Category: travel

Arcos, Giblatar

I’m exhausted. It’s been two very busy two days,and i know that unless i blog now it will all fly out of my head, but oh my god I’m barely able to type while lying down (with a glass of red, of course).

It looks like I stopped at yesterday, 10am. After salobrena we did a “long range” drive of 3 hours over to across de la fronterra, not jerez as i originally typo-ed. Drive was fun andverey picturesque. Spain has a massive number of windmills,which are super fun to watch. We even saw a solar panel farm.  

Ok, due go exhaustion… Point formish…

Arcos is a tiny town. We attempted twice to drive in, but it is so freaking narrow, ing and old that google maps completely mislead us, and we ended up parking and just grabbing essentials

Oh god i already typed his, must have been not in Tim’s notes app, arghhhh. Ok. 
Skipping forward because noway imagining up all of the above effort!

So! After typing up the myth on the weird computer, we shared drinks on our amazing, amazing patio. It wax the best hotel so far – you are above bird flight and above a massive ravine. 
The spectacular thing about the evening was watching a row of tiny steady flahes go across the horizon – many kilometers away (Tim says at least 50km away) – flash kn complete synch every second. It was eerie. As we figured out it was those windmills.

I woke up earlier in the morning to go and take some photos before the sun got too ugh – shockingly that was a success. Upon that we did the short hop between Arcos and Tarifa, except for a small mis navigation that gook us on a 30km street h of a no exits stretch of highway, arghhhhh. It all worked out though,and we got to our Rancho Relaxo,really named hotel Chillout Tres Mares. The atmosphere is awesome. Asian inspired, lounges everywhere, white sheets and dark town wood, small twin king lifts, perfection. It is slightly outside of the city, and it will allow us to stay 2 nights in one plisse in order to see 3 different countries – Spain (Tariffa), UK (Gibaltar), and Morocco (Tangier).

Sfter check in we dro r to G., whicsh was nice and easy. Minimal parking questions aside we did a pretty simple and predictable trip into G. 
Cable carried.
Monkeys.
Fish and chips.

Except that due to early rise, long drive, and exciting few days, my brain shut down around 3pm, so i basically zombied through the fish and chips, and relied on Tim on getting us home safe, he succeeded.

I’m already lettering out, and there is still Morocco tomorrow, so I’ll cut this short. Pictures will fill it all in! I hope.
    

Granada and Salobrena

First of all, the most important news. I am drinking a 2003 glass of “crianza”, red wine, in the most adorable town. 

Ok, now that that’s out of the way – I will continue where I last stopped, the landing in Granada. A tiny, adorable airport (large enough that I didn’t recall Thompson), we got super lucky and our checked suitcases were #1 and #2 in the roll out. I know everyone looked on jealously as I took the iPad and grabbed them – tim was outside for his smoke. After that nice little victory of checked baggage, we grabbed a taxi (pre negotiated price), and got to our really very pretty and nice hotel, called RoomMate. For some reason i keep thinking of it as room “maaah-they” instead of the normal roommate work.

The hotel is a tiny boutique, red and black decorated place, with super stylish chairs * and nice and comfortable rooms. //pictures will be available// we were exhausted, so we wanted to nap right away. Surprisingly , our room wasn’t made up, so we went on a little tour of exploration. It was quickly successful as we identified a lovely hole in the wall bar//restaurant across the street/corner. 

Leaving barcelona immediately shown a great side benefit.There is a south of spain tradition of giving small tapas dish when you order a drink. That means we constantly got to try misc dishes as we continue to drink our way through the country. This place didn’t disappoint and we soon were drinking white wine (at 12:05 mind you, so at least it was after noon!) and a beer. After that pleasant interlude,and another short walk, we went and had delicious 3 hour nap. Alas, we had. Ery deadline oriented plans of seeing Alhambra and the Nazreth gardens, where350 people are allowed to enter every 30 mins. If you miss your 30 min slot, you need to buy another ticket. Ours was for 5pm,and i was warmed of log lines to pick it up, as wells entry to gardens themselves.

The pickup went so well – there is anew system wheee you swipe your card and it gives you the tickets automatically. No line no fuss 3 minutes of effort.**          
The gardens and the castle were very cool, and very pretty.definitely a must see sight, but nice the lions garden is repaired. There were a lot of mind blowing parts about it – the carved stone and woodwork is really truly mind blowing. To quote our guidebook: “One phrase – “only Allah is victorious” – is repeated 9000 times throughout the palace.”

