Author: Tim

Okay, the word “gaudy” has only a coincidental relationship with Gaudí, but it’s a catchy blog title, and we spent the day in Barcelona exploring his works and a few other Barcelona landmarks.

It was an easy train trip on the R2 line from Sitges to Barcelona, and we decided that we prefer staying outside the major cities and will look for similar “trainable” stops from now on so we can avoid the stress and expense of the overly touristic city centers.

There is a big fútbol match today between Barcelona and Madrid, so the city had its share of fans wearing their team logos and breaking out into slightly inebriated fight songs on the streets, and the police had a huge presence, chasing away unauthorized sports memorabilia sellers on the sidewalks and patrolling the touristy areas.

We searched every corner of the Bocaria market for a food stall called El Quim that I heard was one of the best places to eat in Barcelona, but we couldn’t find it, so we settled on some croquetas and veggie wraps, which were actually quite good. We then had a great time people watching at a cafe on the Rambla, checked out the waterfront and cathedral and headed to La Sagrada Familia.

I wasn’t really prepared for this. I was expecting another touristy basilica, but maybe a bit more modern. I was really blown away with genuine awe when I stepped inside. I wonder if this is how people must have felt when visiting older basilicas when they were first built hundreds of years ago. I’m very glad we visited, though the audio guide wasn’t really necessary.

We then hopped on the train back to Sitges and picked up a baguette and made some homemade bocadillos, and are taking a power nap before maybe checking out a piano bar in town.

An update on our travel plans: since we spent more time than expected in Spain, we no longer have a lot of time left on our visa to visit Greece, so we are now thinking to adjust our route to move Greece (and maybe Turkey) to the fall, when the weather will be cooler, the tourists will be fewer, and our visas renewed. I haven’t figured out the exact plan yet, but it will give us more time to explore more of the Eastern European countries that aren’t in the Schengen visa zone, and possibly add Serbia and Ukraine to our country list.

After our last few days battling traffic on the N-340 highway, I was getting hell-bent on finding a route to Sitges with the absolute minimum amount of highway, even if that meant going off-road for parts of it.

So I took to Strava heatmap and planned a route as coastal as I possibly could, and it was a lot of fun! Lots of boardwalks, some through over-developed empty retirement/vacation areas, some through cuter coastal towns, plus some beautiful hiking trails through natural park land, a few hundred metres pushing our bikes through beach sand, some rocky outcroppings bordering the rail line (where we met a guy, 10km south of Sitges, who looked like he was on his way home after a too-long night of partying, dressed in his best club outfit that was just a bit ragged), and crawling through drainage ditches under the rail line to get to the road on the other side when our road ended, plus a few km of highways.

We ran into a couple who were coming to a finish of their two-year cycling tour through Europe and were on their way back to Switzerland. We exchanged some tips on gear and camping (curious about their lightweight folding chairs! We are getting tired of sitting on the ground when we camp), and swapped blogs – hey Martin & Barbara, safe travels!

For lunch we checked out a few restaurants along the water and were disappointed to find prices 5x what we are used to in the countryside, but when we cycled away from the water two blocks, Steve found a place for a tortilla bocadillo with a drink for a reasonable price.

We did have an ice cream on the coast though, and saw this helicopter come by, lower a man to the water, hover for a bit, and then haul him back and take off. Not quite sure if it was a training exercise or something else…

When one of our coastal paths ended in impassable brush next to someone’s mansion, we reluctantly got on the highway and found our way to Sitges, where we are chilling for three nights. We’ll take the train to Barcelona tomorrow, then enjoy a beach day Thursday, before continuing towards France!

Sitges is nice, but this part of Spain is super touristy. It’s comfortable to be able to speak English everywhere and have something besides Spanish food, but I’m missing my quieter countryside. However, we are going to go out and enjoy the nightlife at least one night before we get back on the bikes! It’s pretty quiet tonight (Tuesday), so perhaps Wednesday or Thursday…

My romantic vision of the bike ride from Valencia to Barcelona was of bike lanes through cute coastal towns, interspersed with sections through quiet rural farmland. The reality of the ride so far has been about 10% cute coastal towns with bike lanes filled with pedestrians and rollerbladers plus kilometer after kilometer of mind-numbing highway with constant traffic (nice wide shoulders though, so it’s quite safe). I think a lot of people are returning home from their Easter holiday today, so traffic was 10x what we’ve seen over the past week.

The highway riding and slight tailwind did increase our average speed quite a bit, and so we chose to push on and do our longest day today, a crazy and grumpy-inducing 152km, so that we have a shorter day tomorrow and more time to spend in Sitges. We are glad to be in our next rest stop, a hotel in the Catalunyan beach town of Capellans, a suburb of Tarragona. The hotel was cheaper than our patch of gravel last night, and we’ve got a kitchenette and patio and private bathroom to boot!

