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<A HREF="spain.htm"><H3>Spain</H3></A>
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<A HREF="portugal.htm"><H3>Portugal</H3></A>
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<A HREF="gibraltar.htm"><H3>Gibraltar</H3></A>
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The trip
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Where to begin? Everything feels so different there, architecture, food,
climate.
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Practically everywhere you go there is a reminder of a history that goes back not merely scores or hundreds of years. Sometimes one may encounter artifacts or ruins that are thousands of years old. Cities also have a very different feel to them depending on whether one is in a new or old section of town. When visiting some of the small villages out in the countryside however, there is a strong feeling of things not having changed substantially in hundreds of years.
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Spain has incongruities like signs prohibiting horse drawn carts on the autovias where traffic zooms by at 120+ kph. It also boasts the world's fastest train (300 kph) on the run between Madrid and Seville.
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Apart from the creations of humans, the extent and variety of the natural beauty surprises and delights as well. Beautiful shorelines, tall, jagged, snow-covered mountain peaks, desert, and forests all within about a day's drive of each other.
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I have been to many beautiful places, and I consider those I encountered in Spain to be the equal of just about any I have encountered elsewhere. There is so much to see and experience that getting to know the area, even on a cursory level, would take months.
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