Category Archives: Our Current Trip

England

Birmingham · Liverpool · Manchester · Wetherby · York

We arrived in Birmingham after our Spanish cruise and delayed arrival. It had been a long day so we took it easy and really did not do much that first evening. The next morning, we saw Birmingham’s waterways unfolded before us with a quietness we hadn’t expected from England’s second city.

Birmingham’s Canals

A Historical Canal Marker – Bringing History to Life

The morning was still, allowing us to see the canals mirror the ironwork bridges and redbrick warehouses above them. Each reflection trembling only slightly at the passage of a mallard or a slow-drifting leaf. We walked the towpaths reading the cast markers that named each bridge and stretch of water, small monuments to an infrastructure that once powered the Empire.

It was a volunteer historian who brought it all alive for us. A man of genuine enthusiasm and salt-and-pepper knowledge. He actually lives aboard a canal boat — which lent his words a particular authority. He walked us through one of the Industrial Revolution’s great secrets. Birmingham didn’t merely use these canals, it weaponized them. Threading iron and coal and ambition through two hundred miles of engineered water to fuel the workshop of the world.

The Hawthorns: West Bromwich Albion vs. Millwall

We came to The Hawthorns the way proper football supporters do, by public transit. Weaving through the Friday evening streets of the West Midlands with scarves and anticipation. Before the gates opened, we found ourselves drawn into a tailgate gathering outside. The smell of charcoal and grilled meat cutting through the cool spring air. A burger in hand, surrounded by Baggies faithful in their navy and white stripes, felt like the right way to begin.

Inside the ground, we discovered something we hadn’t quite expected from a Championship football stadium: a genuine community gathering. We settled at a picnic table in the concourse, apple ciders in hand, and fell into easy conversation with locals who wore their club with the unselfconscious loyalty of people for whom West Brom is simply part of who they are. There was warmth in the banter, and a generosity toward two obvious outsiders who had turned up for the love of the game.

From Our Seats to the Match – Expectations Exceeded!

Five rows off the pitch – you could clearly hear the thunder of cleats and the sound of the ball being put into play.

Our seats were extraordinary — five rows off the pitch, positioned between the offside box and the centreline. At that proximity, football becomes something different altogether. You hear the crunch of tackles, the shouts of instruction, the collective exhale when a chance goes wide. The match itself was electric. Both sides probing and pressing with genuine intent, Millwall defending with the gritty organization that has always defined them. West Brom creating just enough danger to keep the home crowd on edge. In the end, the scoreline remained goalless. Both sides claimed a clean sheet. The contest felt far richer than any scoreboard could suggest.

What awaited us afterward was unexpected. At the train station, police had formed a careful choreography. Millwall supporters corralled on one side; West Brom fans on the other. Each faction loaded onto alternating trains to prevent the evening from curdling into something uglier. It was a reminder that beneath the camaraderie of the beautiful game, old rivalries still carry an edge. A reminder English football, even in its lower tiers, takes no chances with that.

Birmingham: History and Theatre

The day after the match, Birmingham revealed a quieter, more contemplative face. We wandered through the city’s historical heart, tracing the civic ambition of a place that had once declared itself the workshop of the world. Grand Victorian architecture sitting comfortably alongside modern redevelopment, each layer of the city telling a different chapter of the same restless story.

The evening brought an unexpected delight. Spotting a flyer for Death on the Nile at the Alexandra Theatre, we made a spontaneous decision that proved inspired. It was, as it turned out, the production’s final night. From our lower balcony seats, the drama unfolded with all of Agatha Christie’s delicious intrigue intact. Poirot and the cast commanding the stage with evident relish. A perfect last act to our Birmingham days.

Liverpool

Paddington Bear, with a marmalade sandwich!

Liverpool announces itself with the kind of confidence that only cities shaped by genuine history can muster. We began at the Albert Dock, that great curve of restored Victorian warehouses along the Mersey waterfront. Our self-guided walk set the rhythm of the day. The waterfront rewarded unhurried wandering. Spotting the Fab Four, immortalized in bronze. Four familiar silhouettes caught mid-stride against the grey river light. Later, rather unexpectedly, we found Paddington Bear, marmalade sandwich in hand and every bit as endearing in statue form as in print.

A Journey to the Early Beatles

Our second day brought a private guide, and with her came the Liverpool that guidebooks rarely reach. For two and a half hours she walked us through the city’s layered story. The maritime wealth, the immigration waves, the music, the football. The particular pride of a place that has never quite seen itself as simply another English city. It was the kind of insider knowledge that reframes everything you thought you already knew. We left the tour considerably more enlightened for it.

Penny Lane in the pouring rain. It seems like it was scripted!

That afternoon we made the pilgrimage to Penny Lane. It would be too neat to say we planned what happened next. As we turned onto that famous street the sky obliged with a steady, committed Liverpool rain. The barbershop was there. The shelter in the middle of the roundabout. And there we were, walking up and down in the drizzle, thoroughly soaked — or rather, one of us was. Meg had the good sense to come prepared. I did not own a mac, and since this was not my home or business, I could not rush in anywhere from the pouring rain. Apparently this struck Meg as not merely impractical but faintly baffling. She was right on both counts.

From Penny Lane we made our way to Strawberry Field. The famous red gates overlooking the grounds where a young John Lennon once played as a child. It was a dreamlike landscape that would eventually become one of rock and roll’s most beloved songs. Standing there quietly in the aftermath of the rain, it was easy to understand why the place never left him.

