Aside from a weekend break in Barcelona a couple of years ago, Clare has never been to Spain. (Our friends in Catalonia would point out that she still has never been to Spain!) I've been a few times on family holidays when I was a child and visited for a few days with some friends shortly after we entered the year 2000, but I really haven't done our style of holiday here.

I'll be on language duty for this one. I've never formally learned Spanish but I did dip my toes into it around 2001 after I'd decided I quite liked languages, having acquired functional fluency in French and done a 20-hour course on Italian at university. I didn't find any difficulties with the language, seeing as it belongs to the same language family as French and Italian and so there aren't really any new concepts to befuddle me, but it's not one that I like, and so I didn't do anything other than read books on the grammar and practise conjugating verbs. When Clare and I visited Barcelona it was about ten years since I'd given a half-thought to learning it, but we didn't experience any problems. We even got special treatment from a pharmacist, who offered me the suncream from behind the counter that only the locals get (which was half the price of all the others that were on display) and then even knocked me a bonus 20% off, all because I was making the effort to speak her language. Multilingualism pays!

Since Clare's been doing such a good job reading novels in Croatian I decided to warm up by following suit and buying some books in Spanish. I chose a couple of translations of books that I already knew; that's a sensible approach because it's never fun slogging through a book when you're not enjoying it, plus I had the original to bail me out in the event that I really couldn't do it. The start wasn't much fun at all because I made a point of stopping every time I didn't know a word to look it up. Ouch. One page was taking ten or fifteen minutes to read, and this book had 500 of them. I soon gave up on that, highlighting the words I didn't know and then looking them up once I'd reached the end of the chapter. Before too long I'd resorted to highlighting the words and only looking them up if they kept on reappearing or seemed to be integral to the plot. Within a few days I was reading at more or less the speed I do in English, French or Esperanto, so that was a good sign. I'm certainly not conversational in Spanish, but my passive knowledge is reasonable enough.

Somebody who has no knowledge of Spanish is Clare. She really doesn't get along with Romance languages at all. Unfortunately for us, she ended up having to have a crash course. The UK is currently undergoing a crisis with issuing passports. Just today the Chief Executive of the Passport Office, Paul Pugh, has had to apologise to the Home Affairs Select Committee because it's emerged that a surge in applications has left a backlog of nearly half a million passports to be issued, and some people have missed their holidays. I was nearly one of them.

My passport was due to expire in December, but since we have a holiday booked for October and often like to take a trip away over Christmas, I thought I'd play it safe and get it updated earlier. I left what I thought was good time, eleven weeks prior to our trip to Spain. With two weeks to go I still hadn't received it, so gave them a call. Because I didn't have the application number the young lady who answered the phone was unable to tell me anything. That was a cause of concern because I've omitted the missing part of the story: I originally heard back from the Passport Office after about a fortnight because the photo booth that I used hadn't produced a photo that was appropriately clear. At the time I thought it looked grainy, but since photos never look clear in passports and it came out of a proper machine, I sent it off anyway. When it was rejected, I used another machine and sent off the photos. And that was my cause for concern when time was running out. Without the application number, the assistant was unable to confirm for me that my replacement photos hadn't been lost in the mail! I gave her my personal details and she sent a message to another department explaining my situation and asking them to provide her with the application number, so that she could investigate further. I had two working days to wait, which meant a long weekend, since I phoned on a Thursday.

Poor Clare was resigned to not going on holiday. Every time she mentioned not going I had to point out to her that there was only one of us without a passport and that it would be silly if she threw away the holiday. She gave Spanish a good go but has no affinity for it whatsoever. How relieved she was, then, when I told her when picking her up on the Monday night that I'd received a text to say that the passport was being printed. Within a couple of days it arrived. Such a near miss!

We planned the details of what we were going to do well in advance. Unfortunately, our plans seemed to go awry owing to the vagaries of the Spanish rail service, whose websites gave the impression that the routes between, say, large university towns and the nation's capital would suddenly stop running. Still, we're built to cope and so we'll stick to our basic plan and adapt as we go. All we have to do is make sure we're in the right cities for our accommodation. What we do in between can be adjusted.

We'll be flying into Bilbao at the very north of the country and leaving from Seville in the south. The map below shows the five places where we've booked accomodation (those are the large icons) plus some other places of interest for day trips (represented by the small icons). If you hover over an icon you'll see its name.

We'll arrive in Bilbao on the Saturday morning, having caught an early flight from the UK. It's the main city of the Basque Country, that area either side of the Pyrennees that is home to Europe's earliest civilisation. The Basque language is unrelated to any other extant tongue and may be the descendant of the cave-dwellers who we know lived in this part of the world during the Stone Age. Basque might be a language project for another day!

Our base at Bilbao puts us within easy reach of San Sebastián and Santander, so we'll definitely be taking day trips there. It wasn't until reading A Basque History of the World (I decided to be optimistic and start reading it over the weekend when it emerged that I might not get my passport) that I even thought about Guernica. It seems so close to Bilbao (its icon and Bilbao's are practically overlapping on the map) that we really must try to get a visit in.

Our next base will be the university town of Salamanca. The travel websites aren't being particularly helpful so we'll decide once we're there what our days out will be. I'd quite like to visit Ciudad Rodrigo because I know it from one of my favourite Sharpe books (it's the opening site of Sharpe's Company, which I love because it's our first introduction to the villainous Obadiah Hakeswill) but I'm not sure how feasible it will be. There's always Valladolid, which is the capital of Salamanca's region, Castilla y León, and is only a short train ride away.

From Salamanca we'll take the bus to Madrid for a few days. We have no days out planned, thinking that the capital of Spain should probably have enough to keep us interested. Besides, this one is supposed to be a relaxing holiday so we'll avoid our customary rushing about.

I'm particularly looking forward to our next location, Córdoba. During the Middle Ages it was the capital of an Islamic caliphate, which is reflected in its architecture. I expect the best photos of the holiday will result from our stay there. I'm not sure where we could visit for day trips. Maybe we can see how others holiday and visit Málaga! Antequera appears to be a perfectly nice town too and I expect will be more to our tastes though.

Our last location will be Seville, right in the south. It's within easy reach of other places for day trips, though we haven't set anything in stone. We might try Cádiz, which is notable because it exists on a narrow strip of land, almost as though it's an island.

So, those are our provisional plans. We're both looking forward to this!

We made our usual mistake of deciding in February that a 7am flight from Stansted would be a great idea. It seemed like less of a great idea in June, when after a long week at work we had to set our alarms for 2am on Saturday morning with the aim of being in Essex by 04.30. We managed it though, reaching the airport parking just as dawn was breaking and joining the hordes of other sleepy travellers in the manic chaos which is Stansted airport.

We were flying to Bilbao with Easyjet, which turned out to be a pleasant - albeit somewhat orange - experience, made far more civilised by the presence of allocated seating. It was a beautiful clear morning as we flew across the channel, although once the effect of our Wetherspoons' coffee began to wear off, we were probably too semi-conscious to appreciate the view. We touched down in the uninspiring concrete of Bilbao airport before 10am, and by 10.15 we were already sitting in the local bus into the city centre. As we had waited outside the terminal building for the bus, we noticed that all the signs around the airport were in three languages: Spanish, English and Basque.

Within less than half an hour we were recognisably in Bilbao, driving past the famous Guggenheim mueseum and crossing the river Nervión. Although the bus stopped at several locations in the city centre, my plan had been for us to stay on until the bus terminus on the far side of town, where the Internet led me to believe that there might be some luggage lockers for us to leave our bags in. The earliest we could check into our apartment was 2pm, so we had quite a lot of time to kill and it would be far easier without luggage.

We arrived at the bus station and promptly found the luggage lockers... but there were only a handful of them, and all the ones of an appropriate size were already full. Oh dear! Condemmned to keep our cases with us then, we embarked on a slow walk back across the city centre in the vague direction of the apartment.

