I'm glad you had such a good trip. We had a wonderful time ourselves on our first trip to Spain. Thanks for your note at the Parador in Jarandilla. Did you happen to see the English-language menu? Creative translating to say the least!

We found that we got along quite well without knowing any Spanish, mostly because we really only needed to communicate with hotel and restaurant people, and they either knew enough English for us to get by (except, alas, for the person at the desk at your hotel when I tried to call you in Trujillo), or were somewhat amused by our clumsy attempts to explain what we wanted.

[I read an article in the SF paper last weekend about someone who memorized the phrase Excusez-moi, je suis sur le point d'ecorcher votre langue. - Please forgive me, but I'm about to murder your language. I wish I had learned that phrase in Spanish. I was afraid to use the only Spanish phrase I knew: Hablo espanol tan mal? - Is my Spanish that bad?]

Overall, we had a great time. One of these days soon I'm going to write a mini-travelogue to at least list the places we visited, stayed and ate.

Best wishes, Al Sonoma, CA, USA