And Now the Photography—My Top Ten

by | Dec 28, 2024 | Photography

I admit it. I have more than ten photos. But I just could not make up my mind. First, I sorted about 3,000 photos to find my favorites. Then, I broke them down and consulted my wonderful bride and my grandson. Both gave me some good advice. I got down to 28. Six of those were puffin photos from the Isle of Lunga in Scotland. One was easy because it was one of a kind, but the others were really good. Kathleen liked one to add to the top ten and Mason another, so with that, I give you my puffins.

A special note (and I will only say it once, I promise): Don’t forget that if you click the first shot, you can scroll through it with your arrow keys or by swiping. And please don’t look at my photography on a phone.

 

And now for the honorable mentions that aren’t puffins. I will put the locations I shot them in the captions. Again, please click the first one and view them in full-screen mode.

This brings us to the Top Ten. Let’s count down to #1. I have set them up as a single photo gallery, so you can click them to view them full-screen.

Number 10—Djupevatn Lake above the town of Gearanger in Norway. I did a quick pano to get the full wide angle. I heard from someone who was on the cruise before ours and, therefore, had visited this lake two weeks before us. They told me it was still frozen over with tons of snow. You really need to click this one to see it in full-screen mode.

Number 9—Eileen Donan in Dornie Scotland from above. This is Kathleen’s family castle. You see, her mother’s maiden name was McCray, and this is the ancestral home of the McCrays. You may recognize it because it has been in many films and is commonly known as one of the most photogenic castles in all of Scotland. I took a ton of photos of it from ground level, but I knew there was a way to get a shot of it from above. As we were leaving the grounds, I asked one of the parking attendants how to get to the ridge above the castle. He swore me to secrecy and gave me exceptional directions that enabled me to get this shot.

Number 8—Lisbon below the Hotel Portugal. We were having our last dinner with our good friends we travel with every October (Steve, Jamie, Mike & Cathy) in a restaurant on top of a nearby hotel when I took this shot of an open-air market about a block from our hotel. It isn’t often that I get two almost aerial shots in one year.

Number Seven—A political demonstration in Lisbon. I don’t think I have ever taken a newsworthy photo before. Something that covers the news that is happening wherever we are. I was walking back from Lisbon’s Pink Street when I crossed a bridge and saw this march below me. It was so unusual for me that I had to include it in my Top Ten.

Number Six—The Tulip Stairs in the Queen’s Castle Greenwich, England. This beautiful photo is all about the angle. I took about 20 shots of this staircase, but the best of them was looking up its spiral.

Number 5—A pastoral scene just outside Plockton, Scotland. We were driving down a very remote but beautiful road headed to Plockton, Scotland, where we were looking for highland coos. We had seen a YouTube video that there were coos in Plockton (if you don’t know what a highland coo is, wait until my number one photo shows up). But there were no coos. But there was a cow on the other side of the bridge over a creek that just grabbed me as I glimpsed it while driving by. Seriously, I had to jam on the brakes (thankfully, no cars within a mile or so) and back up until I could line up the shot. This shot has grown on me since so many people who have seen it told me they really liked it.

Number 4—Incredible Glencoe in Scotland. Besides being the scene of a terrible massacre of Scottish families by British soldiers in 1692, Glencoe is maybe the most beautiful place I have ever seen. As we were driving from Fort William back to Glasgow, we had two routes we could have taken. One was the quickest and easiest, but we had driven up that way a few days earlier. The other way was longer and went through Glencoe. We were tired from our week in the Highlands, but at the last minute, we decided to do Glencoe. On that route, there is a stretch of road with pull-outs for photographers like me to jump out of their cars and shoot the glorious scenery. I think I stopped at all of them. And the weather cooperated with an amazing combination of sun, clouds and blue sky. These mountains are magnificent in every way, and this would have been my number one shot, but like the puffins, I couldn’t decide between the hundreds I took that day. This one is my favorite. One more thing. Please click it to see it full screen—it needs the space to really understand why I love it.

