Thank you for the music.

I welcomed spring this year with a beautiful week on the Portuguese Camino.

We walked a trail that is familiar to me, from Porto to Valença.

We made it to the border between Portugal and Spain, and then we crossed into Spain just to say we did.

Six friends. 80 miles. 12 pitchers of Sangria. 28 Porto Tonicos. 16 plates of gambas. (give or take)

And SO MUCH MUSIC!

In between visits to the Camino, I forget how much I love the energy of this network of paths.

But once I get on the trail and see a yellow arrow or a Camino shell, my heart is all aflutter with Camino memories.

When I am on the Camino, all my other Caminos are present with me.

All my fellow pilgrims, past and present, are walking alongside me.

This Camino evolved out of a couple of desires expressed by my somewhat regular group of early spring walkers.

We wanted to go back to Portugal. Three years ago we walked the Rota Vicentina in Portugal and we all loved it.

And we wanted to hike somewhere (in Europe) that would be warm and sunny in March.

So we chose the Portuguese Camino. Once we settled on it, we reached out to other past spring walkers until we had a group of six.

We met up in Porto. Some arrived early, and some arrived late (delayed flights!), but eventually we all made it and were walking together.

Four of us started from the Porto Cathedral in the afternoon and walked out along the River Douro to the sea.

We did a short day just to stretch our legs and (for those based in the US) to reset circadian rhythms.

By late afternoon we were in Matosinhos having Porto Tonicos by the sea.

It was a perfect way to ease in. And Matosinhos was an easy hop from the airport for our late arrivals.

We stayed in a crazy bunk room that first night. (It’s fine. No one sleeps well on the first night anyway because of jet lag, right?)

We loaded up on coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice the next morning while we waited for our final hiker, Kelsy, to arrive.

And then we began together, ignoring a few tiny raindrops and the clouds.

We walked along the sea all day. Sometimes we walked on cobblestones, sometimes on pavement, and then most blessedly, on these wooden boardwalks that are so much easier on the joints than concrete.

Even with the clouds it was a beautiful day, and we were in high spirits to be walking together again.

This was the first full day of walking and it was all about catching up with each other and hearing what’s new.

I love to walk by the sea, and one day I want to walk the full Coastal Way in Portugal, but I so loved my time on the original route in 2022 that I wanted my friends to get to experience that as well, so we really just had this one full day by the sea (and a half day the day before).

Because we knew it was short, we tried to soak up our surroundings.

There’s a balance to stopping enough to take everything in, but not so much that the day drags on for too long.

We stopped to rest a couple of times, once for a snack and a leg stretch (and a nap for Kelsy who had literally just gotten off an overnight plane).

Then later in the day we stopped for a late lunch before leaving the seaside.

The sun even came out for a little bit. The little bits of morning rain were long forgotten.

We had a gorgeous lunch by the sea and then about an hour to go to get to our hotel for the night.

We stayed in a hotel that had an indoor pool and spa, a big step up from the bunkroom the night before! Three of the gals were even able to book last minute massages!

I spent over two hours in the pool and sauna. We had it all to ourselves and there was a large water spout in the pool that shot water at such a high pressure that it was like a thera-gun but with water. It was delightful!! Zoë discovered it and then we played in it for an hour at least, laughing that we were re-engaging our theme from last year on the GR7 of making love to the water.

But the true theme of this year’s trip was still coming…music.

We weren’t totally tuned into it yet, but there were hints as the hotel lobby area played total bangers all afternoon. We had to walk down a hall that was at least a mile long to our rooms and you could not help but dance as you walked down it to the music they were playing.

The next morning we transferred from the Coastal Route to the Central Route and started walking north on the original Portuguese Camino.

It was still pretty cloudy, but warm enough to be in shorts. (Among our group we vary in our desire for sun or shade, so someone is always happy!)

We carried on along the cobblestones to Rates, the site of Saõ Pedro, one of the oldest Romanesque churches in Portugal.

After Rates, we walked on towards Barcelos, the destination for the day.

We made one coffee stop in the morning and then a stop for lunch later on. When we stopped for lunch, I hoped we had only about an hour left to walk.

(I’ve learned that it’s better to have LESS to walk after we eat, especially if there are drinks at lunch.)

We ate lunch at a tiny bar that didn’t even have menus, but the waitress kindly listed off several sandwiches you could have for lunch.

I asked if I could have a salad and she said sure! It was a different combination than other salads I’ve had on the Camino. I’m used to the ensalada mixta in Spain, but I’m happy to have a salad in almost any form.

This one had hard-boiled eggs, chickpeas, tuna, olives, corn, tomatoes and melon.

Later that afternoon, I had some tired girls with me as we crossed the bridge over the river into Barcelos. We’d come 13 miles.

Barcelos is one of my favorite stops on the Central Portuguese Camino, probably because of the sweet Pilgrim Blessing they do at mass there, but also it’s a beautiful town on a river. You could easily spend a couple of days wandering around.

After we checked in and showered, we went to sit in the main square for the afternoon before going to chapel and dinner.

The pilgrim blessing was as sweet as I remembered it.

We laughed so hard at dinner that night and I think it might have been the result of a combination of tired + joy.

The next morning we set out in the rain. You have to put your rain covers on at least once in a week in order to justify carrying them, and gratefully, this was the only time we needed them.

I was so excited on this day because we were headed to Casa Fernanda, which is one of the most beloved stops on all Caminos. I couldn’t wait for my friends to experience Fernanda’s special brand of Camino hospitality and I was curious about who else we would meet.

This was one of only two nights on this trip that we were sharing rooms with other pilgrims.

The rain continued through the morning but broke around midday.

We made our usual coffee and lunch stops.

It seemed quiet on the trail, maybe because of the weather.

We had seen several other pilgrims leaving Barcelos, but we soon spread out over the trail.

We ate lunch at a place that was full of mostly locals as it was off the beaten path a bit.

They had two lunch plates you could choose from and one of them came with veggies and rice, so I asked to have just the rice and veggies, which was plenty.

After lunch, we only had a little ways left to walk to reach Fernanda’s house.

When we arrived, there were already three or four other folks there sitting in the garden.

We sat down and joined them, and Fernanda mixed up Sangria for us all to enjoy.

While we visited with each other, Fernanda made croquettes and chorizo with bread in her outdoor kitchen.

Then we all dispersed to take showers, do yoga, take naps, etc.

While we were doing yoga in the garden, four German students arrived to take the final spots in Fernanda’s back garden hut.

They threw their packs in the room and came back out to join us.

We were thoroughly entertained by this foursome, who sang several songs in German for us after dinner.

This night ushered in our music theme. We all took turns sharing songs and then sang ones we all knew until I was literally hoarse.

Then Fernanda’s husband Jacinto pushed the kitchen table back to make room for us to all dance.

And really, a kitchen dance is the best kind there is.

I had to take a shower before bed because I was so sweaty!

The next morning we came to breakfast a little tired, but excited for the SUNNY day!

We told Fernanda and all our other new friends goodbye and set out on the trail.

This day we were properly in the countryside and the sunshine all day, so it might have been my favorite.

It’s hard to say. There was something to enjoy every day of this walk!

But on this day we passed one million beautiful calla lilies. We’d seen a lot of them already, but never this many together.

And we stopped for coffee (and other bevvies) at a place where we could sit in the sun and eat from a giant bowl of kiwis that were just the right form of ripe!

I think we ate about 20 of them between us.

We were headed to Ponte de Lima this day, which is another favorite town on the Portuguese Camino.

You enter town along the river underneath the most lovely promenade of trees.

As we sat down to order lunch by the river a gal who was a contestant on the Spanish version of the Voice was setting up to sing for the afternoon. She was live streaming on Tik Tok or Instagram and she was so great.

We stayed for a long time listening to her and singing along to songs we knew.

It was one of those perfect sitting-in-a-square moments that I live for after a good walk.

Finally we pulled ourselves away from the riverside restaurant when our private concert ended to go check into our rooms, which had lovely views of the town.

We went and walked on the bridge at sunset before dinner.

The town is named after the bridge and the river it runs across.

It was a gorgeous night.

Then we went to dinner, and we interrupted a sweet lady’s 80th birthday party. We had to sit outside at first because the place was packed and the whole party was singing along with a man playing a guitar. Then as the guests started to go home, our waiter squeezed us inside. The temps were dropping and we were cold, plus we were so curious about what was happening inside.

One of the birthday gal’s friends started singing Fado songs a cappella. The whole place got quiet as her voice filled the room. I have read that the best Fado is a spontaneous experience and so I was so excited we were getting to listen in. When she finished, we all applauded and I went over to thank her and ended up meeting Alice, the birthday girl, and all her friends, one of who had come over from Madeira from the event and told me I need to come hiking there next.

The whole evening was one of those wild, magical experiences that you aren’t sure was real after you leave. Did that really happen? We asked ourselves after the portal we had stepped into closed after Alice and her friends paraded out at the end of the evening, after many hugs and kisses goodbye.

But I have a small reminder that it was real: a book of poetry that Alice had written and self-published for the occasion. When she discovered how close our names were, Alice and Alison, she inscribed one of her books to me, and now I’m using it to study Portuguese.

The next morning the sun was shining again as we crossed the bridge to head up the hill on our biggest climb of the week.

We left Hayley behind to hang around gorgeous Ponte de Lima on this day because her knee was hurting her so much.

As we walked over the hills into the next village we heard a choir singing. We couldn’t figure out where it was coming from at first, but we finally decided that the music was coming from a church that was far away on a hill. We think they were projecting the service on a speaker on the outside of the church, maybe because they know pilgrims are walking by and will hear the music.

We made it to the top of the hill around noon and sat out in the sun for rest. Lizard time, Kelsy calls it when we have little naps in the sun. I’m a fan.

Then a little while later, we had lunch on the side of the trail at a little cafe. I love the Camino for its MANY roadside cafes.

When we got to Casa da Capela, where we were staying for the night, the big surprise was that there was a pool and it was open! It was absolutely freezing but Zoë and I jumped in anyway and then headed straight to the hot tub.