Whilst we were still walking in confused circuit around the bus station, trying to work out on which side of it we had emerged and where the main road we needed might be, an elderly Spanish couple approached us and asked whether we needed help. When Tim showed them where we were trying to get to on our map, they exclaimed in consternation and began earnestly trying to convince us that we should turn back around and catch the metro into town. The situation became increasingly chaotic as they waylaid two other passersby and they all began giving us advice in Spanish simultaneously. Tim tried to explain that we had three hours before we needed to be at our destination and that we were quite happy to walk, eventually succeeding in extricating us from their well-meaning clutches.

The bonus was that we did at least confirm where we were on the map. After walking for half a mile or so we found ourselves in a shady square full of benches, so we decided to have a rest for a while, making a start on the many books we had brought on holiday with us and enjoying the view of the city with the mountains behind.

We were definitely sitting in the shade - and the day itself wasn't incredibly hot - but somehow I still managed to get my arms mildy sunburnt. Oops!

After a pleasant hour or so we continued with our journey, which was made slightly more challenging by the fact that the Google map I had printed was somewhat lacking in street names. Our vague aim was to head for the river, as we knew the apartment would be on the far side of it. We located it sooner than expected, and to our joy found ourselves on a road which actually corresponded to one on the map. The joy was short-lived, however, as it soon became clear that this was a road which intended to go relentlessly uphill. Bilbao, which I had somehow erroneously imagined as being completely flat, turns out to be one of the hilliest cities I have ever been to. We hauled our suitcases upwards for what seemed like forever and then, stopping for breath just short of the summit of a particular hill, I caught sight of a sign which looked suspiciously like the name of the apartment we were staying in.

It wasn't quite on the road Google had placed it on, but consulting the reservation confirmed that the name agreed, and although it was only technically half past one we decided to venture inside and see whether we would be allowed to check in. Happily we were, and the lady behind reception provided us with our keys and gave us some slightly complex directions to our room, which involved several corridors and two separate lifts.

These weren't just any old corridors, they were probably the strangest hotel corridors I had ever seen in my life...

The statues were huge - and more than a little creepy!

When we opened the door to the apartment itself, we were relieved to see that it was completely normal. In fact it was much more spacious and well-equipped than we had been expecting.

After a couple of hours of much-needed rest, we headed out to explore the surrounding area. Our apartment is just above the old town, and we walked down through some steep narrow streets until we happened across this beautiful church.

We then headed down to the river, which divdes the old town from the new and is spanned by numerous bridges, each seeming different from the last.

There were some beautiful buildings on both sides of the river.

Unfortunately our explorations were cut short by a heavy rainstorm and we had to retreat back to the apartment. Bilbao's proximity to the Atlantic coast makes it one of the rainiest places in Spain and the guidebook had warned us to expect showers most days. Lucky that we had brought a few books with us to help pass the evening

After nearly 12 hours sleep we woke up refreshed this morning and ready to see the sights of Bilbao. Our apartment is conveniently located near the old town so we set off to explore that, with our first stop being the impressive Santiago Cathedral.

The day was warm but quite overcast, and as we walked through the narrow streets of the old town with their tall buildings it was quite dark. We saw the Basque flag flying from a number of houses.

There were some very pleasant squares which weren't as busy as they would become once the locals had had time to ease into the day.

After spending some time exploring the squares of the old town, we wandered back down to the river. The sun was starting to come out, and on the hills behind the town we caught sight of the Artxanda funicular, which our guidebook had recommended as a good way of geting a panoramic view of the city. We decided to head in its general direction.

On the way we saw some more beautiful buildings, including the theatre...

...and the town hall.

Outside the town hall there was a flower display celebrating the founding of Bilbao in 1300:

There are wonderful (sneeze-inducing) flower displays all over the city!

We located the entrance to the funicular in the backstreets behind the town hall and were impressed to discover that a ride to the top cost a mere €0.91 each. Within a matter of minutes we had ascended to a pleasant hill top with amazing views back out across the city of Bilbao and the surrounding countryside.

The day was still quite hazy so we couldn't see all the way to the sea, but we could see the old town with its cathedral...

... as well as our next destination: the Guggenheim museum.

The Guggenheim museum, which houses a collection of modern art, was built in the late 1990's as part of efforts to regenerate Bilbao. We didn't go inside, but the architecture was impressive from the outside at least.

Scattered around the perimeter of the museum were some bizarre sculptures...

... including this metallic spider which I suspect is going to give me nightmares:

The most famous sculpture of all, which features in all the souvenirs sold in Bilbao, is 'Puppy', a giant piece of topiary in the shape of a West Highland Terrier puppy. It's hard to convey in a photo just how enormous it is, but apparently it contains more than 60,000 plants. We definitely saw it at the best time of year, with all the begonias in full bloom.

It was mid-afternoon by this point and the sun reflecting off the walls of the Guggenheim museum was blinding. We decided to head back to the cool darkness of our apartment, stopping off at the main train station on our way to research timetables for tomorrow's planned excursion to the seaside town of San Sebastian. The train timetables in Bilbao station make about as little sense as the train timetables on the Renfe website, so in the end we gave up and decided that tomorrow we will be travelling by bus.

Our plan for today was to travel to the coastal town of San Sebastián, approximately 60 miles east of Bilbao near the border with France. We had a choice of whether to travel by train or by bus. Transport websites indicated that the train would take 2.5 hours whereas the bus would take a mere 1.5 hours, so on the face of it it seemed like an easy decision. However, we knew from our experiences on Saturday that the bus terminal was a good 4km trek across the city, while the relevant train station was only a few hundred metres down the road... In the end laziness won the day and we decided to travel by train

There are actually a number of train stations in Bilbao, all of which serve different destinations, but the one we wanted was Bilbao-Axturi, which is home to Euskotren services towards San Sebastián. After a leisurely start to the morning we arrived expecting a train at 10.38, but it soon transpired from the limited timetable information that there wasn't actually one scheduled until 11.00. It was fortunate that from studying the guidebook before we left the apartment we were aware that the Basque name for San Sebastián is Donostia, otherwise we might have been under the impression that there were no trains at all; Donostia was the only name given in the train timetable.

Luckily for us the train was at the station 30 minutes ahead of its departure time so we were able to choose a comfortable seat and read. Even better, it was air-conditioned I had thought Tim was joking when he said that the train was going to stop at a station every minute, but this turned out to be a pretty accurate description of its activities as we pulled out of the suburbs of Bilbao and headed into the surrounding countryside. It was reminiscent of the train to Varaždin, although perhaps a little less bumpy. Our journey took us through a wooded valley, following the course of a winding river and becoming increasingly busy and noisy until after nearly two hours we arrived at the coastal town of Deba, where most of the noisy people disembarked and we had an amazing view out across the Bay of Biscay for a few minutes until the train turned slightly inland once more and towards San Sebastián.

When we finally arrived around 13.30 our first thought was of lunch and we found a nice pizzeria close to the station. I had a four cheese pizza while Tim ordered a burger and chips which, inexplicably, came with the largest pepper we had ever seen in our lives as an accompaniment. Unfortunately it didn't come out properly in the photo we tried to take!

It was mid-afternoon by the time we set out to properly explore the town. The first thing which caught our attention was an enormous statue of Christ on top of a hill on the far side of the town. We had read in the guidebook that there was a funicular up one of the hills at the end of the beach; the funicular wasn't marked on our map, but as this seemed to be the only hill with a monument on it we figured it must be the one.

We decided to head in that general direction, making a brief detour to stroll along the beach first. Beautifully sandy, the beach was nevertheless only a small strip of land and it was so incredibly busy that we didn't stay long. The view was gorgeous though.

As we got closer and closer to the hill, we failed to see any sort of signs advertising a funicular. Tim stopped to buy a postcard in a shop and took the opportunity to ask the cashier for directions. It turned out that when the guidebook had said the funicular was at the end of the beach it meant right at the opposite end of the beach to where we were. Oh dear. The cashier reassured Tim that we could climb this hill, however, and that it would be "fácil", so we decided to continue our route.

The path started off fairly easily with a few staircases but soon became progressively steeper and steeper. We were reassured by the presence of lots of signposts directing us towards various fortifications. It turns out that this hill, which is called Mount Urgull, was the site of a castle called Mota which was important during the siege of San Sebastián during the Napoleonic wars. Partway up we came across some cannon:

The higher we climbed the more impressive the view became.

