Hi friends! I am home from a wonderful, nearly three-week trip to Spain. We arrived home at midnight last Thursday after twenty-four solid hours of travel, only fourteen of which were actually in flight. The rest was time spent at airports, for connections for our three flights, because I am this guy:

I am not an anxious person generally or an anxious traveller specifically, but I have two travel-related anxieties: missing connections, and losing my luggage. For the latter, I take only carryon, even for a three-week trip, and for the former, I make sure – or, truthfully, My Husband The Travel Planner makes sure – that we have at least three hours between flights and lots of cushion time. YOU NEVER KNOW. I am also adding, to my twenty-four hour travel time, driving time to and from the airport, and let me just note that the time getting to the airport in Spain does not reflect the years that were taken off my life. I have had this experience before – twice in both Italy and Morocco – where I thought Well, this is where it ends. I have had a good run.

When my husband and I were boarded on our flight home from London Heathrow, he received a news alert that there was a cyber attack that grounded many flights within Europe. Ours was, obviously, not affected, but I had a now-familiar feeling that came up a lot in this trip, namely I guess I dodged that one.

Before I get to that, I would like to note that my 1715-day Duolingo streak has finally paid off! Almost everywhere we went had little to no English, with the notable exception of Barcelona. No. It is stupid. I hate it, our Argentinian-born Barcelona bartender responded when I asked if he spoke the local language of Catalan, leaving me in no doubt about his views on the very sensitive issue of Catalunya independence. I got the very strong feeling that English was preferred over Spanish, and in fact that feeling was confirmed by our Catalonian tour guide. For many in Catalunya, of which Barcelona is a part, Spanish is considered the language of the oppressors. Not wanting to give offence or an inadvertent political stance, in Barcelona I only spoke Spanish when spoken to. Interestingly, our Catalonian tour guide was fluent in six languages, and Catalan wasn’t one of them. It’s a waste of time, he said.

Barcelona was our last stop, and so I had a solid two weeks of Spanish practice prior to that. It was so fun being able to understand and to communicate in a different language. I often told people that I was still learning and I spoke badly and slowly, to which they would respond as if I was a small child – no, you are doing very well – or like someone in a Jane Austen novel – I understand you completely.

We started our trip in Madrid, and I was able to easily navigate their metro system, even after twenty-four hours of travel. Our hotel was only steps away from the Sol metro stop, and as we emerged into the famous Plaza Puerta de Sol, we found ourselves in a tent city. I was absolutely not expecting the square to be covered with tents, tarps, and signs saying that Spain was not for sale, but here we were. I later learned a lot about the underlying issues for such mass demonstrations and even riots, which of course are incredibly complex and with no easy solutions. In any case, the giant tent city made it easy to navigate to the hotel when we were out exploring; whenever I spotted the tarps I knew we were heading in the right direction.

We had fun exploring the non-tent-city aspects of Madrid, like the Royal Palace and other beautiful streets.

We used Madrid as our home base and took the high-speed train for two day trips, the first to Toledo. Holy Toledo, I loved Toledo!

We also took a high-speed train to Segovia to see the ancient Roman aqueduct.

On my husband’s birthday we went to a Real Madrid versus Leipzig football match. I have never watched football before, and I may never again, because I can never relive the incredibly fun experience. What a crowd! Real Madrid won 4-1, and our seatmates were hugging and high-fiving me, especially after I told them este es mi primero partido, estoy emocionata! I have also never seen such a police presence. Security was TIGHT, and there was an entirely different section for the visiting team. Football fans can get pretty wild! I would also like to note something that I noticed in Spain as well as in Italy two years ago: omg the police. I have never seen such a group of incredibly handsome men all in one place. Possibly this is coloured by my affection for a man in uniform – Top Gun imprinted on me at a young age – but every single police officer could have been in a calendar of hot police officers.

The football match was a nice goodbye to Madrid, after which we took another high-speed train to Malaga.

From there my husband had rented a car, and I would like to say that I was not overly in favour of this plan, given that the streets in many parts of Europe barely allow for tiny European cars. On some streets, pedestrians have to actually flatten themselves against the walls to allow the cars to pass. Auto! someone will call and everyone becomes one with the walls. But My Husband, The Travel Planner had already mapped out routes and parking that avoided such streets, and happily most of the driving was on regular highways. We went to Nerja, the Balcony of Europe, Frigiliana, the White City, and to the caves of Nerja.

