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Spanish Holiday: Lubrin

Posted on June 20, 2016 by No Map Required Posted in Places, Spain .
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WARNING: I will refer to the “beautiful” and/or “amazing” scenery about 4,000 times in this post. Feel free to send me new adjectives.

Welcome to Part 2 of Small Town Spain where we finally catch up to last December which we spent in the adorable hill town of Lubrin, Spain.

Lubrin is a “Pueblo Blanco” or “White Village” – which will be plenty evident when you see the photos. I wonder if they have a neighborhood association monitoring which shade of white everyone uses?

from high above

We meant it when we said white village. The brown building is the church. Here you’re pretty much seeing the entire town! Yep, it’s not exactly giant.

Described online as an “enclave of tranquility and tradition,” I’d say that just about describes Lubrin perfectly. Very quiet, very mellow with everyone turning out every week for the weekly market to get their fruits and veggies (and shoes and clothes, since there’s no clothing stores in town!).

Storybook tiny little roads

Storybook roads, all of them absolutely spotless.

Lubrin is located in the southeastern Spanish hills about 450 miles from Barcelona and 21 miles from the sea. Remote is it’s middle name. We would drive 25-30 minutes just to reach a town with a grocery store! Lubrin does have three little restaurants/bars that are largely supported by a significant expat community, along with a brand new produce stand and a couple of bakeries. It’s juuuust enough, but there’s nothing like a main street where you can walk through little stores like in Albarracin or Teruel. Our month there was quite relaxing and we were able to do a lot of prep work for our final weeks of travel… plus we played a lot of games and drank some mighty tasty fresh-squeezed orange juice!

We loved hanging out on the patio, Cheech at our feet, and a game before us.

We loved hanging out on the patio, our house-sit pet Cheech at our feet, and a game before us. That’s Rivals for Catan, if you’re curious.

Arriving in Lubrin you need to drive on a lot of twisty-turny-uppy-downy roads. It’s an open secret that the fancy car lines test their sports vehicles in these hills. It happens so fast we never got a good photo of it, but cars completely covered in black (as if it were stealth and we’d never see it) and loads of computers and wires inside the vehicles regularly zoomed all over these hills.

The whole reason we ended up spending 54 days in Spain was this here pet-sitting assignment. Months earlier, while we were still in Africa, we agreed to take care of Cheech, adding Europe to our trip around the world. Yes, one more time that pet-sitting helped shape our RTW trip! Cheech was a bit of rescue dog, having been left alone a lot by his owners when he was young. Now he’s in the care of a lovely retired couple – Hi, Cheryl and Mike! Cheech pretty much likes three things: lying in the sun, eating (a very exciting 60 seconds out of every day) and walking the rambla (the stream bed that acts as a dirt road most of the time) to collect rocks. If only we were all so easily satisfied.

Meet Cheech, a pooch with a perpetually pensive expression.

Meet Cheech, a pooch with a perpetually pensive expression.

It's it time to eat? Maybe we could eat? My bowl is right here if you want to fill it...

Is it time to eat? Maybe we could eat? My bowl is right here if you want to fill it…If you were a kinder human you would feed me more…

Need more rocks. Never enough rocks. Mooooooore...

Perhaps I’ll just eat rocks. Need more rocks. I worry we will run out of rocks. Never enough rooooocks. Mooooooore roc…..

Only four rocks?

Only four rocks?

The one challenge we had with Cheech was that he liked to take a lot of short walks through the day. We’re talking up to six 10-15min walks down the rambla EVERY DAY! It was pretty and all, but that was rather a lot.

Morning walk with Cheech ...sunrises over the neighbor's house.

Morning walk along the rambla with Cheech as the sun rise’s over the neighbor’s house. Not too shabby a way to wake up in the morning!

tree

That gorgeous Spanish Blue sky makes every olive tree seem that much more magnificent!

ll

A short hike down the rambla from the house. Waaay out there is the Mediterranean Sea. Amazing views wherever we walked.

Lubrin also brought us some new human friends, Warren and Betsy, who you might remember from our making olive oil and eating churros posts. We followed them online while they did their trip around the world as we were saving and planning for ours. Meeting Warren and Betsy was like meeting our mentors! They are incredibly down-to-earth, but I have to admit they seemed kind of like rock stars to us and we couldn’t have found better folks to introduce us to Small Town Spain ways.

???

Hi guys! We miss you!!

Then you gather up your nets and look through every little branch that fell onto the net. Pick off any olives that are on the branchs and toss the branches. If you don't when you get the press, they will toss the branch WITH the olive and you don't get paid for the olives they toss. No good!

