Hola!
I am now writing from Amsterdam after travelling around Spain for two weeks and visiting a friend in Germany for one week. It was a great trip! I relearned some Spanish, hit the beach, learned a lot about Spain´s history, met a lot of fellow travellers and got to have some fun and relax with a bunch of international students! For those who want to check out my route in Spain, I flew into Barcelona, then visited Valencia, Cordoba, Cadiz, Tarifa, Gibraltar, Granada and finally Malaga.
This trip also gave me my first experience with RyanAir, which I´ll admit I was a little nervous about. I´ve heard of so many negative experiences with this airline that I didn´t quite know what to expect. But I guess at 17 euro a flight, you´re not really allowed to complain about too much... The first inconvenience I experienced was having my flight leave Maastricht (in the south of Holland) at 9:30pm. I actually didn´t fly to Barcelona itself, but to Girona, which is a couple hours away by bus, so I arrived at the bus station in Barcelona at 1am prepared to look for my hostel with my only map being in my big clunky Lonely Planet. I had also heard that Spain, and especially Barcelona, is not quite as safe as other countries in Europe, so I was really thrilled I would have to pull out my Lonely Planet, clearly identifying myself as a tourist, with not very many people around. In the end I had absolutely no trouble getting to my hostel or in general during my entire trip in Spain.
Barcelona is quite well-known as a good city for tourism because it has so much of everything, but this also made it a little more difficult to know what I wanted to do, so I just went for a walk my first day. I walked down La Rambla (a main pedestrian road) to the monument to Christopher Columbus. I found this monument quite interesting because it had a number of sculptures depicting Columbus´s efforts to get funding to the Church´s endorsement of his voyage to the First Nations looking thankful to the arrival of Christianity (which definitely unnerved me a bit).
I then went to the beach where it was nice and sunny, but also windy so I was wearing my coat. One girl ended up going swimming for a couple seconds, but it seemed a bit too cold for most people. Later, I went to the aquarium where I walked through a tunnel with sharks and rays swimming around me and then rushed outside to get some good pictures of the sunset.
The next day I had more of a plan. I first went to Gaudi´s Sagrada Familia (a big cathedral, which is still under construction after a hundred years or so). Unfortunately, the line was very long to get in, so I decided to just take some pictures and go on to the other big work of Gaudi´s in Barcelona: Parc Guell. This is simply a park built into a hillside at the north-end of Barcelona, but the way Gaudi incorporated structure with nature is really quite ingenious. There´s a feeling of randomness in the construction that imitates nature and makes you notice the construction less. I managed to find a nice little hill above the park that I climbed and was all alone enjoying a 360 degree view of the city. On my way out of the park, I heard a music from a busker I had only heard once before. I still don´t know what it´s called, but I saw it being played by a man in Zurich last summer too. It´s a percussion instrument in the shape of a big bowl (maybe two feet in diameter) with a lid that has indents. Hitting the lid with your hand produces a really nice, relaxing sound and the different indents modify the tone.
I also visited Picasso´s museum, but was a little disappointed since almost half the normal exhibition was closed. I then decided to climb Monjuic to get some good sunset shots (Montjuic is a hill on the western end of Barcelona that impeded my view of the sunset the night before). It was a long climb, but I walked past a castle (complete with someone practicing archery outside) before finding a viewpoint. I then went to a fountain I had heard a lot about, but didn´t quite understand why it was so amazing. In fact, it was a very big fountain with water shooting 20m into the air with different light coming from below and it was kind of dancing to classical music being played over speakers - quite spectacular!
I left the next morning by train for Valencia. This may seem a little obvious, but there really were orange trees all over the city, though I´m guessing they´re not really very good for eating. I actually wasn´t that impressed with the old city of Valencia, but 2km away there is the Ciudad de las Artes y Cienses. A multi-building complex of really nice, modern architecture housing a theatre, a science expo museum, a wrap-around Imax theatre (like the Omnimax in Vancouver) and an oceanarium complete with dolphin show. All were very impressive and I was especially influenced by the dolphin show (i.e. I now want to become a dolphin trainer!).
I moved on via night bus to Cordoba. I arrived at 5:15am and began hunting for my hostel who´s address I had written on a little piece of paper. I knew I was in the right area, but couldn´t quite find it and ended up waking up a sleeping hotel watchman to help me. Once I found it, I rang the bell (it was almost 6:30am by this point) and nobody answered. To give you a bit more of an idea of what I was experiencing at this point: Corboda isn´t on the coast so it gets quite cold at night, and it was raining... and I had hardly slept on the bus! So I was looking for a warm place with a roof where I could sit down for a couple hours waiting for the tourist info or the internet cafe to open and look for another hostel when I literally stumbled upon one and was soon sleeping in a warm bed.
The weather in Cordoba continued to be bad almost the entire time I was there, but this didn´t actually bother me that much because I was looking forward to a place to relax a bit after rushing around Barcelona and Valencia the last 5 days. In fact, I arrived on Monday, which turns out to be the day of the week most things are closed, except the Arabic Baths. So the only touristy thing I did in Cordoba that first day was get a half-hour massage and sit in a hot-tub for an hour! Later that day, I went down to the hostel´s bar for dinner (at 8pm, which provoked a "It´s a little early..." comment from the barman). I lucked out a bit though, because I ended up having a really good seat as the bar filled up with locals excited about that night´s game between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid). It turned out to be a very exciting game with Barcelona winning 5-0 over Madrid (a somewhat unexpected result since Madrid is one of the top teams in Europe). To put this in a bit more perspective, I had watched Madrid clobber Ajax (Amsterdam´s football club) 4-0 the day before I arrived in Spain.
The next day in Cordoba, I also did only one touristy thing : visit the Mezquita (or Mosque), which is actually a cathedral. Cordoba used to be the capital of the Islamic Caliphate in Spain around 900AD. This Caliphate was apparently exceedingly progressive and welcomed scholars from all over and produced some of the most enlightened research of the time (especially since most of Europe was just coming out of the Dark Ages at this point). So the Mezquita was built to represent that empire and was very impressive. Over the following couple centuries, another tribe from Africa came to power over the Islamic area of Spain and they were much stricter with religion and were known to persecute people of other faiths. They eventually got beat out by the Reconquista in the 15th century and fell back to Granada, which was the last Islamic outpost in Spain. But all this history is simply to give some background on the fact that in the middle of this beautiful Mezquita, there is now a Cathedral built in the typical European style with paintings, sculptures of Saints, gold and silver, etc. It seemed so out of place to me. The brochure given to me at the brochure was also saying how Christians should be thanked for not tearing down the Mezquita, which I suppose is somewhat true, but the result now seems so weird when you walk around it.
I moved on from Cordoba to the south coast at Cadiz. Cadiz hadn´t actually been a high-priority destination for me until I learned that a friend from school was teaching French and English there. Cadiz is west of Gibraltar so is on the Atlantic. The sun was very nice and warm but I think I was the only one at the beach December 1st when I arrived. It was great to know people there because I finally went out for real tapas and began speaking Spanish again (my first week in Spain had me thanking people in Dutch or giving them blank looks as I bit back the Dutch while I couldn´t think of the Spanish equivalent). I checked out some touristy sites like the Cathedral, the Torre Tavira (a tower in the middle of the city with a mirror on top that projects images on to a white screen in a dark room below - difficult to explain, but very cool!) and also saw some really massive Peruvian trees in the 2 parks they have in the old town.
I stayed only one day in Cadiz and moved on to Tarifa, a small town on the very south point of Spain. I met a bunch of other travellers here from all over, but especially one couple and two friends, both groups from France, who were biking around Europe and Morocco both with a special mission. The two guys I met first are interviewing children about their dreams for the future - www.lerevomatique.com. They´re hoping to put all the interviews online and subtitle them in a bunch of languages (so if you´re interested in helping with the translating for this projet ... contact me : cmarkra@gmail.com). The other couple is actually biking around with a piano - www.pianotrip.com. They´re stopping in public places, farmers´ fields and other unusual places to play piano. For some reason, they get a lot of attention from people they pass, media, and also border police... In Tarifa, I also got my first taste of Flamenco (singing and guitar, sadly not the dancing).
Though Tarifa is a big tourist city for learning kite-surfing and other water sports, my main reason for staying there was in order to visit Gibraltar (which is quite expensive and doesn´t have any cheap hostels). Getting to Gibraltar is quite interesting : first you go to Linea de la Concepcion, a small town on the Spanish side of the border, then you walk by the border guards who look like they could care less, and then comes the part where you walk across a live runway in order to get into the city. Apparently, the British wanted an airport, and most of Gibraltar is a really big rock, so they built a runway that runs parallel to the coast on the only flat part of their territory. Since the runway is much longer than the width of the spit of land connecting Gibraltar to the continent, it kind of looks like the throat of one of those cartoon characters who's swallowed an object way too big for their throat.
Anyways, the city of Gibraltar didn't really impress me very much, except for the obvious difference from Spain, which is so close. Gibraltar is a tax haven, so it attracts quite a varied crowd from tourists shopping for expensive, tax-free electronics, to Spanish labourers, to Brits enjoying the warmth and sun that is so hard to find on the British Isles. It actually felt a little seedy walking around, so I quickly headed up the rock. Since I'm both stubborn and thrifty, I decided to hike up the rock instead of taking the cable car; a decision that ended up saving me 9.50 pounds and rewarded me with some really great views. I was apparently fairly alone in my decision to hike, since the trailhead was a little difficult to find, but it took me on a nice walk around the south cliffs of the rock and then up the eastern side. The last half of the hike was essentially a long flight of stone stairs, which inspired a previous hiker to write on one of the steps : "Never again." In the end, it wasn't that bad and I caught the sunset over Morocco and Tarifa as I hung out with the monkeys. Actually, I was quite fascinated by the monkeys; I was so amazed how their expressions seem so human. It's not difficult to believe we evolved from them. The park authority has done a lot of work to educate tourists against feeding the monkeys, so I was really surprised (and a little disgusted) when I saw one of the tourist minivans come by and use food to get the monkeys to sit on the tourists' shoulders and such.
