Spanish Mountain Villages

The small Spanish villages are full of charm. There are some real gems when it comes to old and beautiful mountain villages. Few reigons can actually rival Arragon for this. Most are built in sturdy stone typical of the region, with terracotta and slate roofs. Their settings against a backdrop of the Pyrenees or hidden in isolated corners make you feel like you found a little jewel when you come across them. Some of the most pitoresk ones are Ainsa, Alquezar, Daroca, Sos del Rey Catolico and Albarracin.

We spent a couple of days at the town  Alquezar located about 20 km north of Barbastro (the capital of the Somontano wine region ).We came here because we had booked the Canyoning tour and were both captured and suprised by the beauty of this hill top mountain village.

I find the landscape of Arragon facinating. It is very arid, kind of a semi-desert region. Olive trees and small bushes neverless make it green. The rivers cut through the landscape having formed many dramatic canyons over time. 

 I loved the narrow cobble stone streets and the stone houses. All the pretty balconies with flower pots. Similar in ways to small country villages found in both France and Italy but yet so very different. Time and history, present and past is ever present here.

 It almost feels like time has stood still here.

Alquezar turned out to be a busy little town. Drawing quite a bit of visitors even though it was  early September so we did not manage to find a hotel room there on short notice. We did find a small hotel more like a Bed and Breakfast in the neighboring village of Buesca. Located at the end of the street in this sleepy little town. The family dog doing his job by keeping an eye out about what was going on. 

I did get to use my Spanish. In these parts of rural Spain it is very helpful if you know the language. The owners of the little hotel spoke nothing but Spanish. In Arragon and  Catalona, Catalan is spoken. It shares similarities with Spanish but yet it is very different. Even if you speak Spanish you don't understand Catalan when it is spoken. I am happy I got to pratice my Spanish beacause it proved to be very useful and helpful. I can also tell that it was very much appreciated that I could speak the language even if it was not perfect. Knowing and being able to speak the language just opens so many doors.

We were the only guest at this hotel and here we also got to expirence the typical Spanish breakfast. Coffee, juice, two slices of toasted country bread, a plate with cheese and large slices of jamon, olive oil to drizzle on top of the jamon and some kind of sweet pastry to finish the breakfast. 

The Spanish siesta in the afternoons is still praticed here in the smaller villages. Shop close at 1pm and open again at 5 pm. Inbetween those hours are the quiet time. Then in the evening everything fills again with life. Dinner time is definately later in Spain than in other places around Europe. No one has dinner before 9 pm in Spain. The first few days we came into resturants around 8 and 8.30 pm and we were the only guests. Most resturants don't even open before 8 or 8.30pm. 

Deep ravines and impressive bridges. Traveling a long the quiet country roads was fantastic. Many turns and curves up and down the mountain sides. We made stops here and there to take a picture and admire the landscape. Even if the distance between places was not so long it still took time to get from place to another due to the curvy roads.

These ravines and gorges are so deep. If you are lucky you can catch a glimpse of the river at the bottom. Sometimes you just here the sound of water deep down below. Water that has helped to create holes and caves in the lime stone rock where eagles and other birds have built their nests.

 Drivning towards the Pyrenees that you can see in the far distance. The landscape here is just so very differnt from the landscape around the Alps we have here in Switzerland. 

 Another very charming and cute medevial village is Ainsa that sits on a hilltop. We only had time for a very breif stop here on our way back towards Barcelona. This is one of Arragons gems when it comes to beautiful mountain villages.

 It gets pretty crowded in summer but now in September the streets were quiet and so pretty.

A little bit of Adventure

We decided to do another Canyoning adventure here in Spain. One of the well know areas for canyoning is to be found  around the town of Alquezar. This is a lime stone area where the forces of nature have formed a number of caves and deep canyons. We had booked a day tour of canyoining (descensos de barrancos) as it is called in Spanish with Buena Adventura. There are many different guides and agencies to choose from in this region.Our group consisted of the guide, us and a French couple. We did the Peonera canyon (there are several differnt ones in this area). The cost was about 45 euros each and the canyoning expirence lasted 6 hours with an additonal 2 hours of transportaion (driving and walk/climbing).

Again canyoining is about climbing down waterfalls by using different techniques such as repelling, jumping, sliding or floating. I must admitt that I again had those butterflies in my stomach. Every canyon is different so each exprience is totally new and you never quite know what you are getting yourself into. 

