At the end of day 7 in Spain (more or less)
I finally have a free evening so it seems a good time to roll around in bed and write an LJ post.
Aside from a day-trip to Valencia on the 30th, most of those days were in Barcelona - which doesn't really seem to consider itself part of Spain despite legal technicalities, hence more or less - but we have now moved onto Granada in Andalusia. Being rather far south, we did this on an overnight train.
So far, our trip has involved:
DAY ONE
* a walking tour of the Gothic area of Barcelona
* acquiring Spanish sims from Vodafone. Who would have thought I'd ever end up with a Vodafone. It has data, though, and my iPhone is now off contract, so I am experiencing the joy of a smartphone while overseas for the first time. Yay GPS! Yay email! Yay stuff to do while stuck in lines! (Thing I have learned about Spain: there are a lot of slow-moving lines.)
* a Catalan cooking class where we learned to make paella and sangria with ingredients from the Boqueria market
DAY TWO
* Gaudi's Casa Battlo
* getting lost on the way to observing more Gaudi and finding the Illustrious College of Advocates and, across the road, the Bank of Advocates (my translation from Catalan, but it was pretty close to English)
* Going to see the Cathedral and the Santa Maria de la Mar church in Barcelona (I will definitely be experiencing Another Bloody Church/Chapel/Cathedral syndrome by the end of this trip, but the Santa Maria in particular was quite impressive)
* Skipping the Picasso museum, which was temporarily free but had a line 4 across that we had to walk at least 100m, maybe 200, to find the end of.
* attending a performance of the Nutcracker ballet at the Barcelona Opera House (very impressive on the inside, Sydney Opera House still beats all others on the outside, visibility for some of the seating was terrible per traditional European opera houses but we didn't get the absolute cheapest seats so it could have been worse, and the ballet itself was really good)
DAY THREE
* day-tripping to Valencia, where we visited ABC - beautiful mix of Gothic and Baroque architecture and renaissance art, plus they had THE HOLY GRAIL (no but seriously, I have a photo and everything) (there may have been a lot of Monty Python jokes) - and then spent many, many hours in their Art & Science Park, consisting of an aquarium, a science museum like Canberra's Questacon, and a hemispheric Imax theatre, all with really crazy building designs. It was pretty nerdy.
* Also it was a really long day, day-tripping to Valencia from Barcelona is like doing Canberra from Sydney. 3 hour train each way. Our train there left at 7am and our train back left after 8pm. It was still worth it, even though I pulled a muscle in my leg.
* There was a tesla coil!
* Okay, enough nerding.
DAY FOUR (NYE)
* Food tour of Boqueria market (recommended to me by cookinguptales - which was much appreciated, it was a really good tour :D)
* Acquired brace for knee because calf muscle still totally busted after Valencia
* Went on an adventure trying to get to Montjuïc Castle up on the hill. First we went to the closest cable car station, which was closed. Then we caught a taxi to the other one in the opposite direction, which had a 2 hour wait. SERIOUSLY. 2 HOURS FOR THE CABLE CAR. So after that there were a series of buses and trains to get up the mountain.
* Touristed at the castle, which was nice enough but not the most impressive castle ever. It did have nice views of Barcelona, though, being one of the few areas of high ground.
* On the way down the mountain, went via the Olympic Park. My third Olympic Park! (I don't count the MCG in Melbourne, it doesn't really feel very Olympic anymore, but Beijing and Homebush Bay in Sydney do.) Rohan walked down. I was like, HELL NO, me and my busted leg are CATCHING THE BUS. Apparently I missed some gardens on the way down but my leg would not have thanked me.
* On that note our hostel in Barcelona was really good and conveniently located but I was slightly less appreciative after I screwed up my leg and had to hobble up and down 2 flights of stairs repeatedly.
* Went to a Strauss concert at Palau de la Música, which we booked mainly because it cost 20€ just to get inside and we could get tickets for about 30€, but I'm really glad we did. The building, despite not being by Gaudi for a change, was very unusual and impressive. There was stained glass set in the ceiling, gargoyles bursting out of the back of the stage, etc. The concert itself was also really good and fun to watch - least serious classical music concert I have ever been to. There was an anvil soloist. Yes, you read that correctly. He pantomimed hitting his thumb at one point. He also played solo castanets, which were pretty cool, and there were dancers on the stage for about half the numbers who popped cava near the end. We also got surprise Can Can song and what I am pretty sure is the Spanish answer to Auld Lang Syne.