Number 3–Puffins in action on the Isle of Lunga, Scotland. As I mentioned above, when I wrote about my puffin experience, I took a TON of photos that day. I want to say the total was in the high hundreds or low thousands. The hardest part was getting a decent shot of them flying. I lay or sat on the ground, focused on a particular area and shot at least 200 shots. In all of those, the flying puffins were either blurry or so fast that I missed them completely. This was also one of those times when I didn’t know what I had until I got back to our Bed and Breakfast that night and could look through the shots. I had no clue if I had that shot I wanted or not. It turns out I did. Out of those hundreds of attempted action shots, this isn’t the best puffin flying shot I got…it is the ONLY puffin flying shot I got, but it’s a good one, and I worked hard to get it.

Number 2—Isle of Staffa, Scotland. This is one of those photos that makes people gasp when they see it: This guy is so high on this cliff. I love it because it teaches me something as a photographer—you need humans for scale. I have two versions of this same exact shot. One with a human and one without. The one without is boring. The one with a human catches your eye and pulls you right in. Also, please note the naturally occurring basalt columns at the bottom of the cliff. That’s the reason that Staffa is so famous. You should see the cave below the cliff—WOW!

Number 1—My favorite Highland Coo on the Isle of Skye. This guy just called out to me. Actually, he is kind of tired of me. I have an entire series of shots of this guy posing, but this is my favorite. After being disappointed in Plockton when we didn’t find any coos, we were driving by a farm on the Isle of Skye with a small herd right near a fence. We pulled over, and I took quite a few shots. Our forever neighbor Lisa thinks it should be framed and hung in our house or maybe in hers. Either way, I agree. I love it, and I love pretty much all Highland Coos. They are glorious creatures.

Please let me know in the comments what you like or how you would have rearranged the order. I love discussion. 

Which brings us to the end of 2024. This will be my last post of a pretty darn good year with lots of travel, lots of memories and lots of photography. 2025 looks interesting but with a little less travel. We have nothing scheduled until July, when we head to Southern Africa to fulfill my one remaining photo milestone—shooting a safari. BUT…In the meantime, I do have a photographic project coming on January 1, but you will just have to wait until that day to find out about it. Thanks for sticking with me all year long. Travel safely.

That’s all, folks   —Porky Pig

 

 

Once again…Let Me Sum Up

by | Nov 5, 2024 | Uncategorized

Whew! We are home, but to be honest, I am still having a hard time remembering what day it is. Hopefully, I will get over that soon. Jet lag is pretty much over, but real life is intruding into my travel life. It’s so much fun (sarcasm here) getting home to more than 200 emails I had been just throwing into a folder in Mail to be read when we were home. Now, I have to read them and respond to them. I want to go on vacation again.

Our trip home was pretty decent. The airports got the wheelchair stuff for Kathleen correct this time. British Airways surprised us with two decent Indian meals on two flights. We stayed overnight at a Terminal 5 hotel (Sofitel) and found that we liked the Terminal 3 hotel (Hilton Garden Inn) we had stayed in last June a lot better. Our flight was on time, our luggage showed up quickly, we looked at the camera in passport control, and we were out of there in less than 15 minutes from when we got off the plane. Our Welcome Pickups guy grabbed us, and with the light traffic after 7:00, we were home in no time. Kathleen was off to bed. I got the mail, watched the Dodgers win the World Series and then hit the hay. A good end to a great trip.

Madrid

Going back to the very beginning, we liked Madrid a lot. We stayed at the Hotel Preciados in downtown. As you may recall, we toured for three full days: one in Toledo (our best day), one in Segovia (another great day), and one in Madrid itself, which could have been better. Read all about those in previous posts. The summary of Madrid was that we had a great time, and we’ve now been there and done that. It’s now crossed off our list, and we won’t be going back. A nice city, but it was no Edinburgh or Amsterdam for us—but we are glad we visited once.

Lisbon with Viking

The next stop was Lisbon before our Douro River cruise. As soon as we got there, we met Marianne, who was amazing. She was not only the person directing our pre-cruise stay in Lisbon but also the Program Director on our entire river cruise. She proved to be one of the best parts of the whole 10 days we spent with Viking. Her laugh, her sense of humor and the fact that she was always UP and always FUN made her someone we will remember for quite a while. More about Marianne later.

