We're back!

We arrived back in St. Charles at around 2 p.m. today (Sunday). We drove from Madrid to Barcelona on Saturday. The landscape of the Spanish countryside really varies greatly. In many areas there are cactus and the landscape resembles the American west. In other areas there are groves of olive trees and grape vineyards. Everywhere there are castle remains dotting the landscape.

We have seen large fields of wind farms in Spain also. We saw a very large one in southern Spain between Tarifa and our trip to Lisbon. The one below was probably as large. The highway goes right amongst the wind turbines. There are a couple hundred of these turbines in each of the numerous wind farms we passed. We also passed a number of large areas with solar panel power grids.

Also on our trip between Madrid and Barcelona was the Greenwich Meridian. It is well marked with signs and then a huge archway.

Finally, some interesting things we were unaware of before we visited this region-

• Car keys are different, at least the one we had (for our rental) and some other people's that we observed also. Our key was a flat piece of metal with a deeply grooved area in the center. The "head" of the key was the auto-locking and unlocking mechanism. We also saw some keys that were plastic computer chips, not traditional keys, as we know them.

• Drinking is much more accepted in this region of the world than in the U.S. It was typical to see people with port wine or other alcoholic drinks before noon. People also had wine and drinks at lunch, and dinner. Many places, we were the lone diners without alcohol on the table. Drinking age is 16.


• Breakfast is not a full meal, except in Gibraltar. In most areas we visited, people had sweet rolls and "coffee" (espresso) for breakfast.


• The EU has passed new no smoking laws recently, but many of the new laws are just starting to be enforced. Smoking is much more common in the areas we visited.


• In Gibraltar and Morocco meals are eaten at much the same times as we do in the U.S., but in all the other places we visited, breakfast is a small roll at mid-morning, lunch is a baguette (usually cheese or ham) and a glass of wine sometime between 2 and 4 p.m., and dinner is a large meal not earlier than 8 p.m.


• When we spoke with people from different areas, and we told them we were from the U.S., everyone expressed interest and told us that very few people from our country travel to Europe. We were surprised by this assertion, because most people we know have traveled to Europe. We observed no evidence of negativity towards Americans. In fact, people seemed overwhelmingly friendly and interested in talking with us.


• Salad is served with most meals ordered at the evening meal, which means a few leaves of lettuce, a slice or two of tomato, accompanied by vinegar and olive oil.


• Eggs and/or omelettes are eaten in Spain and Portugal (at least in the areas we visited) for the dinner meal, not breakfast.


• Germany's security is TOUGH! Both going into and leaving through Frankfurt airport we were pulled aside, although we had easily passed through security in other areas (O'Hare and Barcelona). Lindsay was pulled aside and had to empty a carry-on bag she was carrying, she had an IPod taken and tested for trace amounts of plastic explosives on our return trip (this happened to me with my computer on the way through Frankfurt to Barcelona).


• We have all heard the stories of people in France being less than friendly, we found no evidence of this whatsoever. We enjoyed France thoroughly and plan on returning.


• Road signs in the cities were terrible. In the countryside, they were quite a bit better. Some regions had English signs, others did not.


• Tolls for the toll roads are unbelievable high! Some tolls were 20+ Euros for a 50 mile stretch of highway. We found not service stations with gas pumps that you could swipe your credit card to pay, you had to go inside the station and pay.


• When you order water, you always get bottled water. If you order coffee, you get espresso-one cup, no free refills.


• Meals are slow and deliberate. Dinner is a minimum of 2 hours, no matter how you try to hurry the servers along, so be patient and enjoy the food.

Well, that's or trip. We had a great time, hope you enjoyed and learned things along with us!!

The Doeblers