Yup…all of those are olives we picked with Warren and Betsy.

It being the holiday season I was compelled to sing, "Aaron in an olive treeeeee".

It being the holiday season I was compelled to sing, “Aaron climbing in an olive treeeeee”.

The Churro Man Can.

The Churro Man Can. Make tasty, tasty deliciousness, that is!

Then, Christmas came and we got a very special treat…VISITORS! Our good friends Ed and Brigit flew to Madrid on Christmas Day and drove straight over to Lubrin to spend a few days with us!! How lucky were we? VERY! Merry Christmas, indeed!!!

For Cheech, nothing says "holiday" like one more rock.

For Cheech, nothing says “holiday” like one more rock.

All of us in the beach town of Garraucha

How can you not have fun with smiling folks like these around??? Trust me, fun will be had!

So wonderful to catch up with friends who know all about us. When you travel, you spend a lot of time answering the same questions, “where you from…how long you traveling…what do you do…” With these two, we could just jump into all the juicy stuff like how strong Brigit has become since we left. I’m pretty sure she couldn’t have held me up with one hand pre-trip!

We all went on a hike up and through town and took a break to do these perspective shots.

Brigit is super-strong!

We greeted Ed and Brigit with fresh veggie soup, olives and jamon that they are still talking about. That’s one of the joys of the area – the local ingredients are so fresh and so ga-ood! Olive oil bottled down the street, oranges picked from that hill over there, veggies grown over that-away and honey from the hive down the rambla. Awesome!

mmm

I’ll take those two.

siiiiip. And cool off with fresh squeezed homemade lemonade. This place just doesn't stop!

Siiiiip. And cool off with fresh-squeezed, homemade lemonade. This place just doesn’t stop with all the fresh!

Fortified, we all took a road trip to Garrucha, a delightful seaside town.

Welcome!

Welcome!

Check that out! Are we still in Spain or is this Greece?

Check that out! Are we still in Spain or is this Greece?

Shook hands with a "snow" man.

Shook hands with a “snow” man. Christmas-time, y’know.

We saw the paddle boarding santas. Hola Santa!

Nothing says Xmas like paddle boarding Santas. Hola, Santas!

Double-click to really check out this view!!

Double-click to really check out this view of the drive to the sea.

When traveling from Lubrin to Gurracha you basically decend 20 miles straight down and that means, amazing territorial views.

When traveling from Lubrin to Garrucha you basically descend 20 miles straight down and that means amazing territorial views.

Let's see, do I ever get tired of this shade of blue? Ummmm.....NO!

Let’s see, do I ever get tired of this shade of blue? Ummmm…..NO!

Back to Lubrin. Brigit and Ed got to join us in one of our twice-daily events: watching the goats go by across the street! That’s right, this hill town is apparently tailor-made for goats and their herders. Cheech felt it his sworn duty to protect us, loudly, from each imminent goat attack! Without his piercing bark we might have been caught off guard as every morning and late afternoon the goats would pass on by. Poor Cheech would go bonkers, often scaring the living daylights out of us when he’d bark. That might be the most excitement he got every day! Well, except for the rocks.

We would run into herds when we were out hiking or just sitting outside. It was a bit like going back in time and we loved it. Here’s a quick video of some of the goat herds we watched – definitely NOT an experience we’ve ever had in the US! You can hear Cheech whimpering in some of it and us “shooshing” him to stay quiet. Enjoy 60 seconds of goat joy… The video ends strong with a close-up of Aaron in the middle of a goat herd along with the goat bells and shepherd.

Before we knew it, our month was up and it was time to continue on our European tour. Next stop: Amsterdam for my birthday. But first, one last bite and a fond farewell to Cheech.

our last ice cream before flying out of spain

Our last ice cream (in the town of Alicante) before flying out of Spain.

We miss our serious, old fella. Adios, Cheech, and thanks for the wonderful, rock-filled walks!

DSC00472

4 Comments
« Small Town Spain
A HONKing Good Time! »

4 Responses

  1. cathy olson says
    June 20, 2016 at 4:02 pm

    Well done. Pretty scenery.

    Reply
    • facebook-profile-picture No Map Required says
      June 23, 2016 at 12:16 pm

      Kind of missing those dry hills as the rain comes down here in Seattle…

      Reply
  2. Brigit says
    June 21, 2016 at 8:42 pm

    So much fun seeing you guys and meeting Cheech ‘n Spain! Thanks for letting us join you for a bit of your journey and for feeding us so well 🙂

    Reply
    • facebook-profile-picture No Map Required says
      June 23, 2016 at 12:19 pm

      Thank YOU for making our holidays special!

      Reply

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