My heart started beating faster even before we reached the bottom of the canyon which was the starting point. We parked the cars and from the parking lot it was about an hour of hiking/walking to reach the bottom of the canyon.The first half of the path was totally fine but the latter part was extremly steep. The worst part for me was the part where they had put some pegs into the mountain wall to climb down as it was too steep to do any other way ( a litte bit of Via Ferrata as it is called - nothing I ever really wanted to try). At least that took away my worries about the canyoning and the fear of the cold water. 

The few pictures we have here are taken with C's cell phone. The guide had a waterproof camera so hopefully he will send us some more pictures later.

Classic jump. The jumps vary in height. This tour included jumps between 2 and 10 meters. However none of the jumps were compulsory (which I was very grateful for). I did some of the lower jumps. Again it is about so much more than the height. It can be jumps between narrow cliffs, you have to completely trust the guide as you have no idea what lies under the surface. You have to get it right, jump into the defined area and not hesistate. It always looks worse, higher and scarier from above.

This was a really beautiful canyon. The water was shimmering in bluish-greenish. It was just as cold as it was beautiful. Despite wearing wetsuits it was still cold. I even got a pair of wetsuit gloves but as we stopped for lunch break my fingers were still numb and tingling from the cold for a good 20 minutes. Besides the wetsuit and helmet each pair of us also had a water proof bag with some extra dry clothes and a plastic jar containg our lunch. 

The first part of the canyon was very demanding and technical. There was a lot of water and the forces of water are really powerful. You just have to be very careful beacuase you do not want to break or sprain an ankel or something like that. It would be very hard to get out of a region like this if you got severly hurt. 

Despite being careful I got a little bit of an injury this time. I managed to wrench my left shoulder. I was holding on to the rock above me and I must have slipped a little or the water pushed me before I was quite ready to let go. Small detail but it happens so easily. However, I was lucky enough that it did not get quite painful until we reached the lower part of the canyon that was the very last part. I felt pretty much done then. I was tired, angry about the injury. Much shoulder has pretty much healed up now. It feels much better anyway.

Floating is one of my favorite parts. That is the really nice part when you can float on your back, relax and take in the full beauty of the canyon surrounding you. The nature is just amazing. It is very hard to reach these parts unless you do something like this with a guide. Some more pics.

 It can be very narrow passages that you have to get through sometimes.

Dominique and Virgine from Paris, our canoyning partners for the day.

 Following our guide into the water maze of limestone passages.

 Me and the guide. The depth of the water changed all the time. Sometimes you could walk and at suddenly at other parts you had to float or swim.

 Another squeeze through.

 Not daring to do all the jumps I chose to repell instead. This part is actually one of my favorite ones during canyoining.

Lying here waiting for the others while they were doing some jumps trying rest my injured shoulder a bit.

I also included a short movie here below found on Youtube from the Peonera canyon that we did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4gzwgtIyv0

Hiking in the Pyrenees

The Pyrenees provide magnificent waking and hiking opportunities as well as immense beauty. We were fortunate enough to be able to visist two national parks up here in the Spanish Pyrenees. The first one located in Catalunya called Parc National d'Aiguestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici (yes very long name). Located in the north west this area offers jewel like lakes and dramatic peaks. 

We arrived in the morning as the mist and clouds were lifting unveiling this fantastic landscape of lakes and peaks to us. We arrived early enough so that we still were among the first ones to enter the park. During the peak visitng months private vehicles are not permitted into the park and instead there are Jeep-Taxis that offer transport from both main gate villages of Espot and Boi.It seems like a good thing to do to shut of the national parks from private vehicles during the peak visiting months of the year. This was also the same case in the second national park that we visted.

The best season for hiking in the Pyrenees is from late June to early September. The hiking paths and parks can be pretty crowded in July and August as those are the two major vacation months in Europe. Early spring, snow can make thing diffcult as these two national parks with it's hiking trails are located at quite high altitude. The whole park is usually coverd under snow between December and April.

Catalynas only national park is not very large extending about 20 km east to west and 9 km from north to south but still it packs more beauty than most areas that are 100 times its size. 

The dramatic and beautiful landscape is much due to glacial action over the course of two million years. The park is made up of two east-west valleys at 1600 and 2000 m altitude lined by peaks reaching up to 2900 meters. 

