Madrid-Sevilla-Granada-Barcelona-Paris

My trip to Spain/Paris was amazing. There's so much to tell. Nora and I took a flight from London to Madrid on 4 April, met Jane at the airport. After some confusion on the metro and with the assistance of an old Spanish lady who became very invested in helping us find the right street, we met our couchsurfing host, Xavier, who spoke fluent English, and who we all agreed was super-sexy. Another couchsurfer, Demetrio, took us into town, where we had our first of many tortillas (slices of cooked egg, potato, and onion inside a small baguette). I also had some delicious pistachio gelato, which was all it took for me to count the day a complete success. We then proceeded to Retiro Park, one of the largest well-kept city green spaces I've seen. We wandered a bit, and laid on the grass and chilled for a bit. I was quite amused by the large quantity of teenagers/20+ couples making out on the lawn. As far as I can tell, Western Europe (excluding the British Isles) is into public displays of affection like WOAH.

After spending a while in the park, Demetrio left to go back to Xavier's, and we three girls spent some more time wandering about the streets. After a few hours and some delicious pizza for dinner, we too headed back to the apartment, where we had some late night laughs with the assortment of people we found there. Demetrio got more and more bizarre as the night progressed, in a way that was usually merely random and hilarious, but sometimes bordered on sexist. We were all thoroughly weirded out when he finally asked to take a picture of us "in our natural state" once we had changed into our nighties.

Next morning, we bought some clementines and pistachios to sustain us on our wanderings, and headed off to the centre of town, where we saw a ridiculous number of statue people lining the streets, and made our way to the Palacio Real of Madrid. We didn't feel the need to go in, since we wanted to get to the Reina Sofía, the art museum where Picasso's La Guernica is housed, but we did see a very cool old man playing Für Elise on partially filled wine glasses. At the Reina Sofía, I wasn't able to get much into the modern artwork in the other areas (since, as we all know, I'm neither an art person nor a museum person, in general), but La Guernica was very impressive, even if it was surrounded by an enormous crowd and electronic wires that beeped obnoxiously when you got too close. I also enjoyed much of the other Picasso's they had on display, but soon, my feet were getting sore from standing still so much, and that is always the point where my whiny child kicks in and forces me to vacate the premises.

After the museum, the warm weather steered us back to the park, where we wandered more and eventually ended up at the lake. There, we watched a pair of super-sexy flamenco dancers busking on the walkway, and somehow ended up with a huge bagful of gummy candies, on a rowboat on the lake. Nora and I haphazardly steered us about the lake, and we managed to keep the awkward collisions with other rowers to less than ten. :) It was really relaxing, and the water felt like condensed heaven on my feet. After that, we ate dinner (Jane and I had cheese, banana, sugar, and cinnamon sandwiches, which sound weird but were SO DELICIOUS), and then went to a sevillana/flamenco bar/restaurant/club that we thought would be cheap. There was no cover fee, and there were couples of all ages getting their sexy on on the dance floor. So far, so good. Little did we know that the sangria (red wine with fruit juice squeezed in) we ordered would end up costing an Unbelievable Price Which Shall Not Be Named Because It's Too Depressing. Suffice it to say, that a damper was successfully put on our evening, and we didn't stay very long at the bar before leaving with our tails between our legs.

Sunday morning, we headed for Madrid's fleamarket, where we spent a few hours wandering around clothing, crafts, and jewellry stalls. Afterwards, we walked over to what my guidebook told us was the old Jewish Quarter, but now seems to have been converted into the bellydancing stores/cheap kebaps/delicious Indian food Quarter. Then... we once again found ourselves gravitating towards Park Retiro, where I made myself a daisy crown and we frolicked in the greenery like the fairies we are at heart.

That evening, we went to a cheap flamenco show that our couchsurfing host had recommended to us, which turned out to be the experience we were looking for the previous night, but failed to get. There were three dancers, a singer, a guitarist, and a guy keeping time by drumbeat. The experience can truly only be described as orgasmic. The dancing was so intense, melancholy, fierce, seductive, and euphoric, all at the same time. It made me want to drop out of college and spend the next ten years of my life in Spain, learning how to dance.