Our host served a yummy dinner, lots of bits at the beginning…bread, cheese, meats, olives.
And then a vegetarian hash with eggs and potatoes and I don’t even know what all, but it was delish. As was breakfast the next morning.

We loved this spot, just a little bend in the road between Ponte de Lima and Valença.

Our last day of walking came oh-too-soon. We only had a short 8-9 miles to go into Valença.

It was another gorgeous day, with lots of final arrows, shells and photos.

I think this little taste of the Camino definitely had these gals wanting to come back for more.

We had a very sweet week together and I would go right back tomorrow and do and all over again.

We ended in lovely Valença with the beautiful blue tiles and textile shops everywhere.

Valença’s old town is preserved within its medieval fortress walls.

We had lunch in a sqaure, did a bit of shopping and sitting in the sun.

A final bottle of Tinto Verde.

A last wander at sunset, across the bridge into Spain and back again to Portugal.

One more dinner together. And one more sleep.

Goodbye Portuguese Camino! We’ll be back one day!

Many of the photos in this post come from my fellow hikers: Kristie, Zoë, Koko, Hayley and Kelsy! I’m super thankful to them for trusting me to lead them on this adventure. 

If you enjoy reading about my walks, consider subscribing to get future updates.

The post Return to the Portuguese Camino appeared first on Alison Chino.

Every time I go for a hike with a group of folks I send out a packing list.

People don’t always follow it, but they can’t say I didn’t try to help keep those trail pack weights down once we’re out there hiking.

I love to travel light.

It is freeing on any trip, but especially on one where you are carrying everything with you every day.

Also when you’re moving to a new place every night, it’s so much easier to pack up again every morning if you don’t have much.

I tend to explode when I unpack, so less is always going to be better for me.

Every time I go these days, I weigh everything and try to get it down a little bit more.

For example on a recent trip I didn’t need a sleeping bag liner, and I decided to leave the rain pants and fleece layer at home when I looked at the weather. So my total pack weight with water empty, and wearing trousers, underclothes, base layer, fishing shirt, boots, phone in my pocket and trekking poles in my hands was 10.9 pounds/4.95kg.

That’s a record I think. We’ll see if I can beat it this summer, but I’m hesitant to go to the Alps in any season without my rain pants. Plus for most mountain huts, you need a sleeping bag liner.

Here’s what I bring on a hut-to-hut hike…

Alison’s Hut-to-Hut Packing List

Gear:
24 liter Osprey Sirrus Pack 1.2kg
Water bottle: 32 oz Nalgene. 120g empty/600g full
Sleeping bag liner: 160g

Clothes:
Black Montane Hiking trousers (w/belt) 195g
Black Montane Hiking shorts (sans belt) 110g
Plum sleeveless wooly tank 80g
Short sleeve wool base layer 75g
Long-sleeve wool base layer 175g
Columbia fishing shirt 145g
Fleece zip up mid-layer 239g
Plum Montane Rain Jacket 200g
Gortex Rain pants 230g
Ultralight Down Jacket 110g
2 pairs of underwear 20g each
1 forclaz black tank 75g
1 icebreaker sports bra 30g
2 pairs of Darn Toughs 115g (together)
Leggings 200g
Thin wool gloves 55g
Blue Patagonia beanie hat 36g
Blackberry baseball cap 63g

Shoes:
Hiking boots 1070g
Xeroshoes sandals 240g

Personal Hygiene:
Small fast drying towel 45g
Small bar of soap
Toothbrush and toothpaste tablets
Moisturizer, lip balm, sunscreen, meds, ear plugs
Total weight for toiletries: 400g

Other:
Trekking poles (not pictured)
Backpack rain cover (included in pack weight)
Journal 50g
Pen 8g
Phone 204g
Charger/charging bank/headphones 340g
Passport 36g

Small wallet with credit cards/etc
First aid kit 400g
1 roll KT tape 100g
Headlamp 65g
Picnic silverware kit 30g (Just the spoon 8g)
2 Protein bars 52g each
1 nut butter 32g
1 tube electrolytes 50g
Deck of cards 75g
Small stuff sack 38g
Swimsuit (I use my sports bra and shorts)
Knee brace 20g
Bandana 30g

Here are a few more photos of what I’ve packed on trips over the last few years.

If you’re planning a hiking adventure soon and have questions about packing, hit me up! I LOVE to talk folks into packing less.

Before you know it, you’ll be back at home and wishing for the simple days of living out of a backpack. Embrace the vagabond energy while you can!

The post Hut-to-Hut Packing List appeared first on Alison Chino.

12 miles 

 2500 ft of elevation up and  3000 ft of elevation down

We woke up to sunshine on the last day of our walk on the GR7.

I had originally planned for us to only walk the five miles to Pampaneira. However it seemed like such a shame to not spend the whole day in the sunshine, so I extended the walk to Soportújar. We would go 12 miles instead of only five or six. We couldn’t do two short days in a row!

We fueled up early on this day. Two twin brothers ran the hotel where we were staying. They served us the usual toast with ham, cheese, tomato and olive oil. The bread for this toast was delivered fresh every morning in each place we stayed.

I (per usual) also asked for hard-boiled eggs and we kept our hosts busy with our requests for multiple coffees.

Whenever I would say, does anyone need more coffee?

The answer was always YES.

These brothers were so kind and patient with us!

We finally drank our last sips of coffee and got out of their way.

We descended out of Capileira quickly. It was cold so we were anxious to get into the morning sun.

It’s hard to describe how steep the descent was that morning. We first dropped into the valley, crossed the Poqueira River and had to climb back out.

Then once we got to the other side of the gorge, we went downhill for the rest of the morning.

The day was so beautiful that it made me a little teary. I am always sad when a walk ends, but this week had gone by so fast and this day was so gorgeous, I sort of wanted it to go on forever, a sentiment I would later make me laugh.

The Poqueira Gorge or barranco, as it is called in Spanish, is absolutely stunning. The hills climb steeply up both sides of the river and are covered in olive and almond trees.

When I see terraced farms on steep hillsides, I wonder at humanity. Honestly, how did we ever begin to farm this kind of terrain?

When I got home from this trip I read a book called Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart, which is about one family’s experience of moving to this part of the world to work this land. It’s a good read, both for how funny it is and because of the glimpse you get into the world of the folks who still live and work up in these mountains.

It felt like we spent the whole morning losing all the height we had gained throughout the week.

We got down to where we could see Pampaneira, but it was still probably an hour before we made it into the village.

We had a small break when we got down to where we crossed the river again.

I pulled out my fig log and cut off little chunks as treats and hopefully motivation for the final push.

Everyone was hungry and ready for some lunch in town.

Pampaneira isn’t very high on the side of the gorge, but it was still a short climb for us to get into the town.

This village is a popular stop for folks who are visiting Alpujarran pueblos blancos, so it had more people in it than we had seen all week.

I think one of the draws might be the local chocolatier. She certainly got our business.

We had a quick wander about town and a snack in the square. I gave everyone an hour to spend in the village, most of which I spent in the square people-watching. We managed to drop a fairly astonishing amount of money in Pampaneira in one hour. I might have instigated a bit of panic shopping by not giving everyone more time. But sooner than everyone wanted, it was time to push on and continue our hike, with backpacks just a little bit fuller.

Bye Bye Pampaneira! We hope to see you again one day.

We had to drop back to the river and cross it a third time before rising again. Before we left the gorge, we could look back and see both Pampaneira and Bubion in the distance behind us.

The towns got smaller and smaller as we climbed away from them. The trail map for the afternoon looked fairly easy. Instead of climbing up for a long time and descending for a long time, the trail went steadily up and down. It looked like a gentle ramble.

Unfortunately, the steady ups and downs were on a rough trail that wasn’t nearly as traveled as the one we’d been on in the morning. And they were not long drops or climbs but they were steep. So it was a lot of work.

As the afternoon wore on, the sun beat down and it was not long before we grew both tired and hot.

And so I got my wish. This day DID go on forever.

We kept on hiking for hours and hours before we finally arrived in the witch-themed town of Soportújar.

Truly, the town has witches everywhere. I’m not sure why but it’s quite cute. You can even visit Hansel and Gretel’s house. (Not a Spanish fairy tale, but who cares?)

We made a quick effort to see the town before we posted up in the main road and ordered food and drinks like we hadn’t eaten all week.

I remember having the best salad of my life. (I’m sure that how good it tasted had nothing to do with the extra hours of walking in the sun.)

But even though it was a long last day, I was grateful to feel like when we left the GR7, I had given my all.

It always feels good to push hard on the last day. I’m sure my fellow hikers agree, now that it’s behind us. We left the witchy town in a taxi to stay in a town where we could catch a super early bus back to Granada the next morning, where we spent one more day together touring the Alhambra before saying goodbye.

It was a grand adventure, and I’m so grateful to this sweet group for joining me in the Alpujarran hills! Let’s do it again soon y’all!

This is the sixth in a series of posts about hiking the GR7 in Spain in the Alpujarras. Many of the photos come from my fellow hikers: Kristie, Eve, Zoe, Alexis and Kelsy! I’m super thankful to them for trusting me to lead them on this adventure. 

If you enjoy reading about my walks, consider subscribing to get future updates.

The post GR7 in Spain Day 6: Capileira to Soportújar appeared first on Alison Chino.

6 miles 

1500 ft of elevation up and 800 ft of elevation down

We had a slightly later start on Day 5 of the GR7 as we were not trying to cover as many miles.

I had a second loop hike above Capileira in reserve in case we arrived with a lot of steam still in our engines, but after the long slog of Day 4, we were all more than content with a shorter day.

A little rain was predicted in the morning with heavier showers in the afternoon. We hoped to be done hiking for the day before any heavy rain arrived.

It started to sprinkle a bit on us as we left Pitres.

However, as soon as we put on our rain jackets and pack covers, the rain stopped.

We had a steady climb out of Pitres and then a meandering wander on the trail towards Capileira.

Capileira is the highest of three villages in the Poqueira Gorge, the other two are Bubion and Pampaneira. We would descend part of the way into the gorge today to Bubion, then climb to Capileira.

Then on our final day we would hike down the opposite site of the gorge to Pampaneira and on to our final stop on the trail, Soportújar.

