I'm really not interested in doing a travelogue. Someone asked me if on our trip we were the logging or V whatever to make money or something. I really not into that and for what I understand most people who do it don't make any money and find it just annoying after a while. There's too many damn people on YouTube as it is.
After we picked up the van we stopped at all the to get groceries. Aldi in Spain is pretty simple pretty similar to Aldi in America. In other words, in the middle of the meat department you'll find garden equipment. It's not as bad as LIDL, which is another chain popular in Europe and also in some places in america. Here I literally found a drill press for sale in the middle of the vegetable department. I'm not kidding about this. They sell Power Tools with groceries.
Anyway we had to stock up on everything for the van to fill the refrigerator in the cupboards and so we had a big pile of groceries which is unlikely most people in Europe shop. When lady gave us 30 looks as a result she started piling stuff on the conveyor belt behind me making it difficult for me to put the rest of our groceries on.
If you Google bakery near me and look at your phone it'll appear like a shotgun is Blaster your phone screen. There's a bakery on every block and people get fresh bread every morning. The bread here is delicious but it doesn't last very long which is why people buy it on a daily basis. It's a whole different head compared to shopping in America where you buy a loaf of bread and has a shelf life of other gears. 100 years.
And the wine. You can buy a really decent bottle of table wine for under $2 or at least under 2 euros. With a conversion rate it probably comes out to $2 to some change. If you're willing to spend up to five bucks man you can get the real nice bottle of wine in particular some sparkling wine either Cava from Spain or sparkling wine from France or other regions. The wines of the duro region in Portugal are particularly nice.
Again, I guess we can't have nice things in america. Speaking of alcohol, the paranoid puritanical Baptist Notions about serving alcohol in America or not present here. Every small shop in outlet has a bar attached to it and nobody seems to care whether you have a license or not to serve alcohol. So you go to a campground and they have a bar. In America it's very unusual for a campground to have a bar. You go to the gym and they have a bar. You go anywhere and they have a bar. You don't have to ask if they have alcohol on the menu it's taken for granted. Nobody thinks it's weird to serve wine with dinner.
We stopped in Zaragoza one night at a free parking space for caravans. The van camper has taken Europe by storm, possibly supplanting the Caravan trailer as the mode of camping. Of course, these same Vans are now sold in America by Ford Mercedes and Dodge it used to be the Dodge D100 and the Chevrolet G10 and the Ford Econoline grew up the road. But now European advance are the norm in america. It seems like we can't make anything in America anymore other than big pickup trucks and SUVs. But that's another story.
The van Handel's remarkably well and we think we'll probably buy one second hand when we get back to the states. Either that will buy one over here and use it as our Escape pod. Anyway getting back to Zaragoza, they put in a free parking area for camper vans complete with a dump station. It's right across the street from the tram station which takes you right to downtown. They have a beautiful square with an enormous Cathedral and Juan was very good at being a tour guide. We then went to an area called the tunnel which is a series of really narrow picturesque streets with Tapas bars and went from bar to bar having a glass of wine and various tapas items. It really is a different way of living. I really love that city as it's very small and easily walkable. We've been watching videos on YouTube from a guy named Tony about touring Spain and Portugal and that's his hometown.
We kind of got lost ended up in sort of a working man's bar and decided to stop and have a beer and sit at the table and look out at the people walking on the sidewalk. Juan ordered three beers and the total came to about $4 or less. I bought the second round with larger signs that have been frosted in the refrigerator and I think it came to six bucks. Bear in mind in America you'd be lucky to get one beer for $6 even at a dive bar. Why is everything in America so expensive? Why is everything in America just a freaking money grab.
And don't ask me if that included tip cuz they don't do that s*** here.
But I digress.
The Germans and the British love the idea of wild camping which is driving your camper down to the beach or out of the woods and just hanging out on somebody else's property or in public lands. It sounds neat in theory and you can do this still in some parts of America in particular in Canada on so-called Queensland which I guess is now called kingsland. What is your mind imagine people parking out in the woods for free or on the beach tend to leave litter and debris and dump their gray water and other things on the ground and it gets out of hand real quick. Driving vans on fragile Dunes are in the forest causes erosion as well. So they're starting to clamp down on this sort of thing. We've been using a app called park for night to find spaces sometimes right on the beach period
It's really peaceful period the camper has a pop top and we sleep up on the roof and zipped down the canvas so you can watch the ocean crashing in the shore and hear it at night as you follow gently asleep.
Other times we go to RV parks which are mixed bag. Some of the ones, particularly in Portugal are a little sketchy. We went to one in Lisbon which looked like a really nice place. It had hundreds of sites in these enormous bath houses which look like they've been designed for Expo 67. But everything was a little rundown they hadn't even mowed the lawn or anything. The toilets had no toilet seats and there was no toilet paper. It was kind of weird. Other places had toilet paper but you expected to put the used toilet paper in a bucket like you were in Mexico.
Other places where Immaculate and had brand new bathrooms. But you had to pay 50 cents to use the bathroom and a dollar for the shower. On the online review sites the Germans and the Brits wind continuously about having to pay for these things. But after every use a toilet with no seat I was happy to pay. And it was a short walk to an absolutely gorgeous beach. Across the street was a shanty of a restaurant that reminded me of something from Key West. It was dining European style we swallowed for hours there waiting for our food when it finally arrived it was well worth the wait it was just amazing that they produce such dishes from what basically was a food truck. I miss that aspect of the old key west. Now it's all Condominiums and chain restaurants.
Again I apologize for the spelling errors because I'm dictating this on the phone and I have a very sketchy internet connection so it's probably old disjointed to make no sense. Maybe I'll edit it when I get back home. Or maybe it's just the Parkinson's talking.
