On the Road Again!

After siesta we started to check on the packing. Claire replaced a pair of shoes in Mérida at Decathlon and so that is a straight swap. I am actually hoping that the cases go in the hold. It will save messing about with sponge bags and the liquids in see through plastic bags. I got TomTom from the car and set tomorrow's route to the car hire place with a petrol fill up as near as possible. The rental is full to full. The My Drive app seems to work really well and it can be set as the default from booking.com to save more faffing to set routes to the hotels. Dinner. Another restaurant in Plaza Mayor. Los Portales. Firstly a beer and tapa. Then the €12 menu. The menu is three courses and includes a drink. Tonight we had the red wine. Another smooth one. From the restaurant it's walk off the dinner. Final packing and beddybies. Tomorrow the 300kms drive to the airport or at least to the car hire place. TomTom reckons three hours. posted from Bloggeroid

After some faffing we picked up a 1.0 litre Polo. The TomTom fitted and we are off. An hour later we finally work our way to the non toll A5. Traffic quite horrendous. A warning for next Friday's return trip. By 5.30pm I was needing a walk. We stopped for a coffee. On the way we had been caught in a few torrential downpours. Traffic at a standstill occasionally as the wipers couldn't cope. Photo from right, passenger, side of the car. We arrived at the Parador in Trujillo about 7.30pm and checked in. Nice room. http://mobi.parador.es/en/paradores/parador-de-trujillo Nice floor.. posted from Bloggeroid

Arrived Madrid Terminal 4 quite promptly. Despite half term not starting until this evening there were loads of kids. Amazing that parents ignore the seat belts sign. Standing in the aisles and letting small children stand on the seats whilst we have seatbelt lights on. Sadly typical middle-class English who know better!! Once out. Another long walk. Got luggage and exited the airport. Car hire minibus easy to find.... We were the only customers on the bus. posted from Bloggeroid

Not long now. Airlines & Luggage With budget airlines charging almost as much for a case to go in the hold as they do for a human to occupy a seat on the plane I followed the advice of a well known travel writer. The advice? Book hand luggage only first of all as the baggage price is at its highest at this point. As the flight date gets nearer this price tends to drop and although still an "extra" it can save a lot of money. So that's what I did. Will it work? Will it buggery. With less than a week to go I logged into "manage bookings" on the outward leg of the journey. The flight is operated by Iberia the Spanish national carrier. I can add a bag for €15. Very reasonable. Before booking I logged into the "manage booking" page of British Airways for the return leg. The flight is actually operated by their partner. Iberia! Loads of information about additional baggage but no "add a case" button shows up. Unlike many big companies there...

Another juggle. Day 1 - Flight out to Madrid and Trujillo Parador to stay 2 nights. Day 3 - Mérida and stay 2 nights. Day 5 - Badajoz - one night Day 6 - Cáceres - two night Day 8 - Back to Madrid and flight home. Using this Rough Guide to read about the places to visit. To give us more time I have dropped one of the overnights and doubled up at Cáceres. Three weeks to go. Update 12th May 2018 Email British Airways. the return flight has been re-timed to be 1835 instead of 1805.  Not that it matters as we have to have the car back at about 1530.

Michelin 576 A few days sitting at home looking at the Michelin Map 576 and getting a "larger picture" of the trip means yet another update to the routing. All the hotels for the first night have been either too far to the north and way off the path between Madrid and the first Extremadura stop at Trujillo.  So yet another review using the map to see where places are has been helpful. I have changed the first night stop again. That's what is quite good about booking.com ! The chance to plan and chop and change as need be. The biggest change is that I have decided that when we arrive in Madrid and get the car, it will be about 3.30pm so instead of an overnight on the way we'll go straight to Trujillo. I logged into the Parador website and "modify booking" didn't work. Luckily, they had a chat option and a nice lady called Viktoria changed the booking to make it a day earlier. That of course freed up another day in the week. A bit of shuffling around and I...