When we got to a big rock formation called Peña de Angel, we could see down into the Poqueira Gorge.

It was fun to be able to see our destination so early in the day, especially since we had opted not to carry lunch.

We descended quickly into Bubion and started to look for a food spot.

These three villages are so high that they are consistently colder than the lower villages we’d been through.

But we were grateful that the heavy rains had stayed away.

In town there was not a lot open. The restaurant I had picked out would not be open until 1pm, so we found a coffee shop that was still serving breakfast and just starting to have some lunch on offer. The owner told us there was a vegetable soup on offer, which several of us ordered.

The Spanish tortilla I was hoping to have for lunch was not an option, so I asked if it would be possible to just have hard-boiled eggs.

It’s unusual to have eggs for breakfast in Spain, but I’ve started asking if it’s possible to have hard-boiled eggs. I have found this off-the-menu request to be more likely to be accommodated than if I ask for eggs cooked some other way.

Everyone else said they also wanted an egg. The waiter was a little taken aback when I asked for six hard boiled eggs, but he brought them to me anyway and then was relieved that I was sharing them with friends.

We also had more cafe con leche of course.

We left Bubion happily fueled up for the last mile or so of our hike up to Capileira.

The sun even came out for a little while as we made our way up the hill. Part of the trail had washed out from heavy rains in early March so we walked some on the road. One side of the road had fallen away down the side of the hill, reducing the traffic to one lane.

But we found our way through a small wood and over the road into the next town up.

Even though Treveléz is officially the highest village in the Alpujarras, somehow Capileira feels higher. The views down the gorge make it feel like you are way up high.

And the village feels like a remote, far away place.

I loved all the villages we visited on this walk. They each had their own charm. But I think if I had to choose one as my favorite, it would be Capileira. Maybe it was just that we arrived here earlier in the day and had more time to enjoy it.

Almost as soon as we got into town, it started to rain harder. So we checked into our rooms and then went to find a warm spot to enjoy being out of the weather.

We found a bar around the corner where we posted up for the afternoon playing cards before going back to our rooms for naps before dinner.

Before dinner we did a little shopping in the small village. There were beautiful handmade rugs and baskets for sale along the main street.

At dinner, I asked for salad and was grateful for some lettuce with my other pickled veggies from jars. These veggies are a standard part of mixed salads in Spain, especially at this time of year. Spring had not quite reached these high villages.

The rain was still falling when we walked back to our rooms, but the usual end-of-dinner offerings from random, unmarked jars of spirits kept us warm. Capileira’s offerings came in lemon or coffee flavored. Both were delightful.

Even with the short day, I fell asleep quickly. I slept hard in this sweet village perched high on a hill.

I could not believe we only had one more day of walking! The week had gone by so fast.

This is the fifth in a series of posts about hiking the GR7 in Spain in the Alpujarras. Many of the photos come from my fellow hikers: Kristie, Eve, Zoe, Alexis and Kelsy! I’m super thankful to them for trusting me to lead them on this adventure. 

If you enjoy reading about my walks, consider subscribing to get future updates.

The post GR7 in Spain Day 5: Pitres to Capileira appeared first on Alison Chino.

11 miles 

2650 ft of elevation up and 3625 ft of elevation down

Alternate title for this day: Does anyone see the trail?

After waiting for what seemed like forever for breakfast at our lodging in Trevélez, we finally set off on Day 4 of the GR7 after 9am.

We climbed to the top of the quiet village under a cover of clouds, and warmed up quickly in the cool morning air.

When the village ended, we still kept climbing up through mountain farms.

We passed sheep and horses. Dogs and cats.

We criss-crossed the edges of steep slopes, crops planted unfathomably on hills.

Farming already seems like awfully hard work to me on a flat plain, but mountainside farming must be hard on a whole other level.

We rose high above the town of Trevélez fairly quickly.

Early in the day we missed one or two of the GR7 marks and had to back track to find our way.

The red and white markings are usually easy to spot, but there are places where the markings have faded and other places where they are marked along overgrown tracks that no longer resemble a worn trail.

We determined that perhaps this section of the GR7 is less-traveled than the previous days.

For the beginning and ending parts of the day we traveled along a dirt track. Waving goodbye to Trevélez, we looked across the valley at the trail we had been on the previous day. We were drawing a big U-shape with our footsteps with our entrance into and departure from the jamon-themed village.

After a while the trail curved away from the valley and we could no longer see the town behind us.

And soon after leaving the dirt track, the trail seemed to disappear.

It would later reappear, seemingly out of nowhere, complete with clear markings, only to disappear fifteen minutes later.

I used my GPS to follow where the trail should be but often we would have to turn around and find a different way because the way was covered in large branches or impassable overgrowth.

It was slow-going to say the least, and a bit frustrating. We stopped for a snack on a wide expanse of rocks. Someone must have placed them there intentionally at some point, but what for we never figured out.

The rocks served as a good resting point. While the gals had some snacks, I went to scope out the next stretch of trail, looking for the least overgrown way forward.

We later discovered that the recent heavy rains had washed away parts of our trail and covered other bits with lots of debris, which we navigated as best we could.

There were a few falls, several slips and many scrapes and scratches as we traveled the miles between Trevélez and Pitres. It was a trying day to be sure.

I would rejoice when we found a marker or a clear bit of trail. Then I would feel downtrodden fifteen minutes later at losing it again.

We made our way forward, slowly but surely inching closer to our destination.

We stopped for lunch after finally reaching a dirt track again.

When I sat down to eat, I practically fell asleep on my pack.

Apparently getting lost is very tiring!

I was relieved to discover that after lunch we could just follow the dirt track the rest of the way down into town if necessary.

It was a long way down into town, so we stayed on a trail that was shorter than the road. However it crossed the switchbacks of the dirt road over and over again so it was always nearby if we needed it.

At some point we caught up to a cat that walked with us most of the way down. Our new companion charmed the girls so much that they perked up at the end of a long day.

Between our late start and the slow progress of bush-wacking, this day seemed to wear on forever.

We reached a point where we could see Pórtugos, a town that was just a mile or two before Pitres. We decided we would stop in Pórtugos for much needed refreshment and call it the end of the day.

While we rested, we expressed much gratitude for finally being off the mountain.

Then we decided to take a picture of how we all really felt at this point in the day.

Laughing, we filed into Pórtugos and found a young waiter willing to bring us veggies and drinks even though the restaurant was shutting down for the afternoon.

We ordered up a big plate of patatas a lo pobre (poor man’s potatoes) with eggs on top.

The waiter laughed at our bad Spanish and at how ravenous we all were.

We never wanted to leave, but eventually it was time to walk the last mile to Pitres and find our hotel.

Pitres was so quiet when we arrived that for a moment, I wasn’t sure it was inhabited.

I interrupted an older gentleman’s nap at the hotel in order to ask for our rooms. He was sleeping around the corner from the desk in an armchair.

After I disturbed him a second time for the wifi code, I told the gals that we needed to let that poor man sleep. No more questions.

Which was fine, because they all crawled into their beds for naps as well.

After a warm shower, I went to make dinner arrangements. After the previous night’s terrible meal and the morning’s disappointing breakfast, we were overdue for some yummy food. I felt we had earned it after the day we’d had.

Thankfully, in Pitres, there is a master chef from Malaga who came to the countryside for a quiet life. He opened this beautiful restaurant overlooking the mountains in Pitres and serves up his gorgeous creations each night to the lucky few who wander into the village and find him.

We were the only ones at El Jardin del Mirador that night. I had to drag the gals out of bed and up the hill to the restaurant. We walked up there feeling like we could just as easily have gone to bed rather than have dinner at all.

At El Jardin de Mirador, there are tables outside with beautiful views, but the temps were dropping as we arrived so we sat inside the small cozy spot.

Our host listed off the various dishes he could make for us and everyone chose different ones so we would have a variety.

He cooked all the meat on his grill, and then he would come inside and hand our plates through a little window from the kitchen.

We were all revived as we enthusiastically oohed and ahhhed over every dish that came through the window.

The chef told us he had been in Pitres for several years, but that he had grown tired of the small-mindedness of the village.

Everyone in this town would rather just have a pizza place!

He said he was headed back to Malaga soon to open a new restaurant there.

When we discovered that El Mirador was in its last season, it felt so special that we had spent an evening there.

It was like we found a secret (and temporary) door that opened onto the best meal of our whole week.

We promised to come find him in Malaga when we next returned to Spain.

He couldn’t believe how far we were walking. Then he told us that we were sure to be in the rain the whole next day.

Oh no, I said. It won’t rain on us. 

At the end of the night, he poured out goodbye shots. It was Zoco, a Spanish liqueur made from sloe berries.

We giggled and talked on top of each other all the way back to the hotel.

It’s amazing how a good meal and a lovely evening can wash away even the roughest of days.

This is the fourth in a series of posts about hiking the GR7 in Spain in the Alpujarras. Many of the photos come from my fellow hikers: Kristie, Eve, Zoe, Alexis and Kelsy! I’m super thankful to them for trusting me to lead them on this adventure. 

If you enjoy reading about my wanderings, consider subscribing to get future updates.

The post GR7 in Spain Day 4: Trevélez to Pitres appeared first on Alison Chino.

OR

alternatively this day could be titled:

Make Love to the Water

We headed out early on Day 2, our first REAL walking day on the GR7. We would cover over 10 miles with some more significant elevation drops and gains on our way to the next village on our itinerary: Bérchules.

We headed downhill out of Yegen into the morning sunshine.

It was a beautiful spring day, exactly the kind I dream about when I am training throughout the winter in the cold rain.

Much of our trail was made up of old donkey tracks that had been paved over, so we pounded the pavement for miles.

Whenever the tracks turned to gravel, my knees and ankles were grateful for a little more give in the ground, even if the dusty trails kicked up bits of rock into our shoes.

The trail markings on the GR7 are generally very good, but occasionally we had trouble spotting them. Sometimes the sun had faded the paint on the marker,  and the whole post blended into the mountainside. You had to get closer to spot it.

Soon the sun rose high enough in the sky to reach us on the trail and we warmed up fast, shedding layers and drinking more water.

