Vacations are about sleeping in late and then having a nice breakfast/brunch when you do decide to get up – right?  FORGET IT, that memo was misplaced, or I suspect purposefully hidden from me, for most of our Spain trip. :-)

So after being up 30 hours, hours of walking and a late Friday night dinner, we arose somewhere around 7am, checked out of the Madrid hotel and transported ourselves via the metro with luggage back to the airport to get our rental car for the trip — actually, I felt energized…perhaps it was the excitement of the journey.  Once we’d finished fitting the four of us and 10-days worth of luggage into the car we set out for an enjoyable drive north on the Spanish A-1 to the small mountain town of Azpeitia, Spain, where we spent our second and third nights in Spain.

This drive was our longest single day drive with only a few stops to take in interesting towns and sights along the A-1.  We even grabbed snacks from the equivalent of a Spanish truck stop.  Do we know how to travel or what? ;-)

Setting my camera for a fast shutter speed I went from novice to advanced amateur at taking photos out the window from a moving car.  Not a practice I’d recommend if you have more time but one which surprisingly resulted in some decent vacation snapshots.  Thank you Olympus for fast and accurate autofocus.  Just as important as the shutter speed, I set my mind to view the photo experience as a fun learning opportunity and adventure.

I was somewhat surprised at how arid, almost semi-desert, the landscape was immediately north of Madrid. This northward trek of landscape soon turned into rolling windy hills, with many electric generating windmills,  along with rocky outcroppings before finally ending in lush green mountains and valleys.

Our faithful fifth member in the car was our rented GPS navigation unit.  It sometimes got confused but never more then the rest of us.

This would be a good point to issue a big published thank-you to our friend who drove the whole trip.  It certainly took stress off the rest of us and he did an excellent job.  Here’s hoping there’s not a bunch of tickets and fines coming in the mail for him.

 

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Tom Dills
10 years ago

Very beautiful countryside, Earl. I think I also would have had a hard time getting up that first morning, but after that? I don’t think I’d have wanted to miss another minute of daylight!

It’s interesting how much of the grass is brown in some areas but green in others. Related to elevation and climate, I assume?

Monte Stevens
10 years ago

No rest for the weary. I’m also surprised at the arid landscape but not sure what i would have expected. I like series and love the street scenes.

Cedric Canard
10 years ago

It’s a pleasure to see this different side of Spain. Too often it is of the cities like Madrid and Barcelona or of the beaches. Few bother to venture out into the Spanish countryside. As you have obviously found out (and captured beautifully), there’s more to Spain than the usual tourist haunts.