Finally we reached the top! We could see right out to sea...

...and back towards the town with its cathedral.

This was the closest we got to the statue. There wasn't any explanation of when it had been erected or why it was there, but it was impressively large.

The walk back down to San Sebastián was an awful lot easier than the walk up had been! It was nearly 5pm by the time we were back at sea level again though, so we just had time for a quick wander around the old town before we needed to head back to the station to start our long train journey back to Bilbao!

The destination for today's excursion was the coastal town of Santander, located approximately 100km to the west of Bilbao. This had been a planned stop on our itinerary ever since we first started designing the holiday in February, although precisely why we are struggling to remember. It may have been because it looked like a significant dot on the map of Spain and so we felt it must surely be worth seeing, or it may have been because I thought that anywhere which had a bank named after it must be an exciting place. It presumably wasn't on the recommendation of the Rough Guide to Spain which, we discovered over breakfast, described it as being devoid of interest. By the time we read that it felt like too late too change our minds - and we have loved other places in the past which the Rough Guide has been scathing about - so we decided to give it a go anyway.

There is a train route between Bilbao and Santander, but the trains appear to run at such irregular and unfriendly intervals that it didn't seem possible to use them for a day trip. Instead we trekked across town to the bus station with the intention of catching a bus which was scheduled to depart at 11.00. The timetables on Spanish transportation websites don't appear to be entirely reliable, and it transpired that there wasn't actually a bus until 11.30. Oh well. When it finally came it was clean and comfortable though, and happily everyone was given an allocated seat so there was no pushing and shoving to board.

The journey took us on a motorway which led out of Bilbao and then across some hilly countryside towards the sea. The middle of the route was particularly spectacular as we drove alongside a rocky coastline with steep cliffs. As the road moved inland, the views became less interesting and we stopped in a couple of towns of which 'devoid of interest' was probably quite an apt description.

First impressions as we pulled into Santander was that it looked how Wolverhampton might look with the addition of a sea port. Warehouses, retail parks, industrial estates; I felt more like I was going on an audit than on holiday. As we walked out of the bus station the town centre seemed very... concrete. And the entire seafront looked like it was being dug up in a serious construction exercise.

Oh dear. We began to feel like it might have been a terrible mistake to attempt to defy the Rough Guide and that the best course of action would be to have lunch and head back to Bilbao. Trying to find somewhere suitable to have lunch quickly became a mission of its own, but in the course of our quest to find a restaurant in Santander which served something other than fish, we did come across some more attractive parts of town.

This was the building of Banco de España...

...this was a pleasant square with a statue...

... and this was an interesting church.

Eventually we came across a restaurant which was advertising its dish of the day as spaghetti bolognese. We went in and took a seat in hope, but I began to get rather nervous when they presented us with an English version of their regular menu, which featured three different dishes involving squid and several other delights along the lines of pickled tuna and gizzard with onions. Eek!

Luckily for me, the waitress confirmed that spaghetti bolognese was indeed on offer and it came as part of a meal deal with a glass of house wine, pudding and coffee. It all sounded good, but when the wine came we were somewhat perplexed by the fact that it smelled more like whisky than wine. Once you got past the strong smell I thought it tasted nice, though Tim was unconvinced and the man sitting at the table behind us went so far as to tell the waitress there was something wrong with his (she sniffed it, gave him a funny look and told him that was how it was supposed to smell!). The pasta was very normal anyway and I followed it up with an enormous chocolate mousse and an extremely strong espresso.

Feeling a bit more cheerful now that we were fed, we decided to give Santander another go. A big Spanish flag on the main promenade confirmed that we were no longer in the Basque country:

There was another Spanish flag flying from the headquarters of the Santander bank.

We didn't find any indications of an Opus Dei fascist conspiracy, although I may be tempted to send this photo to my correspondent:

Banks aside, we found that the coastline outside of the town was actually quite beautiful...

... and the beaches were a lot less crowded than at San Sebastian.

Overall we probably wouldn't recommend Santander as the most exciting day trip in Spain. On the other hand, we did succeed in getting well and truly off the beaten track, not encountering a single other English tourist, so in some ways it was nevertheless mission accomplished

Tuesday night was our last night in Bilbao, because on Wednesday morning we were due to travel south to Salamanca. We had chosen Salamanca as a destination based on photos we'd seen of its old town and, when we booked the accommodation back in February, we had been under the impression that the journey from Bilbao would be a straightforward one via a direct train. When it got to within a few months of our holiday though and the summer timetables came online, we started to panic because the Salamanca train had mysteriously disappeared. The Renfe website is extremely difficult to use (won't show timetables for a journey which involves a change, won't let you edit a journey once you've submitted it) which made us slightly sceptical about the validity of its information, but when I realised that the route was absent from the Deutsche Bahn website I knew it was time to start researching alternative options. After a lot of fruitless searching of Spanish transport websites we eventually discovered a company called Alsa which operates a bus route between the two cities. Phew!

The only down side of the bus route was that it left Bilbao at 08.15, giving us an earlier start than we might have liked on holiday. We successfully navigated ourselves across Bilbao using the metro and arrived at the bus station in plenty of time for our departure, only to almost fail at the final hurdle of working out which bus was actually ours. The timetable boards in the bus station display only the final destination of each bus, which means you need a far better knowledge of Spanish geography than we possess to work out whether a given bus is the correct one or not if you are not going as far as the terminus. Added to this was the complication that there were six different buses departing from Bilbao at 08.15. I held onto the cases while Tim did a jog around the bus station platforms in the hope of recognising our bus from the sign on the front. Luckily he did and soon we were off on our six hour journey to Salamanca.

After about two hours the bus came to a halt in a place called Burgos, the driver said something incomprehensibly fast in Spanish and - somewhat unnervingly - everyone else got off the bus. We got out too as it seemed to be the done thing, but weren't entirely clear whether it was supposed to be a rest stop or an impromptu change of bus.  Luckily it turned out to be the former, and with 20 minutes to kill we decided to have a quick stretch of our legs and see what there was to see in Burgos.

It looked like an interesting place actually, although we only got a fleeting glimpse of its old town and cathedral before we had to head back to the bus. There was a slightly sticky moment where we took a wrong turning and I had visions of our suitcases being transported to Salamanca without us, but fortunately we did make it back on time.

As we drove further away from Bilbao we left the mountains behind and soon the countryside was almost completely flat. We stopped in a few other towns after Burgos, but none long enough to get out for a stroll. Valladolid, which had been one of our potential day trip destinations, looked so dominated by high-rise concrete tower blocks that we decided to strike it from the list.

Finally around 2pm we arrived in Salamanca. First impressions were good as we caught a glimpse of the old town almost as soon as we stepped off the bus. Guided by the spire of the cathedral we managed to exit the bus station in the correct direction and in less than 15 minutes were standing on the doorstep of our apartment. 

I knew this apartment was going to be on the small side when I booked it, but considered that more than compensated for by its proximity to the old town. What I didn't realise (or had forgotten!) was that it was so small that it had a folding bed.

Believe it or not, this shelving unit is actually a double bed....

The shelving rotates so that it faces the wall, revealing a bed fixed in position on the other side....

The bed then pulls down and looks surprisingly normal!

It is quite easy to fold up and down, but it is going to require some coordination about what time we are going to bed/getting up, not least because the shelving unit is virtually the only place in the apartment where it is possible to store things, but you obviously can't access anything stored there once the bed is folded down.

It's a nice apartment though and the most impressive bit is the view we have of the cathedral from our window

Today we explored Salamanca. When we first woke up this morning the sky seemed a little grey and it wasn't terribly hot outside. It was still warm enough (for us) to wear shorts and t-shirts, but the sun wasn't beating down as it had been yesterday afternoon. We saw some of the locals walking around in coats and jumpers! Our apartment is so conveniently located that we didn't have to go far to see what a beautiful city Salamanca is. In fact the only problem we had was that although it was well past 10am by the time we ventured outside, the people of Salamanca were still in the process of setting up for the day and we had to dodge around delivery vans and trucks to get any decent photos.

It's hard to complain though when just walking around the corner from the apartment gives views like these...

