Fiesta

Spain is a country full of festivals, everywhere we went there was always some local Fiesta on the go. People making music in the streets and doing traditional dancing, and Catalunya was the highlight for this. Catalunya wants to have an Independence Referendum in 2014, so I am not sure if this gave them the extra bit of spark?

We camped in Sitges for 10 nights. This was officially the cleanest and best kept campsite we have found on our journey, and it was only 1km from the beach!  At any point in the day you can find the cleaning ladies cleaning the various service areas. It was so good we decided to stay there and skip very expensive Barcelona. There is a 40 min bus ride for under 3 Euros from the campsite to the center of Barcelona :) thus we just did that twice.

On our first night in Sitges we met up with Colette's brother, Quintus. He showed us around town a bit, and pointed out the cheapest tapas bar! This is also when we bumped into our first fireworks. In Sitges the locals love walking around the streets whilst shooting fireworks followed by a procession of traditional dancers, human towers and a drum band. Its quite spectacular, this went on almost everynight that we were in Sitges. On Quintus's good advice we visited the Bacardi museum the next day where they tought us how to make the perfect Mojito (we had to make one ourselves!). Our last two nights in Sitges was the highlight of the Santa Tecla festival, this ment two days of paper mache giants, human towers, traditional dancing, people turning themselves into fireworks... and one massive official fireworks show. Sitges is really small, so it was easy to get the best seat on the beach for the fireworks show: it was out of this world!

In Barcelona we did the Red Bus tour, I had been to Sagrada Familia before and when we saw the queue we decided to not do it again. The absolute highlight in Barcelona was the Camp Nou experience we did. This is the 100 000 seater Barca stadium. The stadium has an awesome interactive museum that will bring tears to any sports fan's eyes. My sister's two sons are Barca fanatics and I was just wishing they were with us. I had no idea what a great organisation FCB is, it is as they say "more than a club". The experience includes the museum, the commentary boxes, the visitors locker rooms, the press room, the stadium, the tunnel, the field and lifting the Champions Cup!

More Bici (bicicletta = bicycle) adventures

After Lisbon we drove to Cordoba where we spent the night in a backpackers. Our host, Javier, does a free bicycle tapas tour of the town every night. This was really fab, he took us to some locals only tapas places and showed us the sights from a local perspective. One of our tapas stops was at his local neighbourhood society's tapas bar so we got a really good deal :) Some of the tapas highlights were  spicy coleslaw and flamenquin. We were a nice group of people and chatted the night away. Javier was the best backpacker "hostelier" we met, he was so focussed on giving each of us great advice for our trips.

The next day we saw the Mezquita and the castle. The Mezquita is Cordoba's Mosque-Cathedral. It's a really beautifull and unique place, much of the old Mosque was kept in place with Catholic relics decorating the building now.

After Cordoba we drove to Granada, on the way we stopped at one of the mountain side villages (Zuheros) suggested by Javier and had salmorejo and goats cheeses as suggested by him :) The entire landscape between Cordoba and Granada is just hills and hills filled with olive trees. Now we know why olives are so incredibly cheap here in Spain!

In Granada we stayed in a backpackers in the old town, google was (un)kind enough to direct us straight to its doorstep. This made for really exciting driving through some really narrow streets. Colette nearly got a heart attack behind the steering wheel though as we did not take the extra insurance on the car... At one place I had to get out to try and get us through a particular place... what made the experience even more thrilling was that there was a car behind us so turning around would be really hard to do. Fortunately the Corsa's side mirrors could fold away and Colette made it through the 1.8m gap with less than a hands breadth on each side. The car behind us couldn't repeat this feat and turned around... well done Colette!

It was all worth it though as we stayed right in front of Alhambra in a quiet backpackers with a roof terrace... stunning views all ours!

The next morning we got up early to see Alhambra, this place is so popular that not all visitors can see it due to limited tickets being issued. Just before we left I discovered my wallet is lost... big drama... Colette went to get our tickets whilst I raced my bike up the "mountain" to the free parking we found several kms away... I found it lying on the dashboard... only in Europe!

The Alhambra (meaning: God Preserve it) is such a special place that I don't really want to say anything descriptive about it - as I cannot do it justice. All I can say is that you have to see it for yourself, it's for me one of Europe's top highlights.

Later the afternoon we drove to San Jose, located in a National Park, where we camped in the desert and had a braai that night! The national park looks like the Karoo by the sea, a unique place itself.

Port(o)!!!

Wow Portugal is such an awesome place, much more than we expected. Porto was incredible, a rough gem, a "laslappie kombers" of colors!

In Porto you get that "I belong by the sea feeling" Thats the feeling of my heart. Porto is strewn with fisherman, surfers, people having a braai (bbq) outside everywhere, the most amazing riverside and boats. Let us not mention the Port!!! Nothing in Porto is perfect except the complete picture :) We loved this city, a place full of colors and contrasts, smells and tastes. To perfect it all we accidently were their during the Porto Wine Festival. This was so inexpensive and such great value. The highlight was when we did a Port and Tea tasting with a wine maker from Taylors, a cullinary critic and a organic herb farmer. This was an amazing infusion of smells, tastes and wisdom. Oh yeah, we also went for espetada: but not the espetada we know in Cape Town, this was real tender tjops on a sosatie (kebab) stick. Another highlight was the backpackers we stayed at, it was so good that I can say if my house is ever decorated like that I will be ecstatic.

After Porto we camped in Lisbon for 2 nights. Lisbon was also really good, but Porto takes the cup for us! Out of Lisbon we drove over Ponte Vasco da Gama which is the longest bridge in Europe at 17.2km long (Photo from wikipedia attached).

I just want to add: Klein Karoo Fortified wine is also their with the very best. You don't need to go further than Calitzdorp: Saayman straat ;)

Siesta

On our last day we did 55km to reach Santiago de Compostella. This brought our distance cycled to 2320km.

The last day was really tough mentally, it felt like we just couldn't get there, we thought it would be quite flat but hills just kept popping up :) We never saw Santiago in the distance, eventually I told Colette that its a myth there is no such place! The km markings was also not "acurate" as it indicated the distance to the city and not the cathedral... this was another 5km and we were just so tired :) About 2km from the cathedral we bumped into another Peregrino we knew, when we got first sight of the cathedral she told us many people start crying here... but we just were to tired to feel anything! It was just another ordinary day, there was no one welcoming us or congratulating us... no angels singing :) We had reached a dream so unceremoniously it was disturbing.

We took a photo or 2 and then went queueing for "the final stamp". Whilst standing in the queue I decided to book us in in the nice hotel right accross from the pilgrims office, so we went to shower and sleep and only got the stamp that night.

The next day we went to the Pilgrims mass at noon. This brought some chills to us even though we couldn't understand a word - they read the countries that day's pilgrims came from. It was a big feeling to have completed the journey with such a diverse group of people. At one point people greeted each other and it felt like this was our congratulations. Later the day we bumped into other pilgrims we knew and it was so good.

That night we went for some tapas at an old bar and walked around town. The students were out doing there thing to bag-pipe music and we felt the magic of the city. This morning we saw the apostle's (Santiago a.k.a James a.k.a Jakobus) grave and went to the pilgrims museum. Santiago was a little rainy this morning and its just what it needs to bring out its beauty.

After a little bit of rest we were able to truely enjoy our "victory".

Today we rented a car (what an awesome invention!) and we drove to Porto where we are chilling at a backpackers :) and updating the blog (see pic)