Peace Lutheran Church Group’s Spanish Fiesta Journey: A 14-day, 1,949 mile bus tour of Spain, with stops in 18 cities
If you’d like to see more of the 2,500 photos I have of our trip, please check them out in my Smugmug photo website at https://rgwc.smugmug.com/2024/Spain, password=Warburton
MAY 5-9. After over a year’s anticipation, I joined our Peace Lutheran Church’s motor coach tour of Spain. I booked my own business class ticket from Columbus to Charlotte to Madrid on the group’s American Airlines flights. MADRID: Stayed at the 4-star Hotel Riu Plaza España. Bus tour stopping at the Plaza del Toros and the Prado Museum (where I snuck this one photo). Later, I went out on my own to find churros with hot chocolate. On to SEGOVIA and its magnificent Roman aqueduct. BURGOS: Majestic entrance gate and empanadas with Lara & Doug Warburton. Shopping for chocolates in VITORIA. BILBAO’s Guggenheim Museum with Jeff Koon’s Puppy made of flowering plants. (I saw its sister decades ago in NYC’s Rockefeller Center.) SAN SEBASTIÁN, so overrun with tourists, all I got to eat was a soggy tapas.
MAY 9-11. PAMPLONA: We walked the route “Encierro” of the famed 5-day Running of the Bulls, had a beer at Ernest Hemingway’s hangout Rincón, and dinner with jamón tapas. SARAGOSSA’s Pilar Basilica, where the Virgin Mary's apparition appeared on a pillar to St. James in 40 AD. BARCELONA’s Ramblas and La Boqueria food market. Up to MONSERRAT and its Benedictine monastery and basilica housing The Black Madonna. Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Basilica now with stunningly colorful stained glass windows. More Barcelona sights: cruise ships in the harbor and scenic overview before dinner in its converted former bullring (since bullfighting has been banned by the city).
MAY 12-15. From VALENCIA’s Serranos Gate and Roman walls to its ultra-modern Arts & Sciences Complex. GRANADA’s Alhambra: Famed fortress and palaces, started in 1238 by the Moors with its spectacular architecture and taken over by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492. TORREMOLENOS and the COSTA DEL SOL where we stayed at the seaside Hotel Meliã and toured the village of MIJAS and its Shrine to the Virgin of la Peña before dinner of salt-baked cod and paella at Restaurante Juan. To nearby MÁLAGA with its Roman ruins and sighting the penthouse apartment of native son actor Antonio Banderas; tapas lunch at the popular Bodegas el Pimpi.
MAY 15-17. Enjoyed sunbathing on the TORREMOLENOS beach before a delicious seafood dinner at the beachfront Restaurante Casa Antonio with Mary & Rick Wayman, who shared my foodie tastes. Our visit to GIBRALTAR required us to walk through Spanish and British immigration and board minibuses to tour the community of 35,000 residents. Explored the gaudily lit caverns of St. Michael’s Cave and emerged to commune with the Barbary Macaque monkeys. In SEVILLE, learned about bullfighting in its majestic Royal Bullring and museum. (Sadly, it wasn’t bullfighting season.) Arose early to explore the lavish Plaza de España – built for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition – before other tourists flocked in. Another Roman wall, then the 15th century Casa de Pilatos, and the largest gothic church in the world: the Cathedral of Seville with Christopher Columbus’ elevated tomb (encasing just 4.4 ounces of Columbus’ remains), numerous reliquaries, and 80 chapels adorned with an estimated 88,000 pounds of solid gold. Flamenco dinner show at La Catedral.
MAY 18. CÓRDOBA, home of Jewish philosopher and scholar Maimonides, and its immense Great Mosque started in the 6th century AD – one of the most beautiful examples of Muslim art in Spain with 850 arched pillars into which a Cathedral was built in the 16th century. Walked across the Roman Bridge to the Tower of Calahorra to meet our bus. On to MADRID, with sightings of more Ozzies along the way – roadside trademarks of Osborne’s Spanish Brandy. Closing dinner at Las Cuevas del Duque where I finally got to have roast suckling pig and lots of sangria with Pastor Doug & Lara Warburton, Pat & Steve Rocca, and our group before our flights back home the next morning.
