Dave's Travel Blog

Pamplona, Spain to SJPDP, France

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Dave

St.Jean Pied de Port, France

We spent a quick overnight in Pamplona, Spain and explored a bit of the city where the running of the bulls occurs every year. Pamplona is a very nice town and I wish we has more time to explore. However, we had to wash some clothes in the AirBnB using a combo washer/dryer which took a mere 3 hours per load. We haven’t come very far in the 21st century with some technology. Today, we took the noon bus to St. Jean Pied de Port, France where we will start our Camino tomorrow morning. The first day is the most difficult as we have to walk over the Pyrenees. We met a funny young couple from Detroit while waiting in line to get our Camino credential, which is the book we use to collect stamps while walking the 500 miles to Santiago de Compostela. This is used to prove that we walked each stage of the Camino. St. Jean was a bit cold and rainy today, but it looks like it may get near 70 degrees tomorrow with rain clearing. We are exhausted from all of the traveling getting here and will spend an early night back at the hotel. The real adventure starts tomorrow. A few more pics from the last two days:

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First week in Spain

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Dave

2024 Madrid Open

It has been a very quick first week in Spain as I made my way to Barcelona to visit a friend for several days and then to Madrid to watch the men’s and women’s Madrid Open tennis finals. I also spent several hours visiting the Prado museum in Madrid…though this great museum would take days or weeks to adequately explore. But visit for the Bosch and Goya Black Paintings at the very least. I’ll be back to the museum again at the end of June, but fighting the crowds here can be exhausting. I took the train to Pamplona this morning and met my brother and his wife and we will be heading to southern France tomorrow to start our Camino. We are a bit anxious to get going and a bit nervous about spending 30+ days walking. I’ll try to keep posting while we are on our trek, but posting with this iPad may drive me crazy at some point…but I wasn’t going to be lugging a laptop around for 5 weeks. Highlights in Barcelona were the Vinilo vinyl bar for music we listened to in college, the Bar RAIM Cuban bar, and the Bodega Neus tapas bar…all in the Gràcia section. Lots of cerveza and a two bottle of wine night thrown in. Madrid was almost exclusively back and forth to the tennis matches. Some pics from the first week:

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First couple of days in Spain

Posted on May 1, 2024 by Dave

Bar Vinilo – Barcelona

After spending several days in Maine, I have made it to Spain, where I will be spending the next 7 weeks. I’ve met up with my friend Tony in Barcelona, and then will be heading to Madrid this weekend for the Madrid Open tennis tournament, and then up to southern France to start the Camino. I’m using this post to test my proficiency blogging using an iPad…which is turning out to be more challenging than I expected…mostly uploading the photos. Still, I think I have mastered the process and hope to be posting more interesting content while walking across Spain beginning next week. For now a few pics from Maine and Barcelona. You will notice many of them include food and beer…I think the next 7 weeks will be the same. Cheers!

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Work Interregnum

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Dave

This is the first week of a work break I have been planning. I am going on a bit of an adventure …one I have wanted to try for a long time…more on that in future posts. For now, I started my trek out of Kentucky to visit family in Pittsburgh last Friday and then a long drive up to Maine to visit friends before the real adventure starts. Most of the photos are from a 12 mile walk around Brunswick, Maine this morning. That’s the only hint I will provide concerning future plans. I will keep this post short and leave you with some photos from the last several days.

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California All the Way….Take 2.

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Dave

On the road to CA

It’s been six years since my friend Tony and I took a road trip to California to meet his wife and her family for Christmas, so we decided to do it again. The last time, we took the central and north central route throgh Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and finally into San Francisco. This time, we took the southern route through Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and then north through the California desert to San Francisco. I’m a bit ambivalent concerning which route was better, but I lean slightly toward the northern route and it’s likley due to the weather. This time, it was a lot of gray skys and rain. In 2017, we had a varirty of weather from relatively mild sunny days, to snow in Wyoming and California. A little more scenery last time too with the Salt Lake and Lake Tahoe as places we stopped.

Still, it was another great trip with the highlights being Fort Smith in Arkansas (learned about the hanging judge Isaac Parker), the Murrah building memorial in Oklahoma City, all of the scenery in the southwest, the fantastic traditional Chinese feast that Tamaron and her mother arranged for us at a local restaurant when we arrived, the Basque Wool Growers restaurant in Bakersfield, CA (strangely enough we went to a Basque restaurant on our last trip too), all of the other great places we dined along the way (we basically drove and ate our way across the country), and finally the nice dinner we had at Tamaron’s uncle’s house. I’m sorry I couldn’t eat with everyone together as I had to catch a flight back to KY in the late afternoon.

A great time and we are already thinking about another trip. Seven years between trips like this was too long. But, more (and bigger) adventures coming in 2024. Details soon!

As usual, here are some pics from the trip: