Island hopping to Turkey

A view in Syros

After Naxos, we took a ferry to Kos via Syros. The latter turned out to be quite dead - we arrived during siesta time and everything didn't really open in the afternoon, 'cos it is wednesday', according to the waitress at the bar we decided to spend our afternoon in! A walk around the town didn't reveal much else and by the 10:30pm ferry time, which eventuated at 11:45pm, we were ready to leave!

The overnight ferry was huge, a cruise liner in size and it was filled with sleeping bodies, particularly a large contingent of young guys in uniform off to do their compulsory service. Our allotted seats had been taken by people stretching out so three of us ended up sleeping on the floor for the eight or so hours of our journey - it wasn't the best sleep, but our necks got over it the next day!

Once we arrived in Kos, we took a taxi out to our little beach town, Mastichari, and the girls settled in for another few hours of sleep while I went for a wander. It was a little peninsula of beach town really, with the pointed end of land filled with accommodation, restaurants and convenience stores. I took the girls back to a restaurant I liked for breakfast as the sky clouded over, the waiter's dog decided he liked Sibel and spent the next two hours lying in amusing positions under her chair - the waiter's response, 'of course he would choose this table, he's not silly....'

Max!

Because we were keeping his dog occupied (and not roaming the streets and being run over like usual), he encouraged us to stay at the restaurant, bringing us a pack of cards, some drinks (alcohol before 12?!) and we left after about four hours with breakfast and lunch under our waistbands - but at least the sun was out! It is a very pretty little area, and the sunsets on the beach were quite a treat.

Sunset on Kos beach (taken from our seat at the restaurant!)

Pretty church in Kos town

The next few days were taken up with time on the beach, sampling the restaurants around, my walks to explore the coastline with Colleen and a night out where we ended up at a popular little local's bar. Our travel agent in Ios told us we had to collect tickets for the next ferry from the office in Kos, so one day we ventured in only to be told we couldn't collect our tickets (angriness), and had a quick look around the town which turned out to be particularly tourist centric to the extent that the markets had the dali mosaic trinkets from spain. We were unsuspectingly cajoled into a juice shop by a lady who was ..... very strange and made some interesting comments about Greek men before giving us 'gifts' that were so outrageously phallic that we paid our bill and cut and run without them!


On leaving, we had a pretty hilarious trip on the local bus. The driver wasn't in his uniform, was ten minutes late, spoke on his phone for most of the trip, sms'd, ran some pretty bad red lights, struggled with control of the wheel as he opened his bag of breakfast and even stopped at the local building supplies store to pick up ten bags of fertilizer! It was pretty amusing, especially  when the lady in the front seat started berating him for every misstep! We hopped on a quick ferry to Bodrum, Turkey and were met at the other side by Sibel and Selen's aunt, Hale, who has a time share holiday house here.

Bodrum port is beautiful, the marina is crammed full of expensive boats, it took us fifteen minutes of idling to wait for a traffic jam of boats to clear like a logic puzzle; one moves this way so another can get out of the way of a third, enabling the fourth to duck through, etc! There is a castle right on the waterfront and a crazy hillside filled with white houses, my photos don't do it justice, google images 'bodrum' for some better ones. Bodrum is a very well known holiday location in Turkey and I can see why, if I could get around without knowing Turkish, I would definitely come back.

Bodrum marina

We relaxed by the pool for the first afternoon, and ate an amazing home cooked dinner of Hale's, with eggplant and zucchini sweet dolmas (stuffed with rice and pine nuts), pasta with a lovely ragout sauce, sweetened beans, yoghurt with dill and a great salad - yum!

The next day we headed into the town of Bodrum to have a look around. Tuesday is market day, so the place was quite full. It is obviously a tourist town, with strips of well known shops and a lot of restaurants and cafes. We had a good day wandering around and enjoying the area and had a few drinks at a local bar with an amusing host, Sha-hin (pronounced as shine apparently!) and danced until we had to leave to catch the last bus home.

Not too shabby a bar location for a night of drinks and dancing!

