Our first few days in Spain...

Our journey across the Atlantic to Spain will begin early Sunday morning as we drive from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis to catch our 2 p.m. flight to Newark. After a four-hour layover, we'll board the Boeing 757 for an overnight flight to Madrid. We depart at 8:30 p.m. Fort Wayne time, but it will be 3:30 a.m. Spain time.

I flew non-stop from Chicago to Madrid last summer and the trip wasn't that bad, as it was a little easier to sleep since it was night time. Plus, there is always a burst of adrenaline when you arrive at a new place. That adrenaline lasts for the first day before you crash that night because of the lack of sleep. I love it! When I flew to Thailand in February to attend my friend's wedding, the jet lag wasn't too bad on the way there, mainly because of the excitement of visiting a new country and a different culture. The trip home, however, was bad. It took my body about four days to get used to the 12-hour time difference that I had grown accustomed to in southern Thailand.

We will spend our first day in Madrid and the agenda includes a walking tour of the capital city, a visit to the Plaza Mayor and a stop at the Prado Museum. We'll also meet our guide Monday and spend the night in Madrid. Spain will play Croatia that night in the Euro 2012. We're all excited to be in Spain on the night of such an important soccer match!

On Tuesday, we'll walk to Retiro Park and have lunch there. My friend Tish who is leading this trip recommended that I visit Retiro Park during my trip to Spain last summer and it became one of my favorite spots in all of Madrid. The enormous park that was laid out in the 17th century is home to monuments, beautifully landscaped lawns and gardens and a lake where people take boat rides. 

Later in the evening, we'll drive 70 miles northeast to spend three nights in Ávila, which is known as the city of walls. Ávila is home to some 53,000 people and is surrounded on all sides by 40-foot walls from the 12th century. The walls are home to nine gates, 88 observation towers and more than 2,500 turrets. While in Ávila we stayed with host families — an experience I’ll write more about next week.

During our time in Ávila, we will make day trips to Segovia and Salamanca. Segovia is about 40 miles northeast of Ávila and is famous because the city is said to have inspired Walt Disney’s creation of the Sleeping Beauty castle. (Both Ávila and Segovia are World Heritage sites because of their beauty and monuments.)

Segovia is most famous for having the best preserved Roman aqueduct — a 9.3-mile conduit built in the 1st century that has 166 arches and a channel that runs across the top that transported water. Its highest point is 92 feet from the surface. The aqueduct is more than 2,000 years old and is still standing even though the Romans didn’t use mortar to hold the almost 20,000 granite blocks together — and it worked until 1950.

Salamanca, a city of some 156,000 people, has some of the most impressive architecture in northwestern Spain. The city is home to a plethora of sandstone buildings, awe-inspiring churches and one of the oldest universities in all of Europe. The city also houses what most consider to be Spain’s most beautiful plaza — a public square that dates back to the mid 1700s.

We'll depart for southern Spain Friday, where we will visit one of the country's most visited sights. We'll end the odyssey in Barcelona, where we will see the other most visited tourist attraction. 

I'll write more about the last five days of the trip when I update tomorrow night.

Hasta pronto,

--Justin