Saturday 21 September Our last morning call to have the suitcases out and down for breakfast. Thank goodness the coffee is better than the last place. At about the half way point of the 215km to Madrid, is the town of Avila. A Roman Fort and a town were established here, and the defensive walls have been added to (mostly 11th to 14th Century) and maintained in near perfect condition since that time. We take the usual escalators up into the Old Town but stop i...

Friday 20 September Friday is the penultimate day of our "Amazing Spain & Portugal" tour, and most of it will be spent driving from Lisbon, back over the border to Salamanca in Spain. It is a distance of 290km on the E1, E801 AND E80 highways but we break it up by taking a short detour to Fatima, a city of Catholic pilgrimage. The story goes that in 1917, 3 children looking after sheep had several visions of Mary over a period of 5 months. The story got o...

Tuesday 17 September We had thought that we might have a more relaxed start today, but as we had signed up to an optional tour of Cordoba, we were on the bus as usual at 8.00am. It seemed to us and other participants that the tour start hard been brought forward, but we got no sense from Emma the Tour Director. Cordoba is 140km ENE of Seville so an hour and a half saw us pull up besides the Guadalquivir and the Puente Romann de Cordova. The bridge's foundatio...

Monday 16 September On Day 3 of "Amazing Spain & Portugal" with Insight Vacations we are up and outside the hotel ready to visit the Alhambra Palace just after 8.00am. We will be one of the first groups through the gates and we have to be on time. Some 3 million people visit this UNESCO World Heritage site and a maximum of 8,000 visitors is allowed on any day, so book early. Each ticket is individually identified with your name to prevent scalping and occ...

Sunday 15 September Today was our first full day with Insight on their coach tour. We were at breakfast for 7.00am with the suitcases out in the corridor as requested. Busy place the breakfast restaurant buffet when you have two Insight tours that want to leave early. The coach left just after 8.00am, so on time, with us being in one of the front seats for the drive down the freeway to Toledo. We will change seats each day for the rest of the tour. Being Su...