¡Hola mis amigos!
¡Buenos dias! Estoy en Sevilla, en Andaluz en España. Es muy bien.
Right, that´s enough parlour-level Spanish for the moment. After 4 days here in Spain I´m now down in Seville, the regional capital of Andalucia. For those of you who associate Spain with flamenco, bullfights and it being very very hot and dry, well, this´d be the bit you´re thinking of. In fact, it´s about 36 degrees here at the moment, which we (being myself, John and James off my old degree course) have agreed qualifies technically for the term "fecking hot".
Going back a bit, the day before we came out here, I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with Marty and Tracy, who I went on the Shamrocker tour in Ireland with back at Easter, to help celebrate Marty´s 30th birthday. In true Aussie style, they´d decided to take advantage of the relatively good weather to have a barbecue. So, in true British style, the weather obliged by sending a series of cloudbursts through the day, obliging them to acquaint themselves with our national practice of "holding a bbq under a brolly". Overall, though, a pretty good time was had by all.
Sadly, attending the BBQ precluded me from watching the FA Cup Final on TV this year, but it was apparently not all that special, and Man Utd lost, so I was pretty happy with that anyway. I also missed the Eurovision Song Contest, for the first time in several years (yes, I am that sad - so sue me). Again, though, I am reliably informed that we (la Royaume Uni) sucked. Again. Anyone would think we weren´t taking it all that seriously or something...
Part of the reason I didn´t see it, though, was my attempts to get an early night, as John, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that our 8am flight from Gatwick required him to pick up James and I from James´flat at 5am. As many of you know, I have never been (and probably never will be) a "morning person", so that wasn´t really a great start to the day.
To make the day better, the baggage carousels had apparently broken down at Gatwick partway through gettting the luggage for our flight sorted, so we were delayed on departure.
But it all mattered rather less once we arrived in Madrid. After negotiating the joys of the Metro system (actually not being sarcastic here - Madrid´s public transport is pretty good) we settled in at our home for the next few days: the Cat´s Hostel down on c/ de los Cañizares. This is new enough that it´s still not in many of the guidebooks, but is pretty good. Key/card operated door access and safes for all the beds, reasonable numbers of bathrooms (though the water was only ever lukewarm - not an issue at the moment but wouldn´t be great in winter), and a restored covered courtyard, complete with Moorish-style tiling. Really, really nice place. Definitely recommend it to any of you swinging round that way.
The rest of our first day was spent wandering the streets of Madrid, seeing a few of the more obvious sights (Plaza Mayor, Palacio Real, Plaza Oriente, Puerta del Sol, etc etc). Ended up getting food and dinner at a nice little place on Plaza de Santa Anna, so a big thanks to Emma for suggesting that as a good place to start thje drinking of an evening.
Having worked out our itinerary (via the tried and tested "write down everything any of us wants to do and then shoehorn it all in somehow" technique), the next day saw us off on a day-trip to Segovia, a lovely little town north of Madrid. This is classic Castilian territory, with the old town perched up on top of a hill, enclosed by the old city walls. What really make Segovia stand out, though, are the Roman aqueduct, and the Alcazar (castle). The former is in amazingly good nick considering it´s nearly 2,000 years old, and the latter verges on the fairy-tale - it was one of the seats of the Kings of Castile before the capital was moved to Madrid by Philip II. All very pleasant, until the combination of the change from Cambridge to the hot, dry, higher-altitude air of Castile worked its wonders on my nasal passage and set me off with the first of another string of nosebleeds (clear today, so far...).
That evening then turned into one of those random nights out that occasionally "just happen" when travelling. We´d headed out to get a couple of bars and some tapas when we got approached by an American lad (Kevin - never encounted an American Kevin before, it´s not really struck me as a Yank name). He´s over in Spain with his family, but his little brother and usual drinking companion was being seriously ill, and his parents weren´t the partying type, so he ended up joining us for a few beers. And a few more beers. The odd spot of tapas, quite a bit of walking, another nosebleed for me and an abortive entry into a bar with delusions of club-hood later, we ended up in a classy establishment called "El Pirata". Yes, a "pirate bar". Very silly, but in the end quite good fun. So what was meant to be a moderate night out ended up, in Madrileño style, with us staggering home around 4:30am, wondering how on earth we would make it up for our train the next morning.
Astonishingly, though, we did manage it, leaving the hostel around 10:30 to get the Metro and then the train up to El Escorial. This is slightly to the north-west of Madrid, and is the site of Philip II´s personal monastery-palace. Which is big. In fact, I´d venture to say it´s fecking huge. It´s also packed with rather more art than I´d expected, so my dear Mother would have been astonished to find me wandering around actually taking an interest in some paintings (mostly military stuff and portraits, though, Mum - don´t start thinking I´ve had a serious attack of "culture" quite yet).
After our unintentional antics of the previous night, we resolved to be a bit more civilised on Tuesday night, in an effort to save both our wallets and our livers from too much sustained abuse. Hence, we spent a fair bit of the evening in a wonderful little place called "El Espejo", a terrace-cafe (terraza) along the side of the Paseo de Recoletos (one of the big boulevards heading north from central Madrid). Had a few beers, some tapas, a bit of swordfish (which is apparently called Emperador in Spanish, leading to numerous jokes from John about penguins...), all while enjoying a balmy evening and some fine lounge tunes from the resident painist (though we haven´t yet worked out why the Spanish seem quite fond of "Delilah"...). We then rather spoiled the "quiet night" attempt again by wandering across town, having a few more beers from a few more terrazas. We ended up around 1:30am in the Chocolateria San Gines, which is apparently a Madrid institution, partaking of churros con chocolade. This is basically a mug of (near-enough) melted chocolate and a bunch of sticks of fried dough (basically doughnut-sticks) to dip in it. Total sugar overload, but comfort-food of a sort.
So, that brings us to Wednesday (we´re getting there - hang in there those of you falling asleep at the back). We finally departed Madrid, heading down to Toledo, an hour or so south of there, which was the capital of Spain prior to Madrid. This is another of those classic picturesque hilltop towns, even more spectacular than Segovia. What we hadn´t realised (obviously being insufficiently religious) is that we had arrived slap-bang in the middle of the festival of Corpus Christi.
Apart from the fact that it obviously has something to do with the body of Jesus, I still couldn´t tell you what this is about, but it was the excuse for a pretty major shindig down in Toledo. All the houses along the streets, especially those lining the squares, had flags, banners and (bizarrely) tapestries hanging from them. There were stages going up in the two main squares, and the whole place was heaving.
Unfortunately, what with the heat, the altitude, the dryness and a fair amount of dehydration, my nose decided to intervene in proceedings again whilst we were in the middle of our explorations of Toledo. This led to our little group splitting up for a while, as John and James continued their tour around town, while I went and cooled off and took it easy by touring the Catedral. Now, Toledo is the home of the Primate of Spain (the equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury), and you might think this would make Toledo´s cathedral pretty impressive. And you´d be right. It´s a monster. I shudder to think of them putting that up with medieval construction techniques. Absolutely awesome, and home to some rather nice art... D´Oh! That´d be another step down the dark path towards being a proper grown-up, then.
After that, I had some lunch and explored a bit more, including the little Mosque/Church of Christo de la Luz (thanks for the tip, Hannah!) before allowing myself to slow down a bit at last and have a siesta for a couple of hours prior to meeting back up with the others. Once I did so (having avoided a passing herd of dragons - the kids´parade went past just as I was leaving our Hostal), I discovered we had acquired a new companion, a Canadian lass by the name of Kate. She had met up with the lads that afternoon, and ended up out with us for the rest of the night.
And the evening, which we had again pencilled in for a "quiet one", turned into a good one. Muchos cervezas y tapas, enlivened (for me at least) by periodically popping into the bar we were sat outside to follow the astonishing progress of the European Cup Final. How Liverpool did it still amazes me, but that helped the evening too. We ended up briefly seeing quite a cheesey band that were playing in one of the squares, before heading back to the square by our hostel to find an even cheesier disco going on there.
This was just extraordinary. Everyone, from the 2-year-old kids to the grannies, out in the square at one in the morning, with a selection of scantily-clad young ladies up on stage leading the kind of "everyone join in the dancing" numbers which are the highlight (or lowlight, depending on your opinion on these things) of wedding parties and the like everywhere. Anybody familiar with the classic hits "Bomba" or "Follow the Leader" will have some idea of the calibre of the mucial arts we are talking here.
I eventually ducked out of proceedings around 2:30am, figuring I owed it to myself to try and get at least 3 or 4 hours´sleep before we had to head out and get the 7:15am train the next morning. John and James stayed out, resumably along with Kate, until around 3:30, and things were still going on then. Utterly, utterly mad night.
And I´m now suffering journal-entry fatigue, so I shall leave out today´s adventures in Sevilla until next I encounter a computer terminal.
Take care and have fun,
Pat
Right, that´s enough parlour-level Spanish for the moment. After 4 days here in Spain I´m now down in Seville, the regional capital of Andalucia. For those of you who associate Spain with flamenco, bullfights and it being very very hot and dry, well, this´d be the bit you´re thinking of. In fact, it´s about 36 degrees here at the moment, which we (being myself, John and James off my old degree course) have agreed qualifies technically for the term "fecking hot".
Going back a bit, the day before we came out here, I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with Marty and Tracy, who I went on the Shamrocker tour in Ireland with back at Easter, to help celebrate Marty´s 30th birthday. In true Aussie style, they´d decided to take advantage of the relatively good weather to have a barbecue. So, in true British style, the weather obliged by sending a series of cloudbursts through the day, obliging them to acquaint themselves with our national practice of "holding a bbq under a brolly". Overall, though, a pretty good time was had by all.
Sadly, attending the BBQ precluded me from watching the FA Cup Final on TV this year, but it was apparently not all that special, and Man Utd lost, so I was pretty happy with that anyway. I also missed the Eurovision Song Contest, for the first time in several years (yes, I am that sad - so sue me). Again, though, I am reliably informed that we (la Royaume Uni) sucked. Again. Anyone would think we weren´t taking it all that seriously or something...
Part of the reason I didn´t see it, though, was my attempts to get an early night, as John, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that our 8am flight from Gatwick required him to pick up James and I from James´flat at 5am. As many of you know, I have never been (and probably never will be) a "morning person", so that wasn´t really a great start to the day.
To make the day better, the baggage carousels had apparently broken down at Gatwick partway through gettting the luggage for our flight sorted, so we were delayed on departure.
But it all mattered rather less once we arrived in Madrid. After negotiating the joys of the Metro system (actually not being sarcastic here - Madrid´s public transport is pretty good) we settled in at our home for the next few days: the Cat´s Hostel down on c/ de los Cañizares. This is new enough that it´s still not in many of the guidebooks, but is pretty good. Key/card operated door access and safes for all the beds, reasonable numbers of bathrooms (though the water was only ever lukewarm - not an issue at the moment but wouldn´t be great in winter), and a restored covered courtyard, complete with Moorish-style tiling. Really, really nice place. Definitely recommend it to any of you swinging round that way.
The rest of our first day was spent wandering the streets of Madrid, seeing a few of the more obvious sights (Plaza Mayor, Palacio Real, Plaza Oriente, Puerta del Sol, etc etc). Ended up getting food and dinner at a nice little place on Plaza de Santa Anna, so a big thanks to Emma for suggesting that as a good place to start thje drinking of an evening.
Having worked out our itinerary (via the tried and tested "write down everything any of us wants to do and then shoehorn it all in somehow" technique), the next day saw us off on a day-trip to Segovia, a lovely little town north of Madrid. This is classic Castilian territory, with the old town perched up on top of a hill, enclosed by the old city walls. What really make Segovia stand out, though, are the Roman aqueduct, and the Alcazar (castle). The former is in amazingly good nick considering it´s nearly 2,000 years old, and the latter verges on the fairy-tale - it was one of the seats of the Kings of Castile before the capital was moved to Madrid by Philip II. All very pleasant, until the combination of the change from Cambridge to the hot, dry, higher-altitude air of Castile worked its wonders on my nasal passage and set me off with the first of another string of nosebleeds (clear today, so far...).
That evening then turned into one of those random nights out that occasionally "just happen" when travelling. We´d headed out to get a couple of bars and some tapas when we got approached by an American lad (Kevin - never encounted an American Kevin before, it´s not really struck me as a Yank name). He´s over in Spain with his family, but his little brother and usual drinking companion was being seriously ill, and his parents weren´t the partying type, so he ended up joining us for a few beers. And a few more beers. The odd spot of tapas, quite a bit of walking, another nosebleed for me and an abortive entry into a bar with delusions of club-hood later, we ended up in a classy establishment called "El Pirata". Yes, a "pirate bar". Very silly, but in the end quite good fun. So what was meant to be a moderate night out ended up, in Madrileño style, with us staggering home around 4:30am, wondering how on earth we would make it up for our train the next morning.
Astonishingly, though, we did manage it, leaving the hostel around 10:30 to get the Metro and then the train up to El Escorial. This is slightly to the north-west of Madrid, and is the site of Philip II´s personal monastery-palace. Which is big. In fact, I´d venture to say it´s fecking huge. It´s also packed with rather more art than I´d expected, so my dear Mother would have been astonished to find me wandering around actually taking an interest in some paintings (mostly military stuff and portraits, though, Mum - don´t start thinking I´ve had a serious attack of "culture" quite yet).
