Today is Monday November 17th and we have been travelling since the 10th from Portugal back into Spain.

We unfortunatly looked at the money we have left and have had to do some re-thinking about the last few months of our route. So we think we are heading along the Med. coast back into Southern France and then into Italy. We are trying to book a Gite de France for a few weeks to get us through the Christmas and New Year´s holiday season.

For the trip back into Spain though we hit some really great spots. We ended up our first night in a town called Osuna. A very nice town in between the mountains and the sea. The city has a whole street that has been named on of the most beautiful in Europe of orginal archeture. The town is tiny, only about 12,000 people but full of great shopping and nice streets to walk around on.

We end up the next day taking a short drive and heading into Granda for 2 days. We stayed in a one star hostel that was cheap and had an interesting smell and shower system....... anyway.....Granda is a great town. There is lots to do and as it is a bigger city we were able to get on to the internet and get some chores done. The big highlight there was the Alhambra, a must see if you go. It was a muslim castle that sites on the hill side above Granada that is in excellent condition. We spend about 5 hours walking around it and through it. The interesting thing about Granada is where it is located. There are mountains between the city and the Med. sea so it is actually one of the coldest cities in Spain. The Sierra mountains are about 30 kms away and where filled with snow.

It made a beautiful backdrop to the city and are drive out of town.

We moved along the coast for the next few days as we are speeding up the program to get to Southern France. We spent one night in Lorca, another great small spanish town with lots of history and beauty. We had a very long day of riding on Friday. We were headed for a cheaper highway hotel just outside of Valencia. It was about 5 o´clock when we arrived and found out that it was full because of course there is a big convention in Valencia and the whole town is full. It´s now getting dark, we have driven almost 500 kms and the last 2 hours of that was on a small highway to keep off the toll highway and had us behind, I think, every big truck in Spain.

The cheap hotel directs up back up the highway away from town as there is another hotel there. It is a 3 star hotel that looks very nice and Patrick sends me in to see what they have and the cost. They do have a vacancy - GREAT !! it costs more then a whole days budget - CRAP --- I take the room and the wonderful receptionist takes pitty on me and gives us a big room with the biggest soaker jacuzzi tub you have every seen. I do not tell Patrick how much we are spending and just get him into the room where the mini bar is free and has cold beer in it just for him. We get out of town the next morning and again vow to get off the road by 3:30 as even in the low season you can still get caught with a festival or something.....

We move on and end up in a town called Tarragona. It´s a great place. We are in a new province of Spain and it is like the towns of Salamenca and San Sebastian. Not quite as beautiful but this town is full of Roman ruins and we have been walking around the town and hitting all of the museums as we go. We will be here for a total of 4 nights as the bike is going in for it´s oil change tomorrow. We think we will be in France by the weekend and hopefull in a spot for a few weeks by the 29th of November.

So far we are not having much trouble commuincating with people here in Spain. People seem to have at least a little english and the tourist bureaux all speak english with no problems. At the hostal we are staying at, we just make hand signals and such and we get along just fine !!

For the motorcycle people reading this the gas is cheaper here then in Portugal and France. We are paying about .88 cents for the Euro 98 (super unleaded). The toll highways are good but uneventful and there doesn´t seem to be a real speed limit. The secondary roads are okay but are not as well sign posted and have a lot of big trucks on them. They are only 2 lane roads so you are either waiting to pass or passing the trucks. We haven´t found any of the small empty roads in Spain yet and I think that is because we have stayed too near the coast.
Overall we have found a big difference in the regions of Spain and find that each are unique and have something interesting to offer.

Anyway that´s about it for now, I´m waiting for an email from my Gites de france to see if we can get a place and then it´s off to some more Roman ruins !!!!