Manchester

The train delivered us into Manchester with the efficient abruptness that rail travel does best. Within minutes we had found our way to Mackie Mayor, the city’s beloved Victorian market hall repurposed into a cathedral of food and drink. We settled in with something adult and restorative, watching the city introduce itself at its own pace — animated, unpretentious, and quietly proud.

The rest of that first day was given over to simply absorbing the place. Manchester wears its industrial past visibly, in the bones of its architecture and the width of its streets, built for the movement of goods and people on a scale that once made this city the engine of a global economy.

Learning the Difficult History

The following morning brought a group walking tour, led by a guide who proved equally at ease with medieval history and contemporary social fault lines. Manchester, we learned, is a city in honest conversation with itself. It grapples openly with questions of inequality, identity, and regeneration that many cities prefer to leave unexamined. It was a refreshing and occasionally uncomfortable portrait.

Vimto – a delicious drink invented in Manchester. We tried it and loved it!

That afternoon, the Science and Industry Museum delivered the Industrial Revolution in full and unsparing detail. The story of the cotton mills is one of almost incomprehensible human cost. Workers, including children as young as five, enduring conditions that the museum presents without softening or euphemism. The noise, the heat, the hours, the toll on small bodies: Manchester does not look away from any of it.

Nor does it flinch from a more troubling thread. Britain abolished slavery decades before the United States, yet Manchester’s merchants continued purchasing cotton harvested by enslaved Americans. Their mills humming with the profits of bondage by proxy. The museum names this plainly and without apology. At its height, we were told by an interpreter, Manchester produced roughly eighty percent of the world’s textile goods. A staggering figure that reframes the entire city you’ve been walking through, casting its grand Victorian facades in a considerably more complicated light. It is precisely this willingness to look honestly at its own history that makes Manchester one of England’s most compelling cities to visit.

Wetherby and the Yorkshire Countryside

We collected a rental car and pointed it north into Yorkshire. Doing so, we traded the urban cadence of Manchester for something older and quieter. Wetherby announced itself without fanfare. A medieval market town that has been holding its weekly market for five centuries, and sees no particular reason to make a fuss about it. We wandered the stalls and cobbled streets as people have always wandered them. Unhurried and attentive, and felt the particular pleasure of a place that has not been polished for tourism.

At the end of our wandering, we ducked into the Red Lion Inn, and the Red Lion rewarded us handsomely. A proper working-class pub of the old school — warm, unpretentious, presided over by a barkeep of genuine friendliness. It is exactly the kind of place that reminds you why English pub culture, at its best, is worth travelling for. We sampled the wares and felt entirely at home.

The Moors

The following day took us up onto the North York Moors, where the landscape opened into something vast and melancholy and beautiful. The clouds were low and heavy, but rather than diminishing the famous view they seemed to deepen it — lending the moors a brooding quality that felt wholly appropriate. We captured the white horse cut into the hillside, half-swallowed by mist, and agreed that the grey skies had given us something a sunny day never could.

A Historical Abbey – Completely Abandoned, Except for Us

Byland Abbey – no one there except us and memories of Monks from almost 1,000 years ago.

Then we found Byland Abbey. It was built in the twelfth century under the Benedictine rule and surrendered — like all the others — to Henry VIII’s particular brand of theological acquisitiveness. Today, it stands in magnificent ruin across an open field. What made it extraordinary was the solitude: we were the only visitors. A volunteer host showed us how to read the mason’s marks cut directly into the stonework. The quiet signatures of the men who built this place eight hundred years ago and never expected anyone to look for them. The interpretive signs throughout the grounds painted a vivid picture of monastic life. Standing with one hand against those ancient walls in the grey quiet afternoon, it was possible to feel, without any effort of imagination, the weight of the generations who had prayed here.

That evening we walked Wetherby’s bridge at sunset. As we did so, the River Wharfe was catching the last of the light below us — a moment of stillness after a day spent among ruins.

From the Moors to the Dales

Yorkshire Dales the next morning brought us to Bolton Abbey, substantially larger than Byland and considerably less deteriorated. It was handsome and well-tended, and we appreciated it as it deserved. And yet… perhaps it was the crowds, or the manicured grounds, or simply the memory of standing alone at Byland with the wind and the mason’s marks — but Bolton Abbey, for all its grandeur, could not quite compete.

Where the Magna Carta was Written

Our final Yorkshire excursion took us to Spofforth Castle, where history of the most consequential kind is said to have unfolded. It is here that rebel barons, among them Richard de Percy, are believed to have gathered in 1215 to draft the terms of what would become the Magna Carta — the document that would reshape the relationship between crown and subject across the centuries. The castle is abandoned now, open to the public without charge, its stones warm and accessible in a way that great history rarely is. We touched those walls too.

We ended the day as the English do it best: a traditional Sunday roast at a local pub. Enormous portions, honest prices, and the deep satisfaction of a meal that asks nothing of you except appetite.

York

We left Wetherby and pointed the car north, making a worthy detour through Ripon first. The cathedral there is a quiet marvel — and inside, the Ripon Jewel and a chalice dating to the 1500s stopped us in our tracks. Small objects carrying an almost unreasonable weight of history. Continuing on, we pulled over at Hetchell Woods for a stretch of the legs, following woodland trails until we reached a river crossing made entirely of stepping stones. The challenge was accepted, the crossing was made, dignity more or less intact.

