Below is our trip from Venice to Spain. 

Our trips during the winter will appear in the menu above as they happen.

It has been a fun time traveling through Germany and visiting Venice.  But the weather is turning cold.  Our next to the last night in Venice the temperature dropped down to freezing.  There was frost on the leaves that were lying on the ground.  This was the day we went to Murano and stayed until after dark in Venice.  It was very cold when we went to bed.  Our sleeping bag is not built to do freezing so we laid our coats over it and wore socks and clothes to bed.  The next day we headed west on the Autovia until we got near France.  The French toll roads are more expensive than the Italian ones and we wanted to get off the toll road before entering France.  The GPS was programmed to avoid them and it took us to a small town near the border called Cuneo.  There we found a nice municipal campground and spent the night.  We arrived shortly before dark and registered, then the manager gave us each a glass of red wine, he said we probably needed it!  This night it got down to 27 F. (-2 C).  The campground manager loaned us an electric heater and we didn't freeze, but it was sure cold going to the toilets and showers.  The next day we crossed another range of mountains, up a winding road and through some tunnels until we came down the French side, arriving near Cannes at the non-toll divided highway.

We arrived at Aix-en-Provence that afternoon (Saturday) and stayed two nights. We rode the bus into town and toured the craft market on the main street and found an internet cafe and did the essential things. 

On Sunday we toured the old town, found a book fair (but it was all French), toured an old "hotel", as the rich called their houses, and found the farmer's market.  Then we went to a different internet connection and spent the afternoon catching up on surfing and found that we could again upload to our web pages.  So you guys got the new pages we had written 2 weeks before.

From here we headed for Agen, a town in southwest France.  When we had the trouble with the alternator in Bayonne I had called the international representative of the GoldWing Club of France and asked him for translation help.  He lives in Agen and we took him out to dinner as a thank you.  From here we headed straight south through the town of Condom and up into the Pyrenees.  Our second great European mountain range in two weeks.  The weather is still sunny, but cool.  The south of Spain has been flooded by rain, washing away cars and houses in Malaga, according to the TV in our motel room.  And they showed pictures from back home, there's flooding in Oregon too.

We travel two days on back roads, some only 1.5 lanes wide with no stripe for 50 km. Sometimes the road has been cut out of the side of the cliff, we have rock to the side and overhead.  These are wonderful roads for biking.

Another day, this time in scattered light rain we arrive in Avila, Spain.  We have caught the backside of the storm that dropped all the rain on southern Spain.   This town, west of Madrid, has a complete medieval wall around the old town. We find a cheap Pension with a room on the second floor (that's the third floor to you Americans, Europeans count the ground floor then the first floor, second floor, etc.).  We pack all of the gear up to it and go walking through the walls and old part of town. 

The next day we head south, taking some more pictures of the wall, this time in daylight.  We have our sights set on the town of Jerez de la Frontera.  This is where the president of the GoldWing Clube de Andalucia lives.  We had sent him an email asking for his help in finding a place to spend the winter, he had replied that he would be glad to do so and had given us his phone number.  We camp nearby (the temperature is now in the low 60's F at night, a temperature we never even reached during the day in Venice) and call him.  He doesn't speak any English and my Spanish is very weak, but we finally understood to call some friends of his in the town of Rota, on the beach to the southwest of Jerez.  We do and go to meet them.  They are all prepared for us.  They have a two bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a building 200 meters from the beach, and secure parking for the bike in a private garage nearby (I have the key to the door).  The apartment is furnished right down to the silverware. 

And it is 450 Euros per month (about $600 USD).  We are set up for the winter (if you call this winter).

That is Kathy looking for pretty rocks on the beach on the 14th of November in a t-shirt and sunshine.  This is a resort town where people come in the summer when it is hotter and worse where they came from than here.  During the winter most of the apartments and a lot of the stores are closed, now is definitely the "off-season".  We think the winter has been great so far.  We will have some winter storms coming in sometime during the winter because Rota faces the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Mediterranean  like resorts on the Costa del Sol (we are on the Costa del Luz) but that shouldn't be a problem for people from the "Pacific Northwet".  The Costa del Sol is much more developed than it is here, but this area is being discovered quickly now.  There are two huge resort developments being constructed along the beach to the north of town. 

In this picture we have the lower apartment and the patio to the right of the building.  The open gate is our private entrance, the upstairs uses the gate to the left..  The garage for the bike is a block away but is a private single-car garage and I have the key.  Our apartment has a living room with dining area, two bedrooms, one with a double bed and the other with two twin beds, a kitchen and a bathroom.  The clothes washer is on the patio with the clothes lines.  Nothing is large but it easily meets our needs.

We went to much larger city of Jerez de la Frontera for a shopping trip and I found this in the mall.

  The Spanish obviously know a good motorcycle when the see one and train their children early to select the best!

We have been invited to the local GoldWing Club's winter gathering in a nearby resort on December 1-2-3.  Then the following weekend is the Portuguese GoldWing club's winter gathering in northern Portugal.  We are planning on going to both, to meet new Spanish friends and to renew with our Portuguese friends..