After descending a while, we started to climb to Mecina Bombaron, a village that we had planned to stop in if there was an open cafe as it was the only one we would pass through on this day. Originally I had planned for us to sleep in Cadiar, but there hadn’t been a place to stay that was open for the season and would hold all six of us, so we were pushing on to Bércheles, skirting around Cadiar altogether, opting to avoid an extra 1000 ft drop down and back up again.

It was already a steady uphill climb to the next village without dropping down to Cadiar, but the cool mountain air made for such a pleasant morning of walking.

I wanted us to log several miles before the sun got too high, but a theme of this trail is that if you find an open cafe, you should go ahead and stop, even if you aren’t too hungry or tired yet, because there might not be another one for a long time.

So we took full advantage of the open bar in Mecina Bombaron and stopped for second breakfast. (Our first breakfast had been instant coffee, yogurt cups and fruit from the tiny supermarket in Yegen.)

Fresh squeezed orange juice in Spain is one of my most favorite treats, so I ordered up a round of jugo de naranja and cafe con leche.

We also had the ubiquitous toast with tomato puree, olive oil, ham and cheese before moving along through the village.

Mecina Bombaron carried on the “book” theme from Yegen, another nod to the famous author that lived and wrote there.

As we left the village, we stopped at a fountain to refill our water bottles.

An older gentleman was drinking from the fountain and told us that the water from this particular fountain was the very best in all of the Alpujarras.

Then he put his whole head under the fountain, turning it from side to side and just letting the water run down his face.

He gestured to us to follow his example.

I wasn’t quite hot enough yet to be dunking my head in the cold fountain, but he was insistent.

You can’t only drink it, you must MAKE LOVE to the water!

Clearly we were not convinced, so he continued,

If you do not play, you will miss your life!

I was trying to decide if I was going to volunteer when Zoe removed her her hat and stuck her head in the water.

The old man was so delighted and we all cheered for her.

Most of us had just met Zoe, but we all fell in love with her when she stuck her head in that fountain.

We were all laughing as we left the village to rejoin the GR7, and just like that, Make love to the water! became both a catchphrase and theme of our whole trip.

We would come back to it again and again.

I love a good swim on a hot day, especially after a hike, but now I will forever phrase the glory of a post-hike dip as making love to the water.

The day began to properly heat up as we carried on, so were glad we had all re-filled bottles at the fountain.

By the time we decided to stop for lunch, everyone would probably have been happy to find a little water to dunk our heads into, but we were up high and there was none to be found.

We did find the perfect picnic spot though, high on the trail and across the valley from our destination.

Bérchules seemed close enough to reach out and touch, but in reality it was further away than we imagined.

We ate our packed lunches on sunny rocks looking over the valley and just soaking up the beautiful day.

After lunch, we carried on down a road that seemed like it was heading away from Berchules in the opposite direction, but then Kelsy spotted a gate that had some faint markings for the GR7 on it.

We opened it up and took the small track behind it down into the valley.

The valley had a fairly steep drop off to our left so we couldn’t quite see how we were going to cross it, but the trail revealed itself as we carried on.

As trails often do.

Walking a new trail requires a bit of faith. Sometimes you have to move forward without being able to see what’s ahead.

You have to believe that the way will emerge as you carry on. There will be a way. You just don’t know what it looks like yet.

Then you come around a rock and you see the trail start to cut switchbacks back and forth across what seemed like an impossible ravine edge.

From below, we looked back up at the layers of rock we had come down and the trail seemed to have disappeared behind us.

A small river cut through the bottom of the ravine. We walked across the bridge over the river and onto the trail on the other side before I realized that we should absolutely not pass up an opportunity to make love to the water!

Y’all! We should go back and make love to that water! And so we did.

Because we don’t want to miss our lives by not playing.

And also icy cold water on tired feet is SUCH a balm!

Then we dried off, put our boots back on and climbed the hill to the village.

By now it was getting on in the afternoon and we were craving our post-hike drinks and snacks.

We hoped that everything wasn’t closed for siesta yet!

Fortunately there was an open bar in town, so we made our way inside and collapsed at a long table. The bar had some cheese puffs for sale on the wall. So we grabbed a bag and dumped it out on the table.

I think we finished them all before our drinks even came.

Clearly, we needed to pack more lunch tomorrow. We also ordered an extra large sandwich that looked like a giant doughnut. You cut it into pieces to have several small sandwiches. So clever.

After our bar stop, we found the hotel where we were staying, but they were having a plumbing problem. The water had been turned off in the entire hotel, which also included the restaurant where we were hoping to have dinner.

But our sweet hosts, a mother and daughter from the Netherlands, had prepared some other apartments they own for us. They usually rent them out by the week but they offered them to us in place of the hotel rooms.

They turned out to be so beautiful with balconies overlooking the Alpujarras and little fridges stocked with drinks.

We all said we would LOVE to come back and stay in them for longer.

We spread out over the balconies and soaked up the last of the sunshine.

We laughed about the day and looked at the map for the next day’s hike while our hosts cooked us the most beautiful dinner.

A Moroccan dish cooked in a clay tagine with beans and veggies.

They also brought us breakfast for the next morning and generous sack lunches for the next day.

We felt so spoiled and as I went to sleep I said a little prayer that our sweet hosts would be able to get the hotel plumbing fixed before the Easter Holidays. Apparently it’s really hard to get work done in these remote villages and our hosts were on the cusp of the busier season, so they really needed a plumber to come.

Because obviously you need working toilets, sinks and showers in a hotel. I was so grateful that we had not had to forgo showers!

After a hike, a shower feels so good. You just want to stay in there forever. It’s like making love to the water.

This is the second in a series of posts about a week of hiking the GR7 in Spain in the Alpujarras. Many of the photos were taken by my fellow hikers: Kristie, Eve, Zoe, Alexis and Kelsy! I’m super thankful to them for trusting me to lead them on this adventure. 

If you enjoy reading about my wanderings, consider subscribing to get future updates.

The post GR7 in Spain Day 2: Yegen to Bérchules appeared first on Alison Chino.

It’s often a mystery to me how a trail ends up on my list of ones I’m hoping to get around to. I heard about the GR7 in Spain from several sources, but I think the main reason I finally put it on the calendar and made it happen is that the portion of this trial in Andalucía is so far south in Europe that it can be comfortably hiked in early spring.

The GR trails are a massive network of trails all over Europe. I believe they started in France so GR stands for Grandes Randonnées, but in Spain they are called the Grans Recorridos. And they have different names in other countries, but mainly a GR is a long trail, a way to wander around Europe in the most delightful way possible…on foot.

The GR7 runs through France, Andorra and Spain. The portion that runs through the Alpujarras in the Sierra Nevada in the far south of Spain seemed like the perfect next journey for my crew of spring hikers who are game to head off just about anywhere I suggest within reason. We roped in a couple of new friends and off we went!

We met in late in March in Granada, where the sunshine was plentiful but the evening temps still required puffy jackets. Perfect for hiking. We could even see snow in the mountains in the distance.

We had an afternoon and evening in Granada before taking off for those mountains.

It was just long enough in Granada to want a little more time, so we were glad we had booked another day there at the end of our trip to see the Alhambra.

We wandered the old town and found our way to a drinks spot with a view of the Alhambra.

Some of us were just meeting and some of us hadn’t seen each other since last year so we had lots of catching up to do.

We laughed over drinks and then once we were too cold too sit outside any longer, we climbed higher to a Moroccan restaurant where we had dinner.

Before the food came we warmed up with the most beautiful pots of tea.

It was just the beginning of noticing all the North African influences in Andalucía for my group. The next morning we stopped for breakfast at a cafe with colorful lamps everywhere that reminded me of the teapots from the night before.

The Hike Begins

I had requested that we make a very early start from Granada so we would have time to stop for breakfast along the way. So at 7:06am we left our hotel and walked the two miles to the spot in Granada where we were catching the bus to the Alpujarras. I had planned only a five mile walk on the start of the trail that afternoon, so it seemed like a good idea to add a couple miles more that morning.

As I marched us through the quiet morning streets of Granada, my newbies expressed a little consternation to their friends about how quickly we were moving.

Kristie and Alexis confessed to me later that they had both reassured Eve and Zoe that I would not walk this fast all week. But it was cold and dark and I did not want us to miss our bus. The next one was at 5:40pm. So yes, I was moving quickly.

We stopped for a quick coffee and a classic Spanish breakfast: bread spread with tomato puree, olive oil, ham and cheese. (We would see A LOT of this breakfast in the week ahead!) Of course, I was tapping my toe and rushing everyone along so that we could get over to the bus stop and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

The bus was late enough that I started to research other ways to get into the Alpujarras.

It was late enough that I asked random people at the bus stop where they were going and if they knew anything about the Alsa Bus to the Alpujarras.

It was late enough that any bus that came along, I boarded and asked if the driver had any information about the Alsa Bus to the Alpujarras.

I was starting to formulate a plan about what we could do for the day if we had to wait for the 5:40pm bus. Had we missed the morning bus? Had it come early?

I wasn’t in a panic, but my brain was in overdrive creating Plans B, C and D.

And then the bus arrived exactly 37 minutes late.

We got on. I let everyone know we would be on it for a while and the road getting into the mountains would have a lot of twists and turns. So several of my jet-lagged American friends fell asleep as we made our way out of Granada and up into the hills. After about an hour, we stopped in Lanjaron where I would spend a week the following September. Then we drove through some of the towns we would walk back through. The road snaked up and up, and I was amazed that the driver could navigate such a large bus around all the narrow curves.

After several hours on winding roads, the driver pulled over on the side of the highway and let us out in the absolute middle of nowhere. From the side of the road, I directed my sleepy friends up a small lane in the sun where we reached the very quiet village of Mecina Alfahar. I had hoped we might have some lunch there, but thankfully we all were prepared with snacks because there was a whole lot of nothing open in Mecina Alfahar, which would be a bit of a theme on this trail.

So we pulled out our oranges and snack bars and headed up the hill to find the trail.

We hiked a few miles in the hot sun before we reached the village of Válor, which thankfully, had an open cafe!

We were able to get some food (Spanish tortilla!!) and a drink I had recently learned about on a previous trip: Tinto Verano.

