Travel in the time of Covid -19 October 14, 2020

Everything fell into place pretty smoothly and quickly! We have a flight today to Amsterdam (a recent Covid hotspot 😳). We rented a car and will drive 2 hours to an area in the North called Groningen. Fingers crossed that the 2nd hand camper van we are planning to buy works out. 10 days of quarantine follow. We plan to spend the first night in the camper outside Bert and Tinto’s house and will drive 4 hours South to Zeeland on Friday. There we can quarantine in a house in a small town near to Veere. This is a summer house that Herman’s parents own. We plan to see Anika and some family before heading to a small town at 1,100 meters elevation in southern Spain where we landed our first house sitting for 3-5 months! We plan to share travel updates on this blog site.



We will miss home and our friends and family, but are looking forward to this long awaited “empty nest” (still actually a very full nest now) adventure!
Onward,
Elizabeth and Herman
Attachments area


Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 29, 2020 at 11:14 AM

    Great to hear from you guys! So happy you got out. Hope you voted first! 🤞🏻

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Epic Bicycle Ride - La Sabine, November 25, 2020

Image
 The morning started out cool enough for us to wear coats and gloves as we set out for what promised to be a long sunny day of bicycling. We planned to bike from the house to the nearby town of Chirivel and then take our mountain bikes up a hiking route about 9 km outside of Chirivel. The trail, La Sabine is normally a moderate climb and 10 km each way. We planned to bike/hike through the pass in a circular fashion as opposed to out and back.  Yesterday, I finally located la panaderia (bakery) and it looked as if it would be open (I could see cookies through the bars of the door). So after a cup of tea, we bicycled into Chirivel via the dry sandy riverbed (hoping to get some baked goods for breakfast). We had sandwiches packed for the long ride. 9:28 am outside the bakery and there were no signs of life. The bars were still across the doorway. We decided to head to a nearby cafe in the center of Chirivel that has quiet outdoor seating.  The two sandwiches we ordered were ...
Read more

Calm before the storm! December 1-3, 2020

Image
Three days and two nights away from our home base in Chirivel found us exploring an area about an hour's drive on the other side of the mountain range we see from here. We are learning that each large valley between the mountains in this area seem to have separate weather patterns. As I sit typing this entry, the wind is literally howling with gusts of up to 68 mph! There is a cloud of rain actually horizontal to the ground. We are thankful for the wood stove that burns chunks of hardwood almond. It took most of the morning to prepare for our departure and run a couple of errands. On our way to La Piza, a nature park area, we stopped in the town of Maria to get some bread. We asked a masked mother and daughter who were walking with a purpose for directions. We were extremely lucky because they were headed to the bakery as well and it would close in just 7 minutes! The town was a bit maze like and after several minutes of winding around, we arrived at the panaderia (bakery) just in ...
Read more

Oria, Spain - December 23, 2020

Image
  Fuente, Oria We had previously tried to bicycle to the village of Oria nestled in the mountains of the next valley, however, due to outdated and missing signage for the route, we never actually made it on our bikes. In one of my stilted Spanish conversations with the goat herder, Juan, he had told me that he and his 8 brothers had been born in Oria and that he still visits there often to go to the bakery and get water from the fuente (source). The water in the house we are staying at is delivered to a large tank by the city of Chirivel about every 5 weeks. It may be drinkable, but it is extremely hard, mineral rich water. Most visitors to the area buy bottled water because of the impurities. Herman and I decided to try finding the fuente in Oria in order to refill our water bottles. We drove SAM there and were able to fill around 100 liters of drinking water. The water is filtered naturally through the limestone and sandstone of the mountains around Oria.  We love Oria! It ...
Read more