Sadly, as you have read, when we were touring Lisbon with Viking, Fatima, the worst guide I have ever experienced, ruined the entire experience for me. Not only would she not shut up, but she insulted me, too.

Our Douro River Cruise

OK, this is what you have been waiting for—how was the cruise? In a quick word, it was awesome. We love river cruising. We really didn’t discover how much we liked it with our Christmas Market cruise on the Danube last winter because it was so darned cold. So, if you have done a Christmas Market cruise, go back and do a warm weather cruise like the Douro and see what you missed.

One of my absolute favorite things about this cruise was seeing the cruise. By that, I mean that on our Danube cruise, most of the movement on the river was accomplished either at night when we were asleep or during the day when we were on an excursion. My absolute favorite part of our Douro River cruise was sailing on the river. I think I mentioned in a previous post that I could do this cruise again and never get off the ship. Seriously, my favorite days were the ones where we spent the majority of the time sailing on the river and watching Portugal go by.

Shore Excursions

Don’t get me wrong, the shore excursions were just fine. If I had to rate them, I would put Salamanca, Spain as #1 because it was like going back to what Europe used to be in the early 2,000s before over-tourism started. I also enjoyed the short visit to Castelo Rodrigo. I mean, the castle was nice, but the best part was that it was brief. We sailed most of the day and then did about a three-hour excursion to a somewhat interesting place. Probably my third favorite was the second half of our first day when we visited the Mateus Palace. What snoozer. But the second half of the day was to visit the Sandeman winery, where they make their wonderful port wine, and be shown around by a guide who really knew what she was talking about and made the tour fun. That was it. The rest of the days, the excursion was either blah (Favios), or we didn’t go (Lamego).

The ship/boat

I really have yet to spend any time discussing the ship itself. Unlike the Viking Longship, we sailed on the Danube, the Douro River boats (you can put a boat on a ship, but you can’t put a ship on a boat, and I think you could put a Douro River boat on a big ocean-going vessel) are smaller due to the smaller locks they must get through. So, instead of carrying up to 190 passengers like the Danube boats do, the Douro River boats carry a maximum of 106, and ours only had 99. That makes so much difference. It’s much more intimate. You get to know most of the crew because there are only 36 of them. And they all do all sorts of jobs. One of our favorite people onboard was Mitra. His official title (on his name tag) said, “Bar Chef.” He was the best bartender on board, and he really kept things going in the lounge. But he was also the sommelier in the dining room and helped out waiting on tables or restocking the buffet as well. Our favorite server in the dining room, Ovi, not only served us dinner but also was the crew member who walked us to our stateroom on embarkation to show us how everything worked. She often worked in the lounge serving drinks. The lady got around.

Embarkation/Disembarkation

Speaking of embarkation…those of you who have suffered through a three-hour embarkation as we did in May 2023 to get on Koningsdam in Vancouver or anything like it will LOVE embarkation on a river cruise. Especially this one. Since we had spent two days with Viking in Lisbon before we boarded the boat, they had everyone on one of four “luxury motor coaches,” and they staggered their morning departures, which meant that each of the “luxury motor coaches” made it to the ship about 15 to 20 minutes apart. So when we arrived, we went up the gangway, and they asked us our names. We were escorted (us by Ovi) to our stateroom, and our luggage arrived minutes later.

Disembarkation was just as efficient. We were given a list of when every stateroom would be getting off (we had been asked in advance how we would be leaving the ship) and told to put our big luggage out in the hallway outside our rooms 15 minutes before we would get off. Then, at our appointed time, we got up and got off. Simple as that. It really pays to be on a smaller boat.

Our stateroom

Our stateroom was a suite. There, I said it. We splurged and booked a suite. It wasn’t that much more, but it got us some things we really wanted. The first was an actual extra room. We had both a living room and a bedroom. Not to mention a walk-in closet and a smallish bath (smaller than on our Danube cruise). So when I would wake up really early, I could sit in the living room and work on photos or on a new post without waking up Kathleen or needing to get completely dressed and go to the lounge.

