Discover Spain, One Blog Trip At A Time.
By Max Milano (Travel Writer & Photographer) The day begins with dust, dry air, and a sun sharp as glass, even this early. Aragon opens on the road before us. We’re in high desert country. Red and ancient. Carved by history and silence. Orwell called it beautiful in the snow, even with machine guns on the hills. Today, it’s just hot. Aragon is an arid, high inland desert that extends from the snow-capped Pyrenees Mountains […]
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By Max Milano (Travel Writer & Photographer) It begins, as these stories often do, with a pint of lager at 9 in the morning. We’re deep in the heart of the British zone, inside a place called “The Queen Vic,” and the man beside us has just announced that he’s on his third pint of the day and still hasn´t had breakfast. His skin is redder than a bullfighter’s cape, and he swears that the […]
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By Max Milano (Travel Writer & Photographer) It’s late at night, and darkness engulfs us as I drive southbound on Highway AP-7 between Barcelona and Tarragona. I am thinking of the Roman Empire because Highway AP-7 follows the ancient Roman road, the Via Augusta, which once linked Cadiz with Rome. Traffic is light, but mosquitoes swarm the car, challenging visibility. Our windshield wiper fluid is exhausted, leaving smeared bugs obstructing the view. Every few kilometers, […]
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By Max Milano (Travel Writer) In the quiet suburb of Lliria, just outside Valencia, Spain, I find myself standing beneath an apartment building, where a grand subterranean space was once meant to be a parking lot for the luxury apartments above. But a builder’s shovel struck more than just rock; it hit a Roman tombstone. The city’s swift intervention preserved the site, at the cost of the building losing its underground parking. This is a […]
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By Max Milano (Travel Writer & Photographer) When one thinks of Spain, the image of a steaming paella often dances through our collective minds. It’s practically a culinary postcard from España. But hold onto your forks! Upon touching down in Valencia, some of you might be shocked to discover that what we’ve been calling Paella all this time is actually called “Arroz a la Marinera”, which is a delightful mix of rice, saffron, and seafood. […]
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By Max Milano (Travel Writer & Photographer) I’m deep inside the ruins of the Roman Forum in Cartagena, Spain. This was New Carthage (Carthago Nova). The sight of 2000-year-old amphorae, mosaics, and Corinthian columns is mind-blowing. Ancient lewd graffiti on the walls reflect the phallocratic obsessions of the average classical Roman. Two stories above us, in the modern city, a Spanish waiter yells at someone in an even more lewd tone, invoking the same phalluses […]
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By Max Milano (Travel Writer) A green sea of rice sways in the wind, stretching as far as my eyes can see. It’s a magic carpet of green waves shimmering under the bright Valencian sun. Just weeks ago, this was all water – a vast lagoon, an inland sea divided by dirt roads extending for miles. But today, all you see are green waves with golden flashes as the rice stalks dance in the breeze, […]
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From the Road to Damascus to an island paradise in the Mediterranean, because even Saints need to relax once in a while. Welcome to Tabarca Island (once known as Saint Paul’s Island, as it was rumored that St. Paul stopped there on his travails), the perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of Alicante and Benidorm.
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By Max Milano (Travel Writer and Photographer) Roadtripping in Spain is always a journey of discovery. You might stumble upon the ruins of a Roman domus, almost forgotten by the roadside, or a string of 1,000-year-old Moorish castles on hills above the freeway. Spain is a country where Roman aqueducts dot the countryside, some just a few miles from seaside tourist hotspots where pale British visitors sip even paler beer and feast on English breakfasts […]
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By Max Milano November 2024. I’m standing on the beach, but the beach is gone. Instead of miles of white sand and clear blue Mediterranean waters, there are now massive piles of debris stretching along the coast, fading into the horizon. The debris is stacked high in mounds, separated by lower stretches of rubble. It looks like the city bulldozers, usually here at dawn to smooth the sand, came early to build a grim mountain […]
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