After celebrating Margot’s birthday in splendid Albufeira, we started to make our way east along this increasingly popular resort-rich coastline towards Spain. Faro is not far from the border and things started out so well with us scoring a coveted camping space at a nearby campground on a beautiful sandspit beach. Unfortunately, however I ended up with what I think was food poisoning from some “fresh fish” and required a number of down days to fully recover.  As a result of loosing those days we had to move quickly along. We drove east through Sevilla turned left at Cordoba and made our way north towards Toledo (places we have enjoyed before in past trips). El Escorial, northwest of Madrid, was a very interesting stop for us with its incredible 16th century palace and nearby “Valley of the Fallen Monument”.  We capped off our visit to Spain with a really nice stop at the 1020-1287 Loarre Castle north of Zaragoza. What a fascinating castle, and the vista views from it’s defensive walls were absolutely stunning. Over and through (tunnel du Somport), the Pyrenees we drove onward into France. Bypassing Bordeaux we stopped at an interesting little place called Blaye that is situated further along the extremely long inlet into Bordeaux. Here a major and long standing fortification was built to protect Bordeaux from invading forces coming from the Atlantic and its origins date as far back as the Romans and Vikings.  Another more modern fortification further north was also an interesting stop. At St. Nazaire the Nazi’s built a huge fortified submarine repair and supply base that is still standing today and now used as a massive multi purpose structure. St Nazaire also has one of the largest dry docks in Europe and for this reason it was a major target of the Allied forces in WWII. In fact, the most daring commando raid in history took place here attempting to neutralize that dry dock and the details around that event makes for a very fascinating story, if your interested. I had a quiet and laid back birthday in Quimper, Brittany before we headed off to the Normandy coast for a overnight stop on Utah beach and a respectful visit to the Canadian war cemetery outside Caen. Onward to Paris where we completed another long walkabout that connected many of the major sites of Paris including Norte-Dame Cathedral that is still undergoing restoration from that dreadful fire. It’s now time to put our feet up for a couple of recovery days before wrapping things up and returning the motorhome back to Dumo Reismobile in Germany and completing this unpredictable 2022 adventure.