The other reason we LOVED this suite was…free laundry. Yes, folks, we could send out as much laundry as we wanted, and it was included. On our Danube cruise, we had sent out a few things because we had already been in Lisbon for a few days, and then we did Prague and Nuremberg as a pre-cruise extension, so when we got on, we needed to have some things washed. But the prices were OFF THE CHARTS! As I recall, I got one pair of jeans, two pairs of socks, and two shirts, and it cost me $20. On Viking Torgil, we got to the ship with lots of dirty laundry from four days in Madrid, two nights in Lisbon and a single suitcase each. We immediately sent out all our dirty laundry (they gave us two really nice-sized bags to send it out in) and had it back early the next day. From that point on, I pretty much sent out laundry every day. Whatever I wore the day before, send it out! And it got to the point where it would come back on the same day.

If you would like to see photos of the suite, you may have to wait. I suddenly realized when we got home that I had never really taken any pictures of the suite. I had a couple (the bedroom and bathroom) but missed the living room. But never fear; you will be able to see a whole bunch soon because Mike and Cathy had the same type of suite we did, and Mike always does an awesome job of taking ship/boat/stateroom photos. His review of the cruise with all those photos should be out soon (HEY MIKE—is the review done yet? ?). When it is done, I will post about it, and you can find it right here at www.thepreismans.com. In the meantime, here are a few photos I took of our room.

The Food

Everyone wants to know about the food on a cruise. We have found that Viking does a “fine” job of food on its ocean and river cruises. By that, we mean we like the food. It’s not gourmet, and it doesn’t hold a candle to Oceania. But our most memorable meals on this trip came when we were off the boat (lunch in Toledo and lunch in Cascais come to mind).

On board Viking Torgil, we had a wonderful British chef named Michael Bee Venet. I say he is wonderful less for his culinary skills than for his wonderful personality. Every night, he would preview the meal at our pre-dinner destination talk. He was hilarious. He also regularly stopped by everyone’s table. At breakfast, he would often come around with a special baked good and serve it to us himself.

But we thought his food was oversalted. Sometimes, it was just finishing salt. Some soups were fine when you got down below the surface, but those first three spoonfuls were very salty. We also thought the food was better at the beginning of the week than at the end. It wasn’t bad, just not as good. On a scale of one to ten, it was an eight when we started and a six when we finished.

By the way, when you take a Douro river cruise, you eat all your meals in the dining room. It is totally casual. I think we only saw anyone in anything dressy twice. OMG— people wore shorts in the dining room. We wore jeans and tennis shoes. On our Danube cruise, there was a small buffet area at the front of the boat, but not on the smaller Douro boat. It was the dining room or hunger.

All in all, the food was good and plentiful, and we had nothing to complain about…or wait! I want to complain about the bread. It was too good. Seriously, it may be the best bread I have had on any cruise. Delicious—and I ate way too much of it. Oh, and there were fewer veggies than we would have liked as well. Kind of like our ocean cruise on Viking Venus in June; there was a lot of red meat, which we try to avoid at home. Here’s a gallery of some dishes we ate on this trip. I will try to tell you where we ate them, but if you like great food, check them out. All were shot with my phone, so feel free to look at them on yours. Remember, you can click them to enlarge them and scroll through. I’ll start with some photos of where we all ate.

I almost forgot the “Steve Test.” For those of you unfamiliar with the Steve Test. I call this the Steve Test because my brother Steve came up with it. I think it’s brilliant. This is the entire test: If you eat in a restaurant while traveling, and if that restaurant is near you once you get home, would you go there again? If it were in your hometown, would we eat there regularly? For this trip, the places that passed the Steve test were Clandestina in Toledo, the Lebanese restaurant behind the TimeOut Market and a few of the meals on Torgil, but the ultimate A+ on the Steve Test went to the Chicken restaurant in Cascais on the day we toured Sintra. I know my brother believes it’s the best chicken he has ever had.