York received us with the easy confidence of a city that knows exactly what it is. We marked the occasion with the obligatory photograph at the York sign, then found our way to a historical pub overlooking the Shambles. That impossibly preserved medieval street of overhanging timber facades and overrun by Harry Potter fans. We settled in with a well-earned pint watching the world go by.

Paddington Appears (Again!)

Paddington in York – he keeps showing up. I think he has a crush on Meg 😉

The following day brought a guided walk that filled in the city’s extraordinary layering — Roman, Viking, Norman, medieval, all of it stacked and interwoven beneath your feet. Paddington Bear made another appearance, as he seemingly does everywhere on this journey, and we obliged him with a photograph. But it is the Minster that commands everything. Massive and imposing in a way that photographs simply cannot prepare you for, it rises above the rooftops of York like a medieval argument for the existence of something greater than ourselves.

That evening gifted us something entirely unplanned. The bells of the Minster began to ring, and the bell choir rose beneath them. The sound carried through the entire town — across the cobblestones and through the narrow lanes and over the ancient walls. Standing outside the imposing building made the centuries feel briefly, beautifully thin. As the bells faded, we walked the ramparts in the lingering light, looking down upon rooftops and spires and streets that have witnessed hundreds of years of unbroken human life below.

The ghost walk, alas, was cancelled at the last minute — the guide unavailable, the spirits uninterviewed. No matter. York wears its haunted reputation in every shadowed alleyway and crooked medieval lane (known as snikleways), and no formal tour was needed to feel it. We left with the distinct sense that York’s ghosts are perfectly capable of introducing themselves.

Thanks for reading

Feel free to reach out via the link above or leave a comment

Cam and Meg

An Iberian Peninsula cruise part II

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This article was written by Cam with help from Meg and Claude AI. All photos are ours.

A previous post covers Part I of this cruise, the departure and visits to Seville, Cadiz, Gibraltar and Malaga.

Overnight, the ship sailed from Malaga to Cartagena. This is one of the things we love about cruising. You go to bed and wake up in a new port. Explore all day, then come back, rest a bit and eat dinner. There are shows and performances in the evening as the ship departs. Then off to bed. Rinse and repeat. No days spent travelling from A to B. It works for us, your milage may vary.

Off to Cartagena Spain

There are Roman ruins and then there are Roman ruins. Cartagena belongs firmly in the second category. The kind that stops you mid-step and recalibrates your sense of what old actually means. The Roman theatre, built in the first century BC and capable of seating thousands, is dramatic in the way that only genuinely intact things can be. This is not a field of suggestive rubble requiring interpretive signage and a generous imagination. The semicircle of stone seating rises in tiers as it always did, the stage area below it still readable as a stage. The whole structure sitting in the middle of a modern Spanish city with the quiet authority of something that has simply outlasted every argument for its removal.

The Roman Theatre of Cartagena has been speaking for over two thousand years. Long before today’s city and skyline even existed.

We moved through it slowly, the way you do when a place earns that kind of attention. I found myself thinking of all the Roman remains I have encountered across my travels, these ranked among the finest. Not merely for their age, but for the completeness with which they communicate the life that once filled them.

It’s About the Food…Always

Back on the ship that evening, we skipped the dining room for the buffet. Not any buffet, an Indian buffet. We were told the kitchen approached this meal with seriousness. That was evident. The spices were present in the way they should be — not gesturing toward authenticity but delivering it. The kind of depth of flavour that takes time and knowledge and must be done by the right hands. It brought back the subcontinent directly and without apology, the aromas alone enough to transport back. There is a particular pleasure in finding food that does not hedge. Food that commits fully to what it is trying to be. This was that. After a day spent among the achievements of one ancient civilisation, it was deeply satisfying to sit down to the cuisine of another. It was a wonderful meal.

Alicante

Castillo (Castle) de Santa Bárbara sits high above Alicante on a bare rocky outcrop, and it earns its position. The views from the defensive battlements take in the whole curve of the bay. The white city below, and the Mediterranean stretching away to the horizon. It is a fortress that has seen Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and Spaniards. That is a lot of generations, empires, dynasties and more. It wears its long history with the blunt indifference of stone that has simply endured. We were glad to have visited. But the castle, if we are being honest, was merely the opening act of our day.

Azamara’s White Night – A True Show Stopper

Azamara makes no secret of its White Night party. It is spoken of aboard ship with the particular reverence that travellers reserve for experiences they have heard about but not yet had. A promised evening that risks, as all promised evenings do, the possibility of falling short. It did not fall short. We dressed in white, as everyone else had, and stepping out onto the deck that evening it was immediately clear that the ship had transformed itself. The guests had risen to the occasion collectively and the effect was genuinely glamorous — hundreds of people in white against the warm Mediterranean night, the ship lit and festive, the sense that something worth remembering was about to unfold.

All white and all in – Azamara’s White Night party did not disappoint.

The dinner that preceded the party was, without qualification, among the finest buffets either of us has encountered at sea or on land. To call it abundant feels inadequate. Lobster, tempura shrimp, sashimi, lamb — the table seemed to extend in every direction, each turn revealing something else that had no business being as good as it was. But it was the crêpes Suzette that settled the matter. Prepared properly, finished in flame, the caramelised orange and butter sauce doing exactly what it should — they were the best I have ever eaten. Not the best on a ship. The best, full stop. The sheer variety and generosity of the evening defied any single attempt to summarise it; it was the kind of meal you keep returning to in conversation for days afterward, each of you remembering something the other had forgotten. Then the pool deck opened, and the real party began.

