We went camping near El Barco, Spain, this last weekend and it was beautiful!

It was a pretty rainy weekend but with plenty of sunshine as well. We had a very fun Friday night in town at a wonderful little bar before heading back to our tent (Lindsey was in the house on the riverside property we rented). Calico played soccer with some local kids in the square while Lindsey and I had a few glasses of wine. We tried to go hiking on Saturday but got hit with some heavy rain and thunder and had to jog down the mountain quickly :).

Calico and I slept in the tent both nights despite a little rain. And we managed to make cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and smores. Next time I need to bring a better metal grill top as it made the hamburgers pretty difficult with the one they had.

Good times :)!

On the way home, we visited Granada and Malaga in Andalucia, Spain.

Grenada was beautiful! We toured Alhambra and found an amazing Syrian place to eat. We ate there twice; it was so good. I also did one bike ride, but it was way too much city riding, and I finally found some gravel at the end of the ride.

Malaga was bigger, sunnier, and had a beautiful beach.

We really liked it, and I got to have a fantastic lunch with Serita. Serita is the freelance editor who takes care of many things at Shepherd. It was really great to meet her, and she brought some of this Tequila she has crafted (I am looking forward to trying it)!

I also managed a long bike ride; the Malaga trails were amazing. I hope to go back and explore more of the gravel routes one day.

We are home now, and I am catching up on a lot of work and random family things we’ve put off. I am feeling more rested which is good.

I LOVE Valencia Spain!

It is by far my favorite city. And, it is one of the first places that both Lindsey and I feel is “home”. It has amazing weather, amazing people, and a perfect blend of city, nature, and beach. Plus great biking!

It has been really hard to think about leaving the city and we’ve dealt with waves of grief/anger over the last couple of months :(. We do not want to leave… we would like to stay here long term.

We always knew we couldn’t stay in Valencia for more than 1 to 2 years because of Spain’s tax system. They have some taxes that are poorly designed and we would be paying 60% to 70% of our income in taxes. Which makes it impossible to live here. Spain has a very badly designed Patrimonio tax and because we are American we are stuck between the two systems. If you are not an American citizen it is pretty easy to avoid these taxes and pay much less, but as Americans, a lot of those options are not available to us given American regulations (waiting on the USA to switch to a territorial tax system like every other country in the World). The other option we had was to move to Madrid as it is the only region to void the tax, but we did not like Madrid.

Part of our trip last month was to scout locations around Europe and see what clicked. We were debating between Austria and Portugal… and Portugal won out based on weather/cost.

So… we are moving to Portugal :). We’ve been to Portugal several times and we are looking forward to finding our neighborhood and settling in. We hope is we can find a place we like as much as Valencia in the next couple of months.

We have hope that Spain will fix their system given the huge economic crisis. The current system makes startup/business investment near impossible and they need labor reforms to make it easier to hire people as employees. The current system punishes risk and pushes money into real estate where it won’t lose value but your returns are very low (how a lot of people avoid Patrimonio taxes if they don’t leave in Madrid).

Delicious Greek meal at one of our favorites :)!

And, a bit of a non-pandemic birthday lunch for my lovely wife :)!

We celebrated Lindsey’s birthday last week under lockdown. We are going to celebrate once we get clear of the lockdown too :). Lindsey made a really cool flour combo from some flour that fell on the floor. It gives Calico some fake sand to play with his trucks in.

Wow, so Spain is all shut down for a period of 15 days.

Good move and hopefully we can beat this thing in the next 4 to 8 weeks and then get the economy back online… everything is shut down. You can’t go outside without a clear reason.

According to the government decree, people will only be allowed to leave their homes to buy food and medicine, commute to work, go to medical centers and banks, or take trips related to the care for the young and the elderly

Effective immediately, Spain is also closing all restaurants, bars, hotels, schools and universities nationwide, and other non-essential retail outlets, a move some of the hardest-hit communities have already carried out.

No biking, no walks to the park, indoors unless walking the dog briefly or going to get groceries. This is much needed but going to be tough.

I forgot to blog about this :)… I bought an apartment in Valencia Spain last year! When we visited we loved it so much that I started looking at apartments here. At the time, I thought we might visit a few months each year and I could rent it out on AirBNB the rest of the time (good investment IMO as it is grandfathered into a license). And, now we are living here for a few years.

