Since it was Monday, all the museums and things would be closed. Instead, we just took advantage of the lovely weather and wandered around town, amazed at how clean and pleasant the place was. The lifestyle here is very relaxed.

Today, we visited the Prado and the Parque del Buon Retiro. We finally worked our way over to the Palacio Real, and otherwise enjoyed our continued good luck with the weather.

We picked up our rental jalopy this morning and headed out on the roads. We worked our way through some mountains to the very cool town of Segovia, and after a few hours of wandering there, worked our way west and north to Salamanca.

We spent a few hours in Salamanca checking out the various things to see before working our way south towards some mountains that looked somewhat promising called the Sierra de la Francia.

The plan was to drive towards Lisboa, Portugal today to visit our friends Pedro and Paula. The good luck with the weather came to a crashing end, but we still got to see a bunch of really nice stuff as we headed west.

We spent today wandering around the beaches near our hotel in Costa da Caparica and then we headed into the city to see the motorcycle show that was going on in Lisbon. Sweeeet!

We scooted back into Spain this morning and ended up in the town of Mérida, once a Roman capitol. There was also a cool little medieval festival going on while we were there, and all of spent the day dodging rain showers and lousy weather.

We headed out from Zafra this morning and took the long way to Sevilla, taking a few hours to get there. After arriving, we wandered around for a few hours getting a feel for the city. Lots of tourists, but there's apparently a good reason for that. There's a lot to see!

We went and saw some of the bigger attractions in Sevilla today, notably the Alcazar (castle) and Cathedral, both large and spectacular.

We started our day out by scooting outside of Sevilla to the town of Santiponce, home of the ruins of Italica, an important Roman military town. Afterwards, we headed into the mountains of Andalucia to finally arrive in Ronda, a cool hilltop town.

Ronda is a pretty cool town with a lot to see. Between that and some hiking we did around the countryside, we had a great day.

We headed towards Córdoba today, stopping off at the ruins of an ancient Moorish city called Alzahara. We finally got into the city around 17.00 and found ourselves a cute little hotel right next to the most important site in the city.

We visited the main attraction in Córdoba today, the Mezquita, and then headed out on the road again, stopping in the town of Jaén along the way, just 'cuz it looked cool from the road. We finished off the day in a Natural Park in a quiet and cool hotel.

We drove our way through the natural park some more today, stopping off at a cool dam, and discovering a cool hilltop castle town by accident. We finished off the day in Cuenca, another cool hilltop town (this continent is crawling with them).

Cuenca is a very cool little town with an ancient historical centre. We wandered around there for a few hours before doing a little day trip to some of the natural sights nearby. We even got a little bit lost and did some off-roading in our crappy little Fiat. Awright!

As a last hurrah before heading back to Madrid, we stopped off at the Roman ruins of Segóbriga and spent some time checking it all out. We then headed back to Madrid and spent one last evening downtown before packing up and catching our flight at 7am the following moring (¡¡aiee!! that's early). A wonderful trip come to a close...