Lonely Planet Spain - Softcover

Simonis, Damien; Adams, Fiona; Forsyth, Susan; Noble, John; Roddis, Miles; Swan, Elizabeth

4.03

673 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1740593375 ISBN 13: 9781740593373

Publisher: Lonely Planet, 2003

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A guide to the region features walking tours, accommodation and eating options, shopping advice, entertainment locales, and information on languages and cuisine.

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It has been said that Europe ends at the Pyrenees. While that has always been an exaggeration, any journey south of those mountains proves that, as an old tourism promotion campaign had it, Spain is different. With its plethora of colorful fiestas and indefatigable nightlife, its complete spectrum of scenery and its unique, well-preserved architectural and artistic heritage, Spain provides a variety of fun and fascination that few countries can match.

Travel is easy, accommodation plentiful, the climate generally benign, the people relaxed and fun-loving, the beaches long and sandy, and food and drink easy to come by and full of regional variation. More than 50 million foreigners a year visit Spain, yet you can also travel for days and hear no other tongue but Spanish. Once away from the holiday costas, you could only be in Spain. In the cities, narrow, twisting old streets suddenly open out to views of daring modern architecture, while spit-and-sawdust bars serving wine from the barrel rub shoulders with blaring, glaring discos. Travel out into the back country and you'll find, an hour or two from some of Europe's most stylish and sophisticated cities, villages where time has done its best to stand still since the Middle Ages.

Geographically, Spain's diversity is immense. In Andalucia, for example, you could ski in the Sierra Nevada and later the same recline on a Mediterranean beach or traverse the deserts of Almeria. There are endless tracts of wild and crinkled sierra to explore, as well as some spectacularly rugged stretches of coast between the beaches - many of which are far less crowded and developed than you might imagine.

Culturally, the country is littered with superb old buildings, from Roman aqueducts and Islamic palaces to Gothic cathedrals. Almost every second village has a medieval castle. Spain has been the home of some the world's great artists - El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Dali, Picasso - and has museums and galleries to match. The country vibrates with music of every kind - from the drama of flamenco to the melancholy lyricism of the Celtic music and gaitas (bagpipes) of the northwest.

The more you travel in Spain, the bigger it seems to get. It's surprising just how many Spains there are. Cool, damp, green Galicia is a world away from hot, dry Andalucia, home of flamenco and bullfighting. Fertile Catalunya in the northeast, with its separate language and independent spirit, seems a different nation from the Castilian heartland on the austere meseta at the center of the Iberian Peninsula. Sophisticated San Sebastian and the farmsteads and rolling country of the Basque Country have precious little in common with the coast and limpid water of the Balearic Islands. Once you leave the beaten track, it can take as long to wind your way through a couple of remote valleys and over the sierra between them as it would to travel the highway or railway from Madrid to Barcelona. All you need to do is get out there and enjoy it.

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