I created a day by day detailed itinerary using Google Gemini before the start of the trip and followed absolutely none of it! On the other hand every morning when I ask Gemini on suggestions for that particular day, it nails it and has been super useful!
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València is almost a perfect city. It’s got beaches, great weather that’s not terribly hot like Andalusia and with great connections to rest of Spain within 3 to 3-½ hours by train. Plus real cosmopolitan feel with diversity in food and people, but without the craziness of Barcelona I am sure. Love it!
Another morning another city, but for a quick stopover to the city where Paella was born. While I am not a big fan of paella, reservations have been secured for tonight. In the morning we do the city arts and sciences complex which look architecturally wonderful and modern. And yeah the kid is happy to have left Andalusian old world charm behind to come back to “city” life. Meanwhile I left my heart in Granada.
While Seville definitely has a lot of things to see or do, personally Granada is a far more stunning city to just get lost walking around. I seriously needed another day here to just wander around with no specific plan in mind. What a gorgeous old town!
Another planned rest day with majority of the day spent in train. Let’s see what happens. Our planned rest day last week resulted in the most walking we have done on any day of trip 😆- don’t think it will happen today coz of sitting in train
We have seen the trifecta of Alcazar at Seville, Mezquita at Cordoba and Alhambra at Granada, each incredible in its own way. I can’t put into pictures what each of them are, especially the alcazar and Alhambra. My head is still spinning at exquisite moorish architecture. Ooof!
An excellent day spent going to the white villages of Zahara de La Sierra, Setenil de las Bodegas and Ronda! Our guide was extremely fun, and went out of his way to show us around. Considering we were the only family it was pretty much a private trip!
A busy busy day ahead today! The only day of the trip that required us to be up by 6am! All because of an IDP fumble back home so I couldn’t end up booking a car to drive instead. On the other hand, probably a blessing coz I can now nap in the bus!
One thing about European websites is no matter where you go or which country they suck so much. Barely functional websites. Like they spend half their energy on GDPR consents all over the place but the websites themselves are unusable especially any airline/train or bus bookings. Just very frustrating to use any of their apps or websites.
Another day another train mixup. In morning take train to Segovia. Come out of station to only realize we are in booneylands in middle of nowhere. Google and turns out the high speed train stops only at the new station while the actual city station that I thought this train would go to is serviced by the slower trains! Thank god for a taxi. Next on way back the smart people we are decided to walk from aqueduct to city station thinking oh why not see city more and then just take a taxi from that station to new station? Well turns out the city station is in siesta hour – like it felt like it was literally abandoned! A few anxious moments with kind strangers helping us out to catch a bus few hundred meters away; the bus was late but we were able to flag an empty taxi which got us back to station just in nick of time for our journey back. Some planner I am 😑