I was up early the next day and wanted to go for a walk, so set off from the holiday house down the street - in a general direction that I hoped was the beach! I found it and it was really beautiful, with all sorts of hotels and resorts lining the water, and pontoons of beach chairs snaking out from the sand. A local dog decided to chaperone my walk along the waterfront, coming to sit beside me when I stopped and trotting along in front or behind as I strolled!

Nice view of the coast!

The water here is impossibly even clearer than in the Greek islands, with pebble beaches providing no murkiness, I could see the fronds of seagrass moving back and forth with the waves as I took in the view back to Torba. I came back with the girls for a nice lunch in the area and then returned to pack up for the next leg of our trip before enjoying another of Hale's dinners - home-made falafel is amazing!






From Bodrum we took an overnight bus (no toilet, only toilet stops and dirt roads in many places (construction, I hope!)) to Istanbul. It... wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been and we all got varying amounts of sleep - although, I was quite impressed with our bus 'hostie' who served drinks and biscuits in a bow tie and managed to hold onto the cart most of the time through all the bumps and jolts!

On arrival in Istanbul and after transferring to another bus, we trekked up the hill to Sibel and Selen's gorgeous little apartment that their parents own, with their grandma one floor above, aunt and uncle on the top with an amazing view of Istanbul and a cousin and her husband below - it's quite a family affair! After such little sleep we didn't feel like doing much, so we just went to the supermarket, watched a movie and then headed down to the local market to pick up veg for the delicious dolmades we were to make.

We cored out white zucchini, long eggplants and tomatoes and filled them all with a special rice mixture that had brilliant fresh herbs of parsley, mint and dill and many other ingredients. These were boiled standing upright until the rice was cooked, yum! Another recipe favourite! It is definitely a communal dish though, coring forty pieces or so of eggplant and zucchini could get pretty repetitive if you were on your own!

People everywhere and the blue mosque in the background!

The next day Sibel took Colleen and I out to see the big blue mosque and Hagia Sofia, an ex-Christian church, then mosque, and now a museum. But the line for the latter was huge and the blue mosque was shut for three hours with Friday prayers, so we continued on to the grand bazaar, which was incredible. We spent a few hours in there looking at ceramics, jewellery, souvenirs and bags. It is a busy market but it is so well set out with really wide aisles that it's not nearly as stressful an experience as Chatuchak market in Bangkok is.

Inside the grand bazaar

Not too busy in the grand bazaar!

We made it to the mosques the next day, after visiting the spice market and being overwhelmed at the varied choices of Turkish delight, spices and tea. I bought a few pieces to have later and the smell they pick up from neighboring spices and the aroma of the market was just incredible - such an imagery evoking smell! Hagia Sofia was really beautiful and worth the entry for anyone heading to Istanbul, the architecture is pretty spectacular.

Inside Hagia Sophia

We headed back to the Asian side of Istanbul (they have an 'Asian' continent and European continent sides of the city separated by the Bosphorous river) and walked up in the direction of Taksim Square, had dinner and a drink and caught the funicular and then ferry back to the apartment.

View of Istanbul across the Bosphorous from Sibel and Selen's Aunt and Uncle's house

The Sunday fresh food market was our next stop, but they were only just setting up as we arrived because the nearby school was hosting exams and the market stalls are too noisy to have operational nearby so they were shut down until the exam finished! We bought lots of fresh food and went to Sibel's Aunt's favourite pastry man for the vital ingredient for Sibel's spinach borek, which was incredibly tasty - another recipe to bring home! We were joined by Mandy as we finished our late lunch, who is travelling on her way home after a uni exchange in Canada, and then met up with another two pegs'ers, Kathryn and Greg, who were on their final stop of their Europe exploration, for a lovely kebab dinner near Taksim square.

Our last day was spent on a nice shopping area and we had manti for lunch, little turkish ravioli I guess, topped with natural yoghurt and a spicy sauce and then Selen made her favourite kofte's for dinner. We certainly weren't going hungry this trip - home-made food was such a treat after three months of eating out!

Colleen and I headed off for the airport the next day, leaving plenty of time for the unpredictable Istanbul traffic - Colleen headed back to Aus and I to London to see Lauren, Sam and Jess before returning home!

