The Gorgeous and the Ugly - photojournal of the weekend

Valencia had a fabulous pool and some beautiful sunlight, but I only took photos of my children there.  Very cute, but not truly gorgeous.

However, the drive from Valencia to Colonia Tovar from gorgeous.  Driving through the valley, we never stopped the take photos.  We passed so many interesting things that I wanted to get out and walk alongside the car.  Fabulous graffiti, lush palm groves, tiny gardens surrounding honest-to-goodness sod houses, the cartoon-like skinny cows.  Actually, it seemed disrespectful to photograph much of the scenery.

But once we began climbing out of the valley, we stopped for photography.

And once we reached Colonia Tovar, a little tourist village buried in the hills, everyone had their cameras.  The setting was lovely.

The town specialty is fresas con crema, or strawberries and cream.   They grow delicious strawberries in the hills surrounding this town, although we didn't find any for us to take home.  However, we did each enjoy a big cup of strawberries, piled high with whipped cream and drizzled with sweetened condensed milk.  Muy rico!

We packed into the car around 3:30, planning to reach home by 5:00.  We sat in traffic like this most of the way.  We reached home just before 8:00.  We spent most of those extra few hours in a 0.5 mile stretch of road, packed in so tightly that we frequently needed to snap in our side view mirrors.

We left a cell phone in Valencia and had some pretty bad service at the hotel.  We faced some nasty traffic and had some nasty attitudes.  But the scenery was truly tremendous - and I did recover my backpack from the pizza place.  So all in all, it was a good weekend.