Tag: spain

La Alhambra

Day 211, Thursday 02 August 2012, Granada

Discovered last night that the internet, while free – is slow as a wet week – not that I have had a wet week since I left England! But trying to upload blog posts and photos was hopelessly slow – I had gotten to used to the fast access at Ian’s place.

The hostel room is not too bad, bed is comfy, shower is awesome, but let down with paper thin walls – the party people who arrived at 4:30 am were very audible and I didn’t really get back to sleep after that, though I didn’t actually get out of bed until 8:45 – ahhhhhh, luxury.

My plan for the day was to get a La Alhambra ticket for tomorrow as getting one on the day is supposed to hard in peak season and then cruise Granada’s barrio streets and see the non-Alhambra highlights. I meandered off in the direction of Alhambra to get coffee and breakfast on the way, I picked a cafe at random, had a good coffee – an average pastry and the shittest service yet in Europe, I waited a good ten minutes standing at the bar waiting to pay – it’s not as if the place was crowded either, I was so so tempted to walk. Not going back there tomorrow !

The walk up the Sabika hill was not as bad as I expected, the guide book suggests taken a bus, but that would have been stupid. It was a shady and cool walk thankfully but the wait in the queue for tickets was exposed to the sun and was quite hot (come on Spain, even the Vietnamese had shade provided for long queues). The queue was frankly – ridiculous, These guys must have read the “how to make queue fucking awful” guide, I have no idea why they had to make buying a ticket so damn hard, this made queuing in Paris seem easy. As there were options for entering the site today I decided to enter now rather getting a ticket and coming back tomorrow. Of course I then had to queue to get in…

La Alhambra (red fort)- one of the most visited tourist places in Europe, was original an Islamic Moorish castle/palace from the 12th century until it was conquered by the Catholic Spanish in 1492. The majority of the site was built under the Moors but some additions were made by the Spanish.

I kinda liked it, it was hot- but not humid, so completely bearable after some of the places in SE Asia – in fact I am pretty used to hot now, scarily so…. It was too crowded for my liking, but given it is school holidays it is to be expected. I just hoping I am not over visiting historic sites, I was not overly impressed to be perfectly honest. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I was not – WOW !

But I did take a lot of photos, mainly of the various views over the city and of some of the large scenes, there was not a lot of interesting detail to document, or maybe I was just in the wrong places!

First I visited the Generalife, which were one of the garden areas of the palace, with some great views of the main site.

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I then took a wander around the main site and I love white birches, they are just fantastic trees.

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Before entering some of the key areas, such as the Alcazaba, with its glorious views over Granada.

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And the Palacio de Carlos V. This building is pretty cool, yet controversial as it is a fairly chunky piece of real estate built in the 1500’s under the reign of Charles 5th, compared to the more delicate and petite Moorish sections of Alhambra it is a bit of a monster. What I liked, apart from the cool eagle and lion rings on the square outside, was that the interior is circular and quite coliseum like.

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From the palace I joined another queue in the sun for my 12:30 entry to the Palacios Nazaries, the Moorish highlight of Alhambra. OK, maybe it was too crowded or too hot or I didn’t read the guide book well enough to see the detail, but I was non-plussed by the whole thing – sorry folks ! (Angkor really kicks its arse). Even my camera was not excited, some crap photos were taken – I am of course blaming the technology, if I had my good camera, they would be stunning!

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I left the site via the Torre de la Justice

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And past the statue of Washington Irving, the American author of “Sleepy hollow” and “Rip van winkle” who lived here for a time in the 1800’s. The hotel named after him has not fared so well!

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I took a leisurely stroll back to my hotel with the aim of joining the locals in the siesta. P1140961

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I stopped for a beer at a small bar near the hotel – ended up having three as each beer came with a tapas – I had pototoe with chilli, blood sausage (yeah I know, but I had to try it) and the best gazpacho yet, yumbo. A wee siesta was had…

After my siesta – and no I did not sleep, I wandered off to check out the Capilla Real, the crypt at the nearby cathedral, the crypt holds the remains of Fernando and Isobell the first Christian rulers of the area, both passed away in 1516. Sadly no photos were allowed – a fact i found out after I paid to go in. It was moderately interesting, but that was some awesome ironwork in there and some fabbo paintings as well – but I cannot show you.

i did like the fountain in the plaza though.