Entertainment

If you have been reading my stuff for a while, you know we have kind of given up on shows. Besides, they really don’t have shows on river cruises. However, they did have some great entertainers come on board while we were in ports, and Mike will have photos of those, I am sure. He can stay up later than we can. But I did want to mention two of the best entertainers I have ever seen on a ship—river or ocean.

The first is not really an entertainer but a server in the restaurant. He was kind of in charge of singing Happy Birthday to anyone celebrating one. He also was a total clown. He has a great voice, but what really makes him GREAT is his face. He can turn it into the absolute funniest looks you have ever seen. Here are a few shots of our buddy Agus doing his thing.

He was so special that I am going to try to add a video I took of him. If it works, it’s right here. IT WORKED!

[videopress UVzEfu7W]

The other amazing performer on the ship was our wonderful, incredible, marvelous, fantastic Program Director, Marianne. We had heard that she was going to sing one night after dinner in the lounge. We were both pretty tired, but I persuaded Kathleen to go, and were we ever glad we did. She was all those adjectives I put up above and more. It might be the best show I have ever seen on any ship or boat. For sure, it was the most fun. And now that I got the Agus video to load, here’s a little bit of Marianne’s show.

[videopress or6hDDlg]

Besides being the best Program/Cruise Director we have ever sailed with (35+ cruises), she is one of the nicest and most caring people you will ever meet. We would take a cruise she was on just to sail with her.

To Sum Up

How much did we enjoy this river cruise? For the first time in more than twenty years (since we took our first Panama Canal cruise on Celebrity’s Infinity in 2004), we don’t have an ocean cruise booked, and we don’t think we will take one in the foreseeable future. We have booked a Chobe River cruise in Africa, a Columbia River Cruise, and a Great Lakes cruise, but that’s it. We can’t think of anywhere that big-ship ocean cruises go that we still really want to see. We aren’t saying we wouldn’t go if friends wanted to go together, but we have been there and done that just about everywhere ocean cruises go. I guess we are now river cruise people.

WAIT! I almost forgot the best part of the entire trip—getting to travel once again with Steve, Jamie, Mike and Cathy—our October gang. We will all do it again next October when we cruise the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.    —Heraclitus

Like Europe Used to Be—Salamanca, Spain!

by | Oct 23, 2024 | Uncategorized

Kathleen and I started coming to Europe in 2002 when we went to Italy for the first time. Since then, we have been back at least 20 times. We genuinely love this continent. But I am sure you have seen the protests due to over-tourism. That’s a problem many tourist destination cities are having, with too many people showing up and using up all the local resources and overcrowding cities, especially cruise ports. But our visit to Salamanca, Spain, was like going back in time—a European city before tourism discovered it. Don’t get me wrong, there were still souvenir shops and tourist cafes, but it just reminded us of the first time we were in places like Venice, Florence, Barcelona or Palermo.

Our day (like most days when you cruise the Douro River) started with a long ride on a “luxury motor coach” from our mooring spot on the river up the canyons and then a long drive on the plateau above the river. This one was our longest ride but with the biggest reward. It was also (at nine hours) the longest we would be away from the Torgil. Again, I can’t stress enough how great the “luxury motor coaches” Viking uses here on the Douro are. They are truly luxurious. It helps so much to face a 3+ hour drive (round trip) on a bus when it has so much legroom, decent WiFi and an excellent guide who tells you what you want to know and lets you look out the window (on the way there) or sleep (on the way back).

After a “comfort stop” about halfway there, we arrived in Salamanca around 10:00 a.m. with no expectations. Our first stop was the local Mercado (market). It’s not a big market—about one-tenth the size of La Bocadilla in Barcelona or about one-quarter the size of Pike Place Market in Seattle. Viking had arranged a cheese, sausage and wine tasting. And as our guide, Marianna, said, “It’s 5:00 p.m. somewhere.” The tiny bites (billed as tapas—which they weren’t) were just right for that time of the day. I skipped the wine. It has become my experience that if they give you red wine in the morning at a stand-up spot in a market, it’s not going to be the best wine ever. Here are some shots I took in the market and on the river that morning. No reminder is needed for my regular readers.