* Even if we did have to get the hostel to book our tickets because Spanish Ticketek hates Australian credit cards. (We had to do that for La Sagrada Familia too.)
* Met up with sister, her boyfriend and their friend for NYE in Barcelona! Now confirmed as more impressive than NYE in Shanghai. Ate grapes on each bong of the clock as per tradition (really hard to do, actually, I still had 2 left at the end), drank a little cava, watched fireworks, was surrounded by a huge seething mass of people, many of whom spoke French.
DAY FIVE
* Leg was feeling slightly improved, but in any case I refused to miss La Sagrada Familia
* La Sagrada Familia was not ABC - aside from the fact I think it is a basilica, which does not start with a C, it is on such a whole different level to every other place of worship that I have been to. It is amazing on the inside, words fail me.
* The Gaudi Park - aka Park Guell - was less worth the cost in time, effort and money. We had to queue for ages to buy 8 euro tickets (see also: slow-moving lines in Spain), and the only timeslot left available for the restricted zone was 5.30, after it starts to get dark. They assured us when we bought the tickets it'd still be light, but it really wasn't. So we didn't see much. The free area was nice though.
* Also, other than tourist attractions, almost everything is closed on 1 Jan. We ate Subway for breakfast, Burger King for lunch, and a Catalan cuisine chain (which was really nice) for dinner.
* On that note Burger King in Barcelona appears to be like KFC in mainland China: EVERYWHERE. Haven't seen one yet in Granada though. Just a lot of Churrerias. Which sell Churros.
* Anyway we ate dinner early - for Spain - i.e. at 8pm - so we could catch our overnight train to Granada at 10
* I had 2 Korean girls in my carriage who were very nice elementary school teachers and spoke English. I was a little amused by the symmetry; on my first sleeper train in China I shared a carriage with 2 Korean girls, one of whom spoke fluent Japanese. (that was kind of hilarious. we were speaking in Japanese, she'd translate for her friend into Korean, my brother would come along, I'd translate into English, the train guy would come and she would translate for me from Japanese into Mandarin... it was a very multilingual carriage.)
DAY SIX - GRANADA
* Another pretty full-on day - after getting off our overnight train, we taxied our stuff to the Hostal Rodri where we are staying (VERY nice, super comfortable beds and helpful staff, inexpensive, totally recommend it) then went to eat churros
* I dunno if it is just Granada or if churros in Spain are not like churros in Australia, but churros here are kind of oily rather than doughnutty
* I don't get the Spanish diet, though. Where are the vegetables? And the fibre? There aren't a lot of supermarkets or convenience stores here but when I find them they do not have anything even remotely resembling a muesli bar. I have not seen muesli in any form since arriving here. Sometimes I see salads, but they are not big into non-starchy vegetables that are not tomatoes, either. What do vegetarians do, other than cook their own meals?
* After churros, we found the Conquistador Day parade. It is a somewhat controversial parade to celebrate the Catholics kicking the Moors out of Granada in the 1400s. This is where I encountered the communist-fascist chant-off as mentioned in my last post. Seriously, there were a group of people with swastika flags and another group of people with Soviet Union flags yelling things.
* I think we actually spent most of yesterday morning standing in a line. Well, to start with, our train ran over an hour late. Then when we went to collect our pre-booked tourist passes after the parade so we could get into the Alhambra, we waited about an hour for the 3 people in front of us to be served. You may think this is an exaggeration, but it really, really isn't.
* Ah, Spanish tourism. So efficient. As a tourist, you are given times when you are allowed to go into tourist attractions and often when you must leave and you have to stick to them quite strictly. For example, we had to be at the Passion Tower of La Sagrada Familia at 12.30, and the palace at the Alhambra at 3.30. Then you stand around in a queue for ages while they are really slow about selling tickets or letting you in or whatever.
* We did eventually get our passes, though. And the Alhambra was cool, especially the palace we had to queue a lot to get into. (We queued almost the entire 30 minute window we were allowed to enter. Not sure what the people behind us did. What happens if you don't get in during your allotted window because you were queuing the entire time?) Also we got to ring the bell on top of the fortress, which you can only do on Conquistador Day.
* I really regretted not wearing my hiking boots, though. The knee-high boots are generally comfortable, as well as more stylish, but OW COBBLE STONES. Also the sole is now coming slightly unstuck on one of my knee-high boots.
* I also regretted not wearing my parka. It was a lot colder than I had expected, especially with the frequent light rain. I feel deceived. Everyone told me it doesn't get that cold in the south of Spain. LIES. IT WAS COLDER THAN BARCELONA. (Barcelona was having an unseasonably warm winter, but still. SOUTHERN SPAIN.)
DAY SEVEN
* Had a good night's sleep and a chilled out morning. Woke up at 10, ate breakfast at 11 (my Spanish is getting better, I managed to entirely order breakfast in Spanish. It is a little unnecessary since most people here have at least some English, but whatever), then met up with my brother to do ABC, a cathedral this time. He did a baroque-style monastery in the morning, but eh.
* Religious groups really like big things. Like super-big cathedrals. Apparently today's ABC was the second-biggest cathedral in Spain. And it was pretty big. Also pretty ornate, being baroque. My favourite bit was the sheet music for gregorian chants, though.
* After the cathedral, we went to the Moorish quarter, which was very hilly and had nice views over the city. It also had very different architecture and a lot of teahouses and people selling much more Middle Eastern looking souvenirs (including "your name in Arabic"), being the Moorish quarter.
* Then we went to another ABC. This one was the royal chapel, though. Rather than the building itself, the more interesting parts of it were the caskets of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, who united Spain (... again, more or less) and the really old paintings and clothes and things in the treasury.
* And now I am chilling out until dinner! The end. It is 9pm but I'm in Spain, so dinner is basically 10.
* Tomorrow we are hiring a car and driving to Ronda. I look forward to chilling out some more, although cars aren't quite as good for that as trains and I do actually have to get out of bed for it.
... That got a lot longer than originally intended, probably obvious from the way the detail increased a lot towards the latter half of the post. Oh well. Probably no one read the whole thing, but kudos if you did. XD
Posted via Vita HD for iPad.
Aside from a day-trip to Valencia on the 30th, most of those days were in Barcelona - which doesn't really seem to consider itself part of Spain despite legal technicalities, hence more or less - but we have now moved onto Granada in Andalusia. Being rather far south, we did this on an overnight train.
So far, our trip has involved:
DAY ONE
* a walking tour of the Gothic area of Barcelona
* acquiring Spanish sims from Vodafone. Who would have thought I'd ever end up with a Vodafone. It has data, though, and my iPhone is now off contract, so I am experiencing the joy of a smartphone while overseas for the first time. Yay GPS! Yay email! Yay stuff to do while stuck in lines! (Thing I have learned about Spain: there are a lot of slow-moving lines.)
* a Catalan cooking class where we learned to make paella and sangria with ingredients from the Boqueria market
DAY TWO
* Gaudi's Casa Battlo
* getting lost on the way to observing more Gaudi and finding the Illustrious College of Advocates and, across the road, the Bank of Advocates (my translation from Catalan, but it was pretty close to English)
* Going to see the Cathedral and the Santa Maria de la Mar church in Barcelona (I will definitely be experiencing Another Bloody Church/Chapel/Cathedral syndrome by the end of this trip, but the Santa Maria in particular was quite impressive)
* Skipping the Picasso museum, which was temporarily free but had a line 4 across that we had to walk at least 100m, maybe 200, to find the end of.
* attending a performance of the Nutcracker ballet at the Barcelona Opera House (very impressive on the inside, Sydney Opera House still beats all others on the outside, visibility for some of the seating was terrible per traditional European opera houses but we didn't get the absolute cheapest seats so it could have been worse, and the ballet itself was really good)
DAY THREE
* day-tripping to Valencia, where we visited ABC - beautiful mix of Gothic and Baroque architecture and renaissance art, plus they had THE HOLY GRAIL (no but seriously, I have a photo and everything) (there may have been a lot of Monty Python jokes) - and then spent many, many hours in their Art & Science Park, consisting of an aquarium, a science museum like Canberra's Questacon, and a hemispheric Imax theatre, all with really crazy building designs. It was pretty nerdy.