Summer Lovin in the isle of Grease

We flew into Athens from Paris, fed up with rude frenchmen (and women!) and received a really friendly welcome to Greece, with helpful staff and tourist info in the airport. We were even able to check our luggage early (go agean airlines and their patient staff for checking us and our multiple bags in eight hours before our flight!). Once we got to the city we made our way to the Acropolis and had a walk around the ruins and up to the top of the hill, it was a hot day but the ruins were a pretty amazing sight when you think of how old they are. Although, there is not much that is original left, most things are in the process of being reconstructed or have had casts made to replace the original piece which is now in a museum.






We got out of the heat and had a long lunch at a nice restaurant instead of trying to cram any more ancient sites in before catching the bus back to the airport. The outer city of Athens was more run down than I expected, with crumbling inner city buildings. There seemed to be police everywhere and the city very quickly turned to dusty and sparse paddocks as we got to the airport; interestingly though, there was a huuuge ikea, two separate buildings worth next to the airport which looked very new! We flew out to Santorini next and were met at the airport by someone from our hostel - most of the accommodation providers on the various islands offer free airport and port transfers, it makes things very easy!

We stayed in a quieter area of Santorini called Parissa Beach, it has a range of budget accommodation, a line of restaurants along the black pebbly beach and that's about it!

We hired a car for a day (cheaper and much more convenient than the bus, but santorini roads are a recipe for a headache!). We went first to Fira, a heavily tourist area with lots of overpriced shops and over five hundred steps to where to cruise ships dock. We also visited Oia, where the stereotypical pictures of Santorini are taken, and wandered the cool streets and waited for the sun to set. The view from Oia (Eeeea) is pretty incredible, and our sunset didn't disappoint, even with the hordes of tourists - this is definitely somewhere to come in the low season, I could only imagine what it would be like in the high season.







Apart from that we had some time on the beach, some great Greek food at the restaurants (including 2euro gyros pitas or lunch, yum!) and cheap cocktails at the hostel.

One of the hostel guys was trying to get fit again so he took us up a nearby mountain to the remains of the ancient city of Thira, there wasn't too much to see, but we had a nice view! It was a nice hike, Selen even continued up another hill to an old monastery.






From Santorini, our next stop was Ios by ferry. Ios is party central, with our hostel's guests being a handful of very friendly twenty-something aussies talking about how drunk they were last night, which article of clothing or wallet or room key they or their friend lost the previous night and how drunk they are intending on being tonight! An interesting bunch! Our hostel manager, George, is so laid back, he didnt ask for payment until we offered it as we left, and has an open bar policy that extends to quite a few bottles of spirits on display and a decent fridge of beer - another interesting and extremely nice guy. Apparently his catch phrase is, 'dont worry about it' (think Greek accent), 'I make my money in the high season,.. now doesn't matter'..!

We ate our obligatory Thai dinner at George's sister's restaurant in town, where the new waiter was an eighteen year old mechanic from Bristol who had run out of money during his travels and was earning enough for rent and his night's worth of drinks (we knew his life story before we had ordered!), soaked up he atmosphere at George's open bar alongside the pool (George wasn't there, he'd entrusted the 'responsibility' of the bar duties to Simon, a 27year old Melbourne accountant who had lost two jumpers in the four nights he'd been there, most of which were total write offs... Then we headed to 'Ali baba's', a bar whose approach to RSA would have had it banned in Aus! Basically, a english guy had set up a bar and restaurant here with the brilliant idea of serving large cocktails to people, complete with 50cm long straws, in a fishbowl.... Each fishbowl probably held two litres of liquid and contained a pretty substantial amount of liquor, one was enough for four people. The guy was doing so well he was shutting down his restaurant to expand the bar, I bet the neighbors are impressed! The sandwichboard on the road advertises the fishbowl as 'the most cost-effective way to start your night!' After a fill of cocktails, the groups head to the main town square which is full of bars and clubs to continue the party until the next morning. I can't believe how people back up night after night, some there were going on a month or longer, straight!

