In case you somehow missed them all: Part 1, Part2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

But first, how about some pix?!

Humans are pattern makers. Find two Best Westerns that allow pets and you really ought to keep checking the Best Westerns. Which is how we found the Best Western in Lyons, France. Lyons was about a third of the way from Frankfurt to Córdoba, probably an 8 hour drive. A completely unremarkable stroll down the A5, A36 and A6, inclusive of tolls that were a bit nervewracking as we had no electronic toll doohickey in the big-ass van. (Credit cards accepted, no problem.)

In Lyons we had our first sit-down meal in… I dunno, seemed like a couple of weeks. A fine meal in the Best Western hotel restaurant.

From Lyons, we drove through the rest of France on Friday, 4 days removed from the U.S. and seriously impressed with the orderly nature of French driving on the super highways. Unlike Americans, these French were aware of their surroundings, polite in allowing traffic in and out of lanes, and quite consistent in the use of signals to indicate their intentions. We were beginning to feel like Master Chaos might truly be vanquished.

Late Friday afternoon we crossed the border into Spain, way way up in the north of España. Given a bit of time for advanced planning, we’d located and booked a hotel in Terrassa, a suburb north of Barcelona (not a Best Western, but pet-friendly). They speak Catalan here, not Castilian (aka Español), but the young and charasmatic clerk at the Hotel Terrassa Confort was delighted to exercise her very good English with los dos.

We’re unclear if said clerk referred us to a shopping mall because it made good sense in support of local business or whether it was simply because of the stereotype of Americans as the alpha consumers on planet Earth. But we decided to walk to the mall before dinner. We needn’t have bothered. The outdoor mall was bustling and awash with Spaniards, but sort of odd by the standards of the inventors of over the top shopping. Even so, one can’t help admire the Spanish sense of style and design.

We had dinner in the small but nicely appointed hotel restaurant. Although we were technically in Spain, we were getting little lessons in the language of Catalunia, Spain’s northeast most state which has been agitating to separate from Spain for many years. The waiter speaks Catalan but no English. The only other diner is a white-haired gent we learn is from Grand Canary. He speaks Castilian, but no English. We can see how this might become a pattern in España, where at least 4 languages are spoken (including by the good gente of the Basque country and Galicia).

Our destination Saturday is chosen by map, a small city along the road from Barcelona to Córdoba called Albacete, a leisurely 5-1/2 hour drive from Terrassa. We booked a pet-friendly place near city center, only to run into an unmovable wall of cat-unfriendliess at the Hotel Castilla. The place boasts that it’s 1000 feet from the city’s Knife Museum. We shouild have known. We only brought a dog and two cats to the fight. And cats were animale non-grata at the Hotel Castilla.

Thus began another round of Where’s the Actual Pet Friendly Hotel Waldo on the hotel map of Albacete, which was developing into a place we determined we would never ever revisit after this. We ended up in a hotel a bit out of town. And where, while they did take pets, the clerk enforced the fiction that you had to buy a second room if you had more than 2 pets. Of course all three pets shared the cramped dumpy room with us overnight. So we weren’t going to lose sleep over this by circling Albacete for a few more hours in search of a 100% pet friendly accomodation that didn’t arbitrarily extort the price of a second room.

Which brings us to our AirBnB in Córdoba, a mere 4 hours from the now blacklisted Albacete. The AirBnB is all manner of odd, at first, but that’s a matter for another day.

There’s no more than a foot on either side of the tunnel for the big-ass van, so it’s quite slow going getting into the place. The vehicle barely squeezes into the end of the tunnel, where the owner’s car is parked. But we manage somehow, los dos, to the take the final step of arriving in Spain without destroying the big-ass van, killing ourselves, or murdering one another, so we can move our entire lives, in 11 suitcases + pets, into our new, albeit temporary, pet-friendly home in Spain.

Happy ending. But we’ll certainly share more pix as the days go on.

The mid-century comedy legend, Steve Allen, is attributed with observing that comedy is tragedy plus time. Removed from the insane, long, strange, trip by a few days, it’s been a pleasure to recapitulate the journey as if it were all just a humorous anecdote and not the actual tour of our own special circles of hell inflicted on us by some pitiless sadistic master of migrations from the U.S. to Europe.

Thanks for sharing the ride!