Christmas in Spain and Portugal

To share some of the sights that we have strayed upon thus far we decided to break it down into the different cities we have visited. Each new place will have a box you can click to view some photos of that area. In addition you can click on a link at the various picture pages to go to a narrative Margie put together for that area. We begin with Madrid. We stayed only one day in Madrid, but managed to take in several parts of the city. By mastering the local subway system it allowed us to move around quite a bit in a short period of time. As you will be able to tell from some of the photos, Madrid was locked in with fog during most of our stay. A delightful introduction to Spain.Click Here
For Madrid
We then moved on to Granada, a five-hour bus ride south of Madrid. Granada is most well-known as the home of the Alhambra, a fortressed palace originally built by the Moorish kings. When the Spainards took the area back from the Moors, the Spanish kings had the good sense to keep the palaces and add to them, using them as retreats for themselves. Because the Alhambra was so much in itself, we've set up a separate page of pictures for it.
Granada
The
Alhambra
On to Sevilla, the home of Spain's bullfighting matadors and flamenco dancers. Ole! Like the rest of Spain, most of the streets in Sevilla are almost wide enough for one vehicle. Add parking and cobblestone sidewalks on both sides, and it makes for interesting strolls. Many beautiful parks and the highlight of the visit: The Plaza de Espana, which was built in 1929 for the World Expo.
Sevilla
While in Sevilla, we ran into some 20-somethings at a flamenco bar that told us "Portugal is cool." We decided to have the first modification to our trip by scooting over to southern Portugal on the Atlantic/Mediterranean coast. The town we stayed in through Christmas was called Faro, Portugal. We use Merry Christmas for the heading of this page because that was the theme in Spain and Portugal for the time leading up to Christmas.
Faro
Portugal
That's all there is for now. We'll be heading on to Morocco. Click on the 2nd installment button to go to the next part of our journey. See you there!
On to Morocco