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I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do, it was “only” 7:00 Pm so too early for dinner apparently, my stomach disagreed of course, so I wandered around a bit, settled on a couple of beers and went back to my room with my standby packet of potato chips and finished last nights wine and blogged.

Today, my heart just wasn’t in it, Granada deserves more than I gave it! I took some shouse photos today, so some brutal culling took place and these really were the best of the bunch.

[edit] I cannot believe this posted on the first go ! last night it took numerous attempts and it hardly had any images.  I create my posts and insert images using  program called Blogdesk, heaps quicker than trying to upload images via WordPress’s interface. However, it can create one big upload that can be tricky on a slow internet connection. So yay,  first time upload [/edit]

 

 

 

The first day of many

Day 199, Saturday 20 July 2012, Alcaucin

Awake early after quite a warm night, hopefully I will get used to the warmth quickly, I imagine so. At least it is only hot here; there is none of the draining humidity I had in Asia, which is a blessed relief. When I woke I started mentally preparing the list of things I need to do and it took a conscious effort to actually stop and remind myself that for the moment I do not NEED to do anything. I am not rushing anywhere in the next few days – or maybe even weeks as I have committed for three weeks at least. There are some tasks I will do in the next day or so, things that I have been waiting to have an actual postal address – such as organise a new New Zealand drivers licence to replace the one I lost in Laos – what seems like months ago now. The rest can wait. I grabbed a coffee and a real book – with paper pages and went back to bed.

Ian has gone to the beach with his girlfriend today so I am alone in the house, miles from anywhere apart from the village and with no car – perfect. All I have to do is walk Rosie and Muttley, my new four legged friends.

I pretty much spent the day doing very little – achieved my first goal ! I watched five episodes of the TV series Firefly, listened to some music, had a dip in the pool, read some book, ate and drank coffee. In the late morning I walked up to the village for a brief explore. A place I hope to really detail over the coming weeks.

To the north

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southish. there are a number of incomplete developments here. These two were illegal and have been shut down by the authorities.

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And in the afternoon I walked the dogs, not too far as it is roastingly hot.

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At 7:30 I cooked myself some pasta and veges, which was extremely pleasant and then I settled into write some blog posts and do some email in front of some English TV. Such luxury – music, TV, cooking my own meals….

Sunset from the deck, apparently the good ones are yet to come.

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Ryan Air – it doesn’t get any better

Day 198, Friday 19 July 2012 – Barcelona to Alcaucin

My final sleep in Barcelona was pretty much as lousy as the first two. I thought a couple of whiskies might have eased me into a doze, but at 1:30 I was still restless and ended up turning the air con on and popping the unused half of the previous nights pill. Even that was not overly successful and I had fairly long night. There is a lot on my mind at the moment and I am hoping some down time from travelling and sightseeing in Alcaucin will allow me some head space to sort everything out and start to organise phase two of my journey.
I was up before the alarm went off at 6:30, packed and drinking the final sludge-like free coffee at the hotel before 7:00 and on the road at 7:30. There was no real need to leave that early, my flight was not until 11:50 but the day was already warm and walking even only one or so kilometres with a pack and a wheelie bag when it got hot was not something I relished.

The hotel recommended the airport bus over the train and it was so much easier and quicker than the ride in from the airport, the things you know when it is too late ! I arrived at the airport almost three and a half hours before my flight – something I am used to though, a habit formed in the past few months. I found the check in for my flight and it was even manned -I thought to myself “great, I can ditch my bags and go have breakfast and un-sludge-like coffee”. But no, way too easy, after waiting for fifteen minutes I finally asked one of three people chatting what time they opened, they said an hour. Way to go Ryan Air, awesome customer service, leaving me standing there like a twit. Another nail in the Ryan Air coffin. I stomped off with my stuff and struggled negotiating the closely packed tables and chairs in the cafe while carrying coffee, breakfast and three bags.

The flight was OK, reasonably smooth, but Ryan Air does not even provide passengers with the little pouches on the back of the seat in front – which means holding magazine, glasses, mp3 player etc on my lap for the flight – not so much fun. The landing however was a different kettle of fish, I am pretty sure we dropped from a hundred foot straight down – it was the roughest landing ever, even worse than Vietnam Airlines and I thought those were bad.

My cousin Ian met me at the airport in Malaga and we left pretty much immediately for the forty minute drive to his house in Alcaucin, with a brief stop at Macca’s on the way 🙂 Ian is ten years younger than me and has lived in Alaucin for about eight years, he currently shares his house with two dogs – Rosie,

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And Muttley.

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I am sure these two will appear a few times over the next few days !

Alcaucin is a small village sitting at 500 metres on the edge of the Sierra Tejeda mountain range it has a population of about 2500, plus a few summer residents.

Ian and I spent the afternoon catching up on the past few years, with me admiring his CD and DVD collection – and planning a few movies sessions when he is out and about over the weekend !

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mmmmmm, what is this outside my bedroom wall…

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I am staying on the ground floor of Ian’s double storey house; I have a bedroom, bathroom and a lounge area with my own TV and best of all – a stereo. I am so looking forward to using the stereo and listening to music of my choice that is not being played through the tinny speakers on my laptop or the headphones on my Sony Walkman.

Once the worst of the heat had gone out of the evening we wandered up to the village and had a couple of beers and some dinner at one of the restaurants in town – nice.

it is great to be here I have been looking forward to this for a while.

I posted photos of pets !!! Obviously I need a break 🙂

A day of walking

Day 197,Thursday 18 July 2012 – Barcelona

Probably due to the half sleeping pill I popped or possibly because I’d only had a couple of glasses of el cheapo rioja instead of the normal three or four – whatever the reason, I had a dead man sleep until about 7am. It was the first good sleep I’ve had in days and it was extremely welcomed.

I lounged in bed for a while then grabbed what was the least disgusting of the hotel free coffees I have had and got ready for the day. Today was my original check out day but I have extended a further day; this however, requires a change of room, so before leaving I had to pack my stuff. This is always a bigger task that it should be.

I was still out the door by a hugely respectable 8:00 am and off to find the Picasso Museum, which is the last thing on my MUST do list for Barcelona, there is still a (lower case) must do list and also a would be good to list too, like any excellent city there is more to do here than time allocated. Excellent city to do list = allocated days + 1.

I’m glad I left early as the museum is a bugger to find, at least it was with the Map I’m using. But once found I went in search of some breakfast and espresso – Loving, just loving short coffees now! After my morning shot I was back to the Picasso Museum for the queue. Thirty minutes before opening and already a decent queue had formed, by opening time there would have been in excess of five hundred queued squeezed into the wee alley. Though the surly guy in the front of the shot was possibly not one of them!

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The gallery was very cool, with a vast collection of early period Picasso works, with over one thousand pieces being donated by  the artist. I spent most of an hour in there, which is pretty good for me in an art gallery.

There was also a small collection of work by Vilato, Picasso’s nephew, which was quite cool – though very influenced by his more famous uncle!

From the Picasso museum I wandered up to the Arxiu Fotografic de Barcelona with the hope this was a gallery dedicated to photographic works. It was dedicated to photography but was sadly not a gallery per se, more of an archive – which I am sure would have been great to explore! They did have a small show which I checked out. Why do photo exhibitions make me want to shoot mono again?

Spain has the unenvious record of an unemployment rate of 24% with youth at an incredible 60% – it is not all smiles and works of art in Espana 😦

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My next goal was the Museu D’Art Contemporani De Barcelona (MACBA for short – don’t ask why). It took a while to find but was worth the visit, both externally and internally.

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Though interestingly the gallery (new obviously) is in an area of Barcelona that was heavily “renovated” and the subject of the exhibition at the Arxiu Fotografic – though not directly this part of town. The MACBA was very cool, I loved the building and some – not all, of the exhibitions were interesting, it was quite modern, most of the art was from the last 40 or 50 years. There was a great exhibition on some “live art”/hippy shit from the 70’s. I loved the video footage – (God save me if I am turning into a freaking hippy). There was also a photo exhibition from the late 70’s /early 80’s of the local area as it was changed – similar to the above. The photo gallery was so quiet, the stand out sound was the click of slide projectors – awesome !

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token selfie…

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I stopped for a beer and some tapas in a cafe on La Rambla – the main drag, and paid through the nose for the pleasure – the most expensive cheap feed I have had in Europe. Doh ! BTW – I did not use the ketchup…

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I foolishly decided (it is 30+ degrees) to walk up to the fort above the port, my aim was to find the cable car, but (see above) my map was crap and I ended up walking all the way. At one stage – well away from the public eye I will add, I made the radical choice of removing my shirt to get some of the most vaguest of breezes on to my skin. It was hard work – but when I went to the cable car to take it down the hill later on it was 7 Euro a trip, glad I walked. Hot as it was it really wasn’t that far!

The castle was dull and full of tourists, but with awesome views over the sea and the city. Though confusing which was the way in 🙂

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I went the wrong way!

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I spent half an hour up the top enjoying the breeze and views as well as avoiding the sun before heading back down into the city centre to find my way back to the hotel.

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Once down past La Rambla and into the old part of town I decided to stick to the alleys to avoid the sun

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and ended up doing a few circles before popping out in familiar territory and finally stopping for a cooling beer at the taverna next door to my hotel.

I was on my feet for eight hours  Chucks are not ideal for a long days walk in the heat, my feet were a tad swollen by the end and I knew it had been a long day.

After unpacking (read throwing stuff all over the show) in my new and incredibly noisy room overlooking the main street, and after a wee lie down I wandered down the road to my new favourite kebab shop and consumed the most awesome chicken kebab ever ;I was starving ! Once sated I went and had a drink with the Pakistani guy who worked there (he of course did not partake) I chatted with him for a while, I think he enjoyed being able to speak English rather than Spanish, and to someone who knew who Shahid Afridi was !

It slowly went downhill from there as Johnnie Walker was cheap…

Though not too downhill as I am still typing and it is only 10:18 pm 🙂

Opinions on black and white photos ? after seeing a lot today I am very keen to go back !

Gallery – Street art in Barcelona

There is a huge amount of graffiti in Barcelona, most of it is just scribbled tagging,  though  I am sure there is some pithy political statements in among the scrawl, sadly it is all Spanish to me, so you my eager audience, do not get to see it either ! Anyway, statements are not always art and art is what I am in to, whether you agree with my tastes or not.Most doorways have something sprayed, brushed, inked or stuck on them so there was a variety of things to look at.

Here are some of the ones that caught my eye – BTW, I am a huge sucker for anarchy symbols. Less so for real anarchy!

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A dip in the Med !

Day 196, Wednesday 17 July 2012 – Barcelona/Mataro

Another reallylousy night sleep, no alarms this morning, thank goodness, but I was still not properly asleep even in the morning, dozed till 8.00. Up late, the same breakfast at the same spot, safety in consistency !

I faffed around again for a while as I tried to engage my foggy brain and completed the blog post from yesterday. While faffing I received a Facebook message from Jess, a Spanish friend of my daughter Meliesha, who I met in Bristol. Jess is from Mataro, a beach town about 30 minutes by train from central Barcelona and is working near home over summer. Another of Mel’s Bristol friends Michelle is staying there too and they have invited me to come down for the afternoon and see a less touristed area – very cool! I had no real plans for the day so said yes immediately.

I left the hotel around mid-day and walked down through the main shopping district (well a shopping district, no idea if it was the main one !) near Catalunya square, It was very hot so I took the opportunity to dive into a department store to make the use of their air conditioning, plus I had some time to kill before catching my train. I made my way to the mens wear and thought I would pick up a pair of board shorts as I left my (bizarrely blood stained) old pair in Malaysia. I found a pair I liked and pulled them off the rack to find they were 245 euros !! that is close to 400NZD – they were Dolce + Gabana. I put them back and fled the department store for the safety of a cafe.

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The queue for the open topped tour buses was insane, why do people put themselves though it !!!

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After a revitalising espresso I went wandering and found Saint Anna chapel, which was very nice, cool and quiet and worth a visit.

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I thought I had left myself a ton of time to get the train, but little did I know of the confusion that awaited me at Catalyuna station. I obviously went into the wrong station first, damn hard to figure out as the signs are not overly helpful. I did eventually find the line I wanted, not that it was on the map, just read and obscure reference to a line. I followed the direction of the single arrow that pointed to my line and then got lost. Apparently I was in the wrong station, of the half dozen stations around the square I finally found the one I wanted – via random selection. The station I wanted was on the ticket machine so that was easy, finding the right train less so. Unlike the Metro or Underground there was no line map for the train system. Luckily the station I wanted was a final destination for one of the trains so I just waited for that one. Hooray ! the train left at the time I was due to meet Jess and Michelle, oh well !

The ride to my stop at Cabrera de Mar, where Jess worked, was on stop back from Mataro. The ride took about forty minutes and about thirty of those were alongside white sandy beaches on the Mediterranean Sea. I was writing some blog notes in my notebook when I glanced out the window and saw a bunch of naked girls on the beach – after five months in conservative SE Asia it was quite a shock. The beach was secluded apart from the train line about twenty metres away ! Topless sunbathing is extremely common on all the beaches here so I found out.

Jess and Michelle met me at the station and we walked down to the beach and sat and chatted for a while before I had my first swim in the Med – or at least my first swim in 25 years, I cannot recall if I swam I swam when I was in Turkey all that time ago. The sea was warm and clear and smelt/tasted clean and fresh – fantastic. This is where Jess works…

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I was a wee bit concerned about getting burnt so we didn’t spend too long in there before getting changed and catching the train up to Mataro.

We stopped for a drink or two at a beachside bar in Mataro before heading in to town so the girls could show me some of the local street art.

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There is a walled of block that has been really nicely painted with some great work and I have posted these in a separate blog post. I am loving the street art in Europe, there are some talented people around. We then wandered up to a cafe that is owned by Jess’s parents and I had a great, very sweet chocolate shake and some carrot cake. Jess was not feeling very at this stage, very bad stomach pain, as it was early evening by now Michelle walked back down through town to the station and I caught a very crowded train back to central Barcelona. Mataro is a nice town, the central plaza was closed to traffic as there was something on, so there were loads of pedestrians about, providing a r – nice feel. The beach was awesome as was the bar and the iced coffee with Baileys 🙂

Thanks to Jess and Michelle for inviting me around for the afternoon, I had fun !

 

 

 

Viva Barcelona

Day 195, Tuesday 17 July 2012, Barcelona

Well  – I was warned in the reviews on various hotel web sites that the noise at the Barcelona Center Inn can be quite bad, and the reviews were correct, lots of noise from the hallways as people arrived from their nights out and then an alarm went off at 5.00 AM, and 5.30 and 6.00 etc etc. I didn’t really get much sleep until an hour or so from 6.30. I didn’t use the air con either so found myself in a pool of sweat when I did wake, it has been a while since that has happened!

I was up late and faffed a bit, had my old standby breakfast of egg on toast from the cafe downstairs and then caught up with some blog posts until I left the hotel about 11:00 with no real plan, apart from wander the streets in the general direction of some of the key sights and hit the gothic quarter.

The day was sunny and already hot by the time I left, it is really nice to be wearing t-shirt and shorts again – and not with leggings underneath like I was in Cornwall. I picked myself up a Spanish SIM card as it is possible I will be staying in Spain for a while – plus I like having mobile access to the internet – I am a net junkie…

My first stop was the Palau de la Musica Catalana, though I did not pay to go inside and my photos from the outside sucked a bit due to some really savage light… though it had some interesting bits.

I soon discovered the Barcelona Cathedral, the bulk of which was constructed in the mid 1400’s. It was a pretty amazing building and it was great to be able to take photos inside, though it was a heaving mass of tourists.

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I particularly liked the paintings in the small chapels that contained some lovely 15the century paintings, this was my favourite from an unknown painter and completed in 1475.

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I also really liked the small carvings I found while waiting for the rickety lift to the roof, they remind me of LOTR !

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There seems to be a mass of renovation projects going on in Barcelona, perhaps it is work created by various government bodies during these recessionary times, but a huge number of buildings are under cover. The roof of the cathedral was one, though the view was good.

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And the gargoyles were awesome.

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From the cathedral I just wandered the streets for a couple of hours, mainly in the old gothic quarter, the streets are so narrow there are very few cars, and the area is full of bars and galleries that do not open until much later in the day. It was relatively peaceful and cool compared the bustle of the big squares. I took a lot of photos ! Most of the doorways have been graffitied in some fashion, some good stuff, but a lot of aimless tagging as well. I did take a number of photos of the stencil and sticker art which I really like and will post those separately one day.

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The small touches were fantastic, this old well in one of the squares was a favourite.

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It was the alleys and the 5 or 6 story buildings looming overhead that I liked the best.

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I did accidently wander into Plaza George Orwell.

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Now I knew where I was I went and visited Palau Guell (Guell Palace). This is one of the big attractions in Barcelona and since renovation is now a UNESCO protected building. It is not particularly old but was designed by Antoni Gaudi and completed in 1890. Gaudi (possibly where gaudy comes from ?) was a Catalonian and designed a number of the key buildings in Barcelona. The Guell Palace, was semi-interesting, I am not hugely into furniture and floorings etc, but it did have some nice touches, I liked these doors

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And the roof was very cool, with all the decorated chimneys.

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Plus I liked the roof top photo opportunities.

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I wandered off for lunch and a beer and was heading towards the Picasso museum when I realised I had the wrong debit card in my wallet and could not get any cash out ! so I meandered back to the hotel.

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I had a wee rest before heading out again in the early evening, got some cash (whew) and walked up to the Temple de la Sagrada Familia – another Gaudi designed building, sadly the skyline was broken by a number of large cranes and the ground was broken by about 1 billion tourists, maybe a million, a lot anyway. The building is stunning though and I may go back one morning for a quick lool before the hoardes arrive.

The queue to get in was not worth effort so I wandered back down to the hotel.

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On the way back I passed Salesians church, built in the 1870’s and designed by Joan Montells, who was a teacher of Gaudi’s. It is unsual in that the bell tower is in the front of the church.

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I spent the rest of the evening ripping my hair out trying to do two things online. Firstly i wanted to transfer some cash from my NZ bank to my English one. I had already jumped through the various hoops to get overseas transfer set up, but this was frustrating as I had to fill in so many boxes – and find the information for those boxes – that by the time I had finished the session with the bank had timed out and I had to log in again and start all over, grrrrrr. And I am not even sure it worked yet…

Secondly I wanted to book myself to Malaga, I started with bus and trains, found the best options for dates, length of travel and cost, and decided on train. The train web site would not accept either of my two NZ credit cards, so bus – yeah 16 hours is a long time but I have done it before – same result on bus web site, grrrr… Next resort – fly. Ryan Air, looks good, price is cheap(ish), convenient time departing and arriving (so my cousin can pick me up). Booked it , YES, payment accepted. Go to add a second bag as booking only allows one bag – 48 frigging euros !!!!!! the fare was only 62… WTF Ryan Air! So my cheapish flight cost way too much..

But anyway… I am staying here in Barcelona for one more day, I leave Friday morning for Alcaucin, a small village about 40 minutes from Malaga where my cousin Ian lives. Looking forward to it.