¡Hola!

Wrote this post about a week ago now, but have been waiting to get some pictures uploaded before I posted it. So, a week later, here's my post about Barcelona, Sevilla, and Cordoba. I'll get one about Granada and Madrid up later this week.

[Just a quick update on what I'm up to now: My buddy's friends in England sort of un-invited us to their house and their trip to the lake district in the North, so my and Will decided to stay in Spain. I've moved in for two weeks with Meagan, former neighbor across the river from me in Niger and now English teacher in Benavente, Spain. More on all that in a later post]

-10/10/09-

So it´s been a good long while since me last update; why break from established proceedures and write frequently just because I´ve left Africa?

We´re in Granada, Spain at the moment, and what has encouraged me to get back into this blog a bit is that we´ve found a cyber cafe that will let us upload pictures to picasa! So I´ve been catching up on uploading photos from Tunisia (and a second album of new Tunis pictures), which are a good three weeks old now, and will be working on the Spain ones soon as well. Incha Allah.

After spending a couple days in Tunis, seeing the Bardo museum and inhaling as many cwarmas as we could, we spent a long night in the Tunis airport waiting for our flight to Barcelona. So, the buses and trains to the airport stop running at eight PM or so and don´t start running again until around seven the next morning, meaning that to catch our 7AM flight, we would either have to catch a Taxi or spend the night there. Seeing as the taxi costs money and sleeping on the floor at the airport is free.... well, being ex-Peace Corps volunteers traveling on a small budget, that was an easy choice. I bet it made for quite the sight to see us three set up in a corner of the sidewalk just outside the airport entrance cooking pasta on a camp stove. Not sure we could have gotten away with that in Europe.

At the airport in Tunis, the third musketeer, Josh, decided to split ways with us in Spain. He´s currently walking the Camino de Santiago, and if all goes well, we´ll be seeing him again in Madrid.

So, arriving in Barcelona, our trio became a two-some of Will and myself.



Barcelona -

What a great city to visit. And I imagine a pretty good place to live as well if you can get just out of the most touristy areas. The parks, oh the parks! I think we spent every day in Barcelona seeing a new park. And we could easily spend the entire day in just one. Park Guell, the landscaped area just north of town, designed by Gaudi was very impressive. The park at Montjuïc was massive and includes the Olympic facilities from the 1992 games. It would be great to live in a city with so many fine sports grounds.


The arcitecture on many buildings is amazing. Again, Gaudi can be thanked for much of the most impressive areas, but other Modernist arcitects also contributed. That, combined with the gothic and enlightment era buildings creates something akin to Paris with medival village, with something almost futuristic.

We didn´t actually go in the Sagrada Familia, but it was impressive from the outside and we spent at least an hour sitting on the sidewalk enjoying it.... and another hour in a small park across the street which also has a nice view of it over a pond.


We, almost literally, ran into our Niger PCV friend Vicky and her sister on the street one day. Small world! So they joined us for something of a high-lite day of park viewing. They´re traveling kind of the same course I am from here, but hitting everything first and in a shorter time frame.


So after a good five days enjoying Barcelona, meeting some great people, and sitting in the sunshine in the parks we decided we should really see more of Spain since we´re here, so we boarded a train heading south to Seville.

Seville/Sevilla -

The train ride was long. The night BEFORE the train ride was a long one too, so I think we spent most of the first five hours sleeping. I was awake for the first hour or so, and watched a truly impressive sunrise over the city. With the train sliding along, the sun would appear and disappear between the buildings and over the water. Was a great sight.

In fact there were quite a few sights to see outside the windows. Spain is a very pretty country. I would love to spend some more time here sometime. Maybe bike across it. The plannning begins....

We pulled into Sevilla about 7, something around twelve hours on the train.

Central Sevilla is a maze of twisting streets, as it has been since medieval times. We found the hostel alright, but got lost that night walking around (without a map) and learned to never leave the house without one; a rule that was broken at least once and resulted in half an hour of wandering back from a bar. But, really, it wasn´t that long till we got a hold of the city.

Sevilla made a great first impression on a friday night. It has a laid back atmosphere, but people, as with everywhere in Spain, came out about midnight to enjoy life. We wandered along the river and then through town and in every square there were groups of people sitting around socializing and drinking. The bars were going till late, and not just with young kids, it´s a common thing for older generations to stay out late as well. It´s a wonder anyone can get up in the morning at all, but about 9AM the city comes back to life.

We stayed in two different hostels in Sevilla and met quite a few fellow travelers, as you tend to. That´s the great thing about hostels, the common living space lubricates the social contacts you make and, then again, so does a shared bottle of wine.

We saw the sights of the old part of town. We actually paid (!!) to go into the Alcazar, which is a centuries old conglomeration of moorish and christian palaces and royal accomidations. It started out originaly as a muslim fort, and then the Almohades built the first palace on the spot, which was constantly updated by subsequent rulers (muslim and catholic alike) until the 16th century. The parks here were great, and as we´ve become park experts, you can trust me on that. Lots of water integrated into the landscape and flowers. Ended up taking a nap in a little corner of the place, only to wake up to a giant peacock wandering on by. Good way to awaken.

We also tried to get into the Cathedral, which we heard was free on Sunday afternoons, but after standing in line for 20 minutes, we found out it really does cost 8 Euros to get in, and so we about-faced, and went back out, browsing the souvenir store on the way. Fun fact about the cathedral: during the 16th and 17th centuries Sevilla was THE place to be in Europe, rich and far reaching power as the gate way to the Americas. With the influx of money, the catholic leadership decided that they needed a cathedral to show off the importance of the city. So they wanted to, quote, "Let it be a church so beautiful and so great that those who see it built will think we were mad.¨It´s big alright. And Christopher Columbus is probably buried inside (though there´s a chance, the remains are not really his, having been moved from the original grave in the New World).

One cool thing we saw, FOR FREE, was the Archivos General de Indias, housing a huge collection of documents from the Spanish explorers plodding their way across the new continent. It was interesting to see many of the maps and letters they have on display in the small museum attached to the archives, but mind-boggling to think of all the thousands and thousands of pages stored away in the floor to ceiling shelves on two floors of this big building.

Last thing I´ll ramble on about in Seville was the amazing graffiti they have down by the water. In a rather drab park along the water there are tons of different pieces done by a variety of graffiti artists. Some are really good. Most are pretty decent. It´s too bad that 1) graffiti gets such a bad rap and 2) that taggers will tag in places they shouldn´t, for instance, the Plaza de España, which is also in Seville and a very beautiful building, but has been tagged in the upper balconies by a plethora of people, sad really. I guess 2 causes 1 really. Fortunately, for the most part Sevilla keeps its graffiti in the right places and it´s very enjoyable, good quality art. Check out my picasa album here for some shots. And I just found this blog on graffiti, originally (2007) in Seville and now about graffiti in general. Check it out if you´re into that.

Cordoba-

So after five days or so in Sevilla, we decided to push on and ended up heading out to Cordoba. We had heard some good things and bad things about Cordoba. First impressions were not so favorable, it seemed to be a more modern city and not something to write home about, but that was really just around the bus station. As we moved into the center of town and found our hostel we warmed a little more to the place.

Unfortunately we then went for a walk through the old, touristy part of town and ended up crossing the restored roman bridge to walk the other side of the river and found a..... well, either a very poorly done park, or one in the process of being completed, but it was not so nice. Day one impression up till dinner was only so-so.

But we made ourselves tuna sandwichs for dinner (with tuna we found in the previous hostel... thanks Wendy?) and went up to the terresse on the roof to eat them. Turns out that night was a free tapas night at the hostel bar and before we knew it was packed with people. Met a bunch of great spaniards and foreigners that night. In fact, one British cat, Liam, invited us to out the next night. He took us for tapas and beers and then back to his place where he made us a great spread of tortillas and tapas again. We shared wine with him and his house mates and then went on to hit a club with them as well. It´s so great to meet great people like that in the world, especially while traveling in a new place.

Other than some good people, we were lucky to run across a free entrance into the Alcazar in Cordoba. Not quite as impressive as the one in Sevilla, it was non-the-less a great place to see arcitecture and some wonderful gardens.

Having seen all that, we left for Granada, where we´re currently encamped, and I mean that quite literally. All the hostels were booked up, so we ended up on the outskirts of town in a campground. It´s not bad at all, but for the fact that my sleeping bag, even with an extra liner isn´t the best at keeping me warm, so it´s bundle up with extra layers and a hat. Still, brrrrr....

---Back to the present---

Check out the new picasa albums for Tunis Round 2, Barcelona, Sevilla, Sevilla Graffiti, and Cordoba. I know that's a lot of photos at once, I had to edit them down from many, many more after all. In fact I'm still trying to motivate myself to give them all captions! Also, as I'm still trying to grow as a photographer, any thoughts and criticism is warmly welcomed.

I will try to get a post and pictures up for Granada and Madrid later this week, but I'll give both you and myself a while to get over this glut of images and info. Until then, adios.