When In Spain.....

Recently Bec, Bjorn, and myself took a trip to Spain. The images are all out of order, but hopefully you will enjoy them nonetheless.

This image was taken at a big park in Madrid. The park had a pond where you could rent row boats and go oar around looking at statues along the water, or in our case find some shade in front of the statues.










While in Spain we had two goals, one was to go see John and Kadee Hughs since they were living there, and two, was to see some cool stuff. In this image, we are on the beach, located right in front of the Hughes rental house (nice) near Ferrol/A Coruna. Bjorn wanted to get his feet wet.




Another afternoon at the beach. When we first arrived in Spain, it rained everyday for the first week. So this was some welcome sun.





This is in Santiago, Bjorn and I are getting ready to eat some of Becca's pulpo (octopus) that she ordered, a speciality of this region.







Ok, so from here on out if you see a picture of cool limestone mountains and crags, you are looking at Picos de Europa. It's a Spanish national park.


This is a little hydroelectric dam, with a fish ladder next to it. Yep those fish do want to get up and past this dam that bad. So when the fish get to the bottom of the fish ladder they say DAM!!








The clouds cleared for a bit so that you can see some neat terrain.








I wouldn't show this picture to a cow in Arizona. We thought that we had died and gone to cow heaven.

I'm not sure what this structure in the middle of a beautiful meadow was supposed to be for, I imagine it's for religious purposes, but it sure did make for a good framing of the mountains in the background. Ian is taken it easy on the stone bench.

The Hughes, guiding us through the treacherous mountains.

They had these cool structures all over the place. They were used to store grains and such. They are called orreos.

Bjorn is sitting in a highchair for the first time and he looks excited.

This was taken at Segovia. Becca had quit the eye and saw this opportunity to take a picture.

Kadee had a sit on top to paddle around. So we dragged it down to the beach and took Bjorn for a cruise.

This was located next to a church in Covadonga. Here Pelayo held out from the Moors in 718, the last region standing in Spain at that time. A service procession was going on. A lot of churches and such were all over the place.

Some of the time when we would be hiking around it would be raining and kind of cool, so we would wrap the boy up. He looked extra special in this photo though.

Here we are at Segovia where one of the largest Roman Aqua ducts is still standing, built about 100AD. It's made out of granite, laid stone on stone, impressive. This place was one of my highlights for the trip. The only problem was that we had just landed in Spain a few hours before this picture was taken and we were absolutely exhausted, super-duper exhausted.

Some more incredible scenary.

Beautiful trails, I couldn't take it all in.

Here we are again for a family picture.

Jack is excited to walk out to the stone structure, just like the rest of us.

Cool old stone Roman bridge in Cangas de Onis, built in 437. Hanging down in the middle (kinda hard to see) is a Victoria Cross with Alpha and Omega. It crosses the rio Sella which John and I got to float for a bit downstream.

I know that the chained gate kind of takes away from the picture, but try to imagine it not being there. This was a pretty typical scene, cottage, green, and a church (Basilica of Nuestra Senora de las Batallas, that's a mouthful) in the background.

This was our last day in Madrid and Spain, it was HOT. We had been riding around all day in the subways and decided to go back to the hotel and cool off and take a shower before we headed out for another round on the town. So this is where we say good bye and thanks to the Hughes family for being great hosts and guides.