The most impressive sight in Salamanca is the gothic cathedral. The building itself is so large and the carvings on it are so ornate that it is difficult to capture more than a fraction of it in a photo. From some angles it looks more like a fortress than a cathedral.

From the cathedral we walked along the main street in Salamanca, towards the city's main square. The day was starting to brighten up a bit by this stage, with bits of blue sky becoming visible between the clouds. The buildings looked so much more beautiful with blue sky behind them that we later retraced our steps and retook some of our photos of the places we'd already visited, including the beautiful square in which the cathedral and several university buildings sit.

When we got to the main square we were amazed by how huge it was!

From the square we headed out of the old town towards the train station, because we wanted to investigate the best way of travelling to Madrid. From the timetables online it looked like there was a train some time after 9 on Saturday morning, so I was a bit concerned when we consulted the ticket machine in the train station and it only offered a train at 4am! Fortunately there was a helpful man at the ticket counter who confirmed that there were other trains and sold us tickets for the one we wanted. We went to the bus station after that to investigate the possibility of a day trip to a town called Ciudad Rodrigo. Again, it was a frustrating experience because we can't find any such thing as a timetable of departures from the bus station; the buses are run by a myriad of companies, all of which produce their own small timetables, and so before you can consult anything at all you need to work out which company (or companies!) operate buses to your desired destination. It seems so inefficient that I can't help thinking we must be missing something through not being able to speak proper Spanish.

That aside, we had a lovely day and by early afternoon the sun was so hot that we had to seek refuge in the air-conditioned apartment to cool down. Salamanca is a beautiful place and we would definitely come back

Clare and I are weighing up whether Salamanca is the most beautiful location we've ever visited. It's not really possible to compare with something so different as the stunning lakes at Plitvice but it's very similar architecturally to the fairytale Albi and we think it might just have it beaten on the basis that there's more here. It's so pretty that we found even more to photograph on our evening stroll, hence this second blog entry for the same day.

Our apartment is placed a two-minute walk away from the southern limit of the old town, and so we decided to venture outside and head towards the Río Tormes, crossing over one of the bridge that spans it. Looking back towards the old town showed the cathedral rising above the skyline.

We soon came across another pretty church. Nothing particularly novel in that, except that this one was on the other side of the river.

For variety's sake we elected to walk around the outside of the old town instead of going back in the way we came. Not surprisingly, the cathedral loomed over the city walls and the local residences.

Unbeknownst to us we'd soon chance upon a convent.

We returned home just in time to catch the sight of the sun setting on the cathedral.

The sun sets rather quickly here and so before long night had fallen and I went on another stroll armed with my camera whilst Clare went to bed. Salamanca seems equally as beautiful when there's a black sky as when there's a blue one.

Our old friend the cathedral is still stunning when viewed from the bridge over the Río Tormes.

And it's beautiful up close too.

The sight of domes rising above the streets is all the more impressive against the black backdrop.

I was spoilt for choice with beautiful photos taken that evening:

So, is Salamanca the most beautiful place we've ever been to? On balance, it probably is, but then again we've been fortunate enough to visit many places which challenge it for the crown. We'd certainly be very happy to come back and see it again one day.

I picked out today's destination having caught the name on a map. It might be out of the way and only a small place, but I'm a bit of a buff on the Peninsular War being a fan of Bernard Cornwell's series Sharpe, and so I recognised the name Ciudad Rodrigo as the site of a famous siege in 1812. At the time it was held by the French, who were protected by the British advancing from Portugal by the city walls. The British gained the upper hand when they made two breaches in the walls and swarmed the defending French. As a result, they gained their foothold into Spain. And so knowing about the history of the place and seeing it on a map, I wanted to see it in the flesh. I imagined it would be a big old fortress and I could relive the famous siege.

Ciudad Rodrigo lies about 90km to the west of Salamanca, which took us about an hour to cover in an entirely non-descript coach journey. This part of Spain is exceedingly flat and is mostly given over to growing wheat. For some reason I'm attracted to the idea of driving through Nebraska and Kansas, which are nothing but corn fields for hundreds of miles, so this was a tiny warm-up.

Having left the coach station we soon found ourselves walking through an archway and into the town. That archway wasn't one of the famous breaches, but it was immediately next to one (since filled in) judging by a memorial plaque on the inside to the fallen Major-General "Black Bob" Crauford. And right next to that were steps leading to the top of the walls, so we started our time in Ciudad Rodrigo by doing a circuit of them.

My initial impression is that they weren't terribly high. I was expecting something much taller, requiring lengthy ladders to scale and leaving the soldiers extraordinarily vulnerable to the Frenchmen defending the fortress with their muskets. I'm doing the soldiers a massive disservice, that said - there was no cover at all and the relative stumpiness of the walls meant that they were very close to the soldiers taking shots at them. The lack of cover and flatness of the land in this region meant that it was hard to get a worthwhile photo for the blog, though we noticed the mountains that indicated the border with Portugal in the distance. At least we were the only people on the walls, a welcome change from our experiences of tourist-ridden Dubrovnik. That said, the view behind us of the church and houses was a good one.

Things improved as we completed the first quarter, since we caught glimpses of greenery, bridges and the Río Águeda.

Before long our route was blocked by some sort of tower, and so we had to get down to walk around it before continuing our journey.

We eventually espied a little church and both rushed for our cameras in excitement at finally having something to photograph. This one came with the bonus of having some flowers in bloom!

We were delighted to remark upon descending that the town itself was much brighter than the landscape outside it. The flowers by that little church weren't one-offs after all.

Before too long we chanced upon what turned out to be the main square. Ciudad Rodrigo is so small that it really did come down to turning a corner. We decided to stop for a drink (why is it that non-Brits think a beer should be one third froth?) and that drink became a meal once we'd seen that the food on the menu was palatable for our finicky tastes and the prices were acceptable for my padlocked purse.

Once lunch was over and the endless wait to pay was bought to an end (by my deciding to enter the restaurant and ask whether I might, since they're terribly relaxed about this sort of thing here), we had an hour left before our bus was due to leave and so set off to explore the rest of the town. It turned out to be quite the hidden treasure, full of little side streets, proud buildings ... and cannon.

We decided to pop out of some of the gates and soon learnt that we were unlucky with out starting point, because the views were much nicer on the other side.

We headed back to through the main square on our way back to the gate we needed to exit through.

We took one last look at the main church, which was much bigger than we initially would have thought ...

before exiting through the gate that initially entered through and wishing goodbye to Ciudad Rodrigo.

I'm glad we came. From the historical perspective it wasn't what I thought it would be (but then I suppose Normandy is just sand and stone without the context) but the town itself was a beautiful little enclave which proved to be well worth a short visit.

On Saturday morning we said goodbye to Salamanca and travelled south to the Spanish capital, Madrid. The town was almost deserted as we walked through it at 9am on the way to catch our train, and we were pleasantly surprised when we got to the station to find that the train itself was very quiet and peaceful too. The journey to Madrid took under three hours and took us first through the flat arable countryside which we had grown used to from our bus travels, before entering a more rocky landscape which became increasingly hilly until the train was winding its way through mountains. It was a very scenic route, and we had some tantalising glimpses of walled towns as the train sped past.

We arrived at Madrid's Chamartin station in the early afternoon and my plan was that we would leave our bags in a locker before having a stroll around and finding somewhere for lunch; we had some time to kill before we were allowed to check into our apartment at 3pm. We saw signs pointing to the luggage lockers almost immediately and followed them across the station concourse, out of a door, through a large car park, round a corner and back into the station building, only to realise that we were within a few metres of where we had originally started and the lockers were right in front of us. It all turned out to have been wasted exertion as with charges of €5.20 per suitcase it was more than we (/Tim!) felt like paying. Instead we formulated Plan B, which consisted of finding somewhere to eat in the station itself.

Happily Chamartin is a big station and we found somewhere without much difficulty. It was actually a proper restaurant, with a menu of the day which offered spaghetti carbonara as the first course and lasagne as the second course, so we were quite fortunate. We had a nice meal, complicated only by the fact that as soon as Tim stood up to go to the bathroom - leaving me unattended for a few minutes - I was approached by a slightly crazy old lady who was seemingly walking around the station collecting ringpulls off cans. At least it gave me the opportunity to utilise my only two words of Spanish: "No comprendo"!

