Ascension
Santiago de Compostela has been full of surprises for me. As I mentioned previously, the weather has been cooler and wetter than I thought it would be. Ascension, a city holiday that took up half of my stay here, was also unexpected. Ascension is a festival commemorating Mary’s ascension to heaven. I’m sure there were…
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Beach of the Cathedrals, Ribadeo, & Lugo
I ventured out of Santiago again, this time to the north and east regions of Galicia. On this trip I got to see more of the landscape in this region. Everything is green, but in this area I could see more of the farmland. It looked a lot like Scotland, minus the hairy coos. Beach…
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Finisterre and Costa da Morte
Galicia is in the northwest part of Spain. It is a mix of Spanish, Celtish (!), and Portuguese and rains a lot. Like a lot a lot. I didn’t know any of this before I randomly picked Santiago de Compostela as my home base in Spain for a month (super smart, right?). When I took…
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Guimaraes, Portugal
This morning I learned a valuable lesson at the train station. I was on platform 1 at 9:53 and when a train pulled up I started to board but luckily checked with the taciturn train worker before I did. After showing him my ticket and pointing to the train (since I can’t speak Portuguese), he…
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Coimbra, Portugal
I arrived in Lisbon after two quick flights (San Francisco to Boston and Boston to Lisbon). I had an unfortunate middle seat on the first leg and the dufus on the aisle did not adhere to the principle of middle seats get the arm rests. If you didn’t know that was an unspoken rule, let…
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Jane’s Journal
Welcome to a new section on the blog! The goal here is to provide proof of life for my mom while I’m taking a sabbatical. 😉 I’ll add updates describing the towns I visit and the things I see. Happy to have you join me!