After the “tapas,” we were broken up into smaller groups, and each group got a local guide who let us explore the city further. We got fortunate with our guide, Maria Carmen (she said to call her Mamen). She was one of the best we had on the whole cruise. She knew her city and had a wonderful sense of humor. Sadly, she was not with us all day, but just enough that we truly got the flavor of her city. Her part of the tour started in the Plaza Mayor (I think every Spanish city has one of these) and took us through the University to the old and new cathedrals. They were genuinely unusual cathedrals as they were attached to each other, and you could move freely between them. Mamen got us right up to the steps of the new cathedral before she let us go off on our own—one note here about how great Viking was on this tour. Once we were no longer touring with Mamen, they had made arrangements in advance that if we just showed our Viking lanyard (attached to our Quiet Vox listening devices—see the one on Mamen’s neck above), we could get into many attractions and Viking paid the entrance fee. That’s classy. I think the best way for me to show you what we saw later in the tour is to post the photos with some short and sweet captions. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Now that Mamen had let us go, I decided to tour the cathedral quickly before heading back to Plaza Mayor, where Kathleen awaited. I am truly glad I did. I don’t usually take a lot of photos of the insides of churches. I leave that to my buddy Mike. In fact, Bob (my best Canadian friend) and I like to make fun of Mike for all the cathedral photos he takes. Don’t believe me? Wait until Mike posts his review of this trip, and I will link it so you can see 10x the photos I took in this church…and all the other churches in the world ?.

But this cathedral was so beautiful, I just kept taking photo after photo. See for yourself. Pretend the usual warning about phones is here, OK?

One last thing before we leave Salamanca. While waiting with Kathleen, I took did street photography and want to share them. It’s the best thing a photographer can do to capture the heart of a city.

After our excursion, I met Kathleen, and we grabbed a snack (a pizza and two glasses of wine for less than 12 euros—what a deal), met the rest of the gang, had a gelato (so we could have a place to sit), met up with the big group and then went to an old casino (now used as a convention/banquet space) where Viking had snacks for us. We skipped them (pretty dry sandwiches), but we were returning to the ship in less than 20 minutes, which was GREAT! We had a fantastic time in Salamanca, which to me is what Europe used to be like. Sadly, I am sure if I came back in five years, it would be overrun as well.

Overtourism is like planning a dinner party for 12 and 12,000 showing up.   —Elizabeth Becker, noted tourism expert

El Escorial and Segovia—What An Amazing Day!

by | Oct 15, 2024 | Uncategorized

This was another long day—a very long day. Mike had found us an outstanding tour guide who would take us north to see two incredible places: the monastery at El Escorial and the town (with castle and more) of Segovia.

To start the day, I slept in. I know—me? Sleeping in? Well, it was only until 5:45, but that’s late for me. What was GREAT for me was getting a full night’s sleep after waking up the day before at 1:45 a.m. But that’s why your post for yesterday was delayed.

We met for breakfast at the hotel at 8:00, were picked up by our wonderful driver, Guillermo, at 9:00 and were off in Madrid traffic to our destinations today—the monastery at El Escorial and the town of Segovia. Word of warning here: I took a lot of photos yesterday, and I could not decide which ones I liked the most, so you will be seeing a lot of them.

Guillermo got us to the monastery on time, and our guide for the day, Coral, met us. Her name is Coral (like reefs are made from), but it is pronounced like the OK Corral. No matter how her name sounded, she was excellent. And we had her for the entire day (except lunch), making our experience more personal and engaging.

I could spend a lot of time telling you about the monastery, but it would be easier if you were interested in its significance in Spanish history and checked out their website by clicking here. I will give you the rundown through my photos, and hopefully, that will intrigue you enough to get you to research a little more or perhaps be lucky enough to tour it with Coral someday. So, without further ado, here’s El Escorial in my photos with captions. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

I need to mention that the most amazing room (for me) was down a narrow, winding set of stairs to the actual burial chamber of the most important Kings and Queens of Spain. No photography was allowed from the time we started down the stairs until we came back up again, but I did steal this photo online so you could see what you missed.

If you’re interested at all, please make sure to click the link to the monastery I posted above.