The apartment we had booked was only 2km from the station so our plan was to walk. As we came out of the station building, however, we were confronted with a confusing array of bridges and highways which weren't easily identifiable on our (not very detailed) map. We made an attempt at walking in the correct direction but soon had to admit defeat and return to the station in search of a taxi.

When we checked into the apartment we were pleased to find that it had normal beds which didn't require folding down (yay!) and two separate air conditioning units. At an altitude of 667m, Madrid is the highest capital city in Europe and has very hot, dry summers, so we had a feeling we might be grateful for them.

We cooled down and relaxed in the apartment for a while before heading out to meet local Esperantist Jorge Camacho and his wife. By sheer good fortune we happened to be staying in an apartment near to the part of town where he lives, and posting some of our holiday photos from Bilbao on Facebook had alerted Spanish Esperantists to the fact that we were in Spain, making it possible for us to arrange a spontaneous meet-up.

It was exciting for us to experience an evening out in Madrid with locals. We went to a little bar first of all where we sat outside and drank beautiful white wine out of little goblets. We were amazed both at how reasonable the prices were and how much food we got for free! Every time someone bought a round of drinks we were given little plates of food to share; we started with pork scratchings, moved on to different types of potato in sauces and finished with my favourite which was fried potatoes and onions on bread. I may have accidentally eaten Tim's portion while he was inside checking the football score.

Later we moved on to a different bar where we were able to sit and eat. Our hosts kindly took on board our disinclination to eat fish and ordered a large plate of entrecote for us to share. Confusion ensued when they tried to explain to the waiter that we would like it without blood. When the meat arrived it was delicious; little pieces of beef which were still sizzling on the plate. We had bread and fried potatoes to accompany it, as well as some green peppers which we weren't brave enough to try. We finished the meal with some pieces of custard-filled pancake and a Basque liqueur made out of some sort of red berries. We were absolutely stuffed by the end but we had a great time and are very grateful to Jorge and Chen for such a lovely evening

Sunday was our first full day in Madrid and an opportunity to explore. We didn't succeed in making quite an early a start as we had hoped, but still managed to successfully negotiate the metro across the city and arrive in the central Puerta del Sol before 11am. We had a few hours to explore before meeting up with some more local Esperantists, so we decided to focus on the main sights and investigate the cathedral and royal palace.

From the Puerta del Sol we began walking down the main road and the first impressive building we came across was the Casa de la Villa, which used to be the town hall (and prison) of Madrid.

In front of the Casa de la Villa was a beautiful display of flowers:

We continued along the main road from the town hall until we reached the Almudena Cathedral, which is situated opposite the royal palace. Construction began on the cathedral began in 1879 but civil war and lack of funds meant that it wasn't finally completed until 1993.

It's hard to convey in photos quite how huge the cathedral is.

Around the side there is a statue of Pope John Paul II who consecrated the cathedral in 1993.

Across from the cathedral is the Palacio Real de Madrid, the official residence of the Spanish royal family. The royal family don't live there, but it is used for official ceremonies. We managed to get a photo through the bars of the gates.

From the palace we headed south to the basilica of San Francisco el Grande, which had an amazingly large dome (larger than that of St Paul's in London).

A little further down the road we found the Puerto de Toledo, an impressive gate into the city.

From there we wandered through some of the side streets towards the main train station, Atocha. This pink church we saw looked like it could have stepped straight out of Talinn or Vilnius and reminded us of our holiday in the Baltic countries last year.

Without doubt the most surprising building which we saw was the Ministry of Agriculture; it was so grand that we can only conclude that Spain is a country which takes agriculture extremely seriously!

Here are some of the things we saw whilst walking through the streets at this time:

It was time for us to catch the metro again on our way to gatecrash a meeting of the Hispana Esperanto-Federacio (Spanish Esperanto Federation). We had noted down the address in advance and were fully-equipped with maps of Madrid, so we found our way to the correct street with no problems. We understood the Esperantists to be located in building number 13, which we quickly identified, but we became confused because there was one entrance (which looked like a heavily-locked gate) labelled 13 and another (which looked more like an entrance into a block of flats) labelled 13D. We decided that 13D looked more promising but it wasn't possible to get into the building without a key. As luck would have it, just as we were hesitating outside a lady emerged from the building - holding the door open for us - so we were able to slip inside. It was quite dark, but we found a light switch and took the lift to the third floor where we believed the Esperanto federation was based. When we arrived at door number 7 on that floor, however, there were no indications that it was anything to do with Esperanto at all, so we lost our nerve and decided to go back outside and try phoning the Esperantists. To our horror, it soon became clear that not only was a key required to enter the building but it was required to exit it as well! We were now stuck in a random building which appeared to have no relation to the Esperanto association and which we didn't have permission to be in. Whoops!

Much to our relief, within a few minutes we were saved by another person wanting to leave the building and unlocking the door for us. Phew! A quick phone call revealed that the Esperanto association was located in the adjoining building (13 rather than 13D!) and one of the Esperantists soon came to let us in. We were excited to meet Tonjo and Alex in real life (as we had previously only been acquainted with them online) and to see the headquarters of the Spanish association. Tonjo kindly donated us two copies of a book about Don Quixote in Spanish and Esperanto (one for us, one for the Butler Library) and we also came away with a collection of leaflets and newsletters. As we sat outside having a drink together, the most therapeutic thing for us was to know that the Hispana Esperanto-Federacio faces many of the same challenges as the Esperanto-Asocio de Britio and that we are not alone in some of our frustrations.

Our aim after lunch was to explore Parque del Buen Retiro, a large park in the centre of Madrid which used to belong to the royal family but is now a public park. We were hoping that the park would provide some respite from the fierce afternoon sun, but unless you were standing directly under a tree it was still pretty hot!

Within the park there were some beautiful gardens, full of roses.

The most exciting thing for me was that after just over a week in Spain, we found our first ducks!!!

I wasn't prepared for quite how grand the park would be. This building is the Palacio de Cristal, built in 1887 to exhibit flora and fauna from the Philippines.

This one was another exhibition hall, known as the Palacio de Velazquez.

The most impressive part of the park, however, was this monument to King Alfonso XII.

There were so many beautiful photos that we took in the park that we've not been able to choose only one or two to put below!)

We managed to pack a lot of Madrid into one day but there's still a lot to see, so we're lucky that we've got the whole of tomorrow to explore as well

Monday was our second day exploring Madrid. We caught the metro into Puerta del Sol in the centre of town again and walked along one of the main shopping streets for a while before turning off onto some quieter side streets. The first impressive building which we saw was the Palacio del Senado, the seat of the upper house of the Spanish parliament.

We were walking in the direction of the royal palace again to see some of the gardens which we didn't have time to investigate on Sunday. They were worth coming back for, with some beautiful flower displays and statues of former Spanish kings.

There were also some lovely views back towards the palace....

As we were walking around the park we caught sight of a stunning church dome in the background. We'd never seen anything quite like it and decided we would definitely have to walk in that direction to explore.

On the way we stopped at the Plaza de España, which features a large monument to Cervantes. Behind it is one of the tallest buildings in Madrid, the Edificio España, which reminded us a bit of one of the buildings we had seen in Riga last year.

Eventually we found the church we were looking for. It turned out to be the Iglesia de Santa Teresa y San Jose. We couldn't find anything in our guidebook to explain why it had such an unusual roof, but it was really beautiful.

Not far past the church we found what is perhaps the strangest monument in Madrid: the Temple of Debod. This is an ancient Egyptian temple, originally built near Aswan and dedicated to the goddess Isis. The temple was donated to Spain by the Egyptian government in 1968 in gratitude for their help preserving other historical sites during the construction of the Aswan Dam, and subsequently rebuilt in one of Madrid's parks. It was quite surreal to see it there.

After seeing the temple we walked back into the centre of Madrid along one of the main roads, Gran Via. This was a recommended walk in the guidebook and it didn't disappoint as the street is lined with imposing buildings.

We soon found ourselves outside the Banco de España, a building so enormous that it was difficult to fit a respectable amount of it into a picture.

