Off We Go!

30-Sep-23

This may be our last big multi-week mini-world trip for the foreseeable future, so we're going big! Three countries in five weeks: Spain, Portugal, & Morocco (3 countries bordering the Strait of Gibraltar).

After an 11-hour flight from LA 😵 we landed in Madrid, picked up a rental car & headed to west Segovia, Spain. Nick LOVES road trips for the freedom it gives us to stop at random sites along the way... Which is of course what we immediately did 😄 (Nick Note: Hells yeah! I had already picked a scenic route to our first destination and it was even prettier than I imagined as we drove to a tiny skiing area north of Madrid with switchback after switchback! It is sooo hot right now it is hard to believe that this area gets snow, but there were signs letting us know to put on our snow chains.)

Driving towards Segovia

We saw the word "palacio" on Google Maps & decided to pull over. La Granja de San Ildefonso started out as a "simple" 15th century hunting lodge built for Henry IV of Castile. The property was later given to local monks to establish a monastery & farm (granja) but by the early 1700s, the Spanish crown bought it back & started building a massive Royal Palace that would served as the summer residence of Spanish kings & queens until the 1880s. (NN: We did not know this was there, that is the beauty and serendipity of a self-drive road trip.)

La Granja de San Ildefonso

The palace was modeled after Versailles in the Baroque style with extensive French-style gardens & too many fountains to count, all representing figures from Greek mythology.

Gardens