Welcome to our spring 2016 Spain & Italy travel blog. We're off to the Basque region of northern
Spain, starting out with our good friends Steve and Axun and their boys Jon and
Beñat. (Here's a photo from their visit to Seattle in 2013). Then we'll be walking part of the Camino de
Santiago pilgrimage route through small towns and countryside across northern Spain, ending (we hope) at Finisterre - the medieval "end of the earth" in NW Spain.
We'll be visiting Llanes, a town on the north
coast where Jen's Uncle Roho (Rogelio Llerandi) was born. Roho's family became
refugees during the Spanish civil war, escaping to France. He came to the US with 40 other refugee
children, and became the adopted brother of Jen's dad Bill. (Here's a photo of their first Christmas
together in 1942 in Madison Wisconsin, and another photo about 40 years later
in front of the Page family home.) We
hope to find Roho's family home in Llanes and experience his native land.
Later in our travels
we'll move on to northern Italy, with time walking on the Cinque Terre coast
before Jen meets up with friends for two weeks travel around the Casentino
valley in northern Tuscany (while Dave goes off hiking in the mountains). Then we'll have a few more days together before
we return to the US.
You can follow our
travels here - if you're viewing on a mobile device please scroll to the bottom
and select “view web version" to see the map at top. Enjoy!