After we finished touring the monastery, it was time to travel to Segovia, where we would have lunch next to a Roman aqueduct and see the most fantastic castle. The ride from El Escorial to Segovia took about 45 minutes (the ride from Madrid to El Escorial had taken about an hour with traffic). Coral did not come with us in the van but said she would meet us at the restaurant right after lunch.

When we arrived in Segovia, we were going to lunch at Mesón de Candido, a very old restaurant…probably the most famous in Segovia because it sat right at the bottom of the Roman aqueduct. At this point, it is time for some aqueduct and Segovia square photos because words can’t describe it. Maybe my captions can.

Lunch was wonderful. We ate outside. The only drawback to eating outside in Spain is the smoke. Cigarettes are still prevalent here, especially when around Asian tour groups who seem to have no problem surrounding you with smokers. We were seated under umbrellas in the square, and at one point, when it started drizzling, non-customer tourists surrounded us, many smoking like chimneys. It’s kind of a sad way to ruin a good meal.

After lunch, Coral found us again, and we told her how truly impressive the Segovian aqueduct was to us, and she said, “Just wait.” She wasn’t kidding. Our next stop was a short break to an incredible site below the Alcázar de Segovia castle. This was an authentic medieval castle, but when you see it, you start thinking that maybe someone in Segovia ordered up a Hollywood castle, just like you would see in the movies. Well, it’s not a set. It’s real, and it’s incredible. Not only was the castle impressive, but from there, the views in every direction were astounding. (I know, that’s a lot of superlatives, but look at the photos and tell me I am exaggerating.) Here are the rest of the shots I took in front and inside this amazing edifice.

All I can say to sum up this wonderful day is WOW! From start to finish, we had a fantastic time. A great driver, a very comfortable van (not a “luxury motor coach”), a superb tour guide, a great lunch and so many incredible sights. It was just a totally WOW day.

In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.  — Federico Garcia Lorca

Marching Around Madrid

by | Oct 15, 2024 | Uncategorized

So far on this trip, I have been a very frustrated photographer. It’s not that I haven’t been able to take any photos. On the contrary, I have taken more than 1,000. But what is frustrating is that I have been unable to do my early morning photo walks and get pictures when the light is at its best. Regular readers know I love to shoot during the “blue hour” and the “golden hour.” Well, those barely exist in Madrid or in all of Spain because of a little-known time anomaly. It seems that sometime in the past, the Spaniards were trying to make peace with the British and one of the things they did to show how much they loved all things British was put themselves in the same time zone as Great Britain when actually they should be about a time zone and a half further east. So, if you fly straight north from here, you would be in Warsaw, Poland, but the time here correlates to London. This means that sunrise today was around 8:30 am. That’s too late for me to be out shooting photos when we have to be heading our on tours at 9:00. Yesterday, I was about a mile away and thought it was still around 6:30, and it turned out to be 7:50, and I was supposed to meet the rest of the group for breakfast at 8:00. YIKES…so I walked really fast and barely made it back—only a little late. Let me toss in the early morning shots I did get right here. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After we finished the breakfast that I was late for; it was time to leave the hotel for a one-of-a-kind Madrid experience—churros and chocolate. We had heard (YouTube videos) that there were two places famous for their churros and the hot chocolate you dip them into. The oldest and most famous is Chocolatería San Ginés. I found it on my early morning walk, so I led the gang down to try out the churros dipped in what is pretty much melted chocolate. It was awesome. But on the way down, Kathleen’s knee and neuropathy started giving her problems, so she and I walked back up to the hotel (the nearest Uber or Bolt was 20 minutes away) while the rest of the group walked ahead to find our guide for the day.

Speaking of walking, I did a lot of walking yesterday. My Map My Walk/Run app shows that I walked more than ten miles. Some of my walking was for exercise and photography reasons, but we had also booked a walking tour of Madrid through a company called The Tour Guy.

The Tour Guy company is a tour broker who books tours with different companies worldwide to do tours in a particular place…in this case, Madrid. Mike had used them before in other locations. Those who have read my posts in the past, you know that I am a massive fan of Tours by Locals, but since Mike had booked with them before, we went with them. I made the booking because if you are booking with The Tour Guy for the first time, you get a discount.

Our tour was assigned to a company called Touring Pandas. Even though we got a local guide, I did some checking this morning and the tour company we were brokered out to is based in Korea. That in itself is interesting.

I say all this to preface that we had a good tour guide. Her name was Taylor, and she is from Newcastle, England. She spoke with a beautiful British accent and has lived in Madrid for four years. She knew all about the city and shared great tips with us for food and drink after the tour.

The two anchor spots of this tour (places you really want to see and learn more about) are the Royal Palace and the Prado Art Museum. So we started by walking around, catching fun and exciting parts of Madrid between our meeting spot in the Puerta Del Sol and our big morning stop, the Palace. Everything was great right up until that point.

Then, the big surprise. Taylor told us that after we got in (with our pre-paid tickets—buy yours before you go because otherwise, the wait is very long), we could rent audio guides that would take us through the entire Palace. Mike said, “Well, we won’t need those since you will give us a live tour.” Taylor said, “No, I don’t come in with you. I’ll leave you here to tour the Palace and then have lunch on your own. I will meet you in a park on the other side of Madrid at 3:00 pm. We will tour the park, and then I will take you to the Prado, where you have pre-reserved tickets, and you will tour The Prado on your own as well.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. I know Mike was surprised as well. We had paid for an eight-hour tour (it says that on our reservation), but this meant we were getting about a three-hour tour.

That’s different from what we were looking for. We wanted what we had the day before with Fernando in Toledo: a guide who was with us from the time we got out of our van until we finished at the end of the day, who took us into museums and cathedrals and didn’t just drop us off outside of them.

But when Taylor arrived on time, she told us a lot about the Plaza del Sol, where the tour started, and the Bear and Strawberry Tree statue where we met. Then we left the plaza and headed towards Plaza Mayor, The Mercado, the Basilica, and finally winding up at the Palace, where we had tickets to the tour that I mentioned above. At this point, I was feeling bad about Kathleen being stuck in the hotel all by herself, and I knew she wouldn’t want to go out to lunch alone, so I decided to buzz through the Palace fairly quickly and head back to the hotel to take her out to lunch somewhere near the hotel while the rest of the group took a leisurely stroll through on their tour. Here are my photos from the morning part of the tour and my zoom through the Palace (the photo at the top of this page is the Spanish throne room). Enjoy, and you know the drill.

I should say that it was INCREDIBLY difficult to buzz through the Palace because it has a lot of choke points where the thousands of Asian tour groups just seemed to stop to listen to their guide in their earpieces…but at least they had a guide.

After I finally got out of there, I was off to the hotel and surprised Kathleen by taking her to an Italian place just down the block from the hotel so she didn’t have to walk very far. We had a nice lunch, and then after I got her back to the hotel, I walked off to meet up with Taylor and the rest of the gang at El Retiro Park, which is Madrid’s answer to New York’s Central Park. It is truly a beautiful place, as I hope you will see in my photos. By the way, the weather yesterday was hit or miss. It started out OK, switched to cloudy and cool, the sun finally came out, and within 20 minutes, it was threatening rain again. Go figure.

When I got to El Retiro Park, Taylor walked us around, saying she would take us to the Prado and drop us off there. To be honest, at that point I had been up since 1:30 am, I had walked more than nine miles and I am not that big a fan of Spanish art. So I bid my farewells and walked my way back to the hotel. The other four of our group had a very nice time seeing the Prado and made it back in time for all of us to go out for tapas at another place down the street. They have excellent food and what has become a favorite drink, vermouth on the rocks with lemon. We are sitting on our bed at the hotel (after our day—today—in Segovia—more about that tomorrow), drinking two of them. Let’s finish up our day in Madrid with my afternoon photos. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

That about did it for our day in Madrid. Today (I am writing this at about 8:00 pm on Tuesday), we were in Segovia, and it was AWESOME! We fly to Lisbon tomorrow to start our Viking portion of the trip tomorrow. More about all of that soon.

I never heard anyone say anything bad about Madrid.  —Antonio Ruddier