The apartment is in the old city, close to the massive park, 3 bedroom / 2 bath, and full of light. After I bought I converted the master bath to a shower, refinished the floors, painted it, fixed some odds and ends, and updated the HVAC system. Here it is before we did anything to it:

After we got here we decided to redo the kitchen. The appliances and cabinets were old and broken. The walls on the oven were melting and dripped black gunk all over our pots. When we removed the oven we found we were probably a few usages away from an electrical fire. And, we decided to redo the floor/walls at the same time. Here is what the kitchen looked like before:

Here is what the kitchen looked like as they started in…

And here is the finished kitchen! We cook a ton so it is really nice to have our kitchen back and designed how we wanted!

And, we are slowly getting moved into the rest of the place. We finally got a couch last week which helps. We only have some small stuff left like to make it feel like home… a coffee table, bedside tables, a fold-out couch for guests, and something to jam the TV devices into. Calico’s room was finished first. We got him a “big boy” bed so that was pretty exciting for him. Plus an Ikea kitchen set too. We wanted to make sure he felt settled the quickest.

We are in Valencia Spain and going to be living here for the next 2 years :). I’ve always wanted to live abroad and Lindsey was kind enough to jump on board and try it!

We are slowly getting settled and are buying a lot of Ikea furniture among other things! Our apartment should feel more like a home in a week or so.

Below you will see just a random mix of images from the last month… my favorite is my awesome son standing next to a cardboard robot we made. He told us he wanted to take a picture with “it”, it was so sweet. You will also see him drinking water like a cat, as we saw a cat doing similar outside. He picked out all his own clothes for most of these shots, at age 2 he has more style than I ever will :).

Just some shots of things we’ve been doing around Valencia :), we love this city!

This is the BEST cheese I’ve ever had, Manchego has been my favorite cheese over Asiago for a while now but this stuff is crazy good.

We went on a 2-week road trip around Spain and had a blast (plus a few stops in Portugal).

Where did we go? Here is a rough sketch…

… so all over!

Our first stop was in Merida which is the old Roman capital of one of the 3 Spanish provinces. The ruins were amazing! I’ve been on a big Roman kick for a while now! They also had a fantastic Roman museum.

I brought my bike, but after an injury I discovered on day 1 I took a break the rest of the time :(. I hope to come back and do some serious riding next time.

I’ve always wanted to see an olive tree up close :)

Calico also had his first real cake on this trip, which he enjoyed a lot as you can see here (we usually call it mama cake and explain it is just for mamas):

From there we went up to Caceres Spain. Many years ago I started part of the silver Camino route from there. We stopped there for a few hours to wander around. Then we packed up and drove to Coimbra Portugal. This was one of the many beautiful drives of the trip. I tagged a few castles I’d like to go back and explore. Coimbra is crazy hilly! After a night and a day exploring we headed to Porto Portugal. We loved it and would like to come back and spend more time there. We had an incredible lunch along the river.

After a few days in Porto we drove to Pontevedra and had an amazing lunch. Then we parked ourselves in Ourense for ~4 days (Galicia Spain). It was a good thing we did as Calico puked over my shoulder 10 minutes after getting out of the car. He had a little stomach bug for 24 hours that would eventually get both Lindsey and I.

Ourense was a great stop. They had free hot springs in the middle of town (which I used a few times). It was cool to soak in a bath used thousands of years ago by the Roman! While we were in Ourense we did a day trip to Santiago where I had one of many amazing Octopus lunches. We also did a day trip to a small beautiful town called Allariz where Calico made a new friend. Gustavo was a great host and a highlight of our trip (along with the amazing food and wine he picked for us).

As we were leaving Ourense to head to Lugo, (to look at the Roman walls still left around it) Lindsey started feeling bad. We made it to Lugo where she promptly threw up so we found a place to stay instead of our next destination. The next day she was a little better and we made it to Santiago. I haven’t been to Santiago since me and my brother were there ~12 years ago to run with the bulls. Unfortunately a few hours after we got to Santiago I got sick and threw up. It was a quick bug, but you do not have an appetite for a few days so that ruined our food plans for ~4 days (Santiago has incredible food). Regardless we had a good time wandering around and resting. After that we drove to the Pyrenees and stayed a few nights at a beautiful spot. Then we headed home…

We ate so much amazing food and drank some incredible wine. Calico is a fantastic lunch companion (esp if we pull out Netflix if he gets unruly). We had a lot of two hour lunches with multiple courses over a bottle of wine. Fun times!