The town of Ios itself was very small, we visited a few nice shops but the predominant business here is alcohol, with two thirds (from what i can see) of the premises being bars, it is a bit of a strange vibe actually, especially when combined with all the Aussie accents that your hear as you walk through the town.

We had a twenty minute walk or so to the nearest beach, which had beautiful white sand, was very quiet and Sibel had a great time floating in the water. Selen and Colleen joined us later in the day, after sleeping in to catch up after the night before! We only stayed in ios for two nights before moving on via a huge ferry (think a third of the spirit of tassie size, it was transporting cars and had a huge number of seats), to Naxos.

Naxos is probably the retirement location of our Greek Island hops, with very few accommodation offers on the hostel booking sites, the place we ended up choosing is filled with older (and very tanned!) couples on holiday and a trip on the bus is interesting for it's grey haired character!

It is another lovely island though, with a labyrinth town area alongside the port and a waterfront area filled with fifty year old restaurants. Colleen and I did a big circle yesterday when looking at shops, the lady who we passed the hour before was quite amused! The water here is so clear that even in the port area I can see through to the rocks and sand below.

We have taken a bus to one of the beaches along the 30km or so strip of uninterrupted sand, and with busses coming only every two hours or so, you don't want to miss the trip home!

We've also eaten our gyros at a restaurant on the waterfront that had been operating for sixty years or so; had yoghurt, honey and walnut flavored ice-cream from a colourful cafe man who enjoyed chatting with Colleen and I and receiving exact change ('those damn Americans come in off the boat with a fifty euro note, what am I supposed to do?').

Naxos has been surprising for it's shopping though, with many hand made goods on offer; beautiful jewellery (Colleen and I watched a man grinding away at a shell in his store), hand woven textiles (I bought too much there!) and other arty stores we haven't yet entered. The girls have bought quite a few nice dresses in stores we have come across.

Like the rest of the Greek Islands, Naxos' residents partake in a good 2pm-6pm siesta in opening hours, there's not much to do but sit by the pool or beach, pity really!

The nightlife is the marked difference here, without the crowds of noisy twenty-something Aussies, the bars are a lot quieter. The girls were out last night and had cheap cocktails, but were given as many on the house as they paid for - though the bartender was apparently pretty slimy!

Tomorrow we are off to Syrous enroute to Kos, where we'll stay for a few nights before heading to turkey via Bodrum.





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Location:Island hopping, Greece

Culture shock in Paris

So, Paris, where to start? So much culture, so many things to see, so many incredibly rude people (but some nice ones too!)

After a reasonably good sleep on the overnight train, we made our way to the hostel but were too early to check in so headed to a local market which was crammed full of produce, people and short tempers! We bought some strawberries and cherries and got out! We headed down to a famous cemetery, did the obligatory walk to Jim Morrison's gravesite and looped back around to the hostel via a very nice man selling crepes! Colleen and I shared an incredibly tasty banana and nutella crepe, yum-o!

At the time of checking in, we started having a few Friday the 13th kinda issues; one of our mattresses had a huge hole where the springs had given out and Sibel and Selen didn't even have mattresses! Unfortunately, management was very....French (rude, no eye contact and no apologies as a start) and the girls weren't too happy for most of the day. Nevertheless, we headed out to the Louvre and I surprised myself by actually enjoying an art gallery - the Louvre actually uses it's natural light, it's fantastic, I don't feel like I'm in a claustrophobic, artificially lit maze!








In the pyramid at the Louvre

After a few hours there, we were pretty starved but knew all too well that we were right in the tourist mecca of Paris with it's tourist and well-to-do prices, so Selen asked one of the Louvre information girls where she would recommend and we walked for a few minutes to a busy little bistro that had the most amazing and simple French food - win for the team!

The second day in Paris we took the train towards the Eiffel tower and found a brilliant little market selling everything from flowers, to ready made paella and other dishes, to seafood, cheese (drool!), breads, clothes and more. We took our time and decided we had to detour back for lunch (Sibel's hectic Paris schedule had to accommodate it!).





Cheese at the market!

