1000+ page views

Modest though it is, we passed a milestone for page views. As of this week, our 1001 Swabian Nights has been clicked on over 1001 times!

Good work.... mom.

Berlin

We were inspired to book an ICE ("fast") train to Berlin for a weekend visit.  Der Junge's parents who visited us a few weeks ago took an ICE train from Dusseldorf and gave the train great reviews.  So we decided to go while we have the nice weather in summer (Berlin is much farther north and colder in the winter!).  We found a great saver fare that would get us there in 8 hours with only one train change.

How To: Drive through the Iberian Peninsula

You may have heard that I had a few troubles getting a license here. In March, when we booked the trip to Portugal, Das Madchen was more confident that I would have my license in time for the June trip. Apparently she did not know how easy it was to get a license here!

So, when June rolled around and I still didn't have a license, das Madchen became die Chauffeurin for 20 driving hours, 600 mile journey through the poorly labeled, in accurately GPSed, windy, narrow, and- generally- scenic trip from Lagos to Salamanca to Porto.

Salamanca

With das Madchen's fingerprints firmly imprinted on the rental car steering wheel steering, we arrived in Salamanca. In fact, the reason we chose to do this road trip was because mein Bruder and meine Schwägerin were spending a few weeks in Salamanca as chaparones for their high school, Spanish summer trip. We arrived later than expected because someone wasn't driving at an optimized speed.

"Salamanca" in Spanish means "The Land of Overexposed Church Pictures"

Cáceres, Spain

Shortly after crossing the Portuguese/Spanish border, we stopped in Cáceres, Spain... for lunch and also to take the advantage of exploring this amazing UNESCO world heritage city.

Cáceres, like Evora, is not a major tourist spot and has next to nothing written about it in tourist information websites.   We picked these cities to visit because we needed to drive to Salamanca from the Algarve, Portugal and they happened to be en route.   Our happy discovery was that they both turned out to be quite remarkable cities because they are authentic and off the tourist path!

Évora, Portugal

The drive from Lagos to our next stop, Évora, took us into the heart of Portugal, the Alentejo region. This is a sprawling, rough and rugged countryside with almost every type of terrain... mountains, hills and plains. Despite that the Alentejo region contains about one-third of Portugal land, it is the least populated at 7.1% of the population. The popular phrase here is, "Alentejo, where even time takes its time."

...and we did spend some time here!!!

Alentejo 3 by Cevron Guy

We were on the most barren stretches of country road that I have ever seen. Not a soul in sight... It was a little disconcerting and der Junge can testify that I was more than a little nervous about the state of our rental car (tire conditions, brake conditions, amount of gas...). Der Junge had his work cut out for him to distract me from all the "worst-case-scenarios" running through my head...

The Algarve region, Portugal

Another holiday weekend! This time we are taking a long trip because Der Junge's brother and sister-in-law will be in Salamanca, Spain and we will be meeting up with them! Der Junge's sister-in-law is a Spanish teacher and she is chaperoning a class of high school students for a month in Salamanca.

Spain is not a driveable distance so we must fly and we decide to try out the budget airline Ryanair.  Unfortunately this means that we will be flying into smaller airports that are not so close to our intended destination.  However, what a perfect opportunity to see Portugal!  So the itinerary is: