Spain Photos

So here are my Spain photos! If I had more HTML savvy and inclination, I would make it easier to navigate around all the albums. But it's gorgeous outside, so no dice.

Granada

Seville

Salamanca

Bilbao

San Sebastian

Madrid

London

Homeland

Click here for London pictures! (Spain ones coming this weekend).

So I arrived back in Austin on Monday, where it's hot and sunny. Two weeks of cool weather in the same couple of pairs of pants does a lot to make me appreciate Texas heat and the comforts of home.

I also have Amber back with me, water in the fridge any time I want it, a couch, access to my clothes, and (very important) my own bathroom. I'm glad to be home. Especially since this week I am mostly not working, and have nothing to do but relax near water and catch up with my friends. Oh yeah, and go see Star Wars.

But let's talk about the rest of my trip.

Madrid was, in short, OK. It was my least favorite place in Spain. It was dirty, loud and not very charming. I am rarely a tourist in such large cities and found it exhausting. Plus I was mildly sick, which left me unmotivated to go out. There were definite highlights - Prado, Reina Sophia, and the Arab baths being my favorites.

I loved San Sebastian, Sevilla and Salamanca. Salamanca's architecture was breathtaking. Sevilla was full of energy. San Sebastian is nestled between the mountains and an ocean, and had amazing food to boot.

And then there was London. Madrid's lackluster appeal made me think that I am no longer interested in large cities. But 5 minutes in London made me realize that it was just Madrid that didn't appeal to me.

I had the best Indian food I've ever had. A quick perusal through Time Out showed me that every band I have ever liked is playing in London sometime in the next 2 months, and that isn't including the extensive European festival schedule. A trip to a fabulous Farmer's Market made me ask Kristen if I could pretend to be her and take over the job she is quitting to go back to school (a job I am wholly unqualified for). I had hummus that, literally, melted in my mouth. I didn't think hummus was a food that could do that.

And then there was the Eurovision party. Which is a very popular song contest that seems to be a cross between Miss America and American Idol. And every year, Kristen's friend hosts a Eurovision watching party, a common event for gay men across England. It's like the MTV Music Awards with a healthy dose of camp.

Each European country, and some European-like participants like Russia and Israel, hold a contest to nominate the best talent to represent them in Eurovision. As far as I could tell, "best" was determined by tacky outfits, dance troupes harking back to Paula Abdul's days, and songs that sounded almost-but-not-quite like old American 80s pop songs. Speaking of, Abba sprouted to fame after a Eurovision and Celine Dion won for Sweden, I think, one year. Yep, that Canadian woman we all want to kill.

The contest was replete with pop bands. There was one slightly aggressive industrial goth type band. Unsurprisingly they were from Germany. We could barely hear the songs, though I doubt there was much talent. There was, however, much to discuss when it came to outfits and dance routines.

The scoring system is totally obtuse and involves lots of like-minded countries giving all their points to their buddies. Greece gave Cypress 12 points. The Baltic countries were all over each other. There was a big political upset, maybe Israel gave anti-Semitic France 12 points, but I don't remember. English beer is strong.

Greece won. Latvia's modern day Nelson twins came in second. UK was somewhere very close to the bottom. In a contest of bad talent they were your tone deaf Mom trying to do Eminem.

The Eurovision Experience alone was worth the flight to London. Going with my best friend I've known since I was 12 and getting all the fabulous food was icing on the cake. It was a great way to wrap up a Europe trip.

The last bus ride

So I arrived in Madrid today, where I will spend the rest of the week before catching a flight  to London for Eurovision, Indian food and a copious amount of liquor. I am laying low tonight since a sore throat and achiness joined me on my bus ride here, and there is way too much to do in Madrid to be sick.

On the list is the Prado and one of the other art museums. I haven´t decided which one yet.  There is also the big park, the palace, and a zillion churches and cool twisty streets.

There is an olive oil co-op, as well as a wine shop,and a specialty chocolate store that I need to visit.

Tomorrow night, I probably will go see Jack Johnson with someone at my hostel, since seeing a live show in Madrid would be dope. And best of all, I just (hopefully) made reservations at a traditional Arab bath that is not expensive at all.

I´ve been in the Basque region since Thursday, where there are gorgeous beaches and mountains and fantastic food. It was too cold to hang on the beach, and I got caught in one of the craziest hail storms I´ve ever seen. Walking. With luggage. And an umbrella. 

Over the weekend, Kristen and I probably walked 10 miles. I am coming home in better shape for sure. We went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao and learned about the Aztecs. We checked out some of the bars near our hotel, which was in the partying part of town. The drink in the street phenomenon was alive and well in northern Spain. It is closely linked with street urination. We saw a man pee on the side of a church. There was also a line of guys peeing outside a bar.

We met a girl who was drinking flavored whiskey on the street. She practiced her English with us. Apparently she´s learned English watching Kevin Smith movies. Maybe if I watch lots of Spanish movies, it will move my language skills further along then 6 years of schooling.

Saturday, Kristen and I headed to San Sebastian, and checked into our posh hotel. The comfy bed and big bathroom was a delight after the shitty place I stayed Thursday. We walked many miles to and from the beach and the Parte Vieje, the old part of town with shops and many tapas bars.

San Sebastian is beautiful. It´s a small city nestled between the ocean and the mountains. I took about a zillion pictures of the bay area from many angles and heights, and contemplated retiring there.

Kristen and I, of course, ate fabulous food, but to do my weeks of Spanish food justice, I will post about it separately in one big mouth watering exposition (when I am not racing the get-off-the-computer clock).

Drip, drip, splash

So I am wired on coffee, and stationed at a Internet cafe in Salamanca. The graceful beauty of Salamanca´s sandstone buildings is unappealing this morning since its fucking miserable out. The curse is necessary. I want to emphasize the cold wetness.

This morning I hit the trendy Delicatessen coffee shop a few doors down from my pension for coffee and some reading. Then I quickly walked up the street to the corner coffee shop for more coffee and a pastry and contemplated putting on the new sweater I bought between the two.

Too wired on caffeine to sit and read all morning, I decided to venture out for an umbrella. I´ll have you know that while packing, I thought about bringing the emergency small umbrella I bought in Austria a couple of years ago. But I didn´t. And now I have another that looks just like it. 

However, even with an umbrella, I am not dying to do the Almanac convent tour as I planned, so I am here doing Internet errands, waiting until they open again this afternoon in hopes that there will be less rain.

I am particularly interested in checking out the convent that rents part of its space to a nightclub, which is apparently a great place to go at 5 am.

Yesterday, it rained on and off, but I had a great day aimlessly wandering around this small city. After taking many, many pictures, I think the quality is starting to improve. It´s hard to tell on the LCD, but I have hope.

The architecture here is breathtaking and involves some fun. There is a frog hidden in the etchings over the entrance to the university. If you can find it, it brings good luck and marriage (gulp!) within the year. I thought I found it, but it seemed too easy. It was. I found the top of the staff of Ferdinand. Even with specific directions on where to find the frog, I didn´t see it. Phew.

On one of the big cathedrals there is also an astronaut to be found. He was etched in a couple of years ago when restorations were being done. I like my imposing Renaissance Catholic structures with some humor.

Tomorrow, I catch a 6-hour train to San Sebastian, on the northern coast. Friday I meet Kristen in Bilbao.I´m keeping my fingers crossed for weather worthy of an expletive. Fucking gorgeous is the one I am rooting for.

Plaza is to Seat as Vegetable is to Hamburger

Early Monday morning, the alarm went off indicating that it was time for Becca and I to move on. She had a get on a flight to SF and I had to catch a bus to Salamanca.

Monday night, I arrived in the gorgeous university city of Salamanca, but not before learning some important travel lessons:

1) trust my instincts

2) under no circumstances, should I trust my Spanish language instincts.

As it turns out, I don´t have any. I understand like 1% as much Spanish as I thought I did. Which explains how I missed my bus, even though I was sitting 100 feet from it.

I arrived early to get my ticket for the 8 am bus. Ticket said Bus 1, Plaza 30. I grabbed some food and went to sit underneath the number 30 sign in the plaza where the buses parked. 7:45 no bus. I wandered around, checking for the correct bus line. There was an Alsa bus sitting beneath 21. But it had something about groups on its sign and was clearly in the wrong place. I figured my bus was late.

At 8:02 I asked the girl next to me if she was waiting for the same bus as me. The confused look told me she wasn´t even though I didn´t understand her. At the same time, I saw the Alsa bus make a right out of the parking lot. I headed up to the ticket guy. Lacking the words to explain anything, I handed him my ticket. He shook his head, put me on the 11 am bus, changed the plaza to 33 and in LARGE letters wrote: Anden 20 o 21.

Anden didn´t map to the faint memory of Spanish class. But the large sign above my head made it clear that Anden meant Gate/ plaza type thing. And after staring at my ticket, the sign, and the dictionary, I determined Plaza meant Seat. The Spanish in my head tells me Siento or some such word means Seat, but it is NOT TO BE TRUSTED. Since the 11 am bus clearly left from Plaza 21, my ticket clearly had the word Grupo on it, and and I clearly was assigned seat 33.

Ah language barriers. After figuring out what I did, I found this incident hilarious.

The 7-hour bus ride was through gorgeous rolling Spanish countryside. It may have started late, but was beautiful nonetheless. I listened to sad music and stared out the window almost the whole time and it suited me just fine.

Monday was a tough day. I was tired. I was alone. And I constantly struggled to communicate about the smallest things (except ordering food and drinks. I´ve got that down) After a short walk around, a shower, some dinner and a couple of glasses of wine, I went to sleep.

Tuesday, I woke up refreshed and ready to embrace not communicating very much. I´m working on the mysterious girl with the book image, interspersed with entertaining conversations with lots of hand gestures.

And while mysterious and entertaining are fun, so are friends and bizarre sounding events. I changed my return flight home to leave Madrid a few days early and head to London to go to EUROVISION with Kristen. It´s a big party that sprouted ABBA back in the day. Kristen made no promises about royal attendance, but did say that said that a "multitude of queens" will be there. I´ll take that over the real queen any day.

It's not Alcatraz

Becca is in a coffeeshop downstairs writing postcards and sipping on coffee, while I hang in the Seville Internet Center. We´re across the street from the Cathedral, an imposing Gothic structure. It´s sunny and not quite hot yet, but getting there.

We arrived in Sevilla on Thursday after a good couple of days in Granada. We stayed at an awesome hostel in Granada, with mostly English-speaking young travelers. At 28, Becca and I were definitely among the oldest visitors, except for a hardcore California hippie mom traveling with her 19-year-old daughter. But all the 20-year-old guys had sexy accents, shaggy hair and tans, so we were pretty happy. The community-focused hostel sponsored a tapas tour of bars in Granada and cooked cheap dinner one night.  It was great, though it was very much a college dorm. I shared a bathroom with 12 other people, except I was missing the crucial shower flip flops from my dorm days.

While Granada was quaint and pleasant, I definitely like Sevilla more. The private shower ¨might have something to do with it. As does recovering from my first 2-days of travel crisis. It´s always exciting to find out your ATM card doesn´t work anywhere, and a long call to your bank provides no help whatsoever. Thank goodness for my parents and exciting money wiring technology.

Sevilla is bigger than Granada, and more familiar feeling. There is more to do. Like shop. There is little chance I am leaving this country without a pair of Campers. And we´ve already hit up H&M.

We haven´t just been shoppers though.  We´ve been to Alcazar, which I insist on calling Alcatraz. It´s an impressively large palace and gardens, with very hard to find bathrooms. We had fabulous dinner Thursday night at a Andalusian- Cuban fusion place, where we discovered the wonders of fried bananas in tomato sauce and that dehydration makes me feel sick. Then we had some beers on the street where everyone comes to drink.

We eat. A lot. Coffee and wine are regularly consumed. We walk. A lot. My feet are a comedy of soreness and inconveniently placed blisters. The new shoes I bought to alleviate this problem only added to it. But damn, they are cute.

Last night, Becca and I had dinner at a pizza joint in a 18th century Muslim bathhouse. We had fantastic white wine, for 5€. Afterward, we went to a bar known for its flamenco. It was an old coal yard and hidden in some alley. Then we drank Sangria at an outdoor cafe until 2 am. And got lost going back to the hotel. Apparently, booze impairs my map-reading skills.

Today we are going to the Art Museum and to explore another part of town. Right now, we´re waiting for my laundry to finish. Tonight we´re going dancing to dawn. Becca can´t leave here until we´ve stayed out all night at least once. Good thing I bought a cute dress to wear.

Monday, Becca heads home and I go to Salamanca, which is a small college city a couple of hours outside Madrid. I will hang out at coffee shops and wander around the campus. Now all I need to do is get in touch with the hotel I am staying at. The message I left yesterday said something like "My name is Kristine Coco. I would like a single room for Monday through Friday. I, er, uh, will called you in morning. Thanks."

Esta una fiesta

So I'm drunk. I've had several glasses of delicious, cheap Spanish wine and now I am drunk. And I deserve it. I left my house at 6:15 am yesterday. I took 3 planes, 2 metros, an intra-city bus, an inter-city bus and used my feet to get to this awesome hostel in Granada. 

Becca and I have slept on and off in kinky neck positions for the last 36, or is it 48,  hours, and now plenty of wine will make sure we slept through the party on the streets.

So it's a festival tomorrow. Day of the Crosses. So far, this holiday involves all the young people bring liters of beers or shopping carts of liquor and mixers to the town squares and drinking them there. Small groups of people have matching shirts. When one group of matching shirts sees another there is some singing in Spanish. Imagine spring break or pledging with people who are good looking, dress well, and seem classy (but that might only be because I don't know what they are saying). I only saw one person who looked like he was going to puke. It's unbelievably crowded, and has been since 6 pm and sounds like the crowds will be out for hours. It's almost midnight.

Tomorrow, Becca and I will go the Almahada (I know that is spelled wrong, but I am too tired to look it up), eats more delicious tapas, confuse more people with our bastardized Spanish, and see some flamenco dancing. Wednesday we head to somewhere on the coast.

And now, I am going to bed. Granada may stay up to dawn, but tonight I'm Cinderella.