From Barcelona to Murcia

So on Sunday we bugged out of Barcelona, eventually headed for Lisbon. We caught a cab to the main train station, where we rented a car for the duration.

We were both worried about driving in Spain, but it's a quick learning curve, then easy to manage.

We followed a mostly coastal road today to Canet d'en Berenguer, a tiny resort town.  Lots of mountain tunnels in the first 100 miles south of BCN.

Pulled over into an interesting-sounding town for a driving break and lunch, no other rationale for stopping here.

Because it's Sunday in Spain, almost everything is closed. We were befriended by an Argentinian family living in Tortosa who directed us to one of the few cafes open in town.

After a good lunch, we stumbled onto this, an interpretive center at one of the air raid shelters built during the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway had been here during that time and wrote about Tortosa somewhere along the line.

Back on the road again, first lemon tree sighting!

And first sightings of the bazillion olive groves we would see in the week to come.

Although these stone terraces we saw primarily only along the East Coast.

First fortress sighting!!

Spent the night in the resort town of Canet d'en Berenguer, north of Valencia, primarily because it was cheap and on the Mediterranean.

First time these toes have been in the Mediterranean Sea!!

Beach flowers

Our trusty steed, a Skoda, large enough to be roomy and comfy, small enough to fit into some incredibly small Spanish underground garages!

Monday morning we headed to Murcia, and spent a good part of the day on a small road in orchard country. The area around Murcia is called "Spain's Orchard." These are lo-quats, I think.

We waved and blew a kiss to Valencia as we drove through that city. This odd thing is the city's new performance venue.

And just south of Valencia...

From Wikipedia: The Albufera, or L'Albufera de València, meaning "lagoon" in Catalan (from Arabic البحيرة al-buhayra, "small sea"), is a freshwater lagoon and estuary on the Gulf of Valencia coast of the Valencian Community in eastern Spain. It is the main portion of the Parc Natural de l'Albufera de València ("Valencian Albufera Natural Park"), with a surface area of 21,120 hectares (52,200 acres). The natural biodiversity of the nature reserve allows a great variety of flora and fauna to thrive and be observed year-round. Though once a saltwater lagoon, dilution due to irrigation and canals draining into the estuary and the sand bars increasing in size had converted it to freshwater by the seventeenth century.

We were sorely tempted to take one of these cool historic lake fishing boats for a short birdwatching tour, but time didn't permit.

The area around is lagoon is nothing but rice fields, a major crop in this area. You have to trust me...this is a rice field during fallow season.

Miles of agriculture under sunshades.

We've been hungry to see animals, I guess, saw these moorhens (?) and mules when we made a pit stop for Allen on some back road behind a small town.

And tens of miles of hoop houses. I never knew Spain was such a food producer.

One must trust me when I write this is a fleeting glimpse of scenic Mediterranean coast!

We also experienced seeing what we assumed were wild dogs, three of them, in the median on the highway in the middle of nowhere. That was after we watched a military Huey-like helicopter descending, descending right in front of us at one point. I thought for sure it was going to land on the highway, but instead it descended even lower into some sort of military complex.  No pix; each event happened too quickly.