July 2024 Newsletter

Well,after 3 months of traveling around Europe, starting in Greece, touring the Balkans, visiting London, Madrid and Northern Spain, the Douro Valley, Lisbon and the Algarve in Portugal, and Bordeaux in France we are finally in Paris for the Olympics.  Truly a bucket list checkoff.  What a vacation!.

Since we sent out this newsletter last month, we updated our London Post (http://cosguide4travel.com/england-landmarks/) and we published a new Spain Post highlighting our trip through Northern Spain (http://cosguide4travel.com/northern-spain-itinerary/) and a Douro Wine Valley Post (http://cosguide4travel.com/douro-valley-wine/).  We were really impressed with the Douro Valley and we highly recommend you take a look at the post and consider a trip there.

As of today (July 30, 2024), at the Olympics we have now seen 3 futbol (soccer) matches, 9 Beach Volleyball events, and 2 tennis matches.  Two of the 14 events featured a USA team. The first was in Beach Volleyball and we saw the US team of Evans and Budinger win their first match. Unfortunately,the second USA event was Coco Gauff’s loss in her third round match, knocking her out of medal contention.

What we found most interesting about Paris 2024 and the Olympics is the focus that the European Countries, particularly France, place on events that we don’t see very much in the US. (This is a bit frustrating since this is what we see on French TV and not the Sports that the US is good in). Three that come to mind are Fencing, Table Tennis, and a sport they call Hand Ball that is nothing like the hand ball I used to play growing up in the NYC area.  This is more like a combination of Water Polo and Soccer, but on a court, not in the water, and with hands not feet.  It is a pretty wild sport with a lot of scoring..

Here is a brief introduction to each of the three posts that we completed this month:

London – http://cosguide4travel.com/england-landmarks/
We originally posted after our first London visit in 2022.  Last month we spent five days visiting some new places which we have added to the post. This includes dinner in Chelsea, a walking tour and dinner in Shoreditch, a visit to Wembley to see a play the same day that Taylor Swift was performing at the Stadium and a visit to both the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery.  London’s museums collections are comparative to those in Paris and NYC and we totally enjoy visiting museums and London theatre.

Madrid and Northern Spain – http://cosguide4travel.com/northern-spain-itinerary/
Madrid became a base for tours to a number of cities including Toledo and Salamanca, as well as the starting and ending point for our 7-day tour of Northern Spain.  We started our Northern Spain tour in the Basque Country and visited a number of cities on our way following the path to Santiago de Compostela.  We also backtracked so we could visit Pamplona for the opening ceremony of the Running of the Bulls.

Portugal (Douro Valley, Lisbon and the Algarve  Region) http://cosguide4travel.com/douro-valley-wine/
Portugal, like our other places we visited (Northern Spain and The Balkans), is a fantastic place to visit especially if you like to get great travel value for your Euros. It is hard to spend more than 100 euros at a really high quality restaurant and the food and wine are all spectacular.  We strongly recommend a visit to Portugal and the Douro Valley in Particular.