Tinto is red wine and verano means summer, so this beverage is cold red wine mixed with sparkling lemonade. It seems more common in Andalucía than sangria and I like it better. (But it’s hard to steer me away from a cold Spanish lager.)

After some refreshment, we carried on in the hot spring sunshine. Because of the bus and the late start, we were walking at the hottest part of the day, which helped us be motivated to get an earlier start the next few days.

All the villages have spring fed fountains with water from the mountains, so we would refill and cool off with a little splash here and there.

We rolled into Yegen a little after 4pm.

Ending the GR7 in Spain in Yegen on Day 1

Most of the villages of the Alpujarras are pretty chill. But Yegen is next-level quiet.

Its claim to fame is that British author George Brenan lived here in the 1920s. I had never heard of him but his book South From Granada is a bit of a British classic about Spain and I later read it. The most amazing part of his story is that when he lived here, the village was only accessible by donkey or foot, so if he had visitors, he would walk all the way to Granada to escort them back to his house. He regularly WALKED the journey that took us over three hours by bus. I had to pause reading the book on multiple occasions to just wonder at his wild scrambles across the Alpujarras.

But now, even though you can drive a car to Yegen, the village is probably less populated than it was in George Brenan’s day. There is a tiny little supermarket at the bottom of the village that we explored to restock our snacks for the next day and for breakfast because our host wasn’t serving breakfast until 9am and I wanted us on the trail well before then.

We rinsed out our sweaty clothes and then tried to catch all the remaining sunshine before the evening air brought in the chill.

By dinnertime, we were cold enough for a fire. We were staying in the only pub in town but it was closed on the day we arrived. However, our host, an Irish lady who had moved to Yegen over 20 years ago, agreed to make us dinner. She reminded us more than once that it was her day off, and so we felt a little awkward about coming up for dinner, but there was nowhere else in town to eat and we had exhausted the resources of the little supermarket.

While we enjoyed the fire in the chilly dining room, she gave us our choices (pork belly or steak, veggie plate for me) and then headed off to the kitchen to prepare everything. We devoured the food when it came which was good because very soon it was time for us to go. Our host had a lot to do, and again reminded us that it was supposed to be her day off.

So we went to our rooms like good little children and she locked the doors behind us so we wouldn’t help ourselves to more drinks in the pub.

Thankfully there was another door to the outside from the hallway, so we could get out the next morning.

Before we went to sleep, we made cups of tea in our rooms and watched the most beautiful Alpujarran sunset through the windows before settling into bed. The early start had caught up to us. I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

This is the first in a series of posts about a week of hiking the GR7 in Spain in the Alpujarras. Many of the photos were taken by my fellow hikers: Kristie, Eve, Zoe, Alexis and Kelsy! I’m super thankful to them for trusting me to lead them on this adventure. 

If you enjoy reading about my wanderings, consider subscribing to get future updates.

The post GR7 Spain: Day 1: Mecina Alfahar to Yegen appeared first on Alison Chino.

I first visited Andalucía in September of 2024.

I already knew from hiking the Camino that I love Spain.

Whenever I arrive in Spain, I immediately want to pull up a chair and stay a while.

If I am on a walk in Spain, I can’t pass a vende sign without stopping to look up the property to see how much it would be to buy a small house that I could turn into a pilgrims’ albergue, (my life plan for when my legs stop wanting to carry me so far down the road).

Because I keep returning to the Camino in northern Spain, it took me a while to get to Andalucía in the south, but now that I have been, I cannot seem to get enough of southern Spain.

Just over two years ago I signed up to lead a trip in what is known as the Sherry Triangle, just south of Seville near the coast.

Fast forward two years and I have led four trips in the region and have plans to lead three more in 2026.

So what is it about Andalucía that has swept me right off my hiking boots?

It’s actually hard to say. I feel like I am still at the beginning stages of a love affair with Andalucía that I hope will continue for many years.

What I have to share about Andalucía is not a wealth of knowledge, but more like fragmentary impressions of a place I am still getting to know.

I’m still learning what it means that the cities and villages in southern Spain have “Moorish influence.” Between the 700s and 1400s, the Moors (a word that included Arabs, Berbers, Syrians, Persians and eventually Spaniards) ruled over much of Spain. Seville, Granada and Cordoba were all developed during this time period, which is what makes them and their surrounding smaller towns and villages so architecturally unique from the rest of Europe.

Los Pueblos Blancos (white villages) were built by the Moors and they were what first drew my attention to the area. I kept seeing photographs of these whitewashed hilltop towns. The first tour I led in Andalucia was actually called Los Pueblos Blancos.

There are so many pueblos blancos that it will take me many more trips to visit them all! From their perches on high, these villages invite you from afar to come wander their tiny, winding roads.

It’s difficult to choose a favorite, but I love how in Vejer de la Frontera, the locals decorate their courtyards with plants.

And everyone has outdoor seating with a view.

The ancient practice of whitewashing these towns kept the houses cooler in the summer heat, and it served to keep the walls sterile and clean, repelling both disease and bugs.

But mostly I think the whitewashing creates an inviting feel to these towns.

Different towns add their own local flare to the decor. Locally-crocheted canopies decorate Vélez de Benaudalla and in Trevelez, the highest village in Spain, all the flowerpots have their own handmade covers.

Flowers are definitely a theme. When I come home from Spain, I want to plant pots and pots of flowers everywhere, and in all the colors of the rainbow.

Artisan tile and creative cobblestone patterns are more ways the locals differentiate their white villages.

Around every corner is another tiny surprise.

It’s easy to get lost, but also easy to find your way. You just head uphill until you can see where you are again.

Another delight of being in Andalucia is that you are never too far away from the sea.

There are over 600 miles of coastline to enjoy and everyone you meet has their favorite beach.

Because I usually fly in and out of Malaga to get to Andalucia from Bristol, I like to bookend trips with days along the Costa del Sol. The C-1 train from Malaga Airport makes the beach way too easy to access.

As soon as I arrive, I walk along the seafront and smell the charcoals burning outside every restaurant where cooks are putting fresh fish on the spit.

Patatas bravas and boquerones are the perfect seaside treat. After several visits, I finally convinced Taido to meet me here for a weekend at the end of a trip, and I think I have won him over to the delights of being in the Spanish sun so hopefully more of these views are in our future together.

I also love the province of Cadiz and some of the beaches on the western side of Andalucia, where the surfers hang out for the winds.

It’s quieter than the Costa del Sol, but not as easy to get to with public transportation. I rented a car to explore this stretch of El Palmar de Vejer for a few days after a tour.

On my first trip to Andalucia in province of Cadiz, we spent time in Jerez and El Puerto de Santa Maria, both famous for sherry.

I didn’t think I liked sherry but I had no idea that there were so many kinds. After much sherry tasting with tapas, I found a dry sherry that I enjoy: Oloroso.

We did some coastal walks and wandered through several different nature reserves.

Our walks on this trip weren’t too long. Four or five miles tops. And we almost always followed our walks with a long lunch in some beautiful place.

After lunch, if there was time, we might head to a town square for a quick sherry before a bus ride back to our hotel.

After that first trip to the Cadiz province, I signed up to go right back and lead another Andalucían adventure, but this time I would stay in one of those small hilltop white villages.

I arrived in Tolox in the Sierra de las Nieves Mountains in March of 2023 after weeks and weeks of rain, both in Britain and in Spain.

The landscape that had been brown and dusty in the previous autumn had all turned green.

Instead of sherry tasting and city visits, this time I was there for a week of local walks in the Spanish National Park: Sierra de las Nieves.

I emerged from the winter glum of the UK into the Andalucían sunshine and it was delightful.

I walked new trails and made lists of places I wanted to come back to with friends.

Every afternoon we would return to Tolox from a different direction.

The welcoming sight of the village quickly became my favorite view of the week.

We ate simple, but beautiful meals at our hotel and in local restaurants in and around the village.

One day we took buses to the nearby village of Yunquera and then made our way back to Tolox across a valley and hills in between the two villages.

We had a local guide on this trip and we learned so much about the countryside plants and trees, including what was planted in the terraced hills around the towns: mostly olives, oranges, lemons, almonds and avocados.

I don’t know when I’ve seen so many olive trees!

Our walks were closer to eight miles each day, so we carried picnic lunches and spent the whole day outside.

I had such a hearty group of walkers from the UK. I had one couple from the Isle of Wight in their 70s who walk 20 miles every Saturday.

I am reminded on these trips that a body in motion stays in motion.

If we got back early in the afternoon to Tolox, sometimes we would stop in the main town square for a drink.

But most days we were back in time for a shower, a quick rest and then a walk to dinner.

I do love a week in the hills, and the hills in the Sierra Nieves were just about as lovely as my local hills, but with less rain.

We traveled through several forests, some of which are recently planted. The entire region is a biosphere reserve, where local plants are being protected and preserved.

We enjoyed hunting for wildflowers, especially orchids and tiny little wild daffodils, just about the size of a thumb.

And in the hills, there are still remnants of where farmers packed ice down in the winter to save for when the snow melted. The Sierra de las Nieves don’t see nearly as much snow as they used to, but at one time, the snow from these hills was the main source of ice in a time before refrigeration.

The ice was cut into blocks and loaded onto donkeys to sell, a luxury for those who could afford it.

It’s wild to think about life before refrigeration or electricity, especially since in the history of the world, both are relatively recent. I’m fairly sure I would not thrive without either.

Of all the places to sit and ponder these and many other life mysteries with a sandwich, the hillsides of the Sierra de las Nieves are pretty not too bad.

From Tolox, I took several buses to reach Granada to meet up with my friends for a week of hiking on the GR7, a hike from village to village for seven days. It was so delightful that I am saving it for its own post.

But as a teaser, here is a photo of us at our highest point of the hike with the Mulhacén in the background. (At 11,414 feet, the Mulhacén is the highest mountain in Spain.)

For now, I will skip ahead to my most recent trip to Andalucía and another week spent staying in one of the lovely pueblos blancos, but this time in the Sierra Nevadas.

Lanjarón is the town of water.

The name is derived from the Arabic words that mean “land of springs.”