I moved on the next day, taking a train to Granada from Algeciras. It was a really long train-ride, which ended up stopping almost everywhere. I was a little surprised though when Santa Claus came into my compartment and offered everyone a little candy out of a bag he was carrying. Something about this situation felt a little wrong because, out the window, I was watching nice warm sunlight fall on hills covered with olive groves - not exactly my typical vision of Christmas time... In Granada, I lucked out finding a hostal during la Puente (a nation-wide long weekend due to the combination of their Constitution Day and some religious festival, which nobody could explain to me). It was in the middle of the Albayzin districht, the old muslim area with tiny streets that don't seem to follow any geometrical logic. I actually had a bit of difficulty finding it, but apparently I wasn't the first because a Spanish lady directed me to it hardly even asking where I was going. I went for a free walking tour of the city the next day with a really funny and entertaining English guide. He explained a lot of the history surrounding the city and gave us a lot of insight into how to take advantage of our time in Granada. A big part of that time is usually devoted to visiting the Alhambra - a site I've learned to be very important, and I felt a little stupid not knowing about it before arriving in Spain... The Alhambra is a massive complex of palaces, garrisons, fortresses and gardens that date from the time of muslim rule over the city. It's also supposed to be where Christopher Columbus finally got his support from Isabel, the queen of Castille, to discover India. The artwork in the Alhambra is amazing, but not in any way you usually see in Europe. There was almost no gold or silver, but lots of incredible sculpture into the wall of patterns and writing that definitely make you think of arab culture. The gardens were a little bit of a letdown, but I think that was more the time of year than anything. If anyone's planning to go, go in spring or summer.
I took off the next day for Malaga; my final destination in Spain. I didn't actually do very much here, but I thorougly enjoyed the weather. When I checked in Granada, I was heading to a city of rain and thunderstorms for the two days I was going to be there, but most of the time I was reconciling myself with the fact it was over 20 degrees in December. I hiked up a nice hill to a castle, went for ice cream with a group of German Erasmus students I met, suntanned on the beach for a while, walked through the elaborately decorated streets and squares of the old town and hung out in my hostal with a very odd, but interesting, group of people. Actually, my hostal seemed almost more like a boarding house sometimes because most people were staying for quite a while and were content to smoke, drink, play a little guitar and maybe go for a walk during the day.
Since my flight back to Holland left at 6:30am, I decided to sleep in the airport. I was joined by quite a few other travellers doing the same thing and it really wasn't that bad. I was lucky to find some space on the cushions of a cafe and used my earplugs to block the repeating messages from brainwashing me into never, ever, parting from my bag for the rest of my life. The flight back was nothing special except I tried to practice what I remembered of my Dutch with the couple next to me. I actually did surprisingly well, though a fair number of my sentences that began in Dutch would end in Spanish.
Arriving in Eindhoven was quite a shock. I didn't have (and still don't) a jacket suitable for winters in Holland, so I shivered as I waited for the bus to take me to the train station. I ended up staying in Holland for less than 16 hours, but managed to visit my great-aunt before taking off to Stuttgart, Germany, via night-bus. So as you can imagine after a night in the airport followed by a night on a bus, I greeted my friend in Stuttgart with a lot of fatigue and a little bit of adrenaline. Fortunately, I got to sleep while she went to class and managed to rest up before meeting a big group of international students and then going out salsa dancing. In this, I was also very surprised, since I hadn't danced for over 6 months, but I remembered a lot of my salsa, managed to learn some new moves and actually picked up a bit of bachata as well! All in all, a very good night! The next day, we visited Stuttgart's Christmas market with all its wonderful bratwurst and gluhwein before heading off to a party of all the international students studying at Stuttgart with the Erasmus program. It was another great night of dancing with friends I'd only known for maximum two days, and there wasn't even very much alcohol involved. The next couple days we went to the typical German town of Rothenburg, watched a movie, baked a bunch of Christmas goodies, watched some more movies and went to Stuttgart's TV tower before I took another night bus back to Amsterdam, where I arrived at 6:30am. Now I'm visiting friends and family for a last couple days before I fly back to Canada (36 hours from now!).
I've had a lot to say about what I've done during the last six months, but I have yet to discuss some of the more general things I've learned and felt during this trip. I'm going to take some time to relax at home over the holidays before writing one last blogpost looking back on what I've gotten out of my trip.
Cheers!
Chad
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