When I decided to add Spain to my round the world adventure, I was suddenly flooded with advice. Way more people than I expected have vacationed or lived there and they all had very strong opinions on what I should visit during my ten day stay. Since my best friend's little sister Lulu (or Elizabeth, hey I've known her since she was a kid, I can't get my brain around the "new" grownup name,) lives in Madrid, it was a given that I would base there and take advantage of her years of experience (and her couch!)
Leaving Italy was hard. No problems or anything, it's just I really loved my time there and there was so much more I wanted to do. Oh well, next time...
I landed in Madrid in the middle of the afternoon and followed Lulu's directions to the bar where she had me wait for her to get off work. A couple of cold beers later, she popped in and we eventually headed to her apartment. Later I met her boyfriend Mike (not Australian, amazing!) and we went out to dinner. Spaniards are known for eating late and the restaurant we went to doesn't even open until 9PM! We had a long leisurely dinner and then we walked all over town and they pointed out the sights at night. It is really a late night town, the streets and bars were with people and we even saw parents with kids out walking around after 1AM!
The city is filled with Plazas and grand boulevards and I spent days wandering around local neighborhoods, sampling Spanish cuisine at tapas bars, and seeing the sights. Madrid has some of the best art museums in the world - the Prado, the Thyssen, and the Reina-Sofia where I spent a long Sunday afternoon with Lulu and Mike. I have a very large print of Picasso's Guernica, it's one of my favorites of all the prints I own - his vision of a horrible Nazi bombing during the Spanish Civil War and the power and anguish the he projects in the tortured figures is so compelling.
This massive piece is displayed there along with many of the sketches and studies Picasso drew as he prepared to paint it. I could have spent hours just looking, it seemed every time I was about to turn away I would notice a new element of figure that I never noticed before in my much smaller copy. One night, Lulu found us a true Flamenco show in a tiny out of the way bar. While the singing is not exactly one of my faves, the whole effect of the musicians and the dancing in the dark smoky club was fantastic, and I would really recommend seeking out a good local show when you visit Spain.
One day I took the high speed train to Toledo, a small city with tons of history. This medieval shows off a blend of the cultures that shaped Spain through the centuries. Moorish, Christian and Jewish influences are visible in many of the old city's buildings. There are some pleasant little museums and I really enjoyed the views from the old defensive walls of the town. Many of the streets are tiny winding alleys that reminded me of Stonetown in Zanzibar - must be the Arab influences...
Barcelona is a city I've always known I would visit and fall in love with, so I couldn't wait to have my friend Vicki show me around - but then she went and got an internship and decided to stay in the Seychelles a while (who could really blame her, I mean - c'mon, wouldn't you want to stay in paradise and play with turtles for another 10 weeks?) So when I visited I was sadly on my own. The hostel I picked turned out to be fantastic, and its location on Passeig de Gracia could not have been better situated for visiting this wondrous city. I walked down the famous boulevard Las Ramblas, poked around the Barri Gotic and El Raval, looked in on markets, drank wine at a cafe overlooking the harbor, and sampled yummy Catalan cooking. There were some great art museums here, too, MACBA (contemporary art,) one specifically for Picasso and one for Miro. Definitely my kind of city. One day was my modernista day and I visited all the buildings and parks created in this style. The greatest examples of the genius of Gaudi, the Father of the movement, is la Sagrada Familia, probably the most stunning cathedral I've ever seen - and it's not even finished yet! Started in the late 1800's, artisans and architects are projected to be working to finish Gaudi's masterpiece sometime in the middle of this century...
Two more recent jewels of the city are its fantastic aquarium (with a walk-through shark tunnel,) and all the Olympic venues on Montjuic. I made the long long walk up that hill before noticing there is a special graded metro train that makes the steep trip. The restaurants in Barcelona are amazing and my last night there, I had one of the best meals of my entire trip with my roommate Maddie. Then we barhopped around the city and wound up dancing until 4 or 5 (I think...) I was a little groggy the next morning, but all I had to do was survive the short jet trip back to Madrid.
When I got there, it was Carnaval, so Mike, Lulu and I watched part of a parade before going out for an awesome Paella dinner. The next day we wandered through street markets, ate tapas at tiny local places, shopped some more and then went to the movies when we couldn't take the rain anymore. I went online to find out which teams were playing in the Superbowl and at 12:30 AM, headed to an irish bar to watch it. Not too surprisingly, the place was almost deserted, with only about seven of us watching the game. Through the first three quarters it wasn't very exciting, and the situation was made worse by the fact that the Spanish feed doesn't show any of the highly anticipated commercials. When the game paused, (and it sure paused a lot!) the feed was just a long range shot of the entire stadium from deep in an upper deck corner. It got pretty boring waiting for the next play to start, and the halftime show took forever, so I wasn't too upset when the staff closed the bar and tossed all of us out at the end of the third quarter around 3:30. Little did I know how good a game it would turn out to be and of course I missed the best part...
I really enjoyed Spain, while not flashy and covered with touristy options like Italy, it has a good feel with lots of low key things to do. The museums are top-notch, the transportation options were easy and everywhere, and the food and drink are great and despite the saggy dollar, not too badly priced. The people are more reserved than in other countries, but the combination of uniquely Spanish things to do and visit made for a great stay. One difficulty that surprised me was the language. I've picked up a fair bit of Spanish traveling in Mexico and around Central and South America, but with the accent, the speed of delivery and tone range spoken, I could never figure out a thing anyone was saying in Spain. I did like the whole concept of getting a plate of tapas with every round of drinks you ordered, and was very amused that if you order a Biquini, you get a grilled cheese sandwich. Even funnier was the number of mullets on display - I had hoped this horrible hairstyle was dead everywhere in the world, but no - the Spanish male thinks it is a cool expression of coolness.
After Madrid, the next stop was home so the next morning, I packed my bag for the last time and said farewell to Lulu already feeling some nostalgia and an urge to be on the road again. I think I've got the travel bug bad - a condition made obvious to me on my layover in Heathrow. With several hours to kill, I caught myself in front of the travel section at the Borders books, rifling through the guides and had to laugh at myself. Not even home yet and already dreaming...
I've been home now for a couple of weeks - the family is visited, friends recontacted, cell phone activated and even Voodoo has forgiven me my long absence. My backpack is completely empty for the first time in months and looks pretty forlorn. There is still some sand in the corners though...
What's next? Who knows? But no matter where I end up, I will always have this wonderful journey of world and self-discovery to look back on and smile.
Plus, I'm a whole day younger!
Thanks for traveling along with me here, I hope you enjoyed it almost as much as I did...
Clement
