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

Cruizy Cadiz

Upon arriving in Cadiz, we quickly decided that a taxi would be the best way to the hotel, a well spent 5 euros, we would have gotten thoroughly lost otherwise!

Cadiz is beautiful, a large beach peninsula area with a very relaxes atmosphere, happy and helpful people and lots to see as you ramble (with the knowledge that you can't get too lost as you'll hit sea on three sides of the city!)

Little moments from Cadiz that I will remember,

An old man with suit and cap shuffling along towards an apartment, a bunch of red carnations and a box of something in hand.

A thirty-ish, self-confident, balding, chunky guy in sunglasses, tshirt and Bermuda shorts, walking along a Cadiz pier with his dog. The dog was the size of a chihuahua, had a blue bow in a topknot on it's head and was terrified of anything that moved towards it. It was quite a strange juxtoposition!

The chatty old lady repainting the facade of her building in a quiet side street. Upon noticing us, her rambling included 'touristo' and rubbing her fingers together in a money like symbol. We wondered whether she wanted us to help her paint her wall, I imagine her back wasn't enjoying the job. Imagine having two days in a beautiful place like Cadiz and spending it in a shaded side street, painting a building wall - working holiday?!

Probably my favorite though, was walking back along the beach wall to our apartment and passing the school band rehearsing. The group of thirty or so were out on the asphalt sport area, in the dark, standing in a large circle and belting out their songs. There was a substantial proportion of large drums, thumped at reasonably precise intervals(!), a big brass section and accompanying instruments - it was glorious and so impressive. Our walk slowed to a ramble as we made our way past both nights to take in the atmosphere.


Colleen and I along the beachscape, check out the anti erosion rocks!


Cadiz is big and socio-economically well-off enough to host a large number of retail brands, colleen and I spent a while in mango (MNG) trying things on, and walked past zara, expensive dress and shoe stores and many others.


We visited their impressive cathedral, looked through the glass at the archaeological dig of cathedral footings, wandered through the city gate archway and ate ice-cream on the way to relax on the beach (though it got a bit chilly so we didn't last too long).


On the recommendation of our hotel attendant, we visited a food market area one morning and marvelled at the size of the tuna lying on the bench, two kilo slabs of it lying on top of it, ready to be sold. We all bought some fruit, strawberries, nectarines and cherries, yum; although I can't wait to get to turkey to sample the figs Selen has talked about. We found a busy little cafe that served tasty coffee and toasted bread with 'fresh tomato', most easily described as a coffee cup of blended and slightly dehydrated tomato (Mum, like the first tomato step in your guacamole), to be spread on your toast. I will have to do it at home, simple but yum!

From there we wandered through a nice park which was quite kid-friendly, with numerous playgrounds, and even a fountain area containing dinosaur sculptures, and a board walk up over the top of it - quite random really! Most amusing were the two white ducks having a nap on the back of the two metre crocodile sculpture!

Oh, and a note to self for Selen, when unplugging something to put your phone in to charge, check that it's not the minibar fridge you are using to keep chicken cold!

(colleen gets the thanks for today's alliterations! And the photos from her itouch, now that I am without a laptop the posts will be photo restricted!)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iTouch

Location:Av de Andalucía,Cadiz,Spain

Madrid!

Simon and I said a sad goodbye Tuesday morning, with him heading back to work and study; while I'll continue to Madrid to meet Sibel and Colleen, friends from PEGS, and Sibel's older sister, Selen.

I caught the fast train from Barcelona to Madrid, three hours compared to the six of the more regional train, and met the girls in our hotel.

We spent the afternoon catching up, walking around Madrid streets, it's parks, the girls had some chocolate churros and we even did some shopping for beachy clothes needed in the next few weeks. We had dinner in a well known tapas street, though by the time we got around to sitting down, it was 10pm and the second Madrid-Barcelona soccer game was on, so again the whole city was glued to their sets, even our waiter.















Madrid has nice wide streets, and a more relaxed feel to it than Barcelona did. The next morning we were up early to head to the station where we could reserve our tickets for the next legs of our journey. Leaving with lighter wallets (a sleeper ticket reservation was 76 euro each, and that's even with a Eurail ticket pass!), we had breakfast at a nice cafe around the corner from our hotel that the girls had discovered (with a lovely man running it), and headed to the square to catch a walking tour.

