Well Badajoz is a bit of a hidden gem! Selected by us as a convenient midpoint between Valencia and Porto by rail, we booked three nights here with minimal research. It’s a town with a rich history, largely because of it’s position on the border between Spain and Portugal it became the site of several warring empires over the last millennia or so. The city was founded by a Moorish nobleman in the 9th century AD. It was then captured and converted as part of a Christian crusade in the 12th century. Following this, for a few hundred years, every time Spain and Portugal clashed, Badajoz was involved. It also featured in Napoleon’s Peninsular war. Having left behind it’s bloody past, Badajoz today feels like a thriving place, but with a lot of beautiful historical architecture and charm.
We spent our couple of days there walking around the trail of historical sites, running along the paths next to the Guadiana River which splits the town in two, and shopping in our favourite Spanish supermarket – El Corte Ingles. It’s basically the Spanish Waitrose and we’ve supplied ourselves at all our Spanish stops here!
We also spent a fair amount of time hiding from the heat in our lovely air-conditioned apartment, as the temperature was in the high 30s Celcius during our time there. It’s in this kind of weather that you can really see why the siesta culture exists, with people spilling onto streets after sunset to do their dining and socialising.
While it’s a bit out of the way, we’d highly recommend Badajoz to anyone looking for somewhere a little off the beaten track in Spain!
Our next stop was Porto, where we were reuniting with some more friends – Lou and Hebe! Luckily, they’d both been to the city before so we got to enjoy having some recommendations and heading to their favourite spots.
While the temperatures were a bit more bearable than Badajoz, the city is incredibly hilly, so we definitely burned off the delicious tapas and Natas we enjoyed over our long weekend there!
We even gave making Natas a go at a local cookery class, while admittedly ours weren’t quite as good as some others we tried in the city (the best were from Castro), we enjoyed the experience, especially the complementary port they was provided during the class.
Speaking of the town’s most famous beverage, we enjoyed trying it in it’s many forms: White, Ruby and Tawny (the local’s preference), and both neat and in cocktails. We even got the chance to visit one of the port houses, known as Quintas, for a quick tour and to learn more about the beverage. Our host at Quinta Bom Dia happened to have a Cymru Connection, having lived in Abergavenny for a few years, and working at The Bear Hotel in Crickhowell, where Matt and I had visited ourselves for a long weekend years ago. It really is a small world!
Our four nights in the city seemed to pass by in a flash, probably because we were in such good company, but before we knew it, we were heading for an early flight to Turin. Incredibly, it’s our last transfer by air before we head home.
Our first day in Turin proved to be a little trying. We’ve had such amazing luck with all the accommodation we’ve booked on this trip over the last 7 months, but we had our first big issue on checking in to our place. After the breezy Porto, we found ourselves back in scorching temperatures on our arrival into Italy. And it became obvious that the air conditioning advertised in our AirBNB description was not working.
On contacting our hosts, their advice was to turn it off and on again, before admitting they knew the air conditioning was out of action for the whole building and wouldn’t be fixed until the next day at the earliest. Our hosts offered us another property down the road, but failed to respond when we asked for the details to check it out.
So, we escalated the issue to AirBNB support, who had to contact the hosts themselves, and give them an hour to respond before we could seek a judgement and resolution from them. It was at this point we left our furnace of a room where we’d been stewing for a few hours and headed to Pepinos – a famous gelato place. In the 30s they seemed to have pioneered the precursor to the Magnum, the Pinguino or ‘penguin’ in English. Can confirm it was delicious and helped us to literally chill out a bit.
Finally, around 9pm, we got back on the phone to AirBNB support and they confirmed they’d be cancelling and refunding our reservation. We took our cash and immediately booked into the closest hotel with functioning AC, to cool down, get some dinner and much needed rest.
The next morning, we started by enjoying a hotel breakfast (what a treat!) before booking a new AirBNB. Our new host was amazing, and let us check in at 11am – 4 hours early. We then spent most of our day exploring the Museo Egizio, a museum specialising in a huge ancient Egyptian collection – even bigger than the British Museum.
After quite a quiet day beating the heat again today, and seeing a bit of the local architecture, tomorrow we’re off to our next stop – Baveno. We’ll be travelling there via Milan where we plan to stop for a spot of lunch before heading on into the Italian lakes!
Iris
Two for the Road 
Leave a comment