The end to Spain has come and gone

Well folks, it has been a while since the last post and we never finished up Spain! So much has happened since then, but before we get into that, here is the last Spain blog post.

Arriving back in Barcelona was bittersweet, since we both knew this meant we only had a few moments left before we began the dreaded journey home. We had thoughts of returning home and thoughts of returning to the work grind, but first we had to squeeze out some more exploring.

As usual we had to find a coffee shop, and with a little searching we found a local roaster tucked away in the back streets of the Gothic Quarter called 'The Nomad Cafe'. Finding it was easier than finding the way in. We tried the front door, but it wouldn't open... So, I walk around to around to pull on another door... but still nothing. I felt pretty awkward... but we eventually got in and were greeted by a very nice woman. The coffee was delicious so we had to buy a bag to bring home with us.

We can't have a post without a little graffiti that we saw along the way. 

What do you see? 

All this walking made us work up an appetite! I found an empanada shop, that reminded me of some Columbian empandas I haven't had in years! They were delicious.

Joey is always trying to find ways to appease me, first the empanadas and now... The OCEAN!
The coast was full of pebbles and seaweed. I was one happy lade.

There was a lot of interesting things happening at the beach. Acrobatics, observers, body builders, and sun bathers. 

 We learned we were staying across the street from our favorite grocery store, the Mercadona! Joey had to go get some Mercadona bread before we left, of course.

We woke up early and gathered our things to drop off the rental car at the train station. We were sad that our trip was coming to an end, and the elevators leading to the drop off site knew I sad too.

A big huge shout out to Joey for driving thousands of miles (5k?) across the country of Spain and Portugal in this sweet Skoda! 

And sadly, this is the conclusion of our 5 week trip through Spain, but don't worry, we are actively planning a much longer trip and we are hoping to photo-blog all of it!

Costa Blanca

With only 12 days left in Spain we made sure to climb everyday with about 3 rest days mixed in. We were in Costa Blanca, which had tons limestone to climb that was all all within an hours drive or less. 

Joey only packed one pair of pants for the trip, so I made him take them off to wash and slipped him into something a little more fitting. 😋😉

'Twas a nice sight!

On our way to Chulilla and on our rest day, we decided to explore Bellus to see if we wanted to hit up some climbing there too. We were, once again, amazed with how much limestone Spain has! Walls on walls on walls!

We continued our journey to our last climbing destination, Chulilla. It was here were I would project an amazing 6b+/5.11a called Long Dong John. It was full of amazing unconventional tufa climbing! I was extremely excited to experience climbing tufas for 40 meters!

But.... the tufas were dripping wet.

But man oh man these tufas were seriously impressive! We were reallly sad humans.  Joey compared them to Kalymnos and said they were unlike anything he had seen!

We tried to stay optimistic that they would dry before we left. So I hopped on a different route called Peli-chi, a 35 meter 6b+. I ended up taking a big whipper on my fist attempt, one clip away from the chains at a overhung/lay back/crack section. During the fall I tapped my face on the slab below, but brushed it off (after huffing and puffing about the surprise of hitting my face/falling/being exhausted) and finished the route.

Rest day tomorrow and time to explore Valencia. 

Naked people.

And hit up the local market.

And take my first photos with a fancy camera.

A market in Spain is not a market without jamon!

And Valencia is full of beautiful architecture.

One of the big surprises was the post office! Its one of the major buildings in the city and our host told us we had to see it... It was quite the sight.

And then there is Joey catching me doing weird stuff. I dunno what is going on here. 

But I do know that these trees were my favorite of the trip!

WAHHHT, I like trees, okay!

But all Joey wants to do is monkey around!

Valencia is full of some really cool graffiti! Some of these artists are really talented.  We decided to overshare... 

  

 It was time to get some lunch, and if you haven't been to Spain then you don't know how dang hard it is to figure out when they serve food.... They close in the middle of the day and eat dinner at like 9pm! But we found a place that had one thing out of the 4 we tried to order. I did not mind because I had a nice view from across the table.