The next morning/afternoon, Jane and I said goodbye to Nora, and we all left Madrid slightly sunburned, since the weather was so lovely, and since it took us a ridiculous amount of time to find some sunscreen for less than €20. Extremely pertinent sidenote: the Madrid train station that Jane and I departed from contains a miniature rainforest. No joke. The humidity was awful.

And with that, Jane and I were off to Sevilla. Sadly, the lovely weather we had in Madrid was not to last. It was raining when we got to the train station, and it didn't stop for the next 2-3 days (with the exception of short sunny intervals). We arrived in the evening, and didn't do much but share some vegetable paella for dinner, wander around some of the tiny sidestreets, and browse a few insanely expensive flamenco outfit stores.

The next morning, it was raining even harder. We gathered our spirits, and with me wrapped tightly in my rain jacket and Jane making the best of her cheap umbrella, we braved the weather to find our way to Feria, the reason why Sevilla made it onto our itinerary in the first place. We got there early, and it was pretty dead. By this time, we were both very wet and cold, and ended up spotting a tent with gaggles of teenage girls in traditional dress dancing sevillanas with each other. Here, we rested for nearly an hour, before once again convincing ourselves to go out in the cold and make it back to our hostel. We got warm again, made ourselves some food and coffee in the hostel kitchen, and huddled in our room talking for the remainder of the day. It was honestly too nasty outside to do anything else. Later that night, I think we went back to Feria to see if it would be more exciting, but aside from seeing a huge number of beautiful women dressed in beautiful flamenco outfits walking the streets, it was a bit of a disappointment. The tents seemed to be rented out by individual parties, and since we did not belong to any of these parties, we were unable to enter. Normally, there would be daily parades and dancing in the streets, but because of the rain, neither of these took place any of the days we were there.

The next day, we went to the Sevilla cathedral and saw Christopher Columbus's grave. The cathedral was impressive, but it pales in comparison with the Alcázar (an old Moorish fort expanded into a palace for the Christian monarchy), which we went to next. The lacework designs on the interior were amazing, but what really impressed me were the elaborate gardens. We must have wandered around for over an hour; each section of the gardens looked completely different. One part was a maze of shrubbery nearly as tall as I am; another area was filled with headless statues and peahens wandering around; and another area was a passageway overhung with green vines and more roses than I've ever seen before. This was definitely my favorite part of Sevilla, and it more than made up for the disappointment of Feria.

My memory is a little shoddy on this part of the trip (probably because we spent so much time indoors because of the rain, drinking coffee, eating Haribo gummies, and having quality Jane & Pam time), but as far as I can remember, that was all we did that day. We kept on planning on going out to the bars and/or clubs, but were never able to motivate ourselves to go back out into the rain.

The next morning was our last day in Sevilla. We checked out the Plaza España, which was beautiful with it's fountains, saw the bullfighting ring from the outside, did a little bit of wandering through more narrow sidestreets, and were off to the train station for our trip to Granada. On the way to Granada, we each brainstormed a list of things to do before we die, which serious activity was interrupted at one point by a "GOAT ALERT!": approximately 100 goats were clustered together at the side of the rail tracks, taking turns jumping a ravine (presumably to get away from the speeding train). I've never seen so many goats before in my life.

Highlights from my list of things to do before I die:
-Climb a mountain on every continent.
-Get a tattoo that will be awkward to explain to my (potential) children/grandchildren.
-Shave my head at least once.
-Become a certified skydiving instructor.
-Spend around five years of my life in Spain, learning Spanish and Flamenco.

Et cetera.

