Madrid was the first stop post Ireland – a busy yet apt introduction to the country. Here we freshened up on our Spanish history (or at least got the basics for the first time) and quickly discovered that Spain’s history is very much an insular one (especially more recent stuff), unlike other European countries that have tended to show how their neighbours have impacted on them. A lot of it’s pretty nasty stuff (learning about the Spanish Inquisition in detail) and the sort of traditions in Spain that have stemmed from such horrible moments in its history (the massive love of ham, for instance) can be pretty strange and intriguing. (Still, aside from the fact it may be a kind of legacy, the Museum of Ham is really cool, cheap and tasty; unless you’re buying the ham that costs 140 euros a kilo...
Call us “Un-Spanish” (Why does that only sound right with some nationalities... I’d say it’s a racist prefix), but no, we did not go see a bull fight even though the season had just started. Amusingly, one girl in our dorm seemed to be telling us we were missing out on the Spanish experience... “I left after they killed the first one. I know it’s horrible and all that, but I had to go because it’s the Spanish thing to do, right?” Moron. Also bringing into question our Spanish experience was our reaction to Patatas Bravas... Are they meant to be any more than chips with chilli sauce? Am I missing something? For the record, we did have these more than once in different cities just to see if we “got it”... we didn’t. And speaking of not having a clue about things, hows about that Modern Art Museum in Madrid, ey..? We call this one, a mole wearing a swimming cap at the beach:
How awesome are churros, though? Many people can answer that one. What about: How awesome are churros following a plate full of Spanish cheeses? I’m at least hoping that many people can answer that one. If you can’t, the correct answer is AMAZINGLY SO! Did you know that churros are typical breakfast fare for the Spaniards? I find that to be quite spectacular.
You go to this station and you find...
...TURTLES! Hundreds of them. I’m not kidding. Amazing!
Granada was next on the list, and I will say from the outset that we did not get to see the eighth wonder of the world... Yes, we’re mad and all that, but we had no idea a huge money-making tourist attraction would actually limit the tickets to presale only in peak season. Grrr. At any rate, Granada filled us in on a few things – namely sangria and tapas.
Now, here’s a nerdy analogy for how the “tapas with drinks” things work. It’s like a video game you cannot save. You order your drink and it comes with a tapa. You conquer the first level and move onto the next, more exciting one. You get a better tapa! And so on it goes on; an upgrade with every additional drink. That is, until you’re done or change venue – there are no save games. Next time you start you have to begin with the level one tapas all over again!! So this leads me to wonder: Just how many tapas levels are there in this Spanish quest?
As for tapas restaurants, we just went with the age old “go where it’s busy” thing, and this seemed to pay off. I may have had the best calamari of my life in Granada. They know what they’re doing with that stuff.
Reassurance for when you get lost in the windy streets of Granada
Outside Baeza, the smell of olive oil factories is like a hefty waft of dirty nappies
The home of our buddy Antonio Banderas was next, aka Malaga. We hung out with the man whilst there, or at least pretended we did, given he was in Cannes plugging some movie (he’s changed since becoming famous, sheesh). Malaga was really nice because the warm weather had brought out the life, but the peak of party-time had not yet completely overrun the city. We visited Alcazaba to get our Moorish influence fix and try to make up for at least a tiny bit of missing Alhambra in Granada (we’re really bent up over this); and, on a less Spanish note, we also visited the Interactive Music Museum, which may well be one of the oddest placed museums we’ve seen (still a league away from Nuremberg’s Pigeon Museum, however). A big tapas dinner was to be our last for Spain, as it was off to Barcelona where we’d be watching our monies (for more reasons than one).
A treat from Malaga’s main food market: A gold star for guessing what deliciousness this is...
Barcelona gets a bad rap for being Europe’s leading pickpocket city, and it seems to be true. Pretty much everyone you hear when talking about the place has a theft story either personally or within a couple of degrees of themself. The trick we were most wary of was on the metro, where a pair or trio will cause a blockage getting on the train and rifle through pockets in the process, and then try and get off. This happened on a train and we could see it, but the guys didn’t get off (admittedly, we could tell what they were up to so I wanted to keep an eye on them on the train anyway). Sure enough, one of them produced a passport moments later, ever so casually (“oh, look what I found” sort of a thing), and handed it back... Kinda weird that they were so selective in what they pinched really.
BUT, Barcelona is a marvellous city! There is SO much to see, it’s really quite hard work to get around to it all. The city has a thing for Gaudi, seriously great produce markets, and mammoths. They also have this fountain... I’m not sure if Art Vs Science based their track on the Magic Fountain in Barcelona, but it’s almost as cringe-worthy as that song! We went and were expecting some Spanish music to accompany the light/water show; but no, we instead got the theme to Flashdance, video killed the radio star, and Freddy Mercury singing Barcelona in its six minutes of glory! Tacky, but kinda fun.
Magic, magic, magic, magic...
T with Gaudi’s lizard
The highlight of Barcelona for us was getting into Sagrada Familia. (The lowlight was battling against tour groups in the museum of Sagrada Familia :P) The church was unlike anything I’ve ever seen – a unique and incomparable design. A guy had gone to great lengths describing the place as this big marble forest, and we were quite amused when we later read the same thing he’d previously said to us (he borrowed a few phrases a little too similar to the books) elsewhere. But really, that’s a decent enough description, if you ignore how bright the place is. The windows along the sides aren’t stained, which means the place floods with light – a dazzling, bright, marble forest if ever there was one. The interior was finished in January and according to their sight, the exterior should be finished around 2030 – so not long to go now :P. The construction work makes for some challenging photo ops, and fun games looking at postcards and picking where the cranes have been airbrushed out. I’ve put up a gallery of the place on facebook if anyone’s interested, including the cranes in all their glory (Around Europe, cranes are my second favourite sigh, following scaffold).
Sagrada’s less appealing exterior (in my opinion)
The amazing interior
Postcard perfect crane action
For this, balance your head on your left shoulder...
Of course two weeks in Spain wasn’t gonna be enough, but we had to start our journey back across to Italy sooner or later, and France in between doesn’t exactly sound too bad. So it’s time for us to replace tapas with patisseries and baguettes.
Adios!
The coolest thing about la sagrada familia is that the columns spiral and curve. I lost my shit as an engineer when I went there. Btw you had awesome weather!!!
ReplyDelete