Key Largo

No sooner had I got back home from the European beer and football tour, then it was time to repack and take off to Florida for 3 weeks with Alison, Ellie and Meg. We are driving down the Florida keys, then on to Miami and finally Orlando to do some serious theme park stuff!

We flew into Dallas Fort Worth and then onto Fort Lauderdale. 

Picking the hire car up was a bit of a trauma, after a long time travelling you don't want to be faced with making decisions! After doing the documentation with the hire company you walk through into a garage to be faced with lines of cars. They all have the keys on the dash and you just pick the one you want, oh god, please just give me a car! After a few minutes of "I like this one" "no, I like this one" "this ones nice" "oooohh look at this one" I plonked the cases in a car and said "right we are having this one" and drove off. As we were pulling out Ellie said "I thought we'd booked a full size car, this is mid size" I was too tired to care, I just wanted to sleep. 

San Sebastian and back to Blighty

After the BBK festival it was great to get to a nice hotel peel off the clothes we had been wearing for 3 days and have a warm shower and shave, bliss! We headed to the nearest sandy beach and promptly fell asleep for most of Sunday afternoon.

Beautiful beaches 

After a good sleep in the sunshine and feeling a bit more like ourselves, we set off to find a German bar that we had read about to watch the World Cup final. We gave our England shirts one last outing, after all it should have been England playing in this final! We settled down with a couple of good German beers and a meal of pork knuckle, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. We enjoyed the match and were pleased that it didn't go to penalties. Germany were the deserved winners and have played some good football throughout the tournament.

BBK Music Festival

We set off heading for the BBK festival in Bilbao, the Spanish equivalent of Glastonbury, a little jaded after our exertions in Pamplona.

On the way we decided we should get the van sorted so that we could rationalise the number of bags we needed to carry with us to the festival, as we also needed to take the tent and sleeping stuff etc. We pulled into a garage and set about the task of emptying the van. We were well into the process when I spotted in the corner of my eye a police car approaching, here we go, I thought. Three police men got out of the car and started off aggressively asking questions. We hadn't got a clue what they were asking us but they didn't appear to be full of the joys of spring. We did the usual "English" and did our best to explain that we were on a European tour and going to the  BBK festival, which didn't really have any impact, but as soon as we said we had been to the San Firmin festival (Pamplona), we got a few guttural si, si's and they left as quick as they had arrived. To be fair to them as we reviewed the carnage of boxes, bags, crates of beer, strewn all around us, we probably did look a bit suspect.

Madrid and Pamplona - Bull Run

Me and Ronnie

After visiting Seville and Cordoba, we started to make our way north and stopped off in Madrid for a couple of days. The staff in the hotel we were staying in were fantastic. I'd booked a double bed in error but the hotel let us have two double bedrooms at no extra charge, nice one, and it saved us having to build a wall of pillows down the middle of the bed!

We visited the Santeago Bernabau stadium on Monday, really good tour and got to have our photo taken with the European Cup, Madrid's 10th win in this competition. In the afternoon we went to the Prado Museum where there was a El Greco and Picasso exhibition - we do culture as well you know!

After the culture style and sophistication of Madrid, we packed up and moved on to Pamplona for the Bull Run. Its fair to say that everything we had been told about the festival and the 24 hour party was true. It was bedlam when we arrived, the narrow streets crammed full of (very happy) people. After getting to our accommodation we went for a walk and bought ourselves our white Pamplona running gear, with the red sash and bandanna. Everyone in Pamplona wears the same outfit, the ones who don't look a bit out of place.

Seville

Our arrival in Seville was interesting. As we negotiated our way round narrow streets with parked cars inches from the  wing mirror on one side and houses the other, we turned a corner and suddenly we were in the middle of a street market. "What the ....…..!" was quickly followed by some comments about the usefulness of the sat nav, followed by "mind them DVDs" as we edged past a pavement display of dodgy movies. We tried to buy a couple of t-shirts through the van window, but we were unable to negotiate the price down. No one appeared to be bothered by us driving through, they probably just thought mad Brits!

Granada

Granada is the furthest point south in our journey. It is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains - which contain the highest point in Spain and the most southerly skiing resort in continental Europe. As we drove into Granada in 34° temp we could still see the snow on the top of the mountains. After 5 days relaxing by the sea it felt like arriving in a different country as we drove through Granada's busy cosmopolitan streets.

We were having a tapas and beer, deciding in which bar we would watch the match when Bob commented on all the birds flying round, I think he said "its a wonder they don't crap in someone's coffee" next thing he feels a splat on his head! Its a pity we left our hats in Javea, but if I remember correctly, that's a sign of good luck. Did it mean that Belgium (our adopted team, because we like their beer) would beat USA? We settled down in a bar with Belgium fans on one side and Americans on the other.