Dem hairs though. 😍🙆

 It had been a couple days so, we decided to check the Chorreras wall again! Unfortunately, the tufas were still way too wet to climb. So, off to tackle my project! Peli-chi started off awkward, but fun, went through some really fun baby tufas on blue rock, and ended in a somewhat easy overhanging lay back hand crack. I gave it another try, but fell at the same spot. Took a break to eat a freaking amazing Valencia orange (A major source of our lunch) and gave it another shot... AND SENT! Super proud of my first 5.11. One month of leading and gots me that 5.11. 

Here you can see how wet the Chorreras wall was. It never dried off enough for me to try Long Dong John. 

While climbing in Chulilla we stayed at an airbnb with the best hosts, Gary and Beatrice! They lived about 25 minutes away from Chulilla in a very secluded area just outside Lleida. They were both recently retired teachers who had just finished three years of working in China! 

While we were there they picked us about 30 oranges from the orange tress that surrounded their home. I happen to love oranges and was excited to try them! Being from Florida, I have had some good oranges, but nothing compares to Valencia oranges... They have no seeds and are sweeter than clementines. We would eat oranges at the crag and made fresh squeezed orange juice about every morning. 

We originally paid to stay with Gary and Beatrice for 3 days with plans to move on to another area, but they were freakin awesome hosts and we reallly wanted to climb those wet tufas, so we asked to stay another 3 nights with them! They were thrilled to have us. 

 

 Here is their dog Shaggy! Joey really loved Shaggy and Gary ended up getting a picture of him holding Shaggy in his lap like a baby... haha

The birdy says time to go! One more blog! :)

Lisboa

Crossing the border into Portugal was as simple as driving over an imaginary line... But even though that line was imaginary, Portugal looked and felt like a foreign place to us. Spain was filled with overly cautious drivers that drove well under the speed limits and never passed on the right. As soon as we were in Portugal, we were illegally passed by a Porsche Carrera 4, so we spent the next 2 or 3 hours following him! It was a refreshing change from driving 10km/h under the limit in Spain! We made it to Lisbon (an hour faster than expected) and we were pleasantly surprised to find easy parking at our Airbnb, which is good because Joey was pretty brain dead after our 8 hour drive and 3 hours of climbing.

After that exhausting day, we had to find some Coffee.  

Since we were about out of the coffee that we had brought with us, we did a little research on some local coffee roasters. Luckily for us we found Fabrica Coffee Roasters, which was a small coffee shop tucked away down a small street near one of the central Lisbon areas. We bought two cappuccinos (one Brazil and one Rwanda) and were immediately impressed! Both of the cups were really complex and the Brazilian beans were crazy sweet.  So we told the barista that we were brewing with a pour-over and she recommended 2 bags for us. They turned out delicious as well!

Off to explore and make our way to the Sao Jorge Castle. 

After being in small Spanish villages for the past couple weeks, the first thing we noticed in Lisbon was the crazy diversity. The streets were full of people from all over the world! We were happily surprised with how diverse Lisboa is. The street graffiti was 'diverse' too.

After an hour or so of walking we made it to Sao Jorge Castle. The caste dates back to the medieval times finding human presence all the way back to the 6th century BC!

The view from the castle overlooked the historic center of Lisbon

It was so beautiful that I couldn't stop crying... Or something like that :)

But luckily there was a cat with some of the dopest eyes to console and comfort me. We sat with this cat long enough that people asked if it were ours.

Eventually we left the cat and found PEACOCKS!

They were tougher to pet though.

One of the main reasons that we came to Lisbon was for the New Years celebration. I wanted a place that we could watch fireworks over water. The best place to celebrate was at the Praca do Comercio, which is located on the Tagus river. There were about 20k people there bringing in the new year with us.

The start to 2017 was unforgettable, I was a lucky lady kissing an amazing man with fireworks bursting over the river and we were front row!

We passed by this huge fountain every night too! It made Joey think about how much his family likes fountains (his sister loves them I think).

It was time to find some dang rocks to climb though! So, off to the sea cliffs of Cascais to climb into the sunset.

 It was almost as majestic as Joey's hair.

Our time in Lisboa had to come to an end because we have a 10 hour drive in the morning over to Costa Blanca. We are going to stay at the Orange House climbing refugee and climb the surrounding areas.

So we will leave you with a traditional decorative Lisbon tile dating back to medieval times... 

Its never a bad idea to end a blog with a naked baby tile, right?