Dinner Was Only A Warm Up

There is a particular joy in line dancing. We attended a class prior to the party, to learn the moves the dance team would do. Joining in, we felt as if we were part of the dance troop, our timing matching theirs. At least I think it did, the free-flowing wine may have clouded my judgement. We limbo’d. We danced. The band played on and we stayed with them, the warm night air and the residual glow of the finest meal of the voyage conspiring to make leaving unthinkable. When the band finally packed up their instruments, it felt less like an ending than a natural pause — the kind that comes after an evening has given everything it had. Azamara builds its White Night reputation carefully and guards it seriously. Having now been to one, I understand completely why. Some things, it turns out, are as good as advertised.

València

València rewards the visitor who is willing to slow down, and we were in the right mood for it after our White Night. The cathedral anchored the morning — ancient, layered, and self-possessed in the way of churches that have been absorbing the city’s history for nearly eight centuries. From there we found the Llotja de la Seda, the old silk exchange, where a courtyard of orange trees sat in orderly, fragrant rows, the fruit still hanging heavy on the branches. It was the kind of incidental beauty that a city like València seems to produce without effort, tucked behind an unassuming doorway and entirely unconcerned with whether you noticed it or not.

An Exceptional Market

But the Mercado Central was where the day found its true character. Centred on food, it is one of the largest covered markets in Europe. Operating with the unhurried confidence of a place that serves its neighbourhood first and its visitors second. That instinct is precisely what makes it worth the visit. Locals moved through the stalls with the ease of long habit — selecting, chatting, tasting — and we moved among them happily, grazing on whatever presented itself, the market revealing itself as a place of genuine daily life rather than curated spectacle.

Sometimes a perfect lunch is an unplanned lunch

We bought lunch before we left. An Iberian ham sandwich on bread so fresh it was practically still warm — the crust crackling at the first pressure, the inside soft enough to dissolve. We took it outside and ate on a park bench in the sunshine, in front of the market, watching València go about its afternoon. It was, by any objective measure, a simple meal. It was also, in the way that simple meals occasionally are when everything aligns — the bread, the ham, the sunshine, the unhurried moment — completely perfect.

Barcelona — Our Amended Departure

That evening, we set sail for Barcelona, our arrival time was scheduled for 6:00 AM. Putting our luggage out before retiring, we confidently knew we would arrive on time. We have on every other cruise.

Two months before the cruise started, an email arrived from the Ryanair with the particular cheerful neutrality that carriers deploy when delivering unwelcome news. Our flight from Barcelona to Birmingham, originally scheduled to depart at 11:30 AM, had been moved to 3:30 PM. Four hours had been added to our final day. Four hours we had not asked for and did not especially want. Now to be spent wandering aimlessly through a city we were not prepared to properly visit. We were, not unreasonably, annoyed. The fare was nonrefundable, the alternative was changing dates entirely, and so we absorbed the inconvenience with the resigned pragmatism of experienced travellers who know that the airline always wins. We noted it, filed our irritation away, and got on with the cruise.

The morning of disembarkation was to have begun at 6AM, the ship scheduled to arrive in Barcelona at dawn. It did not arrive at dawn. Somewhere in the approaches to the harbour, the fog had settled in with the kind of dense, unhurried authority that cares nothing for departure schedules or carefully arranged logistics. At 7 AM I went on deck to see the harbour. However, Barcelona was nowhere to be seen.

Whatever Shall We Do?

There was only the grey-white stillness of a harbour closed to traffic, the water barely visible below, the city entirely erased. It was eerie in the way that fog at sea always is — the world reduced to the ship itself, everything beyond its railings simply absent. The captain’s voice came over the intercom just after seven, calm and measured, to inform us that the port remained closed and that we were sitting second in the queue. Then again at half past seven. Then eight. The announcements arrived every thirty minutes with the steady rhythm of a slow drumbeat, each one a minor variation on the same theme: we are waiting, the port is closed, we will update you shortly. The ship held its position and we held ours. Those with early morning departures were simply out of luck.

Heading to Port

At half past eight the tone shifted. The port had opened. The captain’s announcement carried something that stopped just short of audible relief, and the ship began to move. Barcelona materialised gradually through the thinning fog — the cranes first, then the waterfront, then the city stacking itself up behind, emerging from the white as though being assembled in real time. We docked at seven minutes past nine, but docking, as any cruiser knows, is merely the beginning of the bureaucratic final chapter. No one was permitted ashore until quarter past ten. Our luggage, checked the night before, needed to find its way from ship to shore. By the time we walked down the gangway it was eleven o’clock in the morning.

Under the original flight plan, we would have missed it by a margin too tight to contemplate. Under the revised one — the revised one we had complained about, the one that had felt like an imposition — we had time. Not time to explore Barcelona, not time to sit at a café or walk the Ramblas or do any of the things the city deserved. But time enough to take the metro to the airport without panic. To check in without the cold sweat of a departures board already flashing our gate. Time enough to board our flight to Birmingham in something approaching composure.

It Worked Out In The End

The airline, in rescheduling our flight for reasons entirely unrelated to our welfare, had accidentally done us an enormous favour. It is the kind of irony that travel occasionally produces — the frustration that becomes, in retrospect, the thing that saved the day. We settled into our seats as the plane lifted away from Barcelona, the fog long since burned off, the city glittering below us in the late afternoon sun, and I thought about the email two months earlier and the irritation it had caused, and found that I had nothing left to say about it except thank you.