* Also it was a really long day, day-tripping to Valencia from Barcelona is like doing Canberra from Sydney. 3 hour train each way. Our train there left at 7am and our train back left after 8pm. It was still worth it, even though I pulled a muscle in my leg.
* There was a tesla coil!
* Okay, enough nerding.
DAY FOUR (NYE)
* Food tour of Boqueria market (recommended to me by cookinguptales - which was much appreciated, it was a really good tour :D)
* Acquired brace for knee because calf muscle still totally busted after Valencia
* Went on an adventure trying to get to Montjuïc Castle up on the hill. First we went to the closest cable car station, which was closed. Then we caught a taxi to the other one in the opposite direction, which had a 2 hour wait. SERIOUSLY. 2 HOURS FOR THE CABLE CAR. So after that there were a series of buses and trains to get up the mountain.
* Touristed at the castle, which was nice enough but not the most impressive castle ever. It did have nice views of Barcelona, though, being one of the few areas of high ground.
* On the way down the mountain, went via the Olympic Park. My third Olympic Park! (I don't count the MCG in Melbourne, it doesn't really feel very Olympic anymore, but Beijing and Homebush Bay in Sydney do.) Rohan walked down. I was like, HELL NO, me and my busted leg are CATCHING THE BUS. Apparently I missed some gardens on the way down but my leg would not have thanked me.
* On that note our hostel in Barcelona was really good and conveniently located but I was slightly less appreciative after I screwed up my leg and had to hobble up and down 2 flights of stairs repeatedly.
* Went to a Strauss concert at Palau de la Música, which we booked mainly because it cost 20€ just to get inside and we could get tickets for about 30€, but I'm really glad we did. The building, despite not being by Gaudi for a change, was very unusual and impressive. There was stained glass set in the ceiling, gargoyles bursting out of the back of the stage, etc. The concert itself was also really good and fun to watch - least serious classical music concert I have ever been to. There was an anvil soloist. Yes, you read that correctly. He pantomimed hitting his thumb at one point. He also played solo castanets, which were pretty cool, and there were dancers on the stage for about half the numbers who popped cava near the end. We also got surprise Can Can song and what I am pretty sure is the Spanish answer to Auld Lang Syne.
* Even if we did have to get the hostel to book our tickets because Spanish Ticketek hates Australian credit cards. (We had to do that for La Sagrada Familia too.)
* Met up with sister, her boyfriend and their friend for NYE in Barcelona! Now confirmed as more impressive than NYE in Shanghai. Ate grapes on each bong of the clock as per tradition (really hard to do, actually, I still had 2 left at the end), drank a little cava, watched fireworks, was surrounded by a huge seething mass of people, many of whom spoke French.
DAY FIVE
* Leg was feeling slightly improved, but in any case I refused to miss La Sagrada Familia
* La Sagrada Familia was not ABC - aside from the fact I think it is a basilica, which does not start with a C, it is on such a whole different level to every other place of worship that I have been to. It is amazing on the inside, words fail me.
* The Gaudi Park - aka Park Guell - was less worth the cost in time, effort and money. We had to queue for ages to buy 8 euro tickets (see also: slow-moving lines in Spain), and the only timeslot left available for the restricted zone was 5.30, after it starts to get dark. They assured us when we bought the tickets it'd still be light, but it really wasn't. So we didn't see much. The free area was nice though.
* Also, other than tourist attractions, almost everything is closed on 1 Jan. We ate Subway for breakfast, Burger King for lunch, and a Catalan cuisine chain (which was really nice) for dinner.
* On that note Burger King in Barcelona appears to be like KFC in mainland China: EVERYWHERE. Haven't seen one yet in Granada though. Just a lot of Churrerias. Which sell Churros.
* Anyway we ate dinner early - for Spain - i.e. at 8pm - so we could catch our overnight train to Granada at 10
* I had 2 Korean girls in my carriage who were very nice elementary school teachers and spoke English. I was a little amused by the symmetry; on my first sleeper train in China I shared a carriage with 2 Korean girls, one of whom spoke fluent Japanese. (that was kind of hilarious. we were speaking in Japanese, she'd translate for her friend into Korean, my brother would come along, I'd translate into English, the train guy would come and she would translate for me from Japanese into Mandarin... it was a very multilingual carriage.)
