Gorgeous, breathtaking, moving and complete awe for this beautiful planet we live on gives you a sense of what we felt as we walked along the coast of Spain’s Costa Brava. We are heading out for another hike today, but wanted to share a few photos of yesterdays tour. Hard to capture it’s true beauty. Reminded me of parts of California’s coastline, which we will be back to soon! Again feeling very lucky!
Today, we enjoyed watching all the fun of Carnival in Spain. Carnival is celebrated all over Europe (and of course, Brazil) where each country puts their own twist to the celebration It is a wonderful celebration of family and community. We saw all ages dancing and singing through the streets, it was great! The different towns compete for the best costumes, dance choreography, and floats. Tough competition this year in Lloret de Mar. We felt very lucky to be part of this great tradition!
When we just really needed some warm weather and sunshine we found it in Mallorca. This incredible island off the coast of Spain, a quick 30 minute flight from Barcelona, is a very special place. It is part of the Balearic Islands which also includes, Ibiza, Menorca and Formentera. It is the home of Rafa Nadal and Carlos Moya, both who have been #1 in men’s tennis. We were so lucky to have warm weather and even a touch of spring. The almond trees were just beginning to bloom and we found fields covered in white and yellow flowers, so nice to see, as it has been a long cold winter. For those of us from Southern California, any winter is a long cold winter, and we have had our share of snow and cold this year traveling through Europe, so this warming trend was very much appreciated.
During the busy summer season, tourists can outnumber the locals 15 to 1. There are lots of German and English visitors, and many have bought second homes on the island. One of the really nice things about us traveling during the winter is that we are in such an off season, that there are no lines and the beaches are almost deserted but it is also a little chilly. It was nice to have the island to ourselves, but many of the restaurants are closed or have shorter hours. We ended up just grabbing some fruit, baguettes and cheeses and headed to the beach, we made the most of it…
We played tennis, went swimming, hiking, enjoyed the beautiful beaches, explored caves, did some wine tasting (Mallorca has several types of grapes only grown on the island) and we had some really nice meals. It was wonderful and we did not feel like leaving but we did.