So beautiful with both cascading waterfalls and parts of Birch forrest. The landscape offerd so much variaty. In the Birch forrest I felt like I was suddenly somewhere in northern Scandinavia.

 The very first shifts into fall colors are beginning to approch and even if it was early fall and most flowers had already bloomed there were still a few pretty ones.

 

There are countless both larger and smaller lakes as well as waterfalls that makes this wilderness into pure beauty. Crystal clear lakes and dramatic peaks that just knock your breath away.

 Vallys with flowing gentle springs. It is easy to find a perfect picknnick spot with a great view.

 We made a nice hike on one of the trails of about 4 hours.

 You keep climbing higher and higher and suddenly you are rewarded by a pretty little lake showing up like this one.

Here among the peaks of the Pyrenees are mountain stations were you can spend the night if you are doing longer hikes. However, booking and making a reservation is recomended to do well in advance. These mountain lodges offer a bed with a matress. You need to bring your own sleeping bag. You get to sleep in a big room shared by about 15 to 20 people all sleeping in the same room. A warm meal is included in the price that is cooked by the people running the lodge. They were cutting up veggies and sausage as we took a peak inside.

 We hiked up to the mountain station that was located at 2380 meters.

 Naturally the Pyrenees are very popular for a number of sports besides hiking such as climbing. Nothing for me tough as I am kind of afraid of heights.

Our hotel down in the little mountain village of Espot. There are two main gateway towns to this national park one here at Espot and the other one at Boi. Small but charming mountain village with about 5 hotels and four or five different places to eat. 

Comfy room with a pretty view, plenty of fresh mountain air and the sound of the flowing river outside our hotelroom. At this time of the year no AC is needed the cool mountain air takes care of that. Sleeping with a crack of the window open was perfect.

Pretty nice view to wake up to.

Back from Spain

Hola! We are back from Spain where we had a great vacation. Travelling and seeing new places is just so rewarding and refreshing. We were in Spain for 6 days but it feels like so much more beacuase of all that we expierenced. We had some truly great days and were able to squeeze in a lot of different things into these days.

We flew from Basel to Barcelona with Vueling. It worked fine and yes I would fly with them again. I found them slightly more basic than Easyjet but still good enough. They were more generous when coming to luggage. I was allowed to have both my shoulder bag and one piece of hand luggage whereas Easyjet is very strickt when it comes to the one piece.

We flew to Barcelona but we did not see Barcelona at all. The original plan was to do a bit of sightseeing in Barcelona on our last day. It was however, an easy choice to turn Barcelona down on our last day as the national park that we were at then is one of the most beautiful and stunning places that I have ever seen. Pics of that are coming later.

From Barcelona airport we picked up a rental car with a smaller company called Firefly which I do not recomend. We had to stand in line for 1.5 hours to get the rental car. The first car we got was still wet in the drivers seat. We got another car that was dry but was still quite sandy in the turnk from people that had rented it before and driven it to the beach. From Barcelona we drove to Figueres about 1.5 hours north of Barcelona. This is where the Salvador Dali museum is located.

This is the coolest museum I have ever been to. The building in itself is an old theater that Salvador Dali aquired and turned into his own art museum. Dali is the master of surrealism. He was very diverse when it came to art and worked with many different kinds of materials and objects. He did not only do paintings but also sculputes, jewlery and drawings. One of the things that I love with his art is the complexity and detail. When looking at the paintings and drawings there is always something new and something more to discover.

The musum has all of these differnt rooms, halways and stairs. It is a labyrith of cool art and surrealism. The outside of the building looks like a red palace with gigant eggs lined a long the roof.

From Figueres we continued on to Olot famous for being an old volcanic region. The most recent volcanic acitivity took place here only about 10,000 years ago. By geologic time measurment that is only a blink of an eye ago. Volcanic eruptions began here about 350,000 years ago. We visited tha Parc Natural de la zona volcanica de la Garrotxa. This park contains about 30 old volcanic cones up to 160 cm high and 1.5 km wide. 

This is one of the old volcanic craters that we walked to. This tiny cute church is located at the bottom of the old crater. Toghether with the lush vegetation as a result of the fertile soils and a humid climate these create a landscape of unusual beauty. 