We arrived in Granada after dark, hungry, and without a map, but managed to arrive at our hostel safely after only a bit of aimless wandering and several confused calls to the hostel reception man, who spoke no English whatsoever (later, we found out that he spoke excellent French, but for now we'll focus on the fact that my high school Spanish served me well enough to navigate unfamiliar streets with directions that I could barely hear over the phone. I was proud of myself.) Both of us still starving but completely unwilling to leave the hostel, we discovered the cute old Spanish man's French capacity in time to explain that we needed a huge vegetarian pizza delivered to the hostel STAT. We then retreated to our room for the night, and ate pizza while watching a combo of shoddy pop music videos and Arnold Schwarzenegger on our newfound luxury: television.

The next morning, we packed up our things, and dragged our bags through the city and up an enormous hill to find our place of lodging for the next night, a guesthouse on the outskirts of the city with a breathtaking view of the Alhambra on a neighboring hilltop. On the way to the guesthouse, we had another important alert: kitties! Of course, there seem to be more kitties on the loose in Spain in general than in the other places I've been, but Granada beats the pants off them all. There were at least ten cats down in small valley, sunbathing by a creek. Of course, this was a bigger deal for Jane than for me, as those of you who know Jane will no doubt have surmised, but still, it was hella cute. We took lots of pictures.

The guesthouse promised to be just what we were looking for: relaxed atmosphere, amazing view, good food, and... a puppy. A very cute baby bulldog puppy, who was very spastic and likes to poop on the floor and bite dangly things, like my earrings. I had some good quality snuggling time with him, which was nice. I miss my dog so much!

Anyway, more about the hostel later. It was still really cold and a little drizzly, but Jane and I had tickets for the Alhambra gardens that day (the interior of the Alhambra, unfortunately, was booked up). The gardens were beautiful, and we did our best to give them a thorough tour, but eventually even our pashminas wrapped around us (Virgin Mary style) couldn't keep us warm, and we departed to get some café con leche and Manchego cheese tapas. After that, we headed back to the hostel, where I had more snuggle time with said puppy before lasagna was served for dinner. Dinner was excellent, the company was varied and fun, and after dinner they put on some music and we all got up and started dancing. That was all fine and dandy, up until about 2 in the morning. No one was taking care of the puppy, and it quickly became apparent to me that all the loud noise was making him really neurotic, so I decided to go sit out on the porch with him and let him sleep on my lap, wrapped up in my scarf. After a while, Jane and I decided to go to bed, and since I didn't see anyone else willing to hold the sleeping dog, I took him to bed with me, where he promptly peed on my sheets. By this time, I was already getting annoyed, but I stripped the sheets and tried to go to sleep anyway. This proved ineffectual for several reasons: 1) The puppy would not stop wiggling around and attempting to chew on various parts of my face; 2) The puppy's breath smelled like ripe urine; and 3) The club jams in the dining room continued at a deafening volume until 7 in the morning. This was not the relaxed stay that Jane and I were looking for. We had been planning on getting up at 7 to go wait in line for tickets to the Alhambra, but when 7 rolled around, neither of us had gotten any sleep, and both of us were rather grumpy. We elected to sleep in instead, skip the Alhambra, and wander around El Albayzín (Granada's preserved historical district, which retains the narrow streets and architecture from the Moorish period). It would have been nice to stay another day in Granada and see more of the city, as well as the Alhambra, but the only hostel available was the self-same guesthouse of the previous night, and nothing could induce me to stay there again, puppy or no puppy. We left Granada around 8 pm on a 10-hour overnight train to Barcelona.

Barcelona was still a little chilly, but sunny, and after dropping off our bags at our hostel, we wandered around a bit, and eventually ended up at La Sagrada Familia, the Catholic church designed in the 1880s by Antoni Gaudí, which isn't scheduled to be completed until 2026. The cranes amongst the spires took away from the majesty, but it was still really cool to see. We spent a while going up and down snail-spiral staircases, and it was really interesting to see a modern interpretation of the Church, rather than the pre-Victorian ones that I'm used to.

