Into the city of Ourense, and a wine tasting evening!

I only had one pair of shoes with me so far on this trip... the new Sketchers that I had bought in Madrid. I learned the other day that I need some hiking boots! Those Sketchers are fine for walking on flat paved surfaces, but they have zero support for anything more than that. And, I knew I was going to have to buy hikers soon anyhow. 

So, we headed into the city of Ourense (pop 109,000) to see the sights and buy some hiking boots.

Well, the time has come

But let's face it, it had to happen eventually.

A fun hike, right from our front door!

We decided on an 8 km (5 mile) round trip hike that leaves right from our door. The destination was the deserted hamlet of San Cosmede.

We kind of thought we might get some nice views of the Sil Canyon, but unfortunately not. However, there were a lot of other interesting things to see along the way! In fact, it turned out to be a really good hike!

Day trip to Ribadavia, and the Melon Waterfalls

There are so many choices of things to do and places to see, it took us a while to decide!

We chose to go to the town of Ribadavia, about a 45 minute drive. Then, Ruth found an 8 km (5 mile) hike with some waterfalls a few kms past Ribadavia, so we went there afterwards.

Hike to a beautiful viewpoint

Once again, we woke up to fog that doesn't seem to totally burn off until after lunch. And there's no point in hiking in beautiful scenery if you can't see the scenery!

So we didn't get out walking until about 2:00pm.

A few photos around the village where we are staying

We woke up Monday morning to thick fog. We couldn't even see the mountain on the other side of the river valley!

Our schedule has been pretty hectic for the past while, and it was nice to just relax for the morning. It was after 11:30am by the time we hopped in the car to go find a grocery store.

Our home for the next two weeks... what a great area!

We headed out of Valladolid with plans to make one stop... at a big Carrefour grocery store on the outskirts of the city. 

Good thing it wasn't much of a detour... because it was closed!

A busy day as we explored both Segovia and Valladolid

We took the metro (subway, underground) from the north part of Madrid to the Atocha train station. We had used up our original ten ride purchase at €0.61 a ride, and it didn't make sense to buy another ten ride package so we had to buy individual tickets at €2 ($3.12 CAD, $2.23 USD) each. 

Arrived at Atocha station a half hour early for our 10am rental car reservation.

The bus broke down, so extra time in El Barco de Avila!

Well, Friday was the last day of the volunteer language program, and we are now back in Madrid.

Busy, busy though... I didn't even have time to do a blog post yesterday, and time is quickly running out this morning too!

Walk into town

Another busy day. They give you fun group assignments, and you think that maybe you don't have time to complete them, but somehow you manage to get them done, even if it cuts into your free time.

As I said, they sure keep you busy!

Another fun day!

Once again, a fun and enjoyable day. 

It's so nice that we are able to go out walking during our one on one conversations. It's such a beautiful area, and we've been pretty lucky with the weather although we did have a few drops of rain yesterday afternoon.

They sure do keep you busy!

We had a fun day yesterday. They sure keep you busy, and the time passes quickly. We had breakfast from 9am to 10am, then began our "one on one" sessions with the Spaniards.

You do three 50 minute sessions, each one followed by a 10 minute break.

First day of the language program

We had signed up as volunteers at an English language program for Spaniards here in Spain. So, this language program is not about us learning Spanish... it is to help Spaniards learning English.

It's five nights/six days, and Sunday morning at 9:30am the bus picked us up to take us to a resort two and a half hours west of Madrid near the village of El Barco de Avila.

Some quirky things in Madrid

Once again, we waited out the rain before heading out to do more exploring here in Madrid. So it was almost 1:30pm before we set out on the subway towards the center of the city.

We often use the Atlas Obscura website to find interesting things to see that aren't necessarily on the tourist radar, and Ruth had mapped out a short list of them.

We moved to another accommodation

Despite sleeping in Friday morning, we managed to get out of the apartment with time to spare. We walked to the nearby subway station to take the metro underground to the north of Madrid.

Only a ten minute walk from the subway station and we arrived at our next accommodation. It's in a very residential area, with a lot of apartment buildings.