A week from today Heidi and Lee will be off for a two week excursion to Spain and Portugal with Grand Circle Travel, part of a group of forty travelers wandering through Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba, Granada, the Costa del Sol, Ronda and other villages along the "Route of the Whitewashed Villages", Seville, and (in Portugal) both the Algrave countryside and the city of Lisbon.
Heidi has been avidly following the daily weather forecasts for Madrid, happy to report the average temperature now has fallen into the eighties. Lee has been perusing the DK Guide, Rick Steve's guidebook and various online web sites, plotting out possible destinations, lunch and dinner possibilities to fill in our "free time" and open dining options. Both have been frantically reading up on Spanish history and enjoying the brief excerpts found in Travelers' Tales: Spain, always one of our favorite preparatory resources.
Our destination was not on our radar even two months ago. Original plans to travel to Java and Bali in Indonesia, however, were short-circuited when Overseas Adventure Travel abruptly canceled our tour in late July, citing unhappiness with earlier trips "not up to OAT standards" (even though online evaluations were quite positive). Indonesia was a new travel destination for OAT, inaugurated just this year, so it's not all that surprising that there were some "growing pains" involved. Still and all, naturally, we were quite disappointed at the cancellation.
We were given a month or so to decide on an alternative (including the possibility of simply getting a full refund). After much thought and exploration of the possibilities, we chose to sign on for Spain and Portugal in Depth with Grand Circle Travel (OAT's parent company). We really enjoyed our weeks in Barcelona in 2013, and the rest of Spain was already on our future travel list of possibilities. So we just moved it up a couple of years to the Fall of 2014.
Everything finally has fallen into place. Lee has his new passport. All the financial rigmarole has been resolved. Summer trips have been completed and enjoyed. Various travel resources have been scouted out and combed through. We're ready for liftoff!
Iberia, here we come...
Heidi has been avidly following the daily weather forecasts for Madrid, happy to report the average temperature now has fallen into the eighties. Lee has been perusing the DK Guide, Rick Steve's guidebook and various online web sites, plotting out possible destinations, lunch and dinner possibilities to fill in our "free time" and open dining options. Both have been frantically reading up on Spanish history and enjoying the brief excerpts found in Travelers' Tales: Spain, always one of our favorite preparatory resources.Our destination was not on our radar even two months ago. Original plans to travel to Java and Bali in Indonesia, however, were short-circuited when Overseas Adventure Travel abruptly canceled our tour in late July, citing unhappiness with earlier trips "not up to OAT standards" (even though online evaluations were quite positive). Indonesia was a new travel destination for OAT, inaugurated just this year, so it's not all that surprising that there were some "growing pains" involved. Still and all, naturally, we were quite disappointed at the cancellation.
We were given a month or so to decide on an alternative (including the possibility of simply getting a full refund). After much thought and exploration of the possibilities, we chose to sign on for Spain and Portugal in Depth with Grand Circle Travel (OAT's parent company). We really enjoyed our weeks in Barcelona in 2013, and the rest of Spain was already on our future travel list of possibilities. So we just moved it up a couple of years to the Fall of 2014.
Everything finally has fallen into place. Lee has his new passport. All the financial rigmarole has been resolved. Summer trips have been completed and enjoyed. Various travel resources have been scouted out and combed through. We're ready for liftoff!
Iberia, here we come...
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