When I told people that I was coming to Spain, many of them asked where in Spain I would be. The answer to that is that I’ll be traveling all over, working in different archives and researching different families, in many different cities, including:

Segovia
Salamanca
Ávila
Madrid
Toledo
Cáceres
Garganta la Olla
Valladolid
Santiago de Compostela
Cádiz
Granada
Sevilla

So we’ll be hopping from city to city, scrambling to get as much genealogy work done as we can. But out of all the different cities we’ll be staying in, we’re spending five nights in Hervás. So it’s our home away from home—or the closest thing to it.

Hervás, unlike the big cities we’ve seen so far, is a quintessential Spanish pueblo, tucked up in the mountains, far away from everything. We’re staying in a little house along the river.

I love it here—it’s so peaceful and friendly. The hills are all terraced and dotted with olive trees; everyone spends the morning cultivating their land; the vegetables from the open-air mercado are sublime; and the power in the little house goes off if we try to run more than one appliance at once. : ) Really, it’s charming, and I’ll be sad to leave it. Fortunately, we’re coming back later in our trip.