After our unintentional antics of the previous night, we resolved to be a bit more civilised on Tuesday night, in an effort to save both our wallets and our livers from too much sustained abuse. Hence, we spent a fair bit of the evening in a wonderful little place called "El Espejo", a terrace-cafe (terraza) along the side of the Paseo de Recoletos (one of the big boulevards heading north from central Madrid). Had a few beers, some tapas, a bit of swordfish (which is apparently called Emperador in Spanish, leading to numerous jokes from John about penguins...), all while enjoying a balmy evening and some fine lounge tunes from the resident painist (though we haven´t yet worked out why the Spanish seem quite fond of "Delilah"...). We then rather spoiled the "quiet night" attempt again by wandering across town, having a few more beers from a few more terrazas. We ended up around 1:30am in the Chocolateria San Gines, which is apparently a Madrid institution, partaking of churros con chocolade. This is basically a mug of (near-enough) melted chocolate and a bunch of sticks of fried dough (basically doughnut-sticks) to dip in it. Total sugar overload, but comfort-food of a sort.
So, that brings us to Wednesday (we´re getting there - hang in there those of you falling asleep at the back). We finally departed Madrid, heading down to Toledo, an hour or so south of there, which was the capital of Spain prior to Madrid. This is another of those classic picturesque hilltop towns, even more spectacular than Segovia. What we hadn´t realised (obviously being insufficiently religious) is that we had arrived slap-bang in the middle of the festival of Corpus Christi.
Apart from the fact that it obviously has something to do with the body of Jesus, I still couldn´t tell you what this is about, but it was the excuse for a pretty major shindig down in Toledo. All the houses along the streets, especially those lining the squares, had flags, banners and (bizarrely) tapestries hanging from them. There were stages going up in the two main squares, and the whole place was heaving.
Unfortunately, what with the heat, the altitude, the dryness and a fair amount of dehydration, my nose decided to intervene in proceedings again whilst we were in the middle of our explorations of Toledo. This led to our little group splitting up for a while, as John and James continued their tour around town, while I went and cooled off and took it easy by touring the Catedral. Now, Toledo is the home of the Primate of Spain (the equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury), and you might think this would make Toledo´s cathedral pretty impressive. And you´d be right. It´s a monster. I shudder to think of them putting that up with medieval construction techniques. Absolutely awesome, and home to some rather nice art... D´Oh! That´d be another step down the dark path towards being a proper grown-up, then.
After that, I had some lunch and explored a bit more, including the little Mosque/Church of Christo de la Luz (thanks for the tip, Hannah!) before allowing myself to slow down a bit at last and have a siesta for a couple of hours prior to meeting back up with the others. Once I did so (having avoided a passing herd of dragons - the kids´parade went past just as I was leaving our Hostal), I discovered we had acquired a new companion, a Canadian lass by the name of Kate. She had met up with the lads that afternoon, and ended up out with us for the rest of the night.
And the evening, which we had again pencilled in for a "quiet one", turned into a good one. Muchos cervezas y tapas, enlivened (for me at least) by periodically popping into the bar we were sat outside to follow the astonishing progress of the European Cup Final. How Liverpool did it still amazes me, but that helped the evening too. We ended up briefly seeing quite a cheesey band that were playing in one of the squares, before heading back to the square by our hostel to find an even cheesier disco going on there.
This was just extraordinary. Everyone, from the 2-year-old kids to the grannies, out in the square at one in the morning, with a selection of scantily-clad young ladies up on stage leading the kind of "everyone join in the dancing" numbers which are the highlight (or lowlight, depending on your opinion on these things) of wedding parties and the like everywhere. Anybody familiar with the classic hits "Bomba" or "Follow the Leader" will have some idea of the calibre of the mucial arts we are talking here.
I eventually ducked out of proceedings around 2:30am, figuring I owed it to myself to try and get at least 3 or 4 hours´sleep before we had to head out and get the 7:15am train the next morning. John and James stayed out, resumably along with Kate, until around 3:30, and things were still going on then. Utterly, utterly mad night.
And I´m now suffering journal-entry fatigue, so I shall leave out today´s adventures in Sevilla until next I encounter a computer terminal.
Take care and have fun,
Pat
Labels: Spain
posted by Pat at 6:03 pm
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