Just down the road from the bank was the Palacio de Comunicaciones, an incredibly ornate building which we were surprised to read was home to the Postal and Telegraphic Museum until 2007 when it replaced one of the buildings we saw yesterday as the new town hall. It certainly looks far more fitted to being a town hall than a mere postal museum.

We walked north from there to the Plaza de Colón, a square built to commemorate the explorer Christopher Colombus.

We also saw the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the largest library in Spain.

We stopped for lunch and then walked south towards Retiro Park again for an afternoon stroll. On the way we passed the Puerta de Alcala, an archway into the city constructed in 1778.

It was quieter in the park today and we had a pleasant stroll under the trees.

Walking around the lake, we had a better view of the monument to King Alfonso which we had seen up close yesterday:

Finally we found the Fountain of the Fallen Angel, which depicts the moment when God expelled Lucifer from heaven. It is said to be the world's only public statue depicting the devil!

We have had a lovely time in Madrid and tomorrow will be moving on to Cordoba. The plan was to travel by train, but a visit to the railway station today revealed that the prices were much higher than we had expected (more than €60 each!) so we are hoping to travel by bus instead.

We kissed goodbye to Madrid today after a lovely few days in the Spanish capital. It was time to travel closer to the traditional tourist areas in the south. If we could find a way of getting there, we were heading to Córdoba.

That's not to say we hadn't made plans; indeed we had. We knew what train we were going to catch, when we were going to catch it and where from. We also thought we knew what we were going to pay for it, until we popped to the station the night before to confirm the details and purchase the tickets. I say "confirm the details" because we'd earlier learned on this holiday that what the (very primitive) transport websites indicate the timetables to be doesn't always match up with reality. In this case there were indeed trains to Córdoba leaving at the times we expected, but the prices were over three times what we originally expected to pay. Ouch.

Yesterday evening was spent trawling some more primitive websites to see whether we could locate a bus to Córdoba instead. We found reason to suspect so but can you really trust a website that is so primitive that it can't even handle Spanish's accented characters?

We got up much earlier than planned this morning so that we could head to the bus station to see whether there was scope for getting a bus but leaving time to catch the original 12:00 train if not. Fifteen stops on the Metro later, we were trying to find that bus station, which was off our map. The only things to note about this adventure were that the curse of Clare's suitcases struck again as one of her wheels broke, and queues of taxi drivers were occupying the roads and blasting their horns non-stop to protest against an app that people use to call a cab. Irritate people immensely; that'll put them on your side.

Our luck was in, we got tickets on the bus for a quarter of what we would have had to pay for the train, and five and a half hours later (or two paperbacks read if you use the Clare scale) we were pulling a broken suitcase through Córdoba en route to our apartment, which merits more of a mention.

For a start, it has been built around ruins. I'm not sure what was originally here because the signs use the sort of impenetrable arty language that even natives don't understand, but there was a mention of the "traditional cemetery style". From above it looks relatively small.

But from the bottom you get a sense of scale. This was a solid building at some point.

There happens to be a mosaic next to it ...

... and a wall-mounted one in the foyer.

And to cap it off there are some remains of columns on display too.

And as for the apartment itself ... well, it's easily the nicest one we've ever been in and is even better equipped than our house is. We had no idea what we were getting, with spare bedrooms, several bathrooms, separate dining and living rooms and a large kitchen.

Tomorrow we'll be spending the day exploring Córdoba. But before we get around to doing that, I think I'll pull some of my beers out of the fridge and go join Clare on our exlusive upstairs terrace

Today we had a full day to explore Córdoba. Before we got stuck into seeing the sights, however, we needed to plan tomorrow's excursion to Granada, which necessitated a visit to the train and bus stations. I had been investigating train timetables from Córdoba to Granada online the previous evening and had found details on the Bahn website of an early morning train which would get us there for 11am. Unfortunately, the Renfe website had no knowledge of this train and the ticket machine at the train station didn't either, so ultimately we had to resign ourselves to Plan B of travelling by bus instead. We seem to be destined to catch a lot of buses on this holiday! Bus tickets purchased, we returned to the apartment to book tickets for visiting the Alhambra. The Alhambra is one of the main sights in Granada but in order to protect the monument the number of tourists is strictly limited to around 6,000 per day. This means that you have to book tickets in advance and at busy times of the year they can sell out very fast. We were lucky that there were still some tickets left for an afternoon slot tomorrow. The slightly shaky wi-fi in the apartment held out long enough for us to purchase some, and then we headed out into the town centre in search of a branch of the Caixa bank, whose ATM's are specially set up to print prebooked Alhambra tickets upon insertion of a credit card.

It was all a bit complicated but we got it sorted in the end and were able to relax and explore Córdoba. Our first stop was the main square where we had sat and eaten lunch/dinner in the first establishment we found yesterday evening after our long and foodless bus journey! It had some interesting buildings and pretty fountains.

From there we walked back in the direction of the train station towards a leafy park we had caught glimpses of and wanted to investigate further. It turned out to be a beautiful combination of statues, fountains and palm trees.

There was even a duck house in the middle of a pond

Walking through the park took us along the western edge of the town, towards the city walls in the south.

There was an enormous crenellated gate into the old town.

You can't walk along the walls themselves but we walked along the outside of them. It was nice and shady with the walls on one side and pools of water on the other.

Towards the end of the walls we came across a statue of Ibn Rushd, an Islamic philosopher born in Córdoba in the twelfth century. Córdoba was captured by a Muslim army in 711 and eventually became the capital of the medieval Islamic state of Al-Andalus. It remained an Islamic city until it was recaptured by King Ferdinand III of Castile in 1236.

Looming on the horizon we saw the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos, a medieval fortress which was one of the primary residences of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon.

The fortress was built close to the river Guadalquivir, which is spanned by a Roman bridge, originally constructed in the first century BC and repaired extensively when Córdoba was under Islamic rule.

To the side of the bridge you can still see one of the original Arab waterwheels, designed to raise water to the caliph's palace.

At the near end of the bridge is the Puerta del Puente, a Renaissance gate into the city...

...while from the far end we had a fantastic view back towards the city and in particular of the Mezquita.

We stopped for lunch in a cafe which served something very similar to a Zagreb schnitzel(!) and then wandered through the colourful streets of the old town.

We worked our way through the old town to the most famous building in Córdoba, the Mezquita. This is a medieval Islamic mosque that has been converted into a Catholic cathedral. At first glance from the outside it looks pretty much like a normal cathedral, with a large bell tower. This was built in the sixteenth century to help Christianise the cathedral by replacing an existing minaret.

Entering a gate in the wall you find yourself in a beautiful courtyard called the Patio de los Naranjos. This was originally an ablutions court, with the fountains used for ritual purification before prayers.

The courtyard is really pretty, filled with a mixture of orange trees and palm trees.

It's free to walk around the courtyard but to enter the Mezquita itself you have to pay €8. Tim thought this was a bit expensive but bought me a ticket so that I could go in on my own. I was curious to see what a mosque-cathedral would be like inside.

First impressions were that it was extremely dark inside! My eyes adjusted to the twilight but my camera struggled a little.

It was extremely striking, with a forest of stripy pillars...

There are a total of 856 columns inside the building, many of which were made from pieces of a Roman temple which had occupied the site previously. This would have been the main prayer hall when it was still a mosque.

Around the sides of the building are a series of ornate chapels, dedicated to different saints. One side retains its original Islamic decorations though.

I can't imagine what it's like to have Mass in these surroundings, but seeing the cathedral was a really unique experience and definitely worth €8.

We had a very pleasant walk home through more parts of the old town and ended up purely by coincidence at the square right in front of out door. That seemed like a sensible place to stop

The advantage for us on our no-travel days is that we free up more time for exploring. We'd already been around much of Córdoba today for about six hours, and yet were home comparitively early. That gave us time for Clare to blog about the day (about two hours' work for those that think it's just writing a few words!) and get something to eat, still leaving us with a spare few hours at the end of the day. And so we decided to stroll in the evening.

Since our adventure today by pure fluke ended in the square outside our apartment, we decided to carry on in that direction this evening on what was largely an aimless walk. Whilst Clare and I were discussing the feasibility (or not) of our visiting every European capital, we were greeted with the sight of some Roman remains, pillars emerging from the earth.