True to its name, there are water fountains all over the town of Lanjaron, and people fill up their giant jugs to take home because the pure spring water is delicious.

Maybe it’s the water that makes everything else in Lanjaron shine so bright, but even the produce outside the markets caught my attention.

At every meal, I tried to order something that included slices of the gorgeous local tomatoes.

We stayed in the lovely Hotel Alcadima where we could eat breakfast outside and have dinner with a view of the surrounding hillsides.

On one of our first days we visited nearby Niguelas to go to an olive oil museum where the ancient modes of making olive oil with giant stones are preserved for history. Olives were loaded onto baskets and carried by donkeys up to Niguelas to be pressed into oil. The guide at the museum brought the entire process to life for us and I’ll never pour out olive oil without thinking about her careful instructions for buying and tasting the best olive oil.

A couple of days before the guests arrived, I went to Niguelas to make sure I knew where we were going and to do the walk we planned to do.

Then I walked back to Lanjaron on the GR7 which took me a little longer than I planned.

But I got high above both towns and ended up getting a good picture of the region that could only be traversed by donkeys until not so long ago. Lanjaron is the gateway to the Alpujarras, this region of the Sierra Nevadas. It was an important outpost in medieval times and as the Nasrid (the last Moorish) Kingdoms fell in the 15th century, the Alpujarras were the final stronghold.

In fact, we learned that after the Catholic church officially expelled Muslims from Spain, these villages kept at least one family behind to teach the conquistadors how to maintain the complex water system (or acequias) that the Moors built in these towns.

We walked along many of these ancient irrigation canals during our week together in the area.

Even the streets are designed to move water through the hilltop villages so that they don’t flood in the rain.

Of course the flowers and plants are beautiful in the town of water.

It was very dry and hot during our week there in September, but you would never have known it from the lush plants and gardens.

However, the hills were super dry and I had a fine layer of dust all over me at the end of every day’s wanderings.

One day I got high enough to enjoy a mountain spring that was running above ground, but mostly the water comes from deep within the mountains.

There are lots of hiking routes that follow the acequias (irrigation canals) so that you can see how high up they were built.

When my group arrived, we had mostly shorter hiking days followed by lunches in small villages.

But just in case we had a picnic or if we needed a snack, I kept my two favorite treats from the region in my backpack.

Toasted Spanish almonds and a fig log, which is dried fig mixed with chopped almonds and shaped into a loaf. These two items will forever be the treats I bring home from Andalucía. (Along with a bottle of Oloroso.)

Prickly pears, which were growing everywhere, are another local treat. They are so bright and inviting, but you only make the mistake of reaching out to touch the pink fruit with your bare hands one time. (Don’t ask me how I know.)

It would be hard to choose a favorite day out from our week in and around Lanjaron, as every day in the sunshine is a good day to me.

Our itinerary included several walks along local water routes, the favorite of which was probably the one that runs into Niguelas from the mountains above it.

We also visited a cave in Nerja where people lived over 25,000 years ago but was only discovered in the 1950s. Stretching over three miles with cave paintings that are more than 40,000 years old, the preservation of this site is impressive.

Another highlight of the week was a day in Granada. We had a tour of the old town and then spent the afternoon in the Alhambra.

The Alhambra is a palace and massive fortress complex built in the 1200s by the first Nasrid emir, who established Granada as a state in Andalucía, then called Al-Andalus.

As one of the best-preserved palaces of the historic Islamic world, the Alhambra is the most visited monument in Spain, to and it’s not hard to see why.

The detail in the architecture is just stunning. I spent a long time staring at the walls and ceilings of the Nasrid palaces taking in the exquisite ornate carving everywhere.

I can’t fathom how you make everything so symmetrically perfect in a time before modern tools. I would love to have watched some of these walls being created by artisans of the Nasrid Kingdoms. Many of the carvings are actually inscriptions with phrases from the Koran or other ancient writings.

The Alhambra also has beautiful gardens that you could spend days and days exploring. I have so many photos of the Alhambra that I will probably need to do another whole post just about this incredible place. But you can only take in so much in one afternoon before your legs are tired, and my group was wilting a bit in the sun by the end of our visit.

The day after we went to Granada and the Alhambra, we did a short coastal walk by the sea and walked to the top of  Salobreña.

From the top of the 10th century Moorish castle we could see for miles across the sea.

After exploring, we wandered down through the village and out to the beach.

We found a seaside cafe where we had a very long lunch, followed by a quick paddle in the sea before we went back to Lanjaron. (A “paddle” is what British people call wading barefoot in the surf of the sea.) In Lanjaron, we had time to sit by the pool before I had to go get ready for dinner. It was the perfect laid-back day to follow the busy visit to Granada.

On our final day of this trip, we drove up into the Alpujarras, the hills above Lanjaron, where the villages are high and remote. We visited a few of them, and walked from one to another along the GR7 before having our last outdoor lunch on a terrace looking out at the mountains.

Between trips to southern Spain, I had started reading Chris Stewart’s books about buying a farm in these mountains, which I found laugh-out-loud funny. (The first book is called Driving Over Lemons.) So it was fun to get walk the hills that he describes in those books.

I have also been reading Washington Irving’s Tales of The Alhambra. Irving wrote the book after his visit to The Alhambra in 1828 and it’s become a classic about Granada. He actually walked from Seville to Granada and after walking some of the GR7, I can better picture his journey. I love these words that he writes about it, and Spain in general:

Such were our minor preparations for the journey, but above all we laid in an ample stock of good humour, and a genuine disposition to be pleased; determining to travel in true contrabandista style; taking things as we found them, rough or smooth, and mingling with all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship. It is the true way to travel in Spain. With such disposition and determination, what a country it is for a traveller, where the most miserable inn is as full of adventure as an enchanted castle, and every meal is in itself an achievement! Let others repine at the lack of turnpike roads and sumptuous hotels, and all the elaborate comforts of a country cultivated and civilised into tameness and commonplace;

but give me the rude mountain scramble;

the roving, hap-hazard, wayfaring;

the half wild, yet frank and hospitable manners,

which impart a true-game flavour to dear old romantic Spain!

I join with Irving in many of his sentiments, perhaps especially packing “a genuine disposition to be pleased” for a journey and “what a country it is for a traveller!”

I’m excited to be heading back soon to continue my ongoing love affair with “dear old romantic Spain.”

The post Snapshots of Andalucia appeared first on Alison Chino.

After the delights of Porto and walking the Portuguese Camino, I knew I wanted MORE TIME in Portugal.

The next walking adventure I planned in Portugal was the surprisingly perfect Rota Vicentina! In fact I have spent so much time documenting the Rota Vicentina on this blog that I have neglected my city visits to Portugal (until now).

But if you are looking for your next beautiful trail to walk, please add the coastal Fisherman’s Trail to your list. What’s wild is that my first days on that trail were really just an add-on to a trip to Lisbon that I had planned with my sister, a happy, fortunate find after some city wandering.

Since that first trip, I have returned to Lisbon two more times, so this collection of photos and ramblings is from all three trips: January 2023, March 2023 (yes, I went RIGHT back two months later!) and December 2024/January 2025 (New Year’s).

I honestly didn’t expect to love Lisbon as much as I loved Porto. But after my first trip to Portugal, I read Night Train to Lisbon (also a film) and The Night in Lisbon, and I knew I had to go for myself and see Lisboa, (which I learned to pronounce properly by listening to Portas do Sol on repeat after Shazam-ing it in a cab in Porto).

As soon as I realized that Lisbon was a city with which I wanted to become acquainted, I asked my sister, Anna, to meet me there. We both were smitten from the start.

One of the best ideas we have ever had is to meet somewhere in January after all of the holiday hullabaloo has passed.

We put our trip to Lisbon on calendar in late September. We bought plane tickets and I made reservations for the city and for a few days of walking afterwards. Then we put our heads down, kept our busy autumn schedules with high school boys and an even busier Christmas season with college and adult kids visiting.

I tend to be a little numb after the holidays.

I think it’s as much a product of the historical holiday drama as it is any of the actual current events. I’m always trying to disrupt my usual Christmas pattern of unrealistic expectations followed by an inevitable disappointment. I have tried moving Christmas celebrations to neutral locations, pretending it’s not really December, and on other years, going all in on what everyone else in my family wants to do, but none of my strategies seem to “work.” Christmas is a time that I simultaneously dread and look forward to. Then when it has come and gone, I am both sad and relieved. And these paradoxes seem to show up every year no matter what I do.

So honestly, I wanted to just crawl in bed for a couple of days (or all of January) after the holidays were over in 2022. It was our first Christmas in our new home in Bristol. It had been cold, dark and rainy. And decidedly anti-climatic.

But instead of getting in bed, I packed my backpack and hopped a flight to Lisbon.

Again…SUCH a good idea!

I arrived a day before Anna, which I spent dodging the rain at Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, an astonishingly varied art collection amassed by one man in his lifetime, in the midst of escaping multiple wars. (Sidebar: I’m adding collecting art and then making it public for all to see to the list of things I prefer that wealthy people do with their money – right up there with building libraries, schools and theaters – instead of increasing military surveillance, shutting down entire cities for personal events, taking eight minute flights on private jets, and funding fascism.)

I often “meet” a city for the first time in the rain. Maybe it’s because I prefer cities in winter when they are less crowded, but I have wandered Paris, Siena, Edinburgh and of COURSE Bristol in the rain.

That’s why hiking boots are the BEST travel shoes.

This is especially true in Lisbon where the streets are made of marble cobblestone!

Even in hiking boots, I had a few near misses on the slick cobbles.

They are EXQUISITE though.

The cobbles were the first thing about Lisbon I noticed (after the easy metro ride from the airport).

I emerged from the underground into a square covered in these black and white cobblestones. I snapped lots of photos of all the different patterns. A city so dedicated to the artisan work that maintaining these streets requires is one that puts a high value on art.

There is even a monument to the craftspeople who maintain this extensive network of art on the ground.

In Rossio Square, the cobbles are laid in a pattern that is meant to make you feel like you’re on the waves of the sea, a nod to Portuguese maritime history.