By the time we got to the Eiffel tower it was past eleven am and the queues were up to two hundred meters long in some places, we decided to take the stairs up to the second level to avoid some of the queue. The views were pretty spectacular, I even saw the obligatory proposal on the top deck!







The fab four outside the Eiffel Tower.






View from the second level of the Eiffel Tower

We had lunch back at the market (yum to a shared, hot, ham and mustard roll), and then headed for the Arc de Triomph.








Outside the Arc de Triomph, Selen's a little excited methinks!

Selen peeled off to explore, and ended up watching a movie(!) and the rest of us wandered down des Champs Elyseess. Sibel headed down to Musee D'Orsay to take in some impressionist pieces and colleen and I wandered down to Notre Dame.








Colleen and I beside the Seine, walking up towards Notre Dame.








Outside Notre Dame!

I wasn't feeling well so headed back home, but walked through a very swish part of town, where everyone was out to be seen outside the cafes, relaxing with an air of casualness that belied the effort taken to dress just so!

The next day we headed down towards a big open air market Sibel had heard about and stumbled upon a flea market nearby to our hotel. The girls bought three Steig Larsson books for $5, in English, so we will be entertained on the beaches in he Greek islands. We continued down to the open air market near the Bastille roundabout, picked up a few things for lunch (i bought the most amazing olive bread) and scarves for gifts and caught the metro across to Montmarte.

The metro was more eventual than we had imagined, with two guys hopping on in suits. I noted to Colleen that 'those guys have stripper pants on' as I could see Velcro tabs and a flash of underwear on the side. They started talking to the carriage in French, and then pressed play on their jukebox, with the 'hot stuff' song ringing out! We were very amused and became even more so when the guys proceeded to strip down to their undies! There was poor little four year old in a pram right in front of them who wasn't sure quite what was going on; and the elderly lady who hopped on he train just as their pants were whipped off in front of her got quite a shock!







Sitting on the steps outside Sacre Cour, there are a few hundred people milling around. Some are taking their tourist snaps, others are sitting on the steps outside the church waiting for their counterparts and more are sitting on the steps leading down the hill, being entertained by the busker belting out cold play and a guy knocking a soccer ball around while he balances on a pedestal overlooking the amazing view of Paris. The bell of the Montmarte tourist train peels and I'm feeling quite reptilian enjoying the sun.

We continued from there to a nearby artists market and then to moulin rouge for obligatory photos.





Up the street is the cafe from the movie 'Amelie', which is one of Sibel's favourites, so we had a coffee there.

We had an early night as we were up at the crazy hour of three am to catch our easyJet flight to Athens.

I'll put some more photos up when I get home, but for now thanks to Coll for all the iPhone shots!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iTouch

Location:Rue de la Fontaine au Roi,Paris,France

Back to Barcelona with the girls!

So my first visit to Barcelona with my Simon was to spend time with Simon Mason, this time I'm back with the girls!

We are staying in a brilliant little hostel in the 'shiny' (as Simon mason puts it!) area of town, there's a tiffany and co around the corner!

Surprisingly, the food places are better price and quality than what Simon and I had staying down near Montjuic. We had paella for 9euro each one night, thats almost half of what you would normally pay and it's a restaurant that people come across town to go to - sweet recommendation from our flamboyant but extremely helpful hostel receptionist!

Our first afternoon on arrival was spent meeting up with one of Sibel's friends who lives here, Camilla. She's an awesome girl, can speak four languages fluently, delivered babies in Ghana for a year and is now studying genetics - she had us in stitches laughing the whole time we had with her!

The next day we walked through some lovely local areas up to Parc Guell, Gaudi's park. We tried to get there early but still only managed after 10am by the time we got there! When I was there with Simon it was closer to lunchtime and the place was overrun with people, I just wanted to get out after shoving through such crowds. This time wasn't as bad, so I wanted to explore more of the outer areas of the park. The views were nice, but as far as 'my idea' (and my western stereotypes of parks go), the Gaudi architecture was the major focus with no care at all to the other aesthetic factors such as gardens, landscaping, etc. This means there is dust everywhere (and people sweeping it to different places at night), people aren't encouraged to walk on specific paths so any smaller indigenous plants are trampled before they get started and the atmosphere of the park is different. If they charged foreigners entry (keeping the park free for the community - another tension apparent on graffitied walls on the walk up 'parc guell is for the community, NOT for tourists'), even 3-5 euros, would provide enough funds to maintain the park without draining city budgets. Especially when the other Gaudi attractions are priced between 7 and 17 euro a piece! Anyhow.....