What particularly caught our eyes was the poor family of kittens that lived there. I fell for a little tabby whilst Clare was enamoured with what appeared to be a Siamese. The poor blighters were about 12 weeks old. At least some gentle souls had put down some water for them. I tried to find a supermarket to get something for them to eat but couldn't find anything. I suppose they stand a reasonable chance of survival, given the amount of pigeons around here and the lack of other cats.

We took a few other turnings and saw the odd church, although we've been so spoilt for choice today that we didn't think of them as anything particularly special. Eventually we looped around to the main square, just as night fell.

And as we approached our apartment we got to see what its square looked like after nightfall.

And now we should think about bed because we have what was an unplanned day ahead of us tomorrow which might just turn out to be the best of the holiday.

Today wasn't originally on our itinerary, but Clare keeps in touch with her family whilst we're away and it transpires that her great-aunt and -uncle know this part of the world and named their favourite place. We looked it up in our Rough Guide and the relevant chapter started convincingly: "If you see only one town in Spain it should be Granada." High praise, and so we booked a coach and reserved tickets to the Alhambra, the site that Granada is most known for.

My initial impressions weren't good. We had rather a trek from the bus station without the aid of a map and the distance meant that we saw a Granada that was no different from anywhere else; roads with lots of traffic, people going about their day, and nothing out of the ordinary. Fortunately I caught a glimpse about half an hour into our walk of a sign (well, piece of paper) inside a shop window stating "Hay mapas" and so, after waiting in a queue behind one of those people who don't actually want to buy anything but just get in the way with their unruly kids, we acquired the necessary material to confirm the way that we would have to go. Hindsight makes me particularly grateful because I'd have normally chosen to follow the current road to oblivion instead of leaving it there and then to peel off in the direction of the old town, the existence of which we corroborated upon arriving at a gate.

A bit of navigational wizardry was needed from this point to find the main street (the trick being not to actually pass through the gate) upon which the cathedral was built. We found it without too much fuss. I was initially unimpressed, although it turns out that the bit on the main road is the rear (hence my thinking it looked rather plain), and by looping around we got to see the front of it.

It was situated in a very pretty courtyard.

We knew we probably wouldn't get an evening meal, so thought we'd get lunch. Clare played it safe, getting a pizza. I ordered the daily meal thinking that gazpacho couldn't be too far away from tomato soup. I was wrong; it was foul. Clare was wincing when she caught a smell of it - she wasn't the person that had to try stomaching it!

Afterwards we roamed the streets and chanced upon some perfectly nice buildings and monuments ...

... and narrow streets.

Walking along the very pretty side of the the cathedral ...

... we eventually saw the monument to Isabel.

We saw plenty of other things too, of course!

The monument to Isabel was the landmark that we were looking for and our clue to branch off northward, which took us to a beautiful building ...

... which was the centerpiece of an exquisite square.

From there and with time to spare we went on a very pleasant riverside walk. (Well, streamside.)

We passed a church ...

... and eventually came to a pretty square.

Alhambra loomed over us.

And having glimpsed Alhambra, so we headed off for it. It was a long walk uphill but we felt that it was more genuine to go on foot rather than on the local mini-trains or, heaven forbid, take a taxi, as we saw others do. We knew we were on the right track when we saw a gate at the end of the street ...

... an in passing throught it bid goodbye to the old town.

We passed a bright orange building with a telling dome which we believed might be part of Alhambra but which, it transpired, was a cash-in hotel.

With plenty more sweat we arrived at the summit and got the pleasure of knowing that we could walk right in rather than have to stand in line, since we'd already purchased out tickets. We immediately left the main path so as not to have to engage with the masses of tourists and immediately hit upon an avenue of trees.

We were surrounded by enchanting greenery ...

... beautiful flowers ...

... and stellar views of the fortresses, town and mountains.

There were plenty of beautiful sights:

Once we'd spent time soaking in the beautiful greenery, we headed off to the Generalife, which were private gardens. We were in for more of the same! There were beautiful, colourful gardens:

Views into the distance:

And mixtures of both:

I can't do it justice verbally, other than stating that I can now picture why the hanging gardens of Babylon were one of the wonders of the ancient world, so I shall instead invite you to click on an image to watch the slideshow.

@todo

We had a bit of time before we were allowed into the palace, so we thought we'd go on another stroll in the direction of the fortresses that we could see earlier from below. Unbelievably, we were treated yet again to beautiful floral displays en route:

@todo

We soon arrived at the Alcazara, the fortresses. The weather was searing but we climbed to the top.

We were rewarded by views well into the distance, including of the cathedral and square that we'd earlier visited ...

... and where we'd just walked from.

@todo

Finally came the part that was to prove Clare's favourite bit of the day, and which would not only cause my camera to run out of memory (a problem I sort of solved by deleting photos that I didn't think were the best on there) but also killed its battery; 17:30 was imminent, that was the time on our tickets to see the palace, and so off we went.

Ultimately, there's little I can say about it descriptively, other than that it appeared to come from another world. Pictures are as good as a thousand words and, fortunately, we have plenty of those.

I'll post below what I think are the cream of the crop but you really must view the slideshow or you'll miss out.

@todo

We were running late for our coach by the time we had exited the palacio and negotiated the Alhambra to find the way out, so we took one of the taxis that was dropping off the people who weren't walking up to it as we had earlier. The driver took us by the back streets, which served to give us an idea that Granada isn't just a one-trick pony. That had been my earlier impression, since the cathedral and its surroundings were nothing special compared to places which we'd been lucky enough to see earlier, such as Salamanca and Córdoba. The Alhambra is astounding, a reason to come on its own. It appears, though, as though Granada has some other things in store for us. At the point that we left Clare was already making plans to come back in the future and go in at 08:00 to avoid tourists, so it seems that we'll be back at some point

We were tired after our long day-trip to Granada but still had to be up at a reasonable time on Friday morning to check out of our apartment and move on to the final destination of this holiday: Seville. We had chosen to go to Seville for no very good reason except that it has an airport from which we managed to book a Ryanair flight back to Stansted for a reasonable price, and so long before we had planned the rest of our itinerary it was established that we would finish up here. What we hadn't appreciated was quite how far south it was and - by extension - quite how hot it was going to be!

We travelled to Seville by train, which felt like an achievement in itself after some of our experiences with Spanish public transport over the past two weeks. The apartment we had booked was only 2km away from the station and we had plenty of time before we needed to check in, so walking seemed like a good idea. It had been a warm day when we left Cordoba that morning, but the heat which hit us when we stepped out of Sevilla Santa-Justa was a whole new level. We heard later that Seville is sometimes referred to as 'the frying pan of Europe' and it seems to be a reputation which is well deserved.

Despite the heat the first kilometre or so of our walk passed off without incident. Or, at least, as well as could be expected since the Curse of the Suitcase Wheel had struck again in Madrid. As we got nearer the older part of town, however, we were slightly distressed to find that the pavements disappeared. The roads were narrow, wide enough for a single car, with a small strip of pavement along one side which would suddenly peter out, switch to the opposite side of the road, then vanish all together. This would have made pulling any sort of suitcase a nightmare but it was particularly difficult given the broken state of mine. There was a surprising amount of traffic on such small roads and at one point when we had to squeeze ourselves up against the side of a building to let cars past we were stranded there for several minutes until one driver took pity on us and allowed us to drag our suitcases down the road to the next strip of pavement. Lesson learned - always take a taxi in Seville!

When we eventually arrived at the apartment it wasn't quite as glamorous as the one we had just left in Cordoba (I suspect no apartment will ever seem impressive again after that one!) but it did have very good air-conditioning which was a blessing. We unpacked, cooled down, did a bit of shopping and then went out to get dinner.... only to find that all the restaurants were closed and not due to open until 9pm. We had read in the guidebook - and been warned by one of the Spanish Esperantists - that people in Seville have different body-clock settings to the rest of us and that we were likely to find the town deserted in the afternoons, but full of life in the early hours of the morning. I had thought perhaps this was an exaggeration, but no; it seems that in Seville dinner time is from 9pm to 11pm and in the afternoon everyone goes to bed.