Prices are fantastic in Spain, our nightly accommodations were around $40 USD to $75 USD. Everything from hotels to 3 bedroom apartments at that rate. The only place we paid more than $100 dollars a night was in the mountains in a converted farmhouse. There were many times we spent more on a huge lunch spread with a bottle of wine than our accommodation for the night. Otherwise we hit up grocery stores, bakeries, and cooked for ourselves. The rental car for two weeks was ~$650, but I upgraded so I could fit my bike in the back for an extra $150 I think (diesel Audi station wagon).

We generally drove around 1 to 4 hours a day. With only 2 or 3 days of 5 hours of more. We found that if we only drive 2 to 3 hours Calico is happy and everyone else is happy. There were always cool places to stop which made that very easy.

I am in love with Valencia, what a cool town with great weather and people :). Below are some pictures from our first week here, a lot of walks, the zoo (the BEST zoo I’ve yet to see), and some other lovely spots.

In 2006 I headed to Essex in the UK to meetup with my brother who was studying there for the year. My brother still had finals so I took a short trip to Fez Morocco via a cheap Ryanair flight. And, after that we headed to San Sebastian near Pamplona to run with the bulls. We finished the summer trip in Dublin visiting Rose and exploring. It was a trip I had wanted to take for a long time and due to some hard work and luck I was able to do it and work remote. Pretty cool time :).

San Sebastian is an amazing city, and I hope to go back one day. The park with the fort overlooking the city was where I spent a lot of my time. My brother preferred the very crowded beach.

My brother was rocking some amazing hair :)

And here I am 10 years ago :)

And, finally some running with the bulls! I wish I had some more pics but for some reason I don’t have any of Nick. Running with the bulls was an adrenalin rush, and a bit of a shit show. It is an awesome feeling to be running in a crowd that big, jumping over shit, and jammed up in a door unable to move with a host of bodies pressed together.

And, finally a few from Fez. I wanted to visit a traditional Moroccan house as I was tempted to try to build one. I was going to go to Beirut but I am glad I skipped it for Fez as it turned into a REALLY bad time to visit. The people who hosted me were incredibly kind and cool. The lady was a former investment banker or similar and put a ton of money into totally restoring this house, and the dude was a spanish guitar player.

My brother got me on a bit of a Hemmingway kick, loving him :)

“They say the seeds of what we do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who makes jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”

So after a day of rest in Salamanca I’m going to have to call it quits, its going to take a week or so to get the swelling down on my ankle and after that type of delay I’d have to average some really long miles every day to finish in time… Which kinda sucks but it was a good break, going no internet with nothing to do each day but get up and walk is incredibly refreshing. I need to do it more often.

And maybe I can come back at a later date to pick up from where I left off, maybe this time with a bike or running it. But for now I’m off for a bit of a rest for the ankle and exlore a different part of Spain. I do wish I hadn’t put it off as long as I did, and did it 5 to 6 years ago, I think it would have meant more to Ben version 1.2. Good walk though of almost 150 miles.

I slept in an Aburgue/dorm for the first time last night, man i hate people who snore :). So I didn’t sleep great but got ~5 hours sleep. Surprisingly I didn’t feel too tired, as I usually sleep through other people’s noise.

Galisteo to Aldenueva – Day 3
I started at 7am when it was still dark for an hour since this was going to be a long day… It was the most beautiful hiking yet and just awesome! Amazing Roman arch and excavations in one area too where you could see the entire stratis of the roman road. But also a very very long walk before there was a town to stop in, I ended up making a few short but painful navigation mistakes and when I finally stumbled into town, I had walked ~36 miles in 11 hours of walking. Some blood, a few small blisters, sore feet, but otherwise intact. Crazy enough I wasn’t very tired, and didn’t sleep well.

Aldenueva to Valverde – Day 4
I woke up with sore feet and shins, duck taped the holes up and started walking. A shorter day today and I did 20 miles in a little under 6 hours. Really beautiful walk and it is crazy how the scenery turned to forest and mountains from the deserty vibe earlier this week. A harder day as I was so sore and very happy to stop. Tomorrow is a 36km one as there just is no place to stop that makes sense, after that an easy day + a day off to let my body heal a bit.