Woke up this morning to this little guy. Couldn’t get rid of him, he found his way back to the tent three times. I finally had to carry him to the next camping plot.

Going to find a bite to eat and rest our legs…

Happy Easter Sunday! We had a lovely 125km ride from Valencia towards Barcelona, and tonight we are camping along the beach. This Holy Week is getting very expensive; our spot of gravel at a beach side campground is 31€! Normally it’s 20€, and we are used to paying just 15€ or less… Quite ridiculous and makes me want to consider wild camping, even if it’s frowned upon… But the next cheapest indoor lodging I could find was over 50€, so not a lot of options. I think we’ll have to stretch our budget a bit from here until Croatia.

When we checked into the campground, the friendly host showed us to our space and asked us about our trip and where we are from. Hearing we are from America, the conversation of course turned to Donald Trump; he said we should have taken him with us to maybe help him change his mind about the world. It has been frustrating, to say the least, to have to apologise for being American everywhere we go. We haven’t met a single European who has anything kind to say about American politics. It’s quite an embarrassment, but as the camp host said, it’s not just the Americans; Hungary has the same problem, and I added that yes, Turkey, and perhaps France are having similar issues.

He then commented that, oh, of course you rode 125km today, you are American, you can do anything. In reality, we’d been passed today by a Frenchman on tour doing over 200km per day plus dozens of racers doing much more on their Sunday rides. Overall it’s disappointing, though understandable, the preconceptions that others have of us, simply based on where we were born. I think it’s an important lesson that the reality is always more complicated than what you first perceive.

We saw a lot of people out picnicking and enjoying their Easter, and we stopped at a busy port city for lunch, where I had the best shrimp I’ve ever had, sorry New Orleans, you are no longer #1. Gambás de Denia (a nearby town on the Mediterranean) tasted like little lobster tails, wow!!

Tomorrow we will ride as far as we can towards Sitges and find a (hopefully) more affordable campground or cheap hotel.

We spent another rest day in Valencia, taking in some of the things that were closed, including a big bag of pastries from the Central market, which we inhaled too quickly, the cathedral, the botanical gardens to see the resident kitties, horchata at Mercat de Cólon, and a nice dinner on Carrer del Comte d’Altea.

Yesterday I bought a 2.5 liter bike bag at Decathlon. It’s meant to go on your handlebars, but I wanted it on my front tube to replace my current bag, which is falling apart. The velcro straps were in the wrong place for that, so I got out my sewing kit and sewed on some new ones. I’m starting to feel like a tailor or something. It’s fun but time consuming…

Tomorrow we are headed towards Barcelona. Things are getting very expensive from here until we hit Italy, so we decided not to stay in Barcelona itself. Instead we will spend three nights in Sitges for half the price and take the train up to see the city. Three days of riding and two nights of camping until we reach Sitges…

Last night, we walked down to the Malvarossa area of Valencia to observe the Holy Thursday processions. The garments worn remind some Americans of the KKK, but they are not at all related. The rhythmic beating of the drums and quiet marching down the streets made for quite a sight.

We also got our hairs cut…

Today, we explored Valencia, mostly the Old Town area, but also some parks nearby. Of course, we saw the bull ring, train station with its stunning tilework, and had a horchata and fartons (which we inhaled before I took the photo).

I enjoyed some of the graffiti art in the area; some of it is quite elaborate.

It’s nice to take some time off the bikes, which are resting next to a wonderful city view for the day. I may have also found my next touring bike, what do you think?

For lunch, I found a pretty good arroz abanda (traditional seafood rice), and Steve had arroz al forno (oven baked rice with pork and sausage). Made some simple sandwiches and Valencia oranges for dinner, and probably off to bed early. We need to catch up on sleep!

I forgot my sunscreen today, so I got a little too much red in the face. As we were walking home, a Spaniard took one look at me and exclaimed, “Ole!” Okay, that’s enough embarrassment; I promise to keep re-applying all day from now on.

I forgot to mention that we’ve now entered a very popular cycling area. We are seeing lots of other cyclists on the road, mostly racing types and mountainbikes, but a few cycle tourists as well. It seems as popular for cycling as San Diego or San Francisco.

It’s kind of nice that the school kids and people on the side of the road pay us no attention, versus in the countryside where we got loads of stares.

That said, we still get plenty of looks, comments, and questions about the mirrors attached to our glasses and our solar panels. I’ve learned how to answer those questions in Spanish by now!

Short, very flat ride to Valencia today. Got here an hour early with a tailwind, so waiting for our AirBNB to be ready. Looking forward to a shower, decent lunch, laundry, and haircut today, and then Holy Thursday.

