Visit: El Valle de los Caídos

My first ever visit to Spain occurred at the age of eighteen, on a school exchange from my sixth form college with a school near Valencia. I remember little of the trip, except that my small amount of Spanish was laughably inadequate for most situations and that, as a vegetarian at the time, eating was usually no pleasure – while my host family enjoyed eating octopus, much to my horror, I was provided with a bowl of boiled cauliflower. My second visit, a year later as an undergraduate languages student, was more successful. I flew out to stay with a penpal and her parents. Their culinary expertise was wider (although it would take another year for me to give up on vegetarianism in Spain), my language skills better and the family's generosity almost overwhelming. Determined to show me the best that Spain had to offer, my week-long stay was a giddy whirlwind of the best sights of Madrid, and also further afield. My friend's retired father drove us across the - to my eyes - dreadfully barren landscape to beautiful historic cities such as Ávila, Segovia, Toledo, even as far as a day trip to Salamanca.