Main entrance to Parc Guell

the famous lizard

Gaudi and his structures

Part of the view of Barcelona, pity it was a big smoggy

Yesterday afternoon we met up with Camilla and wandered through the Gothic area of town and went to a cool food market, you will not believe how bright orange the main colorant in paella is, my best analogy is fanta coloured!

We met up with Simon Mason and went to dinner at a fabulous seafood restaurant on the docks of the port, it was a busy place, with fifteen or more waiters running around like crazy! I had black paella with Simon and Camilla, it is paella coloured with squid ink and the serving size was huge! I left very very full and had to buy water on our walk home, I wonder about the msg content of paella sometimes, though it is probably just the amount of fish stock they use.

I'm currently on a train to Tarragona, an hour away from Barcelona. We are clacking along between the ocean and small hills, the sky is a bright blue (even without the enriched Polaroid effect!) and the temperature is high twenties. The hostel receptionist helped me out this morning with where I could go with my Eurail, Spanish trains are very confusing. Hopping on the train I was hoping the conductor wouldnt kick me off for having the wrong ticket, but all is well!

These Spanish trains though, have strange pressure changes, my ears are pretty uncomfortable as I try to equalize them frequently enough to keep up with the pressure changes!

Tarragona was absolutely beautiful, situated along the coast with ruins dating back to BC, an old roman section that was well signposted with multilingual explanations, with the biggest cathedral in catalunya, the oldest roman walls outside of Italy, remains of a palace and amazingly cute little streets.

I think this was an old Tabacco factory - think!

Park in Tarragona

cute little street in the Roman ruins area

Detail on the outside of the cathedral

Ruins of the old roman wall surrounded by cafes!

As usual I headed out of the train station in the wrong direction, but in doing so have circumnavigated the entire town and saw the necropolis section (remains and a museum) which I would have completely missed otherwise. I wandered through a nice park, grabbed a cheap pasta salad for lunch from a cute little bakery and then made it up to the roman section.

I popped out back on the coast, with the Tarragonian amphitheater and park below and a beautiful coastline following it. Up the coast were a series of old forts but it would have been a fair walk to attempt those in the time I had, so I had lunch in the park on a sunny bench and wandered back down la nova, Tarragon's pedestrian street.

Amphitheatre on the coast

The next day I went with Selen to visit the inside of one of the Gaudi houses, La Pereda (I think, but I'll check that!), it was interesting, Gaudi is all about his shapes and non-flat surfaces, even the stairwells were wonky! The roof of this house is incredible, with monster like abstract statues, steps up and down different levels and various mosaics. It was pretty cool, Selen (being a designer), was in her element.

After that, Sibel and Selen hired bikes and cycled around while Colleen and I walked along the beach and through parts of the gothic quarter, it was a great day for a wander. We packed up all our stuff and met up with the lovely Camilla for a last tapas experience before hurrying off for the overnight train.

Our next stop is Paris and we're going on the trenhotel (trenhotel), an expensive overnight train from Barcelona to Paris, 9pm to 9am, we have booked a sleeper so it should be quite an experience!


It turned out to be quite amusing, with much laughter, junk food and a lovely conductor. Our little cabin was quite small but when the beds folded out of the walls(!) it was comfy enough, with the gentle rocking putting us to sleep quite easily (except when you go round a tight, long bend and feel like you're going to fall out of the bunk!).

Feria in Seville

We caught another good Spanish train from Cadiz to Seville (or Sevilla), and with the use of map apps on my itouch, Colleen's iPhone and Sibel's local map; we trekked across Seville, through meandering laneways and reached our hostel, the ´living roof´ (it had fake grass on the roof bar).