Photos etc upon arrival.

After the exhausting trip, we swung by the trusted bar and had a sandwich and more liquor before having some more downtime in the hotel room. I either napped or read. Tim napped.***

The evening was fun: we got up early enough to have dinner, late enough so that we were doing it with other people. Spaniards really do have dinner very late – no nod is out before 7-8-9 pm.

We had an atmospheric walk through int and narrow cobblestone streets, where sidewalks were nonexistent, and found a nice local place on a plaza/square, which we managed to finish and caught literally the last bus home. The bus driver kicked everyone off at some location reasonably close to our hotel,and when we asked the direction to the plaza on which we stayed he actually gave us a bit of a ride there. So sweet!

Morning was easy enough – packed our bags, walked around the city (ignoring the gypsies who continuously push twigs of Rosemary into your face in order to get you to stop and pay for a fortune. Coins are bad luck,so you can at the minimum pay 5 eu.) had some coffee. And then run into a palming snafu, where we waited for a bus for 50 minutes at the 30+ heat, and realizes that the bus is still an hour away. Ouch. Grabbed a car to the airport, chilled down, got the decent rental (manual of course), and drove south to Salobrena.

Salobrena is not mentioned in our guidebook – even wikitravel doesn’t say much about it. We got it through moms friend, N., who lives in Spain and gave us a list of places to visit when we skid for small sea side towns. This town tuned out toe so awesome that we are staying here anotherr night.

1. No tourists. Beautiful, whitewashed walls, and kids and dogsand tiny places and no gypsies and no shady characters.
2. Excellent room – in what was called a hostel but in rwality is a nice, smal, clean hotel. Balcony, neat room, good price.
3. Beach! Where we spent a few blissful hours reading, napping, tanning.
4. Great food! Our dinner was lovely and totally under what I expected. I had fish in butter and tim had steak and that plus fresh bread and bonus tapa.. Yum!z,z
5. Atmosphere. As we ate, we saw kids playing football, 2 dogs fighting****, locals hanging out,moms gossiping…
And last but not least….

The 2003 bottle that i am drinking was 2.95eu. I…. Am speechless. And its really really good!!! But.,, 2003??? Beer was 1eu.

So… Now to try and post this and continue our evening of relaxation. Plans for tomorrow include more reading, more wine, and more sun tanning. Yes! Vacation!

* one of my hobbies so far is finding Ikea things in public places. Only two or three so far have been without ikea. It’s fun. I even saw a painted “hidden” piece! Even hole in the wall Chitos had LACK shelves.
Anyway, this place had the – likely fake, since they were red – Mise Barcelona chairs. I didn’t even realize the relevance of the name until now! He designed them for the World Fair in Barcelona.

** I kind of dragged tim throguh a really hot hike up the stairs to get there, so the fags pickup was welcome. We had ice cream and coffee after that and life became better.

*** almost forgot! We picked up some wonderful 5eu wi ea d 7eu ham – that Gould tell you how amazing the ham/proscuitto was. The wine was spectacular too. Prior to nap both wine and ham were had. So good.

**** so the dogs. We see a pair of dogs run in, one brown and one black. Both cute, medium size. The brown one looks like its trailing the black one, and we are thinking the black one is the leader, until the brown one starts to try and hump the black one.eventually the black girl decides that this is not what she wants, and they start fighting. The entire courtyard of kids is cheering the different sides on, and after a very playful and amusing fight, the black dog chases out the brown one from the courtyard at full jetting speed. What blew my mind: 
1. We ate dinner at a table that was set outdoors in the courtyard where kids played the entire day.
2. Elegance, cleanliness, and grace of those dogs. Don’t think that they were homeless.   