As we left, reflecting on our cruise, we both agreed, we were very impressed with Azamara cruise lines. It is not a question of if we will sail with them again, but when. When we book a big trip, each leg is booked as part of a plan that will allow us to learn more. Learn about ourselves, our world, our neighbours, cultures, history and of course, food. As long as Azamara cruises has a cruise in an area where we hope to be, we’ll be onboard for another adventure.

Thanks for reading

Feel free to reach out via the link above or leave a comment

Cam and Meg

An Iberian Peninsula cruise

Starting Our Cruise

Leaving Lisbon and sailing down the Tagus River, past the Tower of Belém. We said farewell to Portugal and headed down the Iberian coast towards Spain. The next afternoon, we entered the Guadalquivir River, passing through locks, eventually docking in downtown Seville. Our ship, the Azamara Journey, is a smaller vessel, with only 690 guests. This size allows the vessel to visit ports that the larger size cruise ships simply cannot get into. We were very glad to be where no other cruise ship could be.

Arriving in Seville the Pearl of Andalusia

Meg in an alcove at sunset — Meg in the Balearic alcove — the tiles were glowing, the light was golden, and neither of us was in any hurry to leave.

It was half past seven on the last evening of March and the day was winding down towards night. We stepped into Plaza de España and were lucky enough to see the last of the sun hitting the towers turning everything it touched to beautiful colours of copper and rust. The towers rose above us as the sun withdrew behind them, the long shadows stretching across the curved colonnade and the ceramic-tiled alcoves that lined the plaza’s embrace. Meg hopped into an alcove and there was a theatrical quality to it.

That night, Seville revealed something else entirely. As we moved into the old city towards the Cathedral, we actually heard it before we saw it. Drums and horns sounded an ongoing beat with chanting also filling the air. Hundreds if not thousands of hooded pilgrims carrying crosses and candles. Their faces obscured, their flames casting long shadows across Seville’s ancient facades. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people lined the narrow streets and squares. The procession belonged to another century.

Walking Amongst the Procession – A Step Back in Time

It felt like we had walked into the Middle Ages—hooded figures, candlelight, chanting, and the heavy scent of incense filling the streets of Seville.

Figures in white robes moved slowly through the candlelight. At the head of it all, a great float bore Christ carrying the cross, shoulders bent under its weight. The crowd was silent in the way crowds rarely are — and stilled, as though the city itself had drawn a long, slow breath. We stood among strangers and felt, briefly, like witnesses to something that did not belong to us but had generously admitted us anyway. On the ship, many people had spoken of wanting to witness one of these processions. Having seen it, we now understood why.

Our second day in Seville was given over to wandering, which is the only honest way to move through a city like this. We found the Torre del Oro at the river’s edge in the morning sun. Golden in name and golden in the morning haze. We then turned toward the cathedral — the largest Gothic church in the world, though statistics feel inadequate inside it. We climbed the Giralda, a minaret-turned-bell-tower. The ramps worn smooth by centuries of up and down travel. From the top the view of the city showed colours of the earth. Terracotta and white spreading in every direction.

Inside the cathedral, the organ commanded the space — more than ten thousand pipes. Even silent in the choir loft, it had a presence, a kind of latent authority.

Visiting Historic Bakeries

The Bakery Turnstile – You Never see the Nun’s, nor do they see you. It’s been that way for centuries (except the credit card machine!)

Leaving the cathedral, and wandering the narrow alleyways allowed us the most unique moment of our visit here. We found a small bakery run by nuns. We followed a Spanish couple through an innocuous door, which had a small multi-lingual sign saying ‘sweet shop’. The courtyard inside had a little counter with a wooden turnstile. Beside it, a price list for baked goods. The bakery is run by cloistered nuns. Customers never see their faces – and vice versa. Clients knock with the knocker and order by yelling. The nuns place the order on the turnstile, the client verifies and then the nun provides a credit card machine on the turntable which you tap. A very modern touch to a very olden shopping experience.

A Mid-Afternoon Pause

By afternoon our travels had taken us across the river to Triana. This neighbourhood is also where many ceramic tile ‘factories’ are situated. We were able to watch an artist meticulously painting trivets. She was very intensely focused despite the hubbub around her.

Although the Triana market was closed, the open-air cafés were welcoming. We ordered drinks and did nothing more than watch Seville go about its business. As we did so, golden hour carried out its slow work on the water. After a long day, that felt like exactly enough.

The Real Alcázar – A Historic Palace

Meg framed by the arches at the Real Alcázar, with the still water below catching just enough light to double the moment.

On our final morning, we were at the Real Alcázar at the moment the gates opened. The reward was the kind that patient travellers are occasionally granted: quiet. The reflecting pool held just the two of us in its stillness, the palace’s intricate facade doubled in the water below. Later, the gardens unfolded like a series of secrets — jasmine-scented corridors, hidden fountains, ordered geometry giving way to lush abundance. By afternoon, the city had turned its attention to the sacred. Well-dressed families moved through the crooked alleys toward church services with a purposefulness that reminded us we were passing through, pleasantly unmoored, while Seville observed its own ancient rhythms around us.

Off to Cadiz.

There is a lightness to Cádiz that Seville, for all its grandeur, does not possess. Where Seville draws you inward with shadowed courtyards, candlelit processions and the gravity of centuries — Cádiz opens outward: toward the Atlantic, toward the sky. It is one of the oldest cities in Western Europe. While it has miles of beaches, and hotels, historically, the town guarded the harbour entrance. Several forts can still be found around its coast.