The center of Lisbon is a flat section of squares and streets on a grid. This area is surrounded by hilly neighborhoods that rise up around its edges, and all of it is bordered by the Tejas/Tegas River that flows from the ocean.

The grid-like center of town was built in such uniform structure after an earthquake flattened the city in 1755.

We stayed at the Pessoa Hotel, which is named for one of Portugal’s most celebrated writers, Fernando Pessoa.

The hotel was located on the hill west of Rossio Square, near the Chiado district, where we enjoyed rooftop breakfasts while looking out over the city.

From the hotel, it was a short walk down cobbled steps into Lisbon’s main thoroughfares.

On the way down from our hotel each day, we would pass a window where they were serving warm Pasteis de Nata.  And of course, we would always stop for one!

The pastel de nata, immortalized by Emma Stone in Poor Things, is a Portuguese Egg Custard Tart that is available on just about every corner in Lisbon.

We ate SO many of them, not all at once, but here and there at different bakeries. I love them warm (and they were always warm at this little window), but my favorites were the ones from Belem, out by the Jerónimos Monastery where the monks started making them in the 18th century.

In the 18th century, nuns and monks were using a copious amount of egg whites to starch their habits and robes. So they invented the best treats with the leftover egg yolks, pasteis de nata being the most famous one. But we tried many other egg yolk treats and our favorites were some little cookies from the national bakery in one of the main squares of Lisbon. I returned to this bakery for a little box of treats on every trip to Lisbon.

On my second trip to Lisbon, with three friends in March 2023, I think we ate even MORE of these tarts than on my first trip. My friend Kristie LOVES them and she was keeping track of which ones were her favorites.

I still held to the best ones being from Belem, which I confirmed again a year later when there with my family. They have the flakiest crust! When I think about the warm filling topped with a little sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar, my mouth starts to water!

Honestly, you could easily book a trip to Lisbon just for the food, especially if you love seafood and fish. I think the best seafood I’ve ever eaten has been on trips to Portugal, washed down with a glass of Vinho Verde, another uniquely Portuguese experience.

Next to the Pasteis de Belem, is the Jerónimos Monastery, which Anna and I visited together.

It’s one of the main attractions in Lisbon, and it’s definitely worthy of its spot on all the Lisbon Listicles. When we came back in March, the lines to see it were so much longer, so I recommend visiting in winter when it is quiet and the line to get in is short.

Deep within the quiet cloisters of the monastery, we walked by Fernando Pessoa’s simple tomb.

It is quite the contrast to the sculptures inside the neighboring church of Santa Maria that celebrate Vasco da Gama and other “heroes” of Portugal’s colonial expansion.

The monastery and church were built with money from Vasco da Gama’s and other Portuguese explorer expeditions. If you were traveling along the river from the city to the ocean, you would pass the monastery last, and hope that your contribution to its beauty would keep you safe at sea.

The unique Portuguese Gothic architecture has elements of a ship built into it.

I do love a cloister and I found the ones in the monastery to be as beautiful as any I’ve ever seen.

I could have wandered these courtyards in silent prayer for days, but the ship ropes in the arches and other nautical elements were a reminder that the Portuguese empire was built on exploration, and exploitation. It’s a troublesome history that includes the origins of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

In fact, it was a Portuguese man (Gomes de Zurara) who came up with the construct of race. He literally invented “blackness” (and then also whiteness) in order to justify the slave trade. His writing was actually commissioned by slave-trading leaders in Portugal in the 1450s in order to justify their subjugation and trafficking of people whom they deemed lesser than themselves.

Portugal is a stark reminder that all empires DO eventually fall. Portugal’s post-empire phase was long and rough, including 45 (!!!) changes of government between 1910 and 1926, which was followed by Western Europe’s longest-lived dictatorship.

A right-winged, authoritarian regime suppressed civil liberties and political freedom until a (mostly bloodless) coup in 1974.

In 1940, under Salazar’s dictatorship, Lisbon hosted the Portuguese World Exhibition where a statue of explorers was built to celebrate 800 years of Portuguese exploration. Then in the late 50s, the regime built a larger, permanent version of the statue overlooking the river called the Monument of the Discoveries.

The explorers represented on the statue include Vasco da Gama, and even the writer Gomes de Zurara got a spot on the boat. Standing beneath the structure, I was reminded of Confederate War monuments, and how many of them were put up in the southern United States during the civil rights movement of the 20th century, actually at the same time this statue was being built. Revisionist odes to a history that could only ever have meant success for a few at the cost of the many.

Listen closely and you can almost hear Salazar whispering back in 1960:

Remember when we were great. 

Don’t pay attention the slums, to the growing poverty, to how filthy our capital city has become. Instead look at this bright shiny statue and celebrate when we were great. 

As humans, we are so easily sold a stories about the past. What fools we are.

But look at Lisbon and Portugal now: an example to all of us about how to learn from our mistakes, however slowly.

I would argue (from my extremely limited perspective) that Portugal is as great as it has ever been, and looking towards a bright future.

And it’s not just because of those shiny tiles and artisanal cobbles!

Portugal has made some WILD decisions as a nation to actually build a society that is for the many, rather than for the few.

They’ve done some research about what works well for communities, and here’s the crazy bit…someone in power actually paid attention to the researchers!

They have implemented some of the most progressive and exciting changes in the world. For example, in 2001, Portugal made the stunning decision to decriminalize drugs. All drugs are not legal, but the possession of drugs is not treated as a crime.

Instead of spending more money policing drugs, they increased funding of rehabilitation programs.

Health and healing instead of harm!

Policing drugs has been proven again and again to only increase the demand for, price of and crime around drugs. The research on decreasing drug misuse is overwhelmingly in favor of putting energy towards healing instead of punishing, but few governments have paid attention to this research.

These policies were put in place mainly because Portugal was leading Europe in deaths related to drug use and HIV. Decriminalization was complemented by the expansion of a welfare state which included resources put towards harm reduction, social reintegration and a guaranteed minimum income.

Studies I’ve read suggest that the wider health and social reforms in Portugal have helped the decriminalization policies to achieve the positive societal outcomes seen in the country today.

Of course Portugal is not perfect, but when I walk around Lisbon, I see a city (and country) that feels like it’s looking towards a future that is greater than its past.

Most of the time, I can’t fathom what it would look like to have leaders who have an imagination for a better world for the many instead of increasing the wealth of a handful of billionaires. But when I walk around Lisbon, I get a picture of what it could look like…

Independent bookstores on every corner.

Exquisite museums, including a gorgeous museum dedicated to the history of azulejos (Portuguese tiles) housed in an old convent.

The expansion and maintenance of affordable public transportation.

More spaces for tram lines than for cars.

Beautiful public spaces where people gather. Public squares and well-kept streets.

More than anything, I think being in Lisbon encourages imagination. It’s a space to dream. Maybe that is true of any beautiful city that is organized around human beings…I’ve definitely felt that way in Amsterdam watching bikes and in Paris as they have increased green space and bike lanes radically there in the last ten years.

But somehow it feels even more true to me that today, Lisbon is a place of possibility for dreamers.

And so after leaving a second time, I started to dream about bringing my whole family back there.

On New Year’s Eve in 2024, Taido and I were celebrating 30 years of marriage. It seemed like a great excuse to gather in Lisbon. I put the word out that all I wanted for my anniversary (and Christmas that year) was for my family – whoever wanted to – to join Taido and me in Lisbon.

I rented an apartment in the Alfama, the historic district east of the city center and invited everyone to make their requests about our time there together.

If I had to choose one theme for my third trip to Lisbon, it would have to be food, and maybe even specifically, coffee!

We wandered the beautiful streets together, but in between walks, we ate a lot. And we drank so much coffee.

We haunted old cafes like A Brasilieira and new ones from a list my son Ben made.

One of our favorites was the Copenhagen Coffee Lab, which has several locations around Lisbon.

In addition to coffee, they do brunch and matchas.

Almost every day, at least some of our group would make a stop in one of these coffee spots.

And we brought their bread back to the apartment by the loaf to have with soup and breakfast. In fact, for two months after this trip, I tested recipes until I had perfected my own version of their dark rye Danish bread, which I have been making ever since. It’s now a Chino House staple!

Between coffees, we visited several museums, wandered from one miradouro (hill top viewpoints) to the next and ate all the seafood!

When you’re a group of this size, someone is always hungry.

Often my only photo from a meal would be a pile of empty plates after we devoured every bite.

In addition to Taido and me, our Lisbon crew was our three of our kids (Ben, Mary Polly and Simon), my sister, and my niece and her partner who popped over from Dublin.

We ended up being in two apartments down the street from each other, but we would host meals and play cards at night in ours.

Early in the morning, Taido and Anna would go for a run as the sun came up along the river. Each day one or two kids would wake up to go with them. And sometimes I went and walked. We would get to where a lot of the clubs were located, and folks would still be lined up outside to get in at 7am. It amazed me every time.

Lisbon is definitely a city that doesn’t sleep, although the main squares were much quieter on those early morning walks. In the afternoons the same squares were packed with people.

We enjoyed being in Lisbon in time to catch some of the holiday vibe after Christmas.

I asked everyone later what their favorite things were about Lisbon, and again, the food was a recurring highlight. One group did a food tour that I booked but opted out of myself (since I’m a vegetarian) and they loved all the spots they hit on the tour.

When Ben got home, he recreated some Mozambican sandwiches they had that their guide told them was everyone’s hangover cure in Lisbon.

We also took the kids back to some of the places Anna and I had loved so much. Of course we went to Honest Greens, which we’d discovered first in Porto.

But some other favorites included Chapito a Mesa for seafood, Cantinho do Avillez for shared plates, and the rooftop bar at the top of Pollux for drinks with a view.

We made lots of meals at the apartment. We couldn’t believe the seafood offerings at the local supermarkets.

And we had pizza one day, because Anna and I had found a collection of divine restaurants inspired by Italy (and Portugal and Nepal!) on our first trip to Lisbon.

We had our anniversary dinner at Decadente, now called The Gandaia Club, which was divine!

And then we walked down to the river just before midnight to see the New Year’s Eve fireworks. It’s not often that I stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve (also our anniversary), but being along the riverfront with the masses for the fireworks going off above the city AND out on the river was worth being out past my bedtime for sure.

