Caceres- 17th till 20th January 2012

On our way north from Portugal to the ferry at Santander, we stopped for a four day break in the Spanish town of Caceres.  The main attraction was the Old Town, which is UNESCO World Heritage site due to its blend of Roman, Moorish, Gothic and Italian Renaissance architecture.  The Old Town still has its wall intact and there hasn't been any modern development within it.  We had a good roam around it and visited a few churches, museums and underground cisterns, which were very cool.

Morg of the steps leading from the main town square, Plaza Mayor, into the Old Town

Los Golfines de Abajo Palace

Overlooking Plaza Mayor from the Old City walls.

One of the completely mad but very amusing tiny dogs that ruled the Plaza Mayor

San Francisco Javier Church

View from the bell tower

Interior of San Francisco Javier Church

Underneath San Francisco Javier Church was a small museum dedicated to the various religious festivals that are held in the town and surrounding area.  These are different priestly outfits worn for those various festivals.

In the museum.  One of these guys has rock hard abs.

Happy pig says...

One of the very cool underground cisterns.

View from the entrance to the modern art gallery

Cathedral de Santa Maria 

The bells!  The bells!

View from the bell tower

Inside the Cathedral de Santa Maria

It took a couple of days to get our heads around the switch from Portugese (Meat!!!!!!!!) to Spanish food (tapas)-  but one meal that deserves a special mention was a tapas lunch that we had in the Plaza Mayor.  We got 3 or 4 tapas to share.  Each was 3 or 4 euros and they were incredible- you would have been happy to get most of them at a fine dining restaurant as an entree.
We also had a few fun meals at our campground restaurant- 9 euros for entree, main, dessert, bread and a drink!  Not bad at all.

On the left is the roll of calamari, served with sauce of this, sprinkling of that etc- very fancy and delicious.  On the right is the raspberry gazpacho, a local specialty.  If someone had told me how delicious cold raspberry coup with oil, breadcrumbs and a truffle cream would be I definitely wouldn't have believed them!

Afternoon G&T in the campground.

After leaving Caceres we did one massive haul north all the way to Santander.  It was a long and really  boring drive, mostly because for a large proportion of the time it looked like this....

The scenery was rather bland (apologies for the crappy through-the-windscreen photo). 3 - 4 hours of driving in fog = not fun. If you look very carefully you can see a truck on the other side of the road. However - finally passed the 10,000mile mark!

And after a brief stay in Santander it was adios and back on the ferry to the UK.  It feels a bit sad to be leaving Europe and finishing our time in the motorhome, but we're pretty excited about our month in the USA.  So bring it on!

Tavira- 11th till 16th January 2012

Our next "location of laziness" was Tavira, at the eastern end of the Algarve and close to the Spanish border.  Tavira is a very charming town set about the Rio Gilao, and is definitely less touristy than other parts of the Algarve.  Despite it being very much the low season there were enough people out and about to make wandering around town interesting.  We ate a lot of meat, visited a few bars, saw the old Castelo and stared at the outsides of many closed churches.  Honestly- closed churches, even on Sundays?!

One of the town squares in Tavira.  Or as we call them, the places where old men in cheese-cutters hang out all day long and talk.

Igreja da Misericordia

The Irega had the most beautiful tile work in this unusual pattern.

Morgan on top of the Castelo

OSH?  What OSH?

Convento de Graca

Rio Gilao

This guy was fishing off the bridge.  But no mere fishing rod for him- he uses a spear gun!  Apparently the day before we had caught an 8kg fish!

One of the beautiful closed churches.

Rio Gilao

Vino Rosada and macaroons by the river.  Roughing it. 

A few of the gorgeous tiles we saw on the local houses.

Our actual campsite was in Cabanas, which had a lovely waterfront area with bars and cafe's. A visiting Scot told us that a lot of the local towns are suffering because most of the new housing was bought by foreigners (the Irish, in the case of Cabanas), who now can't afford to visit, and can't sell the homes (or finish building them in some cases). So many of these towns are quite empty.

The waterfront at Cabanas

A very fun wee bar called Copacabanas!.....

..which made delicious sangria.  I'm sure the Spanish won't mind.

Feijoada- a traditional stew of beans and stuff.  We picked the seafood option rather than the pigs trotters and tripe.

We also did a day trip to Faro, one of the larger towns of the Algarve.  The old town is very picturesque so we took what photos we could......before our camera battery died!  Ah well.

The Arco da Vila - note storks + nests.

The Cathedral

View from the top of the bell tower.

The square around the cathedral was lined with beautiful orange trees.  I also love the patterned paving they use in Portugal.

Inside the cathedral.

Yes, reliquaries are creepy.  Strangely these weren't even named.

So it's "Adeus" Portugal and back to the UK- with a little stop in Spain on the way. The weather has been fantastic, and a welcome relief from some fairly challenging conditions in the UK. It was also great being in campgrounds with other people again. We had been pretty much by ourselves in campgrounds (apart from York) since leaving Josh and Helen.

It was wonderful to see Jeremy, Rachel and Maia, and we also definitively achieved our main goal of being very lazy in our last stint before turning around and heading back to the UK.