We retired to the apartment to eat emergency Pringles and try not to think about how hungry we were! We emerged again at 9 and found a really nice Indian restaurant (Tim wasn't keen to try any more Spanish cuisine after his Gazpacho!!!) and had a lovely, if somewhat late, meal.

Our plan was to get up early on Saturday morning and explore Seville before it got too hot, but having eaten and then gone to bed so late the night before it didn't quite work out. When we did emerge into what was already a scorchingly hot day, our first impression was that Seville smelled. It really, really smelled. Of horse

Out of all the places we've been on the holiday Seville is definitely the most touristy, and in addition to a lot of tacky souvenir shops and annoying waiters who stand in the street to try and entice you into their restaurants, a consequence of that is that there are seemingly hundreds of horse-drawn carriages taking visitors on sight-seeing tours around the city. At the best of times, horses smell. But with so many horses and temperatures so high, the whole city smells like an allotment which has just been covered in manure.

Trying not to inhale too deeply, we made our way through the narrow side streets to see the cathedral. According to the guidebook, the cathedral in Seville is one of the largest churches in the world, with its size in cubic metres being greater than that of St Paul's in London or St Peter's in Rome. It did look rather enormous, and it was difficult to fit all of it into a photo.

The cathedral was set in a pretty square...

(I borrowed the hat off Tim because it was so sunny!!)

At the far end of the square was a striking red gate, the entrance to the royal palace in Seville. We didn't think it would be able to compete with the palaces we had seen in Granada earlier in the week, so we didn't pay to go in.

From the cathedral we strolled through more of the old town towards what we hoped would be the shade of the Parque de Maria Luisa. On the way we saw the stunning Palace of San Telmo, which is the seat of the president of the Andulusian local government.

The park used to form the grounds of the palace but was donated to the city as a public park at the end of the nineteenth century and remodelled for the Ibero-American Exposition which took place in the park in 1929.

At the centre of the park is the Plaza de España, a huge square housing the main buildings which were constructed for the exhibition.

It sounds strange to say but some of the most beautiful parts of the square were the lampposts....

...and the bridges.

The rest of the park was also very attractive. There were tiled fountains...

...a big duck pond...

...and water features which were reminiscent of the Generalife.

When we had finished exploring the gardens we crossed a bridge over the river Guadalquivir, intending to stroll along the river back into the town centre. Unfortunately we somehow managed to end up in a large housing estate, which wasn't terribly scenic. We made it back into town in the end and found one of Seville's other key sights, the Torre del Oro. This tower on the banks of the river used to function as a military watchtower and a prison.

We had some lovely views across the river to the colourful houses on the other side.

Seville probably hasn't been our favourite destination of the holiday, but we have still had a wonderful time in Spain and definitely hope to return at some point on one of our future holidays

That was my first time in Spain as a grown-up and you'd never been there.

I've never been there unless you count a weekend in Barcelona.

Our friends who live there would say you've never been to Spain!

We knew we had two weeks to play with so we planned starting at the top and working our way to the bottom, subject to our usual condition of wanting to avoid any tourists. We arrived in Bilbao, the capital of the Basque Country, and spent a few nights there.

It was a lot nicer than I expected because the guide book had given the impression that it was quite industrial but it turned out to be a really pretty place. We saw a huge puppy made of flowers (which was very pretty but also very weird) and the Guggenheim museum.

We planned a couple of days whilst we were in Bilbao. I thought that San Sebastian was a very nice place, just the sort of place we would visit again if we happened to be in the area.

Yeah, but it maybe wasn't the best decision in the world to go there by train because it was incredibly slow. And incredibly noisy with all the teenagers in our carriage on the way there. We probably could've got there quicker by bus.

It was our first beach of the holiday and looked just like the ones that are supposed to be on the south coast, with yellow sand, which we saw from atop because we'd been climbing. Our next day out was Santander.

That definitely wasn't a good choice. In retrospect, we should've listened to what the guide book said!

Yep! What we should've done is try to travel to Guernica or Vitoria by the local bus. At least we know if we ever happen to be in that region again to do those. Anyway, that wasn't a bad start to the holiday. The days weren't as hectic as they had been on previous holidays, everything was good and relaxing. We travelled by coach to Salamanca, a famous university town.

That was one of the most beautiful places we were in. Certainly the apartment had the best location, within sight of one of the cathedrals - although it was probably the smallest apartment that we've ever stayed in in our lives!

I particularly liked it here because everything was scenic. We were within the old town, away from the hubbub of people going about their everyday lives. Everywhere was scenic, especially after darkness fell, when we could cross the river and look back at the cathedral rising above everything else. I'd definitely go back there again.

We took a daytrip to Ciudad Rodrigo whilst we there. I should take the blame for that one since I knew of its historical importance and wanted to go. The walls were rather disappointing and didn't seem terribly high, and there wasn't much to see.

I think the town itself is very pretty and there was nothing wrong with the walls, it's just that the countryside around it is very flat. I'd always imagined that part of Spain to be very hilly.

We could see some hills in the distance marking the border with Portugal but that was all we could see, until we descended from the walls and entered the town itself, which was lovely.

We left Salamanca and travelled by train to Madrid. I wasn't necessarily expecting much from it because its inland and so populated, so I thought that there would be smog and not much else. As soon as we set out we were pleasantly surprised, heading westward from the main metro station, Sol, and seeing the cathedral and royal palace. On another day we saw some beautiful buildings such as the Banco de España, plus things like the statue of Columbus.

And there was a beautiful park, which was a nice place to relax although not as shady as we hoped.

And we had the pleasant surprise of getting to see the Spain that the locals get because we met up with fellow Esperanto-speaker Jorge Camacho and his wife, Chen. We had several servings of wine each, each coming with tapas, and the bill came to 13€ between the four of us.

And it was a real surprise because we hadn't planned any of it! It just sort of developed through Facebook.

And the next day we met up with Toño, who is a thoroughly nice chap. I felt it particularly reassuring to sit down with him and see how normal he is because a few bad apples tend to discolour the impressions that I have about people who are very active online.

We'd intended to leave Madrid by train but the prices were far more expensive than had been indicated online, so instead we decided to head to Cordoba by coach. We had the problem of not only trying to find the coach station, which wasn't on our map, but to get there with a broken suitcase, because a wheel on mine died.

Cordoba's fantastic, isn't it? We were located just off the main square and it was so easy to find things to look at. My goodness, it's just the sort of place that you have to visit again because even with the aid of photos it's impossible to remember everything that you've seen. We spent a whole day travelling around an enjoying Cordoba but at the last minute added a day trip to our itinerary.

Yeah, we did well to follow the guide book's advice and go to Granada.

I didn't think much to Granada itself but Alhambra is spectacular. To be fair, we noticed in the taxi on the way down that there are some beautiful little bits of the old town which we hadn't seen.

I'd definitely like to go back! There are so many parts of this region that we could visit, so I'd definitely like us to take a future holiday in the south of Spain.

From there we did what the tourists do and headed south to Seville, because that's where we were flying home from. Goodness me, it was hot. And we didn't adapt well to the local traditions of eating several hours later in the day. But I think it was fine as a necessary evil.

And that's every recapped, so now for the summary. How do you feel about two weeks in Spain? Was it too long? Just about right? What would you do again and what might you do in addition?

Two weeks is fine but if we're going to travel in the south I think it would be better at a different time of year when it's not so hot. It's not the sort of area I'd want to go during a school holiday!

Although we're referring to "the south of Spain" we'd actually start in the middle, wouldn't we? Salamanca and Madrid again, Toledo?

Yeah. Cordoba definitely. Spend time at Granada and see other places from there.

I think two weeks would be fine. You could condense it into one week but I don't think you'd get the reward. If you're going to take a trip there you may as well make it two weeks and visit this variety of places rather than limit yourself.

If you were going only for one week I think you'd have to stay in one place and get a car. Public transport is the thing that disappointed me most about Spain. It was impossible to navigate the websites, the connections and timetables were rubbish ... I mean, you could easily spend a week in that apartment in Cordoba, but you'd need a car to get anywhere.