Summer Road Trip Destination: Spain

We have been back from our road trip holiday for this summer. It was a lengthy but interesting drive through different cities we haven’t been before. We spent our summer holiday in Málaga last year and we liked the city a lot. We’ve been to Barcelona several times but it’s not after we visited Málaga that we decided to see more of Spain. We thought that through taking a road trip we could explore or even discover unfamiliar places. Spain is quite big to explore so we carefully planned which cities we should be driving through. Although it did not come out perfectly as we planned we had a great and memorable holiday though.

Usually we stay one day or two in a place and take time to go around, eat in a restaurant and read about the place. This time around we planned on staying a week in an apartment-hotel so we could spend time to rest and relax. A place near the beach or an enclosed area with a swimming pool would be perfect. Pictured above is in Vera where we stayed for one week in an apartment hotel. It is also a walking-distance to the beach and the area has a private swimming pool. What we liked most here was that we didn’t have to take the car to shop for groceries or dine in any of the restaurants in the area.

Another place where we planned to stay for a week was at the beach in Cartagena. The rocky bay in El Portus made for a perfect escape from the crowded city of Cartagena. Unfortunately, we cut short our stay here ( just three days instead of one week) because of the downhill and uphill walk to the beach and back to the apartment respectively. Besides, we didn’t know that the restaurant close to our apartment was closed for summer holidays and the restaurant down the hill was not the one we expected at all. It’s an open-air restaurant and we’re both sensitive to cigarette smoke. Other than that, we had a peace and quiet stay up the hill despite the considerable crowd downhill.

Other places we visited in Spain:

• Valencia
• Murcia and San Pedro del Pinatar
• Cartagena (city centre)
• Sevilla (Seville)
• Valladolid
• Burgos
• Bilbao

The hotel chains we hopped from one place to another:

• Best Western
• Accor Hotels
• HHonors
• Melia
• Thalasia

We spent 25 days on this road trip and the longest we’ve ever had so far, breaking our record of 18 days when we took a road trip to Italy in 2014. It could have been longer if we held on to our plan but being spontaneous is what makes a road trip more exciting.