Our Blog - Our Portugal trip along with Basque Country (France and Spain)

First section (France) - added June 10th

You can go directly to the Second section (Spain) if you have already read the first section.

You can go directly to the Third section (Portugal) if you have already read the the other two.

You can go directly to the Final section (Portugal and Spain) if you have already read the the others.

Our first "big" driving trip and we decided to go to the Northern part of Portugal. Our Portuguese friend, Liliana, has been wonderful at helping us with just tons of information (Thanks!!!) and so off we went. This trip is a new type of trip as this one is not planned. We have an idea of where we are going, but don't make hotel reservations until the day before or the day of the stay, based on where we are and where we are going. This allows us to have flexibility in spending more or less time, or to see a sign for something interesting and going to see something we hadn't actually thought about seeing. We will head first across France to the coast, then turn South and West to go through a section of Basque country in both France and Spain. Then we'll finally get to Portugal.

This main page will cover everything, and then individual cities will get added to the City-List on the main blog page.

First up, just some pictures as we headed out of Toulouse towards our first stop, Pau. I hadn't really heard of Pau before, but we have a friend whose son lives in Pau. It was a sunny day as we headed out, going South and West and here you can see the Pyrenees in the background, including the upper mountains still snow-capped! You can also see that it is much greener than our last road-trip.

We finally made it to Pau in time for lunch and a few hours to take in the major sights of the city, which you can see in my Pau, France page.

From there, we headed a little North to meet up with a lovely couple at their home on our way to the coast. They have such an amazing home ... made me a little jealous of how lovely (and large) their house was compared to the apartments that we are looking at in Toulouse.

We stayed overnight in Bayonne and then spent the morning seeing the sights (my Bayonne, France blog) before heading on to the international jet-set city of Biarritz (my Biarritz, France blog for the afternoon before stopping for the night at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

Another morning sightseeing, fully documented in my Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France blog, before a quick lunch-stop in Hendaye. While there wasn't much there, I did write up a Hendaye, France blog to include the drive along the coastline and the beach. It seems to be a big surfing school town.

Then ... we headed to Spain ....

Second section (Spain) - added June 26th

We were able to get to San Sebastian (our first Spanish town for the trip) early enough that we were able to do a couple self-guided walking tours and then spent the evening pinxtos-bar-hopping. Wonder what that is? Well, all will be explained in my San Sebastian, Spain blog.

Yes, by now you are probably wondering when we are going to get to Portugal! We were thinking the same after dinner in San Sebastian, and so we decided to take a more direct route to Portugal. We liked the Basque area, and the food was great, so we decided that it would warrant its' own little road-trip. We didn't quite get out of Portugal directly, but we stayed overnight in Oviedo, Spain. If you have never heard of Oviedo, don't feel bad. We hadn't heard about it until we watched an older Woody Allen movie called "Vicky Christina Barcelona". In the movie, they make a trip to Oviedo! Hence, we decided to drop through Oviedo to break the drive in two pieces. Oviedo is a nice city and we took in the major sights of the old city, which you can see in my Oviedo, Spain blog.

You probably thought our next stop was in Portugal, but we did have one final thing to do in Spain. We did what many pilgrims did. What to know more? I'll explain everything in my Santiago de Compostela, Spain blog.

Third section (Portugal Part 1) - added July 5th

Next stop, PORTUGAL!

And now into Portugal! It is actually much hillier than we expected, and the roads, even the highways, were quite twisty. Our first stop was just an overnight stay in a former 12th century monastery (turned into a hotel called a Pousada), that you can see in my Amares, Portugal blog.

From there we headed first to Braga, Portugal, and then onto the smaller city, Guimaraes, Portugal where we stayed overnight.

Final section (Portugal Part 2) - added July 23rd

In the middle of the fog, we set out early Sunday morning to head to Porto. We stayed there for a few nights to try to take in the sights as well as trying multiple Port wines and the food. I have everything in separate days, so my Porto Day 1 blog and my Porto Day 2 blog.

From Porto, we headed south a bit to get to first to Coimbra, Portugal, where we took in a few sights before making our last stop in Portugal, in Viseu.

Then back across Spain towards the French border, stopping in Salamanca (famous for their ham, Pamplona (famous for their bull running), and finally Jaca(not famous for anything) .

Then through the Pyrenees and back home. I grabbed a couple pictures of waterfalls which I thought were nice through the Pyrenees.

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