So, as I was saying. At first we were confused and a bit unsure on how to behave. The general gist seemed to be about ordering tapas and we weren’t hungry per se. So at first, we tentatively ordered beer, and Tim by some divine intervention saw a tag labelled Limon and asked for at. What he got is the drink of his dreams – half lemonade, and half beer. While my beer wasn’t bad, i really should just stick to wine around here. It is obscenity good and obscenely cheap.*
As wqe got the beer, we also got a freebie (sic?) of 2 pieces of deep fried fish. It was delicious, and everyone around us were ordering food, so we ordered a tapas of sausage and one of mussels.
As we were sitting there, I realize the guy behind Tim is holding a lit cigarette. Mind you, smoking outdoors is finely, but we had no idea there is evener a possibility of smoking indoors! As I tell Tim “I think it is ok to smoke inside” and we look around, we see in slow motion everyone in he bar pull out a cigarette and light it. We see the ash on the floor, and ashtrays on the tables AND IT ALL STARTS TO MAKE SENSE. Like in the ending of Usual Suspects.

Anyway, after an amazing lunch of amazing mussels, prepared very differently from how we do it usually, but still deliciously, and 2 drinks, we come home fore a brief nap/siesta. Ending of day 1 was a success – we went to Ramblas, the main walking strip with parents, and had dinner in a reasonably decent place, which seemed totally overpriced after the 17 eu bill at chitos. (for 5 drinks, 2 large tapas and a tiny “free” one.)

The mattress at our place sucked, and my book was interesting, so i don’t think i slept until 12-1. Unfortunately this trend only became worse as the time went on.

Day two had a Mission. We had to figure out where to get a mini sim card with a data plan for ipsad. This end up being a massive adventure: he first store said ghat only 1 store for Mobilcity carries this in Barcelona…. Then that store had a 40 minute wait. Then they pointed us to another kiosk, one located inside court ingles – a large shopping mall. Then THAT kiosk skipped over Tims number. Then they said he needs to have a passport, and that a sim cost 20eu, and activation another X eu, and that there is no prepaid plasm, only monthly contract.

At some point in theta above I did exploratory shopping in the area and identified a balanciaga (designer) wallet, a dress, a bag, and a skirt**. I had no money on me, but that sure saved time when i came back to try stuff on.

After we got to the point where they said that we need a passport, tim was tired, i was tired, and we were low on alcohol levels. A drink and some small snacks later, we took the metro home, rested fore an hour, and headed out again, with a verbatim quote from oranje’s site – the apparently only mobile network that carries ipad sims and has a pare paid data plan – on the 35eu prEpaid plan that includes a sim and no activation charges. This time, another maddeningly long wait later, the dude busted out a BOX of ipad sims – they were labelled sims for iPad!! Why all the difficulties before?? Anyway, at least the passport requirement is legit and is actually standard in spain. After that, thoroughly happy, we went to see the Gaudi classic, Sagrada Familla. Unexpectedly, it was a lovely experience – the design contains way more logic and math and design then “decorations” from what I expected. Along the way we stopped for another beer/limn, and a delicious 2eu sandwich. Amazing.

The evening was another delicious and interesting restaurant with parents. Somewhere there I also had a swim on as beach with a lot of topless and naked people, which apparently is normal. What was even more amazing is that really pretty people were topless too. Fun times for us!

We got profoundly buzzed, finishing another 2 (3?) bottles of wine over the evening. I went to sleep at 5am due to heat, snoring and an insanely bad mattress.

The 8am wake up call to go for a morning swim with mom, then coffee and croissants***, and then our personal guided tour around the city was painful.

Day 3 started off by a very high quality personal tour given by Christina from //insert tour company name here, can’t remember now, something weird//. she was an adorable, stylish, student/guide, who game us an amazing 3 hour insiders view of the old city. It would be impossible to retell everything that she has told us…. Just highlights:
– the funny way that the city grew means that no building is of one age.
– the completely hidden oldest roman columns in the city that are located inside a courtyard of a private residence. 
– the legends and stories of the saints of Catalunya, Spain and Barcelona.
– the stories and kings courtyard
– tiny amazing local places of soap, drinks, tea and tapas

Her professionalism and skill was unbelievably good. Worth every penny. ****

After the tour she kindly helped us find moms friend, who were meeting after wards, and located us to a great local (no tourists, hidden away in a university courtyard!) tapas place. We had tapas, and then split up: tim and dad stayed to pay the bill and go home fore rest (and tim relating fore his work conference call That was the entire Eason why we NEEDED to get an iPad SIM), moms friend (N.) went to check in to her hotel, and mom and i went to buy all the stuff i Lund day before. We made amazing time, hitting 4 stores and buying everything in 1.5 hours, and a had time to spare to get home and take an amazingly needed 2 hour nap.   

