La Herradura, Alhambra & Gibraltar

After Portugal, we relaxed for a month in the coastal town of La Herradura, Spain. We chose this town because it has a community of worldschooling families. However, when we arrived, we discovered that the families here are more people who stay for several years or half a year, every year, rather than families like us that are travelling around the world. Most of the people in the community were either German or Swedish although there are a few other nationalities peppered in.

La Herradura

La Herradura is a cute little tourist town on a black, rocky beach. It is very clean and very relaxed ( a surf town kind of vibe). Many of the community activities were actually classes that had to be paid for (which we couldn’t afford on our tight budget), but there were some free meet-ups and walks.

Unfortunately, at the end of the first week, a portable, very heavy heater fell on my foot and meant that I couldn’t walk for the next couple of weeks. And at the end of the second week, R contracted a very bad cold/flu which then spread to the rest of us. This meant that all up for me, I didn’t leave the apartment much in the 4 weeks we were there! This was really a shame because the weather was beautiful! It only rained for a couple of hours on one day out of the whole month!

Alhambra

We took a day trip to Grenada and visited Alhambra and its palaces. Apparently this is the most visited site in all of Spain. I went when I was a kid and had good memories of it so I was looking forward to going again. It didn’t disappoint – especially the Nazari palace. The added bonus was that being winter, there was snow capping the mountains.

Gibraltar

After we left La Herradura, we headed to Morocco – taking the ferry across the straight. On the way, we stopped to visit the British territory of Gibraltar. The prices for accommodation in Gibraltar were several times the price of accommodation in the adjacent Spanish town of La Linea de Concepcion, so we stayed there and then walked across the border to visit Gibraltar. Walking across the border was pretty cool – you have to cross the airport runway. We had to wait for a couple of planes to take off first before we could cross.

We really liked Gibraltar. The main street was super cute and having all the forts and batteries dotted around made it very unique. And, it was nice to see signs in English again!

The next day, we drove around the bay to Algeciras where we were taking our ferry across the straight to Ceuta. Unfortunately, there was a severe weather warning in place for gale force winds and high seas. We thought they would cancel the ferry – but they didn’t. The one hour crossing felt very, very long. Nearly everyone was vomiting – the sounds were really amazing and we were joking that they should make some recordings for movies.

The town of Ceuta was sort of interesting – a Spanish enclave on the Morrocan peninsula. Only R went out for a walk a night to explore the town, the rest of us were tired after the long day.

Next stop – Morocco!