Hi, my name is Jim and my wife is Julie. The photo is of us in Alaska last year. Boulder, Colorado is home base. We are planning a trip to Portugal and Spain that starts a week from now. Leigh Ann, through her travel company, Sunburst Cruises & Travel, is helping us plan the trip and make the reservations. I have known Leigh Ann, professionally and as a friend, for a couple decades.

My plan is to write a travel blog that chronicles this trip and send it back to Leigh Ann in daily(?) installments so she can post it on her company’s website at sunbrustcruises.com. If you like, you can log in and follow along to live vicariously, to plan your own trip to the Iberian Peninsula, to pick up travel tips, to laugh and learn, and to see how Leigh Ann works.

We will fly from Denver (DEN) to Washington (IAD), and then Lisbon (LIS). We will stay three nights in Lisbon, then take a train across Spain, stopping two nights in Madrid, and on to Barcelona for one night.

We have friends in Barcelona (and we have been there before). Even though Barcelona is an amazing city, we are staying only one night because we will take a train the next day to Figueres, Spain, to see German friends near the little Spanish town of Roses that is right on the coast and almost on the French border. We will stay with them for about a week. Then, reverse course and meander our way by train back to Lisbon to fly home. In all, this is a two week trip.