The next day we went to Setenil de las Bodegas, which is a city built into a rock formation.

We also drove to Ronda, which was incredibly crowded and, frankly, unenjoyable, but we did see the big gorge. It’s also the home of bullfighting, which Hemingway was obsessed with and had his ashes buried there, but I have never been a fan of Hemingway so this fell flat for me.

We returned the car and took a high-speed train to Granada, which was my very favourite place in Spain. I loved the Moroccan influence, the wildly crowded tapas bars that had zero English, and our very charming hotel, which was like a Moroccan riad. We saw the Alhambra, where we had an English-speaking tour guide who not only gave us an incredible tour, but also lots of suggestions of places to eat in our next stops.

After Granada, we again took a high-speed train, this time for one night in Cordoba, which is famous for the Mesquita. It is a huge mosque that the Catholic Church bossily took over and built a cathedral in the middle of, while expelling the Moorish and Jewish people from the country. History is made up of some pretty terrible stories of oppression. This beautiful structure is a reminder of that.

We headed out to the train station to go to Sevilla, and it was absolute chaos. There were people everywhere as well as the (sexy) police, and I could see on the departures sign that there were no trains going to Madrid. Since I’m not only Local Dad getting to the airport early, I’m also Local Dad getting to the train station early, there was a train departing for Sevilla prior to ours. The woman working at the counter told me our train was delayed, due to an accident. My Spanish wasn’t good enough to ask follow-up questions, so I stood off to the side, waiting. She conferred with her colleagues and then gestured to me wildly, telling me to run and get on the train that was there Right Now! And to take any seat that was available! It was Panic at the Disco, and I had no idea why, so we ran to the train that was half-empty. Suddenly it filled with people, and off we went.

It wasn’t until we were in Sevilla and I was in line for the washroom, chatting with a German lady with a dog, that I found out that there was a horrific collision with the high-speed train out of Madrid, that would have been picking us up on the way to Sevilla. Many people were killed and the tracks were destroyed. It was a terrible tragedy, and it felt strange to be holidaying in Sevilla with this shadow over us. I texted friends and my parents to let them know we were okay, and the consensus was that no one had seen the news anyway.

Sevilla is very, very beautiful, but of course we were a little in the dark about the terrible accident. We were due to go to Barcelona via a six-hour high-speed train, where we would fly home from, in a couple of days. My husband kept checking his train app and the tickets, and everything said that our train was running on time, but I felt a bit apprehensive. We got to the train station for a day trip to Cadiz, two days before we were due to leave for Barcelona. I noticed that there were no departures for Barcelona, so I went to talk to the station master, who spoke zero English. He told me that there would be no trains at all, because the trains to Barcelona went through Madrid. We had two options: book a last-minute flight, or hop on a twelve hour bus that would hopefully get us there. My husband frantically booked flights while we waited for our train to Cadiz.

We did our best to enjoy the rest of the time in Sevilla, while being low-level stressed about the flight. It went off without a hitch, and we got there just in time to visit with my friend Nicole and her husband (HI NICOLE), with whom we overlapped in Barcelona for about six hours. Barcelona is incredible with interesting architecture, particularly the weird giant penis-like office building that was outside of Nicole’s hotel room, and which I photographed every time I saw it in the distance.

On a non-penis note, I really enjoyed La Sacrada Familia. It has been under construction since 1882.

It was a cloudy day but the sun came out just in time for us to see the light streaming through the stained glass.

We had a day trip booked with the aforementioned Catalonian tour guide, who took us to Monserrat to see the Black Mary. It was a very moving experience.

Our guide also took us to Spain’s oldest winery for lunch, and then drove us out to the coast. Unfortunately, the rain started before we could see the sunset. You are very unlucky! our guide said, which was only true for the sunset. I felt like we had been very lucky indeed on this trip. It took a long time to get back to our hotel, because roads had all been blocked off due to a large demonstration…right beside our hotel. We had to walk a kilometre or so in the pouring rain as the driver could not get through. But we got there unscathed, and I exhaled deeply.

So it was a fantastic trip and I feel lucky not only to have had it, but also to have moved through it safely. I love travelling but I love coming home too, and so I have been settling back in to regular life. I currently have an eye-watering 329 unread posts in my blog reader, so I am not caught up with what is going on in your lives. So tell me – what’s been going on? What’s new with you? Tell me everything. xo