Sightseeing is hard work, so we treated ourselves to some delicious gelato and what ended up being some quite disgusting Japanese food. By that time, the day was turning into evening, so we elected to go back to the hostel and try to track down our elusive couchsurfing host for the next two days, and then get to bed early to recover from our (un)restful night on the train.

The next morning, we headed to Las Ramblas, the main drag in Barcelona, and walked down towards La Boquería, the large fruit-vegetable-and-other-edibles market. On the way, we passed more statue people (there for the tourists, of course), and saw the animal market on Las Ramblas, where all manner of small animals (bunnies, birds, turkeys, chickens, mice, turtles...) are sold. The animals were cute, but I felt sorry for them; so many of them were so clearly desperate to get out of their tiny cages, in which they no doubt would be kept couped up in all day. I don't approve.

The food market, however, was very entertaining; we got some delicious fresh blackberry juice and gourmet chocolates. We then did some window-shopping, wandered through the old Gothic quarter, and saw the famously burgundy Arc de Triomf, which was less burgundy than I wanted it to be, but still cool. Even though the day was cool, we bravely made our way to the beach, but it was too windy and chilly to even think about taking a dip. We ended up just walking for a bit and collecting cool shells, and then heading back to town to meet up with Paul, our couchsurfing host. He was very quiet, but very accomodating, and after talking a bit and dropping our bags, we went out in search of food, with the plan of meeting him at 11:00 to go to his favorite jazz club in the area, Jamboree. After dinner and more gelato, Jane and I wandered through what we had been told was the gay district of Barcelona, in search of a good bar, but were unsuccessful, for one of two possible reasons: 1) The internet lied to us; 2) 10:00 on a Monday night is not a popular time for partying in Barcelona. Regardless, we met up with Paul at the jazz club, which was both cheap and excellent. I had trouble getting into it at first, but either it got better later on, or I began to understand it more; either way, I ended up wanting it to go on forever. After the show, we were homeward bound.

Tuesday morning we hiked up towards the Park Güell, another of Gaudí's creations. The mosaic bench plaza was particularly impressive. Since we had gotten a late start, we didn't stay for very long, but just did a quick tour. Afterwards, Jane and I split up; since the day was so much nicer than before, I was determined to get back to the beach, and Jane was in the mood for some more wandering about the centre of town. This time, I went to the nudist beach a little further out of the city, where, I am sorry to say, the only naked people I spotted were overweight old men. The water was still too cold to swim, but I had a lovely, relaxing time sunbathing, and was amused by the two offers for massages that I got by Asian women marketing their skills (I presume).

When I got back to town, Jane and I found each other amidst a terrifying flurry of pigeons, got a bite to eat, and headed up to Montjuïc (translated from Catalan as either Hill of the Jews, or Hill of Jupiter). From there, we got an amazing view of the city, and saw the outside of the old Olympic stadium. We had intended to go to the Botanical Gardens on the hilltop, but they were closed by the time we arrived. After a delicious gourmet vegetarian dinner at an organic restaurant Jane found, we did a bit of bar-hopping, and had what I will discreetly refer to as a shit-ton of sangria. We slept well that night, and got up feeling slightly ill to say farewell to Paul and catch a bus to the airport for our flight to Paris.

Two bus rides and a rocky flight later, I arrived in Paris more than a little nauseous. After a baguette and some Orangina to quiet my stomach, we found our host in Paris, who was perfectly nice, but didn't seem to understand what Jane and I meant when we said we didn't feel well and just wanted to eat, get our laundry done, and relax for the rest of the night. His interpretation of "getting a quick bite to eat" was to take us on an extended train ride to the centre of town, where we wandered a bit before finding a shitty and expensive Italian place. Jane was starving, but by this time I was too nauseous to eat anything but a few crunchy breadsticks, so I made awkward conversation in equally awkward English (our host spoke English well, but his friend that soon joined us spoke it very painfully). I don't mean to jilt him for not being fluent in my native tongue; it's just that it make an awkward conversation even more awkward. The night ended with Jane developing a migraine, and us finally convincing Anthony (our host) that we needed to go back to his place and rest. Even then, he played club jams on the radio for about an hour before realizing that Jane was actually sick, and that all we needed was to go to bed. Finally, sleep.

The next morning, we felt much better, and with Anthony gone for work, Jane and I decided that it would be better to excuse ourselves from the situation as gracefully as possible, and get a hostel in the centre of town. Anthony clearly had quite extensive plans to take us around Paris, including a strenuous bike ride around Montmartre, that we honestly didn't have the energy for. Getting a hostel would allow us to explore Paris the relaxing way that we wanted to. With that decided, we went into town, had some crêpes for breakfast, took a walk along the Seine, and went into the Cathédrale Notre Dame (which was free), but didn't go up to the belltowers (which weren't free). We then went to Shakespeare and Company, one of the best bookstores I've ever been to, and wandered through the Latin district, where we had some delicious vegetable couscous for lunch. From there, Jane showed me around the outside of the Louvre and its adjoining park, but we didn't go in (see aforementioned statement that I am not a museum person). After all this, we went back to Anthony's apartment to tell him that we were still feeling sick, and didn't want to be an inconvenience to him. After making our excuses, we headed back to town and checked into our hostel, where we had a private room, thank the lord. After some cheap and delicious Indian food for dinner, we attempted to party it up in the Paris gay quarter, but were again unsuccessful. We found a few places that looked like they would have been more hopping on other nights, but Thursday is apparently not a big party night. We did, however, have some very entertaining conversation with some older lesbians who told us all the best places to go on Friday. Sadly, I was feeling too tired to go out on Friday, and Jane was too tired on Saturday, so we didn't end up partying too much.

Friday morning, we went to the Sexodrome, Paris' biggest sex store, and walked up to the top of Montmartre, making a short pit stop in Cafe des 2 Moulins, the coffee shop where Amélie was filmed. At the top, Jane was very patient while I browsed the many caricaturists at the plaza, and we then went into La Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart), which I'm afraid would have been far more impressive if I hadn't seen the Cathédrale Notre Dame first. We meandered through a garden on our way down, and I had just enough time to snap a picture of the carousel from Amélie before we were surrounded by 4-5 men trying to hit on us and scam us by selling us their bracelets at the same time. We had to make a run for it, and that was the last I saw of Montmartre. We spent some time in what seemed to be the fabric/knitting/bellydancing district of Paris--clearly designed explicitly with me and Jane in mind. I could have spent hours browsing the elaborate and shiny fabrics, were it not for the overly aggressive salespeople. As it was, we probably spent under an hour in the district, before going back to town, finding Jane's saxophonist-busker-friend, and getting more Indian food for dinner.

Saturday, transfered to a new hostel, which felt strangely like a hotel but was only €20 each for the night. Then, we went to Paris' huge fleamarket, which was amazing, once we got past the several layers of fake designer clothes and D&G watches. We spent nearly two hours browsing the antique section of the market, and came out feeling happily dusty, with some semi-old French stamp collections. After that, I think we went back to the Latin quarter, and I tried lavender-flavored gelato, which tasted more artificial than I would have liked. Dinner that night, as far as I remember, consisted of nothing more than a few cookies and quite a few french fries from a nearby kebap stand.

Sunday morning, we checked out, and made our way to the Cimetière du Père Lachaise with some cheap lipstick, to kiss Oscar Wilde's grave. I was expecting there to be quite a few red kisses already there, but I was shocked by the shear quantity. The tombstone and sculpture were almost completely covered with lipstick marks. Jane and I had trouble finding a bare place to plant our own kisses, but our mission was soon accomplished, and we left the lipstick there for others of a similar mind. After my final crêpe (delicious applesauce), Jane and I parted at the metro, Jane towards art-museum-land, and I towards the international bus station, to get my bus back to London.

The end. Many congratulations to anyone who has managed to make it this far. Later, there will be pictures, but I don't have the energy right now.