We left our cave apartment at 9am to chilly but quickly warming temperatures, riding through wineries and fields of olive trees. It was a gently rolling ride, mostly downhill, along a valley with stunning views of terraced farmland and quaint little towns.

We finally made our way back to the coast, and in Gandia, I stopped at a Decathlon shop to pick up a collapsible cup. I got tired of drinking wine out of the bottle lol. Sometimes it’s hard to fill our water bottles in shallow sinks, so a cup is very useful.

I researched a paella place on wikipaella and found one on the water front. The reviews said service was slow but the rice dishes were good, so we chilled for a few hours and ordered the paella Valenciana, which is traditionally made with chicken and rabbit, from my understanding. I have to say it was hands down the best paella I’ve ever had. The crispy bits of rice on the bottom of the pan were amazing, and the flavor and texture of the rice was perfect. Yum!

We are camping tonight at a very small campground right on the beach. There’s another cycle tourist from the UK next to us who started his European tour back in November and still has a few months or longer until he returns home. We are now having a relaxing evening walking along the beach, chatting with our neighbor, and thinking about dinner, maybe just a salad. The paella was filling!

I have to say, that we have now adjusted to the Spanish food schedule. Lunch between 2-4 seems natural now, and dinner before 8 or 9 just seems weird. We are also enjoying the toastadas con tomate for breakfast along with some pastries, in lieu of our fried eggs we were used to in the US. We are looking forward to seeing what other customs we adopt to along this trip.

Today was a relatively short 60km, but a lot of it was uphill. We mostly passed through nondescript but interesting towns and cities, including one small town that appeared to be a ghost town, La Colonia de Santa Eulalia. We ended in the hip and bustling town of Villena, with a striking castle, gastro pubs, at least three bike shops, and lots of bike lanes and cyclists.

When we rode with the group of Spanish touring cyclists a few days ago, one of the people we met was César. He spoke just a little English, better than my limited Spanish for sure, but we were lucky to have his friend with us to help translate. He asked us to show him our planned route to Valencia because he lives in the area and could make some suggestions.

When he saw that our route went through the town of Villena, he immediately offered for us to stay at his place, there, since he will be gone cycle touring all week. We were taken aback at this offer from someone we’d known for only a few hours, but this kind of generosity is something we’ve become enamored with in the cycle touring community, and is why we became a part of the WarmShowers network, to give back as hosts in San Diego, and is why we will always offer help and space to other travellers whenever we can. Why should it be any other way, though?

Today we reached Villena and had a wonderful lunch, the menu del día at a gastropub, and then took a short siesta in the park (Spain is starting to take ahold of us, I think…), and then visited a local bike shop to get me a new jersey (mine has holes!), Steve some new gloves, and some other miscellaneous supplies. We then met up with Cesar’s mother-in-law, who showed us up 1500 steps (not really, but it seemed like it, carrying our bikes!) to his place, a cave apartment with upstairs bedroom overlooking the castle! It’s super adorable, and we can’t thank him and his wife enough for their hospitality.

I know some of you like to see our food porn. So here are some of our favorite local dishes that we’ve sampled the past few days. This area of Spain is known for its rice dishes, though we have yet to try a true paella. I understand there’s a website where you can find true paellas, and we mean to find one of these places and have one. Perhaps tomorrow when we pass through Gandia.

Veal roulade in Villena. Amazing!

Lobster paella, the waitress said the lobster was flown in live from northern Spain. It was good, but I’m holding out on my opinion until we try a place from wikipaella.

Nougat ice cream (a local specialty due to the almond production here) and caramel cake. Heavenly!

This rich meatball dish is a local specialty of Villena, and may be reason enough to visit. Muy rico!

We started the day along the coast, going through many different beach side communities. Some reminded us of beach towns in San Diego like Pacific Beach, quaint restaurants and shops with small cute houses, and laid back residents and vacationers that smiled and said Hola as we passed. Others reminded us of over-developed retirement communities in Florida, multi-story high rises and snooty folks that turned up their noses when we said “Buenos días” with uber touristy restaurants and guys hawking “Rey-ban” look-alike sunglasses. We eventually tired of fighting for space on the shared cycling/walking paths and headed inland towards Elche.

I’ve been practicing my Spanish as much as I can. I’m pretty confident ordering food and drinks at restaurants now, and today I successfully had two conversations with Spanish-speakers about our trip, explaining where we started, where we are going, our solar panels, etc. One was a life guard near one of the many beaches we passed, and the other was another patron in a restaurant, who said he’s also been involved with several bike tours through Europe and was excited for us.

We made a quick stop in Elche to have some ice cream and admire the famous palm trees. The main park is beautifully landscaped with palms and other trees.

One of the river beds was recently painted by a group of graffiti artists with some interesting work.

Steve and I have been collecting stickers on our bikes as we travel. Here’s what I’ve got so far.