The allure is there — lower priced flights, hotels, smaller crowds. These conditions enticed us to Spain for winter break.
My fiancé Megan and I just can’t resist the call for a travel adventure, but still remain cautious regarding COVID-19 guidelines. Our ultimate goal was to road trip Spain’s various cities, enjoy the architecture, food and culture, all while dodging the possibility of contracting COVID. While a majority of our goals were met, some were not.
Before purchasing tickets, which we seem to do always within a two-week period before we leave, we made sure to read the guidelines for COVID in Spain. With low prices on flights, as well as “off-season” crowds, we were excited to find out that Spain is open for full access travel. With a COVID-19 vaccination, there were no requirements to get a negative antigen or PCR test prior to arriving in Spain, which saved us money.
Our first few days were spent in the center of Madrid walking several miles the first day viewing the many plazas (the Plaza Mayor built circa 1580), beautiful architecture and shops along Gran Via Street, eating “oreja y bravas” (pigs ear — Megan enjoyed that one), and strolling the lavish parks with fountains and palaces. I recommend taking food to-go so that you may enjoy the parks more.
When looking up Madrid on travel websites, you’ll probably see mentions of Segovia or Toledo. Both are worth every effort to see. Segovia is a fantastic city to walk around and has a massive Roman aqueduct passing through the city center built somewhere around 1 A.D. Toledo is a magical ancient city that climbs up a hill by a river.
On our trip we decided to opt for the freedom of a car, therefore increasing the choices for our adventure, instead of using the high-speed trains prevalent in Spain. Pretty quickly the concrete sidewalks and buildings start to blur together. We like to change the geography as often as we can.
Driving excessively is not for everyone. But we decided to drive from Madrid, passing through Zaragoza, to Barcelona, then headed south down the coast to Benidorm. We stopped in Grenada with its beautiful Muslim influences and then jumped the border into Gibraltar, a British overseas territory. You can see the gap between Africa and Europe from there.
Heading to the north, one of my favorite cities was Ronda — it’s claimed to be the birthplace of bullfighting there is an old bullfighting arena. A huge concrete bridge spanning over a deep gorge is one of the main features of the city.
When driving across Spain, there’s a never ending supply of castles to stop and look at, many of which you can go inside and see. A perk of renting a car is the ability to see more sights. If your travel adventure is only to stay in a big city, I would not opt for a car rental. Parking and fuel are not cheap, while public transportation is, and driving is extremely difficult without Waze or Google Maps.
On our last day, we took a COVID-19 test for our return home to California. Eight hours later, the test came back … positive! We’re vaccinated and had no symptoms … or so we thought. “My lymph node feels weird” and “my throat is dry” led to a fever about 18 hours later. We thought our common symptoms were from the cold weather, hiking hills and drinking too much Spanish wine. It turns out the PCR test detected COVID-19 before we were aware of it.
During this time of disbelief, we found an apartment hotel complete with a tiny kitchen and all the items we needed. Lufthansa changed our flights without a question. We updated the car rental (lesson learned: don’t return the car late because they will charge you a new day rate triple of what you were paying and a late fee) and managed our 7-day quarantine by cooking meals we bought at the local grocery mart.
I am thankful that we were not severely sick. My fiancé did call a doctor she found on the U.S. Embassy website. They actually made a hotel visit and confirmed that I had an ear infection caused by COVID (weird) and wrote a prescription that we filled at the local pharmacy, all within 2 hours.
I’d say we were ambitious in estimating how long it would take for us to test negative. We still tested positive on a PCR test again almost a week later. Again Lufthansa changed our flights — although we spent up to 3 hours on the phone listening to the Lufthansa music and “We are experiencing a high volume of calls…”. I can still hear the music in my head still. Luckily, both my fiancé and I each had a Spain SIM card in our phones that cost us less than $15 each. Patience is a virtue with airlines, since each time our flight was changed (we changed it 3 times) we never had an additional charge.
Contracting COVID-19 added almost an additional two weeks to our vacation — definitely an amount of time we didn’t plan on. Financially, we managed the additional costs by staying in the cheap apartment hotels, buying groceries from a market and cooking almost all our meals. Honestly, quarantine week was our cheapest out of the entire month we stayed in Spain. Well … minus the cat babysitter we had to use at home, the activities we enjoyed after our quarantine was up, and the additional COVID tests. Just don’t travel internationally if you have a wedding to attend the following week. Lesson learned, and a trip enjoyed even with difficulties.