The buildings are bleached, salt-scrubbed and cheerful. The white facades bright in the morning sun. We began at Torre Tarvia, the tallest building in the old town. It has a camera obscura, essentially a periscope – a tube with a mirror and lenses – which projects a live image of the city projected onto a circular table in miniature. Rooftops, streets, and neighbours seen hanging laundry, watering plants and anything else that they do on their rooftop terraces. The surrounding sea rendered in silence, like a living map of a place that had long since stopped being in any hurry.

Nothing has Changed for Centuries

Wandering the old town, we were rewarded in the way that only truly ancient places can reward you. You could tell, moving through its narrow streets, that very little had fundamentally changed here over time. The stones underfoot, the low doorways and the small plazas opening unexpectedly off crooked alleys must have looked more or less like this for longer than most cities have existed. It was not a museum stillness, though. Locals moved through it with the casual ownership of people who have never needed to be impressed by where they live. We moved among them happily, unhurried, letting the streets decide our direction.

In the afternoon we found the beach, and the city fell away behind us. The sun was warm as we walked the long curve of sand. The Atlantic stretching wide and blue to the west. After the incense and the candlelight of Holy Week Seville, there was something deeply restorative about the clean air and open horizon. We both find the steady sound of the surf and the simple pleasure of walking with our feet in the cool sea with no particular destination to be relaxing. I think everyone does.

Gibraltar – England’s Hold on the Med

Once the ship had arrived, we went ashore and found a city bus to take us to the Rock of Gibraltar. The bus climbed the switchbacks, and, as the town got smaller, we saw the sea pressing in on both sides. From up on the Rock, you have a great view. To the north, the Spanish coastline curving away toward Algeciras; to the south, Africa. Not the idea of Africa, but the actual continent, close enough to feel like a short swim rather than another world.

The Strait of Gibraltar is only 14 kilometres at its narrowest. Standing at the top of the Rock, with the Mediterranean on one side and the Atlantic beginning on the other, you understand instinctively why this small, improbable place has been fought over for so long. It is not merely a piece of land. It is the hinge between oceans, continents and civilisations.

We needed to climb the last bit and it was an uphill climb. Inside, the tunnels begin to explain themselves slowly. As you enter, rock closes around you, and what reveals itself over the course of several hours is not a single feat of engineering but a composition. Excavations carried out across different wars and different centuries, each generation of defenders burrowed deeper and extended further. Their goal, to find new ways to make the mountain serve the purposes of survival.

Canadian Contributions to the Tunnels (and Victory)

The earliest galleries date to the Great Siege of the 1780s, hand-drilled by British soldiers into limestone. But it was the Canadian contribution during the Second World War that made us proud. Working under conditions that were by any measure extraordinary. There was the constant noise, the dust, the darkness, the urgency of a war, whose outcome in 1942, remained genuinely uncertain. Yet, Canadian engineers still helped carve out a vast network of tunnels sufficient to house and supply an entire garrison.

From inside the Rock of Gibraltar — Africa on the horizon, the Mediterranean below, and the Crown firmly in possession.

What lingers, walking back out into the sunshine, is the cumulative weight of the place. Gibraltar is only six and a half square kilometres, and yet it contains so much history: Moorish fortifications, British colonial architecture, a population that is neither fully Spanish nor straightforwardly English. Beneath the surface of the Rock itself, this extraordinary hidden city of tunnels that most visitors never fully reckon with.

Once we finished with the Rock, we found our way to the most southerly point in Europe. Our impression is simply that it is windy. Our captain had been pleasantly surprised at the lack of wind when we docked; I had trouble standing against it at Europa Lighthouse. Apparently, it is often worse.

Málaga

Easter Sunday arrives differently in Málaga than it does in Seville. Where Seville’s Holy Week processions carry the full weight of penitence and solemnity, Málaga on Easter morning had shaken something loose — there was joy in it. A brightness that matched the day itself. The procession that stopped traffic was less a funeral march and more of a celebration, the crowds lining the streets in good spirits, children on shoulders, the floats moving through the city with a kind of triumphant ease. We stood among the throng and let it wash over us before the cathedral doors drew me in.

The Málaga Cathedral is a magnificent and slightly unfinished thing — it has been missing its second tower since the eighteenth century, the funds for its completion having been redirected to the American Revolution, of all places. Inside, the Easter Sunday mass was in full voice, the Spanish rolling through the vaulted space with great confidence and zero concession to the uninitiated. I lasted approximately thirty minutes, following none of it, before slipping quietly out into the sunshine with what I can only describe as the mild sheepishness of a student leaving an exam early. The cathedral deserved better attention than I was equipped to give it that morning.

The afternoon redeemed everything. I climbed the hill above the city, and the path gave way to wildflowers — great drifts of colour along the hillside, vivid against the dry scrub and the pale stone. Below and beyond, the Mediterranean stretched out in every direction, flat and luminous and endless under the Easter sun. After the tunnels of Gibraltar, the solemnity of Seville, the ancient stones of Cádiz, there was something quietly perfect about sitting on a hillside among wildflowers, with nothing between us and Africa but open water and light.

End of Part I of our Iberian Cruise

For now, we thank you for reading the first part of our Iberian cruise. It has been a blast. Our cruise will carry on to Cartagena, Alicante, White Night, Valencia and finally Barcelona. Stay tuned.

Feel free to reach out via the link above or leave a comment

Cam and Meg

We are off! Portugal here we come!

