Day 1:
Arriving in Madrid
Day 2: Madrid to Toledo to Cordoba
Day 3: Cordoba to Granada
Day 4: Granada to Costa del Sol
Day 5: Costa del Sol
Day 6: Costa del Sol to Gibraltar to Seville
Day 7: Seville
Day 8: Seville to Lisbon
Day 9: Lisbon
Day 10: Lisbon to Salamanca
Day 11: Salamanca to Madrid
Day 12: Madrid
Day 13: Madrid (extra day after tour ends)
The Toronto Reunion (plus additional links)
Sign my Guestbook
View my Guestbook
(Thanks to Mary Cris for all of the above pictures as none of mine turned
out...and no it wasn't from too much sangria!)
The Toronto Reunion -
Friday, September 29, 2000
With eight of us on the trip from Toronto, it was pretty much mandatory that we were to have a reunion soon after we got home, to exchange photos, reminisce, and of course, gossip!
We all met at a restaurant called Casa Barcelona! in (the city formerly known as) Etobicoke (pronounced "e-to-bi-koe"). Eric made the reservation at the Spanish restaurant (how could we buck tradition and go anywhere else but a Spanish restaurant??) and we all arrived pretty much by 7:00PM, except Niko, who arrived almost too late that we were going to go ahead and order our food without him. We had already begun passing around everyone's photo albums around, and when Niko finally did arrive, there was a whole pile of everyone's for him to go through.
We all started off with a pitcher of sangria for all of us, which tasted better than many of the sangrias we had in Spain. Everyone ordered a couple of tapas for their meal. There was everything from octopus (which I had) to roasted ostrich (which Niko had), and normal ones too, like rice, mussels and garlic shrimp. We ended with dessert. The most popular was deep fried ice cream, which Delia, Mary Cris, Elena and I all had. Eric had what was called "fried milk". There was no guzzling of alcohol on this night; the one pitcher of sangria was all we had at Casa Barcelona!
We then headed down the street to a bar/poolhall where Eric, Elena and Naureen played pool, while the rest of us just sat, talked, and reminisced. By the end of the night, we had exchanged business cards, telephone numbers, picked other people's photographs that we wanted copies of for ourselves, and made an agreement to keep in touch and get together often in the future. We were the largest group of people from any one city that was on the tour, so we felt especially proud and lucky that we could do this.
Now that you're read my travelogue of Spain & Portugal, please take some time to Sign my Guestbook, View my Guestbook, or continue onto my other travelogues!
Taste of Europe
June 7 - 18, 2001
Grand Adventurer
April 4 - 15, 2001
China & Hong Kong
June 6 - 25, 2002
Additional Resources & Links
Siesta en Espaņa - Erik
Sprangers' Contiki: Spain & Portugal Travelogue
Madrid, Spain City Guide
MadridMan's Yankee Home
Page
tuSpain - yourSpain
SoftGuide: Madrid City Guide
Metro de Madrid
Museo del Prado
Museo
Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
SearchIberia.com:
The Spain & Portugal Search Directory
Yahoo!
Travel Destinations: Spain
Yahoo! Travel Destinations: Madrid, Spain
Yahoo! Travel Destinations: Sevilla, Spain
Yahoo!
Travel Destinations: Portugal
Yahoo! Travel Destinations: Lisbon, Portugal
