On the road (3) A (hopefully) sunny September road trip to Spain COMPLETED - Page 5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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On the road (3) A (hopefully) sunny September road trip to Spain COMPLETED
On the road (3) – A (hopefully) sunny September road trip to Spain
Pre-trip report – part one:
Dates: Friday 3 – Sunday 19 September Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (37) and DH Mark (44, turning 45 on the first full day of this vacation ) Destinations: Mark’s parents’ villa in Moraira, Spain, driving through France and back to get there Meets: None planned Celebration: seeing some beautiful places in Europe
This time, it’s going to be bigger and longer than ever before – and that’s saying something after our previous excursions! This time, we’re off to visit Mark’s parents’ villa for the third year running, but for the first time, we’re driving, rather than flying. It’s in a beautiful part of the world, located in the village of Moraira in the Costa Blanca, between Alicante and Valenica. We first headed there in September 2008 and had another return trip back there in October 2009. Having seen what the weather was like during our second visit, we decided to go with September, as it had been much warmer then, which had allowed me to do some swimming in the villa pool and I was hoping to get the chance to do that again.
The next issue was trying to plan everything out. We knew we had two full weeks, but it was going to take some time to drive down and back and I didn’t want to retrace our steps on the two journeys, as I wanted to experience different routes, cities and places on each leg of the trip. Life was made much easier, when our originally planned Disney cruise from Barcelona to Dover became a road trip around Normandy and the Loire Valley. That allowed us to cross off a number of the sights that I was originally going to do on this trip, meaning that our drive down became a lot quicker than I’d originally envisaged.
Eventually, I came up with a set of plans that would see us having two long driving days, followed by two nights in that city, to allow some time to recover, as that had become an issue on our Switzerland road trip. We also opted to leave on the Friday night, rather than the Saturday night, as we’d originally planned. We decided that we could leave work a little earlier and then drive an hour when we got into France to lessen the drive the next day.
On the way back, I allowed ourselves five nights to get from the villa back home. I also figured that it made sense to return to Valencia, which we’d loved when we’d visited in 2008, as part of the journey back. It was an hour and a half away from the villa, heading towards Barcelona, so at least it meant that once we were done there, we could just carry on driving.
My biggest problem in planning this was the sheer volume of things I wanted to see on the way there and on the way back, and as I said earlier, without too much backtracking. In the end, the plan was to head down towards Bordeaux and then through the northern part of Spain and down towards Madrid. From there, we’d head down to the villa.
On the way back, we’d take the coast road along the south eastern edge of Spain, through Barcelona, and then into France, before heading inland for the Dordogne region. It would then be a straight drive from there up to Paris, where I had managed to secure a staggering offer for the Triannon Palace Versailles, part of the Waldolf Astoria collection. During the Hilton’s January sale, you could get a hotel room during any weekend in 2010 for half price and I secured a room there. I got it for £184 and, when I checked a week later after the offer was finished, a similar room cost around £500. It would certainly be a great way to end our stay.
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This time, we’re off to visit Mark’s parents’ villa for the third year running, but for the first time, we’re driving, rather than flying. It’s in a beautiful part of the world, located in the village of Moraira in the Costa Blanca, between Alicante and Valenica. We first headed there in 
Life was made much easier, when our originally planned Disney cruise from Barcelona to Dover became a road trip around Normandy and the Loire Valley. That allowed us to cross off a number of the sights that I was originally going to do on this trip, meaning that our drive down became a lot quicker than I’d originally envisaged. 
It would certainly be a great way to end our stay.
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