As so many of our trips start, we headed out on a BC Ferry, taking the ‘Spirit of Vancouver Island’ from Schwartz Bay to Tsawwassen. We then spent a couple of days catching up with my mom followed by one night at the River Rock Hotel in Richmond. Being right on the Skytrain line, it was a five-minute train ride to the airport. Check-in was simple and we headed to the lounge for a light breakfast before boarding our flight. Although we left Vancouver a bit late, we arrived in Montreal earlier than scheduled. There were some pretty strong tailwinds. While the flight itself was smooth, we received a distressing email while in the air.

There are two types of luggage – Carry on and Lost

Air Canada’s bag tracking app sent a message to Meg mid-flight, while we were in the air, over Manitoba. The email advised that her bag had just been offloaded in Fort St. John, BC. How could that happen? Then, to make the story even more bizarre, another message came in 90-minutes later, just before we landed in Montreal. It said her bag had been off loaded in Montreal. That’s not actually possible, unless it was in an F-18 fighter jet.

Our bags had been checked through from Vancouver to Porto, so we could not actually lay eyes on them in Montreal. Once on the ground we spoke with two different customer service reps. One said she did not have access to the system, you’ll need to find someone else.

Thanks.

The other rep said the app was often wrong, don’t worry about it. He then said “you are here and your tag says your baggage is going to Porto; you’ll be fine”. Re-assuring, those words were not. Meg, ever the optimist, decided it would be fine and, although not re-assured, decided to head to the lounge to have a light snack before the next leg of our flight to Brussels.

Arriving in Europe

Porto’s seemingly chaotic but organized roofline.

We arrived in Brussels on time and, once we cleared European customs, we waited for our next flight. It was then off to Porto. As we flew into Porto, we could see why people fall for this historically charming city. The terracotta rooftops tumble down toward the Douro like something spilled and never cleaned up. While seemingly chaotic, it was also warm, and entirely deliberate in the way only very old cities can manage.

Arriving in Porto, we went to claim our bags. While waiting for the conveyor belt to start, I received an email from Brussels Airlines saying my bag had not been loaded onto the flight. They also said there is nothing to worry about as it would be on the next flight. Unfortunately, the next flight was the following day. As I filled out the lost luggage report, Meg’s bag was one of the first to land on the carousel. What a turn of events. As I’ve said, there are two types of luggage. Mine was the ‘lost’ type.

After we checked in, we started, as one should, on foot, exploring the old town, close to our apartment. It was beautiful and, the warm sunshine only made it nicer. Sunset from the bridge was postcard perfect.

Our Days in Porto

Sunshine streaming down in front of Sé Cathedral, Porto

The next morning, on a walking tour, our guide led us through streets that refuse to be straight. We started at Sé Cathedral, which sits on its hilltop with the quiet authority of something that has watched eight centuries of history and yet has not been moved. The stone is dark and serious, but the azulejo tilework in the cloister catches the morning light and turns the whole place warmer.

On to the waterfront area, the Ribeira, rounded out the morning. The old wine lodges sit low and long across the river in Vila Nova de Gaia. Our guide explained the whole peculiar arrangement — how the port wine was historically floated downriver from the Douro Valley in flat-bottomed boats called rabelos. It is then matured in long warehouses across the water. Porto, she noted with some satisfaction, gets the view. Gaia gets the wine. It seemed an equitable arrangement until you’re standing there in the sun looking across the river and realizing Porto has rather gotten the better end of things. Carrying on into town, we continued to view churches and towers while learning about history, invasions, occupations and coups.

From there we wound down to the São Bento railway station, where the grand entrance hall stopped us cold — twenty thousand hand-painted tiles telling Portugal’s history right there in the train station. This is either the most civilized thing a country has ever done or proof that the Portuguese simply cannot help themselves when it comes to blue and white ceramic. We chose to interpret it as the former.

Exploring Porto’s most famous item

There are actually no Port Houses in Porto, as our guide told us, they are in Villa Nova de Gaia. The reason, so we’ve been told, is twofold. The obvious is taxes. Businesses have always gone where they can make more money. Paying less taxes and dodging tolls, means keeping more money. The other reason, and actually more important, is heat. The afternoon sun bakes Porto, but is gentler on Vila Nova de Gaia. Thus, the aging process is less affected.

When trying to determine which Port House to visit, I reviewed at least 15. Big and small. British and Portuguese. Well-known international houses and local affairs. In the end, I decided to head to one that I knew, at least by their product, which I have sampled more than once.

The afternoon belonged to Graham’s.

The lodge climbs the hillside in a series of terraces, and the tour took us through the whole arc of port production. Varieties, vintages, the slow mathematics of ageing in barrels, blending and more. Our guide spoke about it the way people speak about things they genuinely love, which is to say he occasionally forgot he was giving a tour and simply started talking.

The tasting that followed covered five ports, moving from younger rubies through the older expressions. The room grew progressively warmer as we worked our way along. The LBV — Late Bottled Vintage — was the one that landed cleanest for both of us: structured and rich, with just enough tannin to feel like it means something. The aged tawnies were gentler things, almost meditative, the oak and the years having worked on them until they tasted like a comfortable afternoon in autumn. Mellow vanilla and caramel shone through various tawnies. We drank more than we planned to. Everyone does.

Colonial ties run deep, at least at the dinner table.

Portugal’s deep colonial ties to the province of Goa, in India, left a lasting culinary imprint. Portuguese settlers developed a profound appreciation for the bold, aromatic spices of Indian cuisine. This rich history sparked our curiosity, and we set out to explore authentic local Indian flavors firsthand.