After the nap in double-time, tim and i got an espresso, I went to take some photos of the beach, and then got ready and went out for dinner with aren’t and N while poor Tim had to stay behind to work.

As soon as we left an insane thunderstorm caught us outside. After waiting for it to subside we gave up and grabbed a car toward our restaurant. Another pricy choice***** but good taste allowed us to wait out the rain and dive into the gothic quarter. 

What a lovely night it was! We walked around the dark alleys, stumbling around like so many – but not too many – other people. On a hunt for a perfect place to sit and have wine we got insanely lucky. I spotted the kings court lit up at night and wanted to take photos, and asked the group to wait. Being the brilliant folks they are, they found a great wine place that allowed us to sit right there , at the courtyard, with the church bells ringing like they have for the past thousands of years. We drank 2 more bottles of wine, and got home at an intently early hour of 12. A long day it was, for sure, but an amazing one at that.

After another way to late showing on my part, 6am wake up call, thankfully bags packed the night before, we took a cab to the clean, modern, Huge Terminal 1 of Barcelona airport, and caught a plane to Granada. Ite feels like we are coming in fore a landing, so finally i managed to do a full travel blog!
Bless ipad and Steve Jobs and thank you to them fore providing us with the means to hold a skype conversation, play agates, and blog, and gps. I wish i were sponsored.  

I’m at ~11gb/32gb of photos so far. I’ll go back and clean up some of the blurry/repeats of what i shot last night… Later. Now: time to game hole the plane is in the air and tim is busy with my ebook!

* pardon the uncouth mentions of prices,but I’m so pleasantly surprised at how cheap things are. For some reason i thought Spain would be expensive. Let’s home Andalucia is the same!

** wallet was on sale from the department store, bag and skirt from European Zara^, and skirt from some random place. 

*** side note about breakfast. 2eu gives you a mindblowingly amazing croissant that has been freshly baked that morning, and a coffee du leech – basically a latte. I just have no words for how amazing it is. Really. I wish we had the same tradition in canada of having amazing wines and amazing coffee…..everywhere.

**** a lot of pennies.

***** after enjoying amazing 2eu sandwiches, 20eu meal seems wrong. So not crazy, but still. It’s the principle. 

^ as everyone should know, European Zara is painfully better than north amereican. Like, NA’s is good too, but here is really is wonderful.
 

So!I got the iPad while Tim is reading the “sh!t my dad says” book on my ereader. What a totally sweet trade. I get to blog!

We are waiting for a flight to Granada from Barcelona. It is 9:05 am, and we are supposed to take off in 5 minutes. Judging by the fact we haven’t even started boarding I’d say it’s a safe call to say that it will not happen. Literally the first person in line is still the same curvaceous blonde as 20 minutes ago.

Barcelona gave us 3 days – 5,6, and 7th of sep. Today we are supposed top arrive to granada and see the infamius Alhambra.

What has happened so far?

Well…Barcelona in 3 days really felt like it was maybe a week, or a day and a half. The awesome tiny streets of the gothic area, and the Jewish quarter were my favorite part. We also saw the Granada familial – Gaudi’s masterpiece.

On the first day, we landed together with my parents into a gorgeous, sunny, and mostly empty Sunday mor ing airport. Jet lagged and tired, a short cab later we arrived to the apartment thtat we shared over our stay in B. 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, living room and kitchen. Just realized I took no photos, damn. Maybe mom did…
Tim and dad went to get some neccessities, like wine, fruits, jamon (ham) and beer. Mom and I rested because we are lazy like that. After a refreshing break, we realized that were missing Internet and have 1 set of keys. Which meant some coordination was required for us to out. Eventtually we all managed to agree on a time that we’d meet at the apartment – 3pm – and Tim and I went out.

In our neighborhood, same as in many other places in Spain, Sunday is dead quiet. Tired and unwilling to really go to far we got incredibly lucky. Our first attempt at finfing a snack/lunch place failed- we went to the same area as where Tim and dad had coffee earlier that day. But notjing looked like it would have a nice atmosphere, so we stared walking back, where we by sheer luck stmblued onto a place called Chito’s. A tiny, tiny, cramped tapas bar, where despite having anenglish menu, only locals appeared.

Whoops, boarding! 9:20. To be continued.