22052019 - Epic roadtrip day 2

Today we would have started our day way earlier, but we had to wait for the hotel reception to open at 8:30 to pay our stay.

After that we headed west towadrs "Arribes del Duero Natural Park, which is a protected area in western Spain, covering 106.105 ha in the autonomous community of Castile and León. In this area the river Duero forms the national boundary between Spain and Portugal, and the Portugal side is also protected under the figure of International Douro Natural Park. The most notable characteristics of this natural space are its biodiversity and range of watercourses, which have eroded deep valleys and vertiginous precipices. This landscape is known as Arribes, from where the reserve name come."

You can see the river behind us in the first picture. That is Duero and on the other side of the river is Portugal!

It was quite hot day and inland hot without the sea breeze so the dogs couldn't handle long walk. At least we made it to the mirador de las escaleras where we took the pictures of Portugal. Very lovely area. Lots of wildflowers and bees and butterflies.

From Fermoselle (the village we chose to explore Arribes del Duero) we headed north. We ate lunch at some park which was a migratory bird watching place. We've seen so many eagles and storks and other birds that I have never before in my life seen. Especially the difernt kind of eagles and falcons are spectacular to see. Also the nesting storks. Too bad I didn't get any nice pics from moving car. I did try quite a lot. The fence picture is from the lunch place.

The bottom picture is our hotel. The one we intended to stay was closed, so we drove about 100km further out route and came to Astorga. The hotel is the bottom picture. We have a living room and a bedroom and bathroom. It's quite big place but we've only seen one person besids us here. The receptionist was fantastic. He printed us the town map of Astorga and we went to see the fabulous old cathedral and churches.

"Astorga (Estorga in the Leonese of Maragatería) is a municipality and city of Spain located in the central area of ​​the province of León, in the autonomous community of Castilla y León. It is located in the transit between the Páramo Leonés and the mountains of León and acts as the backbone of the districts of La Maragatería, La Cepeda and the riverside of Órbigo. The city is the head of one of the most extensive dioceses and of Spain, whose jurisdiction covers half of the province of León and part of those of Orense and Zamora. It is also head of the judicial party number 5 of the province of León."

Again it's been a long day and I'm ready to sleep. Dogs have been sleeping as soon as we got back from Astorga. I wish we get better sleep her in the midst of weeds just outside Astorga, than we did last night inside the oldest city walls in Spain. There really was a lot of noises for the dogs to react to there.