Our First Month on the Road

by Magnolia

Our first month on the road has been great! We started in Iceland, then Portugal, Spain, England, and now Scotland. It’s been tiring and hard, but really fun.

Iceland was cool, we went on a tour of a lot of the natural sights on our first day, which was extremely cold and wet, but very interesting. Our second day was a bit better, less rainy but just as cold. We went to the Blue Lagoon Spa, which was basically a huge natural hot tub. It felt amazing in the water! We only stayed there for two days, which I was quite thankful for. The sights were great, but I think I could only stand that weather for a few days.

Our next stop was Portugal, where the weather was much better. We were there only for Mom’s travel blogger conference, so Calla and I spent most of our time in the hotel room watching TV. We had a little time out of the room, so we walked around a bit, saw some of the amazing architecture, and met up with a family Mom met through CouchSurfing. One of my favorite parts of the Portugal section of our trip was when we went on a teleferic, a ski-lift sort of thing, where we got to see all of the beautiful town from high above.

After our relaxing time in Portugal, I expected to be well rested and ready to make the most of our time in Spain. Nope! After we met our first host family in a small town outside of Madrid, we took long naps almost right until it was time for dinner. All of the meals we had there were awesome! A few days of our week with that family, we took day trips to Madrid. It was really cool. There was a lot of good shopping, but I think the main highlight was all the museums. They were gigantic! On both of the days there, we got to see our first grade Spanish teacher, Sra. Mooney. It was absolutely wonderful to see her after so many years!

After Madrid, we headed to Dueñas, a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere.  Our hosts were really nice, and I liked how the town was all together, so you could walk for half an hour and almost see everything!  Our hosts had so much planned for us! We saw the churches, a church choir, and all of the amazing sights we could!

The next morning, we left to go to Girona, for another one of Mom’s travel blogger conferences. It was very pretty and had a lot of interesting history. There was an awesome ice cream place that we went to where I got delicious white chocolate and coffee ice cream. It may have been the best ice cream I’ve ever had!

We then spent a week in Garriguella, a small town in the Costa Brava area of Spain. Mom’s conference provided a place to stay afterwards, so we got a huge house to stay in for a week. There  were 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a huge family room with a big TV, a pool, and a big backyard, with ACTUAL GRASS so i could finally practice my gymnastics! It was a great house, but Calla and I were convinced it was haunted. We kept hearing noises, and in such a big house, its hard not to get scared.  We were about half an hour from the beach, and we were all ready to go swimming, but it was too cold and jellyfish-filled to enjoy, so we ventured off to five more beaches that Mom had researched. One was filled with huge rocks that were super fun to climb on, and one had sea urchins in it, so we couldn’t swim, but we could enjoy the beautiful tide pools. There was also a winery near by, so we stopped to have a look around.

All in all, this first month has been great! I can’t wait for our next adventure to begin!