That afternoon we took a hostel tour around Madrid and learnt more about the history of the place, its buildings and people. It is regularly 45´`C in summer which is nuts! We tried to avoid the gypsies outside the cathedral who give you rosemary and ´read your palm´and then request euros.

The cathedral in town is pretty impressive, this weekend was the end of Seville´s Feria festival, so there were flamenco dresses and horse drawn carriages everywhere.

Carriages

Side of the cathedral

One of the many squares in Seville, the facade of the building is incredibly detailed

Seville´s street, plaza and square names are all on the sides of building - similar to most of Spain

That night we went to a flamenco show through the hostel and found out the negative aspect to sitting too close to people dancing crazily around you for half an hour, sweat flew! They were pretty incredible, I´´ve never seen people´s feet move so quickly on such a small area (about 3m by 4m stage with our chairs right up to the edge).

Yesterday we headed to the royal palace, free for students(!), and marveled at the incredible tapestries, colored tiles, mosaics and decorations. Minimalist furniture coverings left you with the true effect of all the tiled decorations and incredible ceilings. The adjoining gardens were also pretty impressive, though we may have been distracted by the groups of ducklings wandering or swimming after their mother! Also present was the impressively coloured peacock, who was looking at us inquisitively for food.
(most of my photos of the palace are in portrait and I can´t rotate them at the moment, come and see them when I get home instead!)

outside the Palace

so cute!

A hungry peacock

The girls needed to do some prezzie shopping, but being Sunday, nearly all the stores were closed. Instead, we headed for lunch and met the woman who hated the world; she seemed to take such pleasure out of making us wait at every stop of the way. I know we are tourists, but the menu was even in English, they are obviously catering for that section of the market! Anyhow, we were all glad that we didn't share her glorious perspective...

Colleen bought some cakes on her way out and Sibel picked one up at the next cake shop so after Selen bought her gelati we sat on the steps of Plaza del Salvador in the sunshine and admired the buildings.

I wanted to head off on a long walk which the girls weren't so keen on, so I left them to tourist shopping and the cathedral and walked around other areas of the city.

strange structure!

art market

Along the river at Seville

There was quite a strange structure, a huuuge mushroom if you like, that I wandered under, along past painters selling their wares outside the museum of fine art, across the river and down the other side.

As it was the last day of Feria, there were flamenco dresses everywhere and the bars were packed to the brim with people snacking on tapas as they drank their beer, sangria or wine.

Once I got back to the hostel and met up with the girls again we made our way to the riverside for dinner. We sat right on the river and had a lovely meal with an even lovelier waitress. An orange tree above us dropped an orange on a luckily unoccupied seat on the next table! The girls enjoyed some meat croquettes (they are like deep fried filled oblong golf balls), which prompted Selen to be smiling 'croquetishly' at the camera (groan!).
The girls loved their paella so much the dish was scraped clean, this caused some amusement within the kitchen staff who must not see a wiped clean paella dish that often. Colleen and I caught their laughter and packed up ourselves and admitted to 'being hungry', but really, it was one paella shared between three girls! Colleen had a nice chat to the guy doing dishes as she waited for the bathroom, to the amusement of the other waiters!

Dinner on the river

We left the restaurant and went down to the Feria, it was a huge showground type area filled with large tents that were heavily decorated in all manner of things and had their own bars and kitchens. Most are private tents for families or groups to come together, dress up in expensive flamenco attire, eat expensive food, drink a lot and dance the week away! Others are public tents where anyone can come and do the same thing! Sunday was the last night so things were quietening down and some tents being packed up, but there would have still been over two hundred different structures I reckon, maybe more. We found a public tent and had a few drinks as we watched some locals dancing to music, it was a bit karaoke like in it's quality though (although, mum and dad, it was not nearly as bad as that couple singing in that restaurant we went to on the way to Chiang Mai!!).

We walked back in time to see the 'end of feria' fireworks on the river and midnight and fell into bed, ready to travel back to Barcelona the following day.

one of the Feria streetscapes