Sevilla, Spain

I was in Granada for about 4 days. On the third day, Saturday, I decided to go to Seville, which is 3 hours away by train, for a day trip. As soon as I got off the train, I was immediately surprised:All over the streets were women dressed in flamenco and men riding on horses. It made me realize that I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had actually just planned a day trip to Sevilla to see the “feria de abril” (it’s hundredth anniversary, actually!) I had no idea what it was about or what the celebration was like, only that it would be a waste not to go when I was so close. I also realized that I was going to have to settle for an extremely tainted version of Sevilla (as in, I wasn’t going to get a chance to see what Sevilla is like when there is no “feria de abril” – do people dress in flamenco all the time? Is horseback riding in the street common?)

Due to the feria, everything was either closed or free. I got into the Plaza de Espanya for free, for instance:
This is the only plaza with this name (there was one in Madrid and Barcelona, as well) whose name makes sense – all around the circle are little murals depicting individual cities. I have a picture of Barcelona, above to the right.

I walked by the university in Sevilla, which is near their main street, avenue de la constitution:

Like in almost every city I’ve been in so far, a river cuts Sevilla in half:The feria is so huge that there’s even a big chunk on the map of Sevilla dedicated to it. It’s literally labelled “feria de abril,” which I found quite shocking. Imagine this exchange:
I say, holding a map, ”Hola! Perdon – donde esta feria de abril?”
They point at the big section called ‘feria de abril’ and say “aqui,” and probably mutter something under their breath which means “dumbass.”

What happens in this mini-city, exactly? The women dress up in these fantastic outfits, frilly dresses with matching roses in their hair (like, black and white dress? black and white rose) while the men dress up in archaic suits and ride around in horses. (I’ve seen some women, in the suits or dresses, riding around on horses. I haven’t see any men in dresses, though.)

You can see in the background in these pictures that there are loads of tents (called casettas) around. Well, in fact, this is quite literally a tent city, and most if not all of the tents are privately owned – your family owns a tent, and nobody’s allowed into it unless they’re invited. They serve beer and food in them, and sometimes there’s entertainment or music playing, and they all have a bodyguard standing in front of them to kick out tourists.

You can also see the frickin’ amusement park! Ferris wheels and carnival games and the whole shebang! And they put it all up just for 5 days a year!

Some locals asked me to take a picture of them in front of the big feria-light-show-sign-thing, so I asked to get a picture with them. They were extremely entertained by my request: “a picture with ‘real spanish’ people,” they all said, and laughed.

Sevillisms

The street names in Sevilla are all like this:That is to say that the street names aren’t printed on signs as a whole but that they have individual letters and put them up to spell out the names. Basically every street is like this. I imagine that vandals have a great time with these.

-Square tree (who thinks that looks good?):

The following two are from the feria.

-A Tom and Jerry ride:
I wonder what the actual title says. Clever mouse and silly cat? Any translators? I’m not online atm. In a train. You knew that.

-A Mr. Bean ride:

I’ll admit that when I first got this far West in Spain, I had secretly wanted just to go to Sevilla to catch the feria, without even knowing what the feria was all about! My only regret is that I was never able to get a hostel for the night to see what the festivities are like in the evening. I met someone who was here the last day, and she said it was basically “bullfight, flamenco dancing and fireworks.” Sounds awesome.

Granada, Spain

Except for a part of the day yesterday (which I’ll write about tomorrow), I spent the last four days in Granada. Granada is a beautiful city built hugging a mountain. Many of the residences (I don’t want to say houses) are built in actual caves that were dug into the side of the mountain. During a tour, we were invited into one (by a jolly old man whose story-telling and hoarding reminded me too much of my father), and it was very impressive:

These caves are equiped with electricity and running water and are deathly silent.

I was joined by Sarah and Neto, a couple who followed me from Barcelona through Valencia: Well, actually, they’re the ones who convinced me to go this way, and I’m definitely glad they did.

Granada has a rich religious history (that I don’t quite remember) that involves Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In fact, there’s even an old Jewish quarter:
 
Granada was one of the cities that was evacuated during the Spanish inquisition with Morocco so close by. Probably contributed to many of the sephardic (spanish) population there.

Today, the city has a surprisingly large hippy population. No, seriously, hippies. Their presence is felt everywhere, from teterias (tea shops) to the street shops selling saris and hacky sacks, to the elaborate street art:

Even an elementary school had commissioned to be decorated by graffiti:Some of the art was pretty clever, too. Take a look at this giraffe, for one:

The main tourist attraction in the area is La Alhambra:It was described to us as Spain’s cash cow, apparently earning more money than any other tourist attraction in the country, including the Segrada Familia and the Guggenheim. (Not surprising at 15 euros a ticket…) It was worth almost every penny, though. In La Alhambra are many palaces and castles and gardens and stuff. Read on!

The first area is Charles V’s palace (or the Palacio de Carlos V):

The garden outside (the Generalife) is absolutely stunning, adorned with lilacs and fountains: 

The main attraction is the main palace, the Palacios nazaríes, which you have to pay extra to get into. I find it truly unique – the walls, arches, doorways and pillars are all… carved out of stone. It’s actually very pretty, one of the nicest things I’ve ever gone to see:

Granadisms

A. Food

- I had churros, again. Man, these were the best I’ve ever had, fresh out of the fryer:

-In Spain, traditionally, if you order a beer you’re given what’s called a “tapa". This is usually a small appetiser, either a piece of bread with  or a few meatballs with french fries or mini sandwiches. Few places I’ve been to actually did this properly. In Granada, however, they say that the food is free, that is, just buy beer and your meal is always covered.

-I had really delicious falafel, of all things. Neto’s actually never had a falafel before Granada, and from the sounds of it, he really liked it:

Ok, on to other stuff:

-Siestas: Stores. Are. Always. Closed. When the hell is siesta supposed to be? It just feels like things are closed all day long. I don’t get it, when do they make all of their money?

-Weird foosball table (where the players actually have feet):

-Dude in an Nordiques shirt:He said he doesn’t care about hockey, but a friend of his gave it to him, and he knew where it was from.

-One of the only English street signs in Granada:

-Mysteriously crooked bench:

-Oh, a good one – the little red lights on the street turn white if the light is green and red when it’s red. Very cool!

Now in Bilbao. Will tell you about Feria de Abril tomorrow! Don’t google it, please, I don’t want the surprise to be spoiled. I walked into it without knowing what to expect too!

Valencia, Spain

Things just keep getting better and better – the cities are prettier and cleaner, the weather is nicer and the company is really nice. About this last point, actually, I haven’t really been alone in almost 2 weeks!

Well, Valencia did a great job in keeping up all of the trends. I think the one thing that sucked about this leg was that I was covered in bed bug bites, an itchy reminder of the horrible hostel I stayed at in Barcelona.  (Tip: Do NOT stay at the Rambla&Catalunya hostel in Barcelona, regardless of how good the location is or how much money you think you’re saving. I really hope this will be googled.)

Also, for some reason everybody thinks I’m a Spaniard. That is, according to strangers who ask me questions on the street. They all really do act very surprised when I tell them, in broken travel-Spanish, that I’m Canadian. Wow, which reminds me – people in Valencia are not as fluent at English as people were in Madrid, Barcelona or, well, most other non-English speaking cities I’ve been to in Europe.

Valencia immediately feels much smaller than Barcelona, though it’s still a very modern city, even complete with a nice shopping area:

On the left, the center square. On the right is a coliseum of sorts that sits beside the northern Valencia train station, barely visible on the far right of the image. 

The first morning we woke up in Valencia was very hot:

so we decided to go to the beach, something which was surprisingly easy to do:

The second day, we went on a walking tour. (Free and highly recommended). It began at Plaza de la Virgen:

In Plaza de la Virgen stands a cathedral. It turns out that a (apparently symbolic) governmental body has been meeting outside of it every week (Thursday at noon) for 1050 years. This is the longest continuously regularly meeting body in the world, which I thought was pretty cool. We were there on a Wednesday, unfortunately, so I don’t have any pictures of the meeting to show you, but here is a picture of where they meet:

Among many other places we were brought to was the main entrance to Valencia:
There used to be city walls surrounding the city, too, but they’ve been gone for ages. Standing to the side of this door, you can see where the walls used to connect to it.

We were showed this cool door:
The virgin mother above the door can swivel and is meant to point inwards when the owners of the house are indoors. (If I’m not mistaken, the tour guide said something about how the artisan who created this entrance went mad upon its completion…)

Also, here’s a really thin house (the red sliver): Right beside it is a “fancy restaurant” that scammed us when we ordered our paella on the first night. 

Valencisms

-In Valencia they don’t speak Spanish or Catalan, but a Valencian dialect that has (quite controversially) not been granted the status of an official language. Apparently, the street names on the maps are written in Spanish while on the actual streets they are stubbornly written in this dialect, making this city extremely tourist-friendly.

-Weird crosswalk:

-The keyboards in all of the computers here (well, in Spain, really) are really annoying since they are different to accommodate the Spanish tildes (~) above certain letters and moving the question mark out of place to make room for the upside-down mark (¿).

-An awesome candy store:
 Notice the decorations on top and on the bottom. Made of candy.

-Oh, I have to mention something cool about the seats in the trains here – you know how when you’re on a coach bus or airplane, you lean your chair back and it takes up some space from the guy (or girl) sitting behind you? Well, in the trains in Spain, (riding in the rain by the plains, plainly staining them with paint again… sorry), the front part of your seat kind of slides forward, reclining you without inconveniencing anyone. It’s not quite as comfortable as the real reclining seats we’re used to, but it’s a pretty good guilt-free compromise.

-Height of flood in 1957. You can also see my dorky new sunglasses:

- In Valencia (as well as in Lisbon), the street numbers are weird. They still go up in pairs, all right, with the odd on one side and the even on the other, but the two sides are not synchronised! On your left you’ll have 24 26 28 whereas on your right you’ll have 65 67 69. Traveling for this long, you start really getting used to always seeing weird things like this, and you start forgetting what you thought “normal” was back home. It’s impossible to keep track of every funny thing, as they stop standing out as much as they’re not as fresh as they would be if I had just left home. Still, this really screwed me up and amused me.

- An interesting gargoyle:

I had two extremely Valencian foods:
-The first, almost obviously, is paella. This is only obvious if you knew that Valencia is the birth place of paella (which, actually, I didn’t).

- The second is a beverage called Horchata. It’s made of ground tiger nuts and sugar, and it tastes like a sweet almondy soymilk. It’s traditionally eaten with a long doughnut stick:

Next stop is Granada. It’s surprisingly wicked here. The Gallway of Spain, I’ll say. Anyway, come read about it tomorrow, or something.