We discovered a charming, family-run Indian restaurant — the kind of place where recipes are passed down through generations and every dish is crafted with genuine care. I ordered a fragrant biriyani, while Meg chose the tandoori chicken paired with freshly baked bread. Both dishes were outstanding, bursting with authentic flavor and prepared with obvious skill and love.

The experience was nothing short of remarkable, and all at a surprisingly affordable price. Truly a hidden gem which made us appreciate Porto even more.

A Day in the Douro Valley

The Douro Valley requires a full day and earns every hour of it. The drive east follows the river as it cuts deeper into the hills, the landscape gradually organizing itself into something extraordinary. By the time you reach wine country proper, the hillsides have been terraced into steep agricultural geometry — row after row of vines stepping up slopes that seem to have no business being farmed at all.

On our visit in early spring, the terraces were just waking up. The vines sending out the first shy growth of the season, the stone walls still grey from winter. It was beautiful the way serious things are beautiful — not immediately, but increasingly, the longer you looked. As we headed up the hills, the greenery became more pronounced, a clear sign that ‘location is the only rule’ does not only apply to real estate but to wineries also!

A River view of the Vines

Terraced vines along the river – centuries of winemaking.

Our river cruise gave the best perspective of all. For an hour we drifted past the Quintas — the estates — each with their own particular arrangement of terraces and manor houses and the odd chapel. The famous names appeared and passed: Quinta do Crasto, Quinta do Vale Meão, others tucked into the hillsides as if trying to avoid the attention. It was peaceful in the way that moving water is always peaceful, which is to say profoundly.

Two tastings followed at separate wineries. Each was distinct in character and approach. Lunch at Quinta do Lodeiro was the sort of meal that makes you reconsider your life. Long tables, local wine poured without ceremony, food that came from nearby and knew it. To wrap things up, the only concluding option was port wine. A 10-year-old tawny. Drinking it made me realize, at least for a few minutes, my problems were first world problems.

What else is in Porto?

The third day was slower, and deliberately so. We headed out to Foz, on the coast, to see the beaches and the Atlantic. The beach there is long and windswept. It feels genuinely at the end of things. Looking east, there is nothing until the America’s. How daunting it would have been for Columbus, Magellan and other explorers back in the day?

Meg reflecting on life as the waves come in

On the beach, we walked for a while and said very little, which is its own kind of conversation. Heading back into town, the Bolhão market followed — covered, lively, smelling of the morning’s fish and the afternoon’s lunch. It is the sort of market that has clearly been doing this for a very long time and intends to keep going, although in a changed way. In reality, it is a bit sad to see fewer and fewer local merchants. They have been pushed out for hawkers selling to tourists. Change is the only constant. Lunch was fresh, haphazard, inexpensive and delicious. I can only imagine what it would have been like 25 years ago.

In the evening, for our last night, we headed out to the old town and simply walked. Up the cobblestones and down them. Through squares where people gathered without apparent reason other than that it was evening and there was nowhere else they needed to be. We found a bar eventually, as one does, and sat with our drinks listening to the street noise and the distant sound of someone playing fado two alleys away.

Our final thoughts on Porto

Porto is one of those cities that doesn’t try particularly hard to charm you. It simply goes about its business — the wine, the tiles, the hills, the river — and trusts that you’ll come around to it. We came around to it by the first afternoon. By the last night, leaving the next morning felt genuinely difficult, which is exactly the right way for this leg of our trip to end.

Our final thoughts on Porto…we hope to come back, but for now, we were off to Sintra.

Sintra

Arriving in Sintra, we made our way into town and wandered through its narrow streets, pausing to admire the extraordinary facade of the Quinta da Regaleira. Without tickets and deterred by the lengthy queues snaking outside, we contented ourselves with taking in its gothic towers and elaborate stonework from the street. It was a tantalising glimpse of the romantic follies and secret tunnels within that left us already planning a return visit.

The decision to stay overnight in Sintra rather than Lisbon proved wise. As the afternoon wore on, we watched the crowds thin dramatically, day-trippers streaming back towards the train station and the city. By evening, the town had settled into a quieter, more authentic rhythm. Finding a place to eat was easy with guests rather than tourists in town. It made the whole place feel suddenly more like itself.

A quiet morning

The reward came the following morning. Rising early, we stepped out to find Sintra almost entirely to ourselves. Cobblestones empty, the air cool and still, the palaces bathed in soft morning light. It felt like a private audience with one of Europe’s most theatrical towns. That magic lasted until nine, when the first visitors began arriving once more.

The palace on a beautiful sunny day – sunglasses required!

We spent our morning at Pena Palace, and it did not disappoint. Perched high above the town on a forested hilltop, the palace is a gloriously extravagant confection — turrets, battlements and domes painted in bold ochres and terracottas. The whole structure looked more like a fever dream than a royal residence. Inside, the state rooms are preserved much as they were left in 1910, offering an intimate window into Portuguese royal life. Outside, we explored the sprawling grounds and dramatic viewpoints opening up across the Serra de Sintra and, all the way to the Atlantic.

Farewell to Portugal

It was a vivid final chapter before descending to Lisbon. We would now say good bye to Portugal and board our waiting cruise ship for a journey to Spain. For us, it is not if we will return to Portugal, but when.

Thanks for reading.

Feel free to leave comments or contact us by the link above.

Cam and Meg