Even though we had to bundle up a bit, it was so fun to be outside and often in the sun in January.

One evening some of us walked up to a sunset bar with books and cards to see the sun go down from above the city.

We warmed up every time we went uphill, which is often in Lisbon.

A lot of the days we would split up into smaller groups depending on who was interested in what, but one morning we all did a bike tour together that was so fun.

We rode along the river all the way to Belem, and our guide stopped along the way to tell us about different parts of the city.

We rode to the top of the architecture and technology museum, which the boys ended up coming back to the next day.

And we visited the LX Factory which is an old textile factory that has now been turned into a hub for artists, restaurants and shops.

We rode to have the Pasteis de Belem and again to the problematic Monument of the Discoveries, and then we rode all the way back. It was the longest I’ve biked in a little while and I definitely felt it.

I love doing a bike tour of a city, but then I’m glad to be back on my two feet again.

Walking the Lisbon city streets is how I spent my first hours there in 2023, and we ended our trip in 2025 doing much the same.

After a week in Lisbon, we had seen what we wanted to see, so we walked the Alfama neighborhood, had our favorite coffees one more time, and said goodbye.

Hopefully it’s not the last time I’ll be in Lisbon. I feel sure I’ll be back for another walk on the Rota Vicentina, but I don’t know that I’ll ever have a whole week in Lisbon again so I’m recording these memories now to treasure later.

I’m so grateful to everyone who came to Lisbon to help make my Lisbon family travel dreams come true.

 \

PS. If you go to Lisbon, please write and tell me how much you love it. And also, here’s my Lisbon Google map with all my saved spots, as well as a playlist for Wandering Lisboa. 

Annnnd, if you enjoy my rambling posts about places I visit and walk, you can subscribe to get them straight to your inbox right here. 

The post Snapshots of Lisbon appeared first on Alison Chino.

I can’t remember when I first started wanting to visit Provence.

It might have been in college when we watched La Gloire de Mon Pere in French class.

Or maybe it was earlier, when my grandmother introduced me to Vincent Van Gogh through paintings of his sunflowers. I don’t know when I learned that Van Gogh loved painting in the south of France because of the light, but I wanted to follow in his footsteps to see where he painted that Starry Starry Night.

For sure a seed was planted when I read Peter Mayle’s books about Provence in the 90s. I remembered reading his descriptions of the sunshine in southern France during dark, cold Chicago winters.

However, in my own trip planning, I had never made getting to Provence a priority, so when an offer came through to lead a slow, springtime wander through Provence with Ramble Worldwide, I jumped at the chance.

I took the train from Bristol to London, then the Eurostar to Paris, a taxi across Paris and then a final train to Avignon to lead a group of ladies between the ages of 60 and 86 around Provence.

I had a couple of days to get my bearings before I took the train back to Paris to meet the group, so even though I didn’t have time to do everything on our itinerary ahead of time, I was familiar with two of the main towns (Avignon and Arles) before the official trip began.

I spent most of my prep time wandering streets to learn my way around, checking train and bus schedules and doing a couple of the walks that we would do together later in the week. Then I took the train back to Paris to meet the sweetest group of ladies who would be my travel companions for the week.

It was evening in Avignon by the time we made it back with the group, but I offered to lead a little orientation walk after dinner just to the center square and back. Sometimes it just feels good to get your bearings, to put your feet to the ground after a full day of sitting on trains. Plus an evening walk always seems to make sleep come a little easier, especially after a rich French meal.

I knew immediately that I was going to love this group when, as we walked through the streets of Avignon, one lady told a story about hopping on a sailboat at the spur of the moment to be a fourth crew member for a trip around the world and another reminisced about dancing in this same square in Avignon over 50 years before, her face lit up with delight at the memory, like it was yesterday.

The next day we wandered the streets of Avignon in the daylight and met up with a guide who told us the papal history of the town.

Even though we kept our pace to what I like to call “a wander,” these spry ladies walked all day long for seven days straight.

They soaked up the history like it was their first cobblestoned town, which of course, it was not.

I am always in awe of folks who are still learning all the way through life, asking questions, looking for more to understand about the world.

After a quick lunch in town, we met a different guide in the afternoon for a trip to a Châteauneuf-du-Pape vineyard.

In the shade of the olive trees, our guide Nicolas told us about how these vines, which are shorter than most I’ve seen, send their roots down deep. And the rocks hold the warmth from the sun that the grapes need. These vines can be over 100 years old. When one dies and the vineyard owner plants a new vine, they are planting a vine for their grandchildren. Running a vineyard is definitely a job for someone who is willing to plan well into the future, and even to imagine a future for when they will no longer be around.

After our vineyard walk, we got to taste some of these full-bodied wines. Then we all might have dozed off on the short ride back to our hotel.

On Day 2 of our time in Provence, we walked the top of the medieval walls that go all the way around the village of Aigues-Mortes.

The walls are perfectly preserved.

In one direction, you can look out into the salt marshes where the famous fleur de sel de Carmague is hand-raked and harvested. (It was for sale everywhere we went, so I definitely brought some home in my suitcase.)

After walking the circumference of the whole village, observing the narrow streets from the bird’s eye perch of the medieval protective fortress, we descended some tower steps and made our way to the center square.

The four edges of the square were lined with cafes and table spilling out into the streets. Children were running around a fountain in the middle of the square. A man played an accordion on one side of the fountain and in front of him, a little girl danced to the music.

As we took in the scene, I looked over at my travel companions and said, I think we might be in France.
We laughed, knowing that imagining moments like this exact one was what drew us to Provence.
All too soon, it was time for us to finish our coffees and head off to the next stop on our tour of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.
As I got up reluctantly, I thought to myself,

Sometimes I think I’ve traveled halfway around the world to live just so I can sit in squares.

(Maybe I should start doing tours that revolve around sitting in squares?)

We left Aigues-Mortes to go for a walk in a bird conservatory where we saw about 1 million flamingos, after which we visited the Black Madonna in Saintes-Marie-sur-la-Mer, followed by ice creams by the sea, naturally.

Every evening, we ate dinner together at our gorgeous hotel or at one of the local restaurants in Avignon.

Our meals were gorgeous every night, and our desserts even prettier.

The food, a highlight of any trip to France for sure, fueled us through our days of wandering.

Across the Rhone River from Avignon is Villeneuve, a small, fortified medieval town. It served as sort of a suburb for cardinals during the papal era of Avignon.

At the top of the town is a former Benedictine abbey surrounded by the most lovely gardens.

A few of us spent a free afternoon roaming the gardens before going back to Avignon for a late lunch.

Next time I visit the gardens, I’ll bring a picnic lunch as there are charming spots around every corner to enjoy lunch outside.

For many of us, these few hours in the Saint André Abbey gardens were the highlight of the whole trip.

Slow days full of sunshine will live strong in my memory of what it’s like to be in Provence.

I didn’t see the classic lavender fields of summer, but I’ll take spring in Provence any day.

Our next full day was market-themed, another classic French village staple.

Besides salt, we consumed many buckets and bags of fresh French strawberries.

As I wandered markets, I dreamed about coming back and staying in a cottage with a little kitchen to which I could bring a market basket of goodies home to prepare a meal.

From the market town of St-Remy-de-Provence, we made a little pilgrimage to the psychiatric hospital where Van Gogh stayed after his mental breakdown.

The path to the hospital is lined with little markers bearing Van Gogh’s signature, so you can easily find your way.

In the hospital, you can see the bedroom he painted several times. Van Gogh did over 150 paintings during his time in St Remy. He seemed to thrive in the quiet time away from the world.

The next village we visited was Les Baux-de-Provence, a name from which the word bauxite comes as it was mined from these hills.

We did a loop walk around the outskirts of the village at the base of the rock on which it is built, before wandering into the pretty village streets.

Even if my ladies were a bit tired from the previous day, they didn’t want to miss anything so they opted for the extra loop around.

I was amazed at how fit my group was, and how I had to work to keep up with them as we went from village to village.

We always managed to find somewhere to have a rest with a treat though, an ice cream or a drink.

Usually with a view!

After Les Baux, we were off to see some famous windmills, one of which an author (Alphonse Daudet) actually used as a residence in order to have a quiet place to write.

We felt like it was a fairly extreme move just for a little quiet.

Next stop, Roussillon, a village that falls within the national park of the Luberon and is known for its red buildings made from the ochre hills nearby.

We walked the red and orange hills before visiting the village and they reminded me of hills I’ve seen in Colorado or Utah.

The village was gorgeous, and I think my picnic and pastries from there might have been the best I had all week.

A recurring theme of our trip, since we visited around three villages each day, was that we all wished we could have more time in each village.

Every place we stopped seemed like somewhere you could rent a little room for a long while and be happy in.

But this was especially true of Roussillon!

Between Rousillon and Sorgues, we made a quick stop to see Gordes, the village on the a hill that was made famous by Peter Mayle. One of the funniest stories from the week was that a lady in our group thought we were going to get to meet Peter Mayle, so she was very disappointed to hear that he had been dead for several years.

We ended this day with walking along the Sorgue River.

We had a picnic lunch along the way and made it to see the source of the river, walking past lots of places where it would have been lovely to stop for lunch.

But our schedule always called for a picnic, which was fine because our dinners were so elaborate.

Most days I had a baguette for lunch filled with roasted vegetables, goat cheese, lettuce and tomatoes.

We ended our week with a train trip to Arles, another placed Van Gogh lived in the south of France.

It’s a beautiful town with lots of original Roman ruins still in tact, including an amphitheater that is still used today.

Outside the walls of the old town of Arles is Les Alyscamps, an old Roman necropolis.

Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin chose the Alyscamps as the first place they painted side by side in Arles. One of the paintings from that day was sold in 2015 for over $66 million.

As we walked around Arles, I could understand why Van Gogh had chosen it as a place to live and work.

Arles was a perfect ending to a delightful week in Provence.

Soon it was time to pack our bags and hop an early train back to Paris and then to London, where we were met with rain. We all went home longing for the slow days of wandering in Provence, but we were grateful for our memories in the sun!

The post Snapshots of Provence appeared first on Alison Chino.