Our intrepid Bay Area News Group readers have traveled the world this last year. They’ve ridden the rails in Queensland, toured La Sagrada in Barcelona and rambled through Maine’s Acadia National Park. Then they shared their travel tales and offered up plenty of travel tips for all of us.
Read on for one Bay Area family’s trip to Tennessee and another’s trek across Spain, then find more reader travel inspiration at www.mercurynews.com/tag/wish-you-were-here/.
Wish You Were Here
TENNESSEE: In October, San Rafael residents Karen and Scott Schneider and their 22-year-old daughter Gina, of Capitola, spent a week in Tennessee taking in the sights in Nashville and Pigeon Forge, home of Dollywood. “We stayed with friends in Nashville — recent transplants from California — and drove 3.5 hours to Pigeon Forge in the Smoky Mountains to visit Dollywood,” Scott says.
“The theme park was much better than we expected — very wholesome, friendly and more crowded than we thought. Lots of great food, rides and the history of Dolly Parton, her career and music. Dollywood was decked out for fall with thousands of real pumpkins as well as thousands of plastic carved pumpkins with lights.”
TRAVEL TIPS: “We chose early October to miss the hot humid summer, and timed it perfectly with 70s everyday, dropping into the 60s on the day we left. We also spent several days in Nashville, seeing lots of county music and visiting a wonderful garden estate called Cheekwood.”
SPAIN: San Jose residents Franceen and Paul Anderson walked the Camino de Santiago from France to Spain last fall — “The trail was peaceful and quiet, because we went after the high season ended,” Franceen says — then extended the trip with visits to Gibraltar, Malaga, Madrid and Barcelona.
TRAVEL TIPS: “You will meet people from all over the world. Rudimentary Spanish will get you by. Assume that you will get blisters on your feet and bring blister pads, good socks and shoes. Nearly 500 miles is a long walk. We shipped our backpacks forward to our next destination most days and carried water and food in our daypacks.”
Join the fun! Send a photo of yourself on your latest adventures — local, domestic or international — to jburrell@bayareanewsgroup.com. Tell us where you are, who everyone is and where they’re from, and share a travel tip or two to help fellow readers go there, too.