I always find the walking tours interesting, even if three hours can take a while! There are always so many little stories that you don't find out if you just wander by yourself. In Madrid, there was so much history that we were told, from the rise and fall of different kings, democracies and dictators, to the slow progress made on commissioned buildings (the cathedral took something like over 100 years to be finished) and the oldest restaurant in history (guinness book of records approved); as well as the obligatory information on the best bars in town, etc!


After this, we had some lunch, filled in an hour shopping (Colleen bought a very cute little jumpsuit!) and headed to the El Prado museum and another that housed Modern art, including some Dali. During the early hours of the night, these museums and galleries are free of charge, sweet!
After another late memorable dinner, where colleen asked for chips and was given potato crisps and selen was served cooked, but re-frozen fish, Sibel and I headed back to the accommodation while Colleen and Selen joined the walking tour's pub crawl across the city.

The next morning we headed to the train station to catch a train to Cadiz (car-diz), and watched the scenery go by (well, Colleen and Selen caught up on last night's sleep!) for four hours.

The trip to Cadiz seemed greener than that from Barcelona to Madrid, with crops almost the entire way, rolling hills every now and then, but not much happening overall. Everything in europe is so well connected, these trains to cadiz run every hour or so, and its a pretty small place! Australia's lack of public transport options are cringeworthy in many respects, even when the larger distances are taken into account.

Location:Madrid, Spain

Bustling Barcelona with the Simons!

Simon and I bid a sad farewell to Edinburgh, I really love that city, definitely somewhere I could live easily and now it holds such memories for us! We caught a Ryan air flight down to Barcelona for a few days to catch up with my cousin, Simon Mason (Christmas dinner with the family will be too confusing with multiple Simons! It will require my Simon being renamed I think!). Luckily all went smoothly with our flight, although ryanair was a bit disturbing with constant sales pitches over the loudspeaker for food, duty free items (both to be expected), calling cards, lotto tickets and even smokeless cigarettes (for those who can't go 1.5hrs without a nicotine hit!). They even played a little congratulatory song for arriving on time, random!

We caught the Aerobus to Sants train station and transferred to the subway and made it to our hotel. Simon Mason and his workmate, Ignatio, met us a few minutes later and took us to a nice restaurant for some traditional fare, yum! Dinner over here is pretty late, after 9pm is not out of the ordinary.

The Madrid-Barcelona football (ie, soccer!) game was being played, so the streets were deserted, with everyone inside glued to their tv's, it was quite bizarre! The waiter wasn't really very interested in taking our order when the tv was on in the background!

The next morning, the room's blinds were shut and we slept in. I went to check the time and expected 9am (a pretty good sleep in for me), but shockingly discovering 1pm!! That's a first for me, but as Mum always says, 'you obviously needed it' - fighting a cold will do that I guess!

So we headed out to explore the city, walked along the bustling busy street of La Ramblas, it was a bit intimidating after the relative calm and easy atmosphere of the royal mile in Edinburgh, with Spanish conversations left, right, and centre.

On the streets of Barcelona

We visited some of the sights of Barcelona, in particular, the famous Santa Maria del Mar

The bit of Santa Maria del Mar that could fit in my camera screen!

Greenery on a Barcelona street

Waterfront

Another trip was a walk up to Montjuic (seen behind in the crazy sculpture loops below!) to have a good view of the city and suburbs. There was an old fort on tipped of the hill, with huge cannons that disturbingly, didn't look that old.

Montjuic in the background

The view from part of the way up Montjuic

Simon and I ventured on the metro across to La Sagrada Familia, which had so many tourist buses lined up outside, a 200m line to get tickets, and queues within the building that we didn't bother to go inside.

La Sagrada Familia - the church that just keeps on being built!

From here we walked down a few streets and then followed Diagonal up until we got to the station, it took a bit longer than we had thought (Mum, think our Munich 'we will find a bakery around the next corner' expedition!!)

One of the old bull fighting arenas, after the ban comes into play this year, we're not sure what they'll do there...

From there we headed to Parc Guell, and fought the throngs of tourists to get a feel of the place. I think I'll have to do more Gaudi research before I'll understand any of it!

A lot of people (tourists) and a bit of Parc Guell

Another Gaudi building

We started to focus our exploration on the alleyways of Barcelona

After seeing a few of the Gaudi sights, Simon and I started to just explore the alleyways of the city, we found some pretty cool little shops and areas that we otherwise wouldn't have even imagined existed. That's the side of Barcelona that I enjoyed the most (apart from the food!).

