If you are wondering about the choice of “Amazeballs” for use in this title, I was, until recently, just like you. Our travel buddy Lisa, whom you met in Evora, used the term occasionally. In Lisbon, we went out with Lisa and several of her colleagues from Cambridge, and she used the term. I asked, […]
Author: Steve
Sintra – Felt Like Winta
So everyone said that you just had to go to Sintra if you visit Lisbon. Sintra is a day trip away, there are many buses, trains, and tours. We decided to go. It had been fairly warm in Lisbon, and the weather promised to continue in this manner. Even though we’d been told that Sintra […]
Évora – Wildflowers and Megaliths
Évora is the capital of Portugal’s Alentejo region. I’d never heard of this region before, but having sampled a few Alentejo red wines, one can be sure that I will be seeing its name again. Unfortunately, Ellen was pretty knocked down with a cold when we arrived at this university town of about 56,000 residents. […]
The Algarve
We took the overnight from Madrid to Lisbon. It is the only train between the two cities, and runs on old, bumpy, slow, and uncomfortable track. One would think that Spain is not the largest trading partner of Portugal. As we arrived at 7:20 in the morning, we decided to head straight down to the […]
The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on Madrid
According to Wikipedia, “Spanish rain does not actually stay mainly in the plain. It falls mainly in the northern mountains. In Spanish, the phrase was translated as La lluvia en Sevilla es una maravilla (The rain in Seville is marvellous). The lyric about Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire implies (but does not entail) that hurricanes ever occur […]
Grecotown
Nancy, Ellen, and I did a daytrip to Toledo. We took the high speed train, as it takes 30 minutes, vs. 90 on the bus. It was another whirlwind, but would like to go back sometime. We didn’t get to see many of the panoramas from a distance for which Toledo is famous. It’s also […]
Happy Birthday StevenEllen.com
1 Year Anniversary of the Blog! 7 Month Anniversary of Departing the Twin Cities! Last year on the 11th of May we made the first post on www.stevenellen.com. It was an exciting time as we were psyched about moving to South Africa to join the Peace Corps, preceded with a bit of travel to see friends […]
Cordoba
To be fair, we did Cordoba in a whirlwind. We drove from Sevilla along the impressive Spanish highways. It took maybe two hours. Nancy’s phone had Google GPS and it generally helped us find where we needed to go. We had rented another Airbnb and the map showed that is was located within the walls […]
Seville
Sevilla was founded by Hercules about 3000 years ago. He did a fine job. It is now one of the coolest places in the world. (It seems we’re saying that quite often in Spain). Sevilla is about 100 km up the Guadalquivir River from Cádiz, and it is a inland shipping port (container ships, etc.). It was where […]
Cádiz
We decided to stop in Cádiz on the way to Sevilla because Ellen’s family had hosted a social worker from Cádiz many years ago. When Ellen and I went sailing in the early 80’s with her parents, they had some work done on the boat in Gibraltar, and we took the bus to Cádiz to visit Maria […]