DAY SIX - GRANADA
* Another pretty full-on day - after getting off our overnight train, we taxied our stuff to the Hostal Rodri where we are staying (VERY nice, super comfortable beds and helpful staff, inexpensive, totally recommend it) then went to eat churros
* I dunno if it is just Granada or if churros in Spain are not like churros in Australia, but churros here are kind of oily rather than doughnutty
* I don't get the Spanish diet, though. Where are the vegetables? And the fibre? There aren't a lot of supermarkets or convenience stores here but when I find them they do not have anything even remotely resembling a muesli bar. I have not seen muesli in any form since arriving here. Sometimes I see salads, but they are not big into non-starchy vegetables that are not tomatoes, either. What do vegetarians do, other than cook their own meals?
* After churros, we found the Conquistador Day parade. It is a somewhat controversial parade to celebrate the Catholics kicking the Moors out of Granada in the 1400s. This is where I encountered the communist-fascist chant-off as mentioned in my last post. Seriously, there were a group of people with swastika flags and another group of people with Soviet Union flags yelling things.
* I think we actually spent most of yesterday morning standing in a line. Well, to start with, our train ran over an hour late. Then when we went to collect our pre-booked tourist passes after the parade so we could get into the Alhambra, we waited about an hour for the 3 people in front of us to be served. You may think this is an exaggeration, but it really, really isn't.
* Ah, Spanish tourism. So efficient. As a tourist, you are given times when you are allowed to go into tourist attractions and often when you must leave and you have to stick to them quite strictly. For example, we had to be at the Passion Tower of La Sagrada Familia at 12.30, and the palace at the Alhambra at 3.30. Then you stand around in a queue for ages while they are really slow about selling tickets or letting you in or whatever.
* We did eventually get our passes, though. And the Alhambra was cool, especially the palace we had to queue a lot to get into. (We queued almost the entire 30 minute window we were allowed to enter. Not sure what the people behind us did. What happens if you don't get in during your allotted window because you were queuing the entire time?) Also we got to ring the bell on top of the fortress, which you can only do on Conquistador Day.
* I really regretted not wearing my hiking boots, though. The knee-high boots are generally comfortable, as well as more stylish, but OW COBBLE STONES. Also the sole is now coming slightly unstuck on one of my knee-high boots.
* I also regretted not wearing my parka. It was a lot colder than I had expected, especially with the frequent light rain. I feel deceived. Everyone told me it doesn't get that cold in the south of Spain. LIES. IT WAS COLDER THAN BARCELONA. (Barcelona was having an unseasonably warm winter, but still. SOUTHERN SPAIN.)
DAY SEVEN
* Had a good night's sleep and a chilled out morning. Woke up at 10, ate breakfast at 11 (my Spanish is getting better, I managed to entirely order breakfast in Spanish. It is a little unnecessary since most people here have at least some English, but whatever), then met up with my brother to do ABC, a cathedral this time. He did a baroque-style monastery in the morning, but eh.
* Religious groups really like big things. Like super-big cathedrals. Apparently today's ABC was the second-biggest cathedral in Spain. And it was pretty big. Also pretty ornate, being baroque. My favourite bit was the sheet music for gregorian chants, though.
* After the cathedral, we went to the Moorish quarter, which was very hilly and had nice views over the city. It also had very different architecture and a lot of teahouses and people selling much more Middle Eastern looking souvenirs (including "your name in Arabic"), being the Moorish quarter.
* Then we went to another ABC. This one was the royal chapel, though. Rather than the building itself, the more interesting parts of it were the caskets of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, who united Spain (... again, more or less) and the really old paintings and clothes and things in the treasury.
* And now I am chilling out until dinner! The end. It is 9pm but I'm in Spain, so dinner is basically 10.
* Tomorrow we are hiring a car and driving to Ronda. I look forward to chilling out some more, although cars aren't quite as good for that as trains and I do actually have to get out of bed for it.
... That got a lot longer than originally intended, probably obvious from the way the detail increased a lot towards the latter half of the post. Oh well. Probably no one read the whole thing, but kudos if you did. XD
Posted via Vita HD for iPad.