We have spend the last few days in Madrid having a look around before we fly home. Madrid is a big confident city, very clean and with lots to see. Amanda found us a great airbnb appartment right in the heart of town. The nightlife is also very active with lots of people filling the squares and many many restaurants. We are now sitting at the airport about to get on our flight home. It will take us about 40 hours. It's been a great season, looking forward to the next one.
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Aztec Gold is all packed up now for the winter. The yard is very good with a useful little town nearby and all the boat related services you need. There is also a very good pool at the marina which we visited once or twice. A good way to cool off after a day of boat jobs. While servicing the engine for winter storage I found a pipe in the salt water cooling system that was corroded and needed replacing. €166 euros to get a new one! One of the end of season challanges is to use up all the food on the boat before we leave (but not too soon). This was our last meal, a what's in the fridge salad. And very tasty it was.
Aztec Gold came out of the water today for our winter storage. So another season is over, one of our best. The marina sits within the Ebro Delta, a large enclosed delta which gives great shelter. This was our anchorage on our last night. Calm, quiet and secure and with flocks of flamingos flying overhead so close that you could hear the swish of their wings. However in the morning the boat was covered in thousands of mosquitos. Thank goodness we had our mosquito nets up. This is AGs home for the next 7 months. A small yard in a big marina and close to a nice little town. And this is the sort if thing we will be doing for the next few days. Bending ourselves into interesting shapes while we clean up, pack up and tidy away so that AG is secure for the coming northern winter.
Barcelona has some interesting architechture and the most well know are the buildings of Gaudi. The last photo is the Sagrada Familia which is still under construction. It is due to be finished in 2026, 100 years after Gaudi's death (and you thought your builders were slow). Gaudi worked on the building for the last 30 years of his life and was killed when he stepped back to admire his work and was hit by a tram. Amazing stained glass windows inside (and outside too actually)
We are now in Barcelona for a few days visiting with our good friends Jim and Deb. This is the Barcelona cathedral. Today is Catalonia's national day so there are lots of activities going on, plus a strong independance theme. Amanda making friends. This monkey type chap is the logo for a local drink, a bit like ouzo. A big thing in Barcelona is the creation of these human towers. The challange is to go as high as possible. Big people at the bottom and smaller as you go up. I was particularly impressed with the young girls, who only look 5 or 6 years old, who climb right to the top. They go up like monkeys, amazing. There were half a dozern teams there taking turns to make their tower, the tallest going up 7 levels, so at least 10 or 12 meters. One tower collapsed with a few people having to visit the attending ambulance.
This week we are having Amanda's birthday week in Palamos, Spain. We have been exploring lots of lovely places with Amanda's friend Suzie. We went to Salvador Dali's castle. Salvador Dali's back garden. Here is Amanda featuring some of her birthday presents. A lovely new necklace and a funky yet tasteful new bag. Amanda's birthday is on the 6th and Suzie's is on the 7th so we had a combined celebration dinner. Happy birthday Amanda and Suzie. It's still birthday week until Sunday so Amanda is the boss of everything but then things return to normal. We leave Palamos on Sunday heading for Barcelona.
We sailed down from France to Spain a couple of days ago. We had to cross the Gulf of Lions which has a reputation for being very windy. We had no wind but a lumpy sea for the first half and 20 knots from astern for the second half so overall not bad. We are visiting Suzie, an old school friend of Amanda's, and her husband Charley. They have been showing us around the local area which has been great. They have taken us to many pretty villages. And up into the mountains away from the coast. This was a pretty impressive waterfall. You can see people standing at the top to give you some scale. Here is the same waterfall from the top. This area of Spain is Catalonia and they recently held a referendum for independence from Spain. The Spanish government quashed the referendum and arrested the local politicians who organised it. The result has been now a much bigger percentage of Catalan people want independence. The signs on the tower are typical of what you see everywhere calling for independance and the release of the politicians arrested. These yellow ribbons are in support of the arrested politicians and you see them everywhere. Here you can see the rutts made by the old carts that travelled this ancient road. More signs of the Catalan independence movement. The flag is the Catalan independence flag and the sign says Free the Political Prisoners.
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October 2019
CategoriesWelcomeCheck out what we have been up to lately. Most of it is even true. |