The volcanic ash soil is very fertile and in this part many of the resturants announce they cook and use the volcanic kitchen meaning that the produce that is used has been grown on the fertile soils making them richer and fuller in flavor.

 Between the woods are crop fields and farm houses scatterd around. The misty clouds lifting from the rains the previous evening. So beautiful.

One of the things that I found the most striking was the many different landscapes that we got to see and expirence as we travelled around in both Catalunya and Arragon. The diversity was so wide from lush vegetation here around the volcanic region of Olot to the arid regions of semi-desert landscape that we encounterd later.

When coming to food and wine we discovered some very nice wines. We very much liked the red wines from Somontano. Less well known compared to the famous Riojas but with excellent taste. Full bodied and rich in flavor but slightly lighter than most regular reds. The Jamon or dried hams offerd fantastic flavor for our tastebudds. For the most part food was good but nothing really amazing or fantastic at least not in the parts we visited, mostly small mountain villages. Now I am comparing to how easy and how yummy everything is generally in Italy. Not saying that we did not eat well but we had only one more outstanding dinner. But on the other hand we did not go into Barcelona where I am sure one would have had many excellent choices. 

Another interessting thing that we noticed in many of the Spanish resturants was the lack of candels and dimming down the lights a bit. Many places had full bright ceiling lights on, not very cozy at all. 

So this is a bit of an apetizer on our Spanish vacation. There is more to come.

Off to Spain

We are off to Spain for about a week. I am so exited and really looking forward to some vacation with C! We had a great week in France but since that was in June it already feels like pretty long ago. I bought myself a new guide book over Spain the other weekend. I had borrowed an older one from a friend but thought it would be a good idéa to get ourselves our own copy. I am the kind of person that loves travel guides. I really could not imagine travelling anywhere without a guide book. Half the pleasure of a trip somewhere is the reading and planing. I like to get a good overview of the region I am going to. I want to know what there is to see and do. I feel I get more out of a trip by having some knowledge about the place prior to arrival. There are so many people that never read anything about the places they are going to and that is just such a foregin concept to me. How do you plan and gather info about trips and places you are going to? Books, the internet? Or do you just go?

Again I love living smack in the middle of Europe. Everything feels like it is just right around the corner. The flight to Barcelona for us is only an hour. We are trying out a new airline company (at least for us) called Vueling. I guess I will tell you about how flying with them was when we are back. 

We are flying to Barcelona and then heading up into the Spanish Pyrinees. Nationalparks, hiking, more canyoining and maybe also some horseback ridning is on our list. Then of course culture, art, history and good food and wines are also on our list. I will also get to practice some of my Spanish. I have been to Spain before but this is a new part to me. Having some vacation  now when everyone else is back from theirs feels awesome.

Sista helgen i augusti

Värmebölja igen. Helgen har vacker men varm. Temperaturer mellan 30 och 35 grader. Igår fortsatte värmen. Jobbigt att jobba i sådan värme. Kände hur jag höll på att smälta bort och fick huvudvärk på kontoret i går eftermiddag. Idag är det bättre. Svalare och regn. Riktigt skönt. Idag ar det 22 istallet for 33 grader. Det funkar mycket battre for mig.

Helgen ägnades åt goda vänner, god mat och goda viner. En av mina bästa vänner har flyttat hem till Svedala igen. Men väldigt glad att Frida och jag fick en hel sista helg ihop eftersom hon bodde hemma hos oss då hon lämnat nycklarna till sin lägenhet i fredags. Frida hade med sig många goda viner hon inte fick med sig i flytten som vi avnjöt tillsammans på lördag kväll tillsammans med C och Fridas pojkvän Fredrik som kommit ner för att hjälpa henne med det sista med flytten. Vädret bjöd på en perfekt grillkväll.

Min pasta Vongole som jag fick da vi gick ut I fredags.

C kom hem i lördags och han var naturligtvis både saknad och varmt efterlängtad efter en hel vecka. Han kom hem hel och välbehållen förutom lite rivsår på smalbenen. Han fick packa upp väskan för att packa den igen. Jobb möte i Frankfurt fram tills sent onsdagkväll. Då han kommer hem på onsdag får han packa upp för att återigen packa eftersom vi flyger till Spanien på torsdag för lite efterlängtad semester.

Jag var på utomhusbio i fredags och såg filmen Kelly och Cal med Juliette Lewis. Helt ok men ingen superhöjdare.