Dueling Backpacks

Day 490 (October 31, 2019): Cádiz, Spain Sometime during the middle of the night on our way from Málaga to Cádiz we left the Mediterranean Sea, passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, and entered the Atlantic Ocean. It felt like one small step closer to home. Cádiz was our third day in a row of trekking around Spanish towns, but it was perhaps my favorite. The weather kind of sucked, being extremely cloudy and overcast, but Cádiz felt the most intimate. It was a small town with dozens of narrow streets to get lost in and was surrounded on almost all sides by the ocean, separated from the town by a huge city wall.

Day 489 (October 30, 2019): M á laga, Spain Another day, another port stop. It took us a while to get up, eat some breakfast, and get properly slathered in sunscreen before hitting the streets of  M á laga  for the day. The pier for the cruise ships was far out into the water, so we had a long walk to get to shore.  M á laga  was a much larger city than Cartagena , and it seems to be a bit more tourist oriented. There was long stretch of sandy beach out to our right and an equally long row of beachfront high-rises. And despite how late in the season it was, people were still hanging out on the beach and a few of them were even swimming.

Day 488 (October 29, 2019): Cartagena, Spain It was a weird feeling to get on that cruise ship. On the one hand it was sad to think that this was the last leg of our trip, but on the other hand we were thrilled to get on board and have nothing to do for a couple weeks. The thought of slowly heading towards home was appealing. As strange as it seemed, we were excited to be stuck on a boat for 14 days. It would be the longest we had ever stayed in the same place during this entire trip. After unpacking our bags in our cabin, we would only have to pack them back up again one last time when we disembarked in Florida. We also had zero travel plans left to arrange for the first time since we left home. Everything was set and we were on our way home.

It’s difficult to distill our time in Europe down to a few comments, but we certainly saw our fair share of town squares and old churches and we sat outside at countless cafes. Most of our time in Europe was spent within the Schengen Area, where there are no passport checks between countries and the currency is most often the Euro, but not always. Overall, it was fairly easy traveling. Especially after having come from China not too long before, traveling through Europe was a breeze. There are always delays, complicated logistics, and moments of intense confusion to figure out, but in general we had fewer of those moments traveling through Europe than other places we had been to on this trip.