Outside the Arc de Triomph

Simon Mason also took us to places like Arc de Triomph, and we had many lunches and dinners at places recommended by his workmates in Barcelona (local knowledge is the best!). One night we went to a seafood restaurant on a street that was rather inconspicuous, you walk in, pick your fish (that is all laid out on ice in front of you, some still moving (eugh! But at least it's fresh!) to be cooked for you, grab some drinks and a table and wait for your number to be called. We feasted!

Our amazing seafood feast at La Paradeta - yum!

Wandering streets during our days, Simon liked looking at all the patisseries and delis in the city, especially the selection of jamon!

Simon likes the delis in Barcelona, lots of cured meats! (sorry to Chloe and Kristy!)

We frequented bars Simon Mason recommended, one had the most amazing gin and tonic, as Simon M said, 'you can tell the guy really loves it', as each g&t prepared by this bartender (in a flannel like shirt done all the way up to his collar!) had about five steps, swirling large cubes of ice to cool the glass (presumably!), rinds of lime and lemon which were worked vigorously with a contraption of some sorts, with gin and tonic added at the end; I think there might have been some sugar in there too, it tasted pretty lolly like! Yum! We got home a little late that night(!), but not late for Spanish standards, the clubs and bars don't get going till after 2 around here.

Even Simon's iPhone had a few too many by the time of this G&T!

On Saturday, Simon Mason took us to Sitges ('Sit-ches'), a 40min train hop from Barcelona, it is largely a very pretty tourist beach town. We walked along the foreshore, passed many groups having wedding photos taken, sampled some tapas, local beers and wine from various places along our way and made it to a restaurant recommended by a workmate of Simon M's, Ignatio.

Streetscape in Sitges

Simon Mason and I outside one of the Churches in Sitges - loving the blue sky!

We were there for paella, and according to Ignatio, traditionally, it must be prepared and eaten within sight of the ocean, must not be a 'mixed' paella, and many other rules I won't go into here! We started with the biggest steamed mussels I have ever seen, munched on fine paella with fresh prawns and mussels, sipped a nice white wine alongside and watched the ocean roll in (the restaurant was on the beachfront). After all that we went for a lie down next to the beach to digest and watched kite-surfers get dunked in the surf, what a fiddly and exhausting sport!

Sitges beach-strip

We lay on the grass over the beach at Sitges to let everything digest!

On the Sunday, Simon M met us after his epic morning mountain bike ride and we wandered around the Barceloneta area, had a burger at one of his fave places and sipped beer by the foreshore.

Simon's ultra burger that included blue cheese!

That night we had tapas at a very traditional catalunya'n restaurant, it was delicious! We started to feel like we'd eaten far too well this week, some salads are required next week!

Catalan Tapas with Jamon, Goats cheese and Duck Pate

- Posted using BlogPress from my iTouch

Location:Passeig de Montjuïc,Barcelona,Spain

ENGAGED in Edinburgh!

So...... the details....... (as requested!!!!)

Simon had been incredibly romantic and flown around the world to come and visit me on my three months away (originally planned as a surprise but he was worried about me getting angry, so told me mid-Germany), the poor thing had flown from Melbourne to Seoul, had an overnight stay and brewery dinner with his Dad, Pierre, then flown to Heathrow and waited three hours for an overnight bus to Edinburgh, arriving early Saturday morning, but had to wait to see me until Sunday night when I arrived back from the Haggis tour! To say he was tired on arrival was an understatement.

He waved frantically as Haggis busses pulled into Edinburgh, only to realise there were more than one and he was getting strange looks after the first two! I gave him such a huge hug when I got off the bus and found him shaking like a leaf - very cute! He waited for me to say goodbye to everyone on the tour and took me to our lovely accommodation right off the Royal Mile, told me to sit down and said his pre-rehearsed proposal speech (400 times apparently!), got down on one knee and showed me the gorgeous heirloom ring.

Incredibly romantic and such Simon style!

Of course I said yes, well actually, I said 'of course' and then I waited for him to calm down and stop shaking (at least now I knew why!), and we went down for a drink with some of those from the tour (barely containing our excitement!).

The next day we explored Edinburgh, did some groceries for making superb lunches, had a nice lunch with Sibel before she headed off for London and then hiked part of the way up Arthurs Seat for a pretty incredible view of Edinburgh - blue skies and a clear view meant that everyone and their dog was out hiking Arthurs Seat, there was such a line up to the top that we decided a