All change. Some small changes to the overnight stays have required a change to the routing.  The Parador de Gredos has been changed to another hotel nearer the main route between Madrid and Extremadura. The changes are really to make the trip a little smoother. This routeing is set to avoid toll roads and highways. As usual I have used Tyre to create the routing. Tyre  Route - avoiding highway & toll routing

So with the car-hire dilemma sorted.  I went for the no-excess plan instead of the low rate and potential hassle route of the cheap hire and massive insurance risk. So back to the route.  As usual I have used Tyre to plan a route between the various stops and the airport. Having this in the TomTom doesn't preclude from going off-piste to look at things in the Rough Guide or on the hoof.   I know there are people that think that a paper map is all you need and technology only ruins the trip. Good luck to them.  Finding a hotel in a huge city and arriving right outside the front door is preferable to riding around for hours.  I have done both other the last 40 years of touring and believe me. The TomTom way is way preferable. So this is the base route: Anti-clockwise at the top from the airport to the Parador de Gredos and then clockwise around the Extremadura cities. There will be some autostrada as well.  Not all of it on ordinary highways.  I ca...

It's been a while since I updated this trip. Everything has been in place for quite a while and there was nothing much to do, apart from make sure the Advanced Passenger Information (API) was completed for both of us. Then as I was looking through the folder in my Yahoo email I to check dates and make sure that my Tripit itinerary was up to date (it feeds into Google Calendar!) I noticed that although I had a few car hire emails, I hadn't booked any. Car hire is always one of the biggest bugbears for me.  Flights are easy to book. They give you a price and you accept that and then check for the add-ons (rip offs?) such as baggage check and reserving a seat and you get a price.   But with car hire.  There are so many "insurances".  Very annoying.  I ran through a few of the online booking agencies and there are quotes as low as €40/£35/$50 for a week's hire for a small car like a FIAT 500 "Cinquecento". This includes legal insurance cover.  Then you se...

After a look through the Rough Guide to Spain and then TripAdvisor a rough plan was established that we should do a clockwise circuit around the central region of the region. The distances involved in this trip won't be too great so we should have time for a good look around without too much driving about. I have booked another Parador in Trujillo for two nights. On the booking sites there weren't too many hotels available for our dates. I thought about an anti-clockwise trip around the circuit but that didn't help. So a quick trip to the Parador.es website and I signed us in there. I booked another hotel  in Mérida ,  Again for two nights. This one a little less luxurious but it looks very nice. As we have seven nights to play with, the above leaves two to book.   So I have gone ahead and booked a single night in Badajoz and the last night in Cáceres.  These are also decent looking hotels. We will have to get used to the standards after the Paradors.  That wi...

With the Extremadura as the destination for some serious touristing I have booked the first night just short of the border from Castille. A bit of luxury before we enter the "Frying Pan" of Spain.   The Parador at Oropesa. I was looking last night and the Parador site has discounted rates for over 55's and in the Extremadura there are quite a few Paradors in the area. Oddly, booking.com had a much cheaper rate than the official site. Even with the senior citizen discount the cheapest rate is non-refundable and was way more than the booking.com refundable price.  How? I have no idea. The Parador's official booking site used to have a special "bulk" purchase rate. Something like four nights for the price of three or something along those lines.  Worth checking out. I need to get the Rough Guide out to see what we can see in the area. I have also bought a copy of the regional Michelin map #576. It covers Extremadura and across to Madrid and the east. Although I...

The Tour d'España has come about really because we wanted an early holiday.  Most often we have been to the US in May but with the changes to my contract at work, where I am stuck with school holidays for the bulk of my leave, it has meant that two week trips are out  of the question unless done at Easter or Summer. I would like to have gone  back as we did in August  2014 on the Explorer -  Revisita España 2014 , and on the bike but it is not practical with Claire's hip and her gradual worry about being on the bike! The next best thing is to fly/drive. I have been checking on Skyscanner and the way it works it seems impossible to get the flight out and back into UK when you want them at a reasonable  price.  A quick click to one-way revealed a lot more flights. It also revealed that their website creates round trips groups of flights that when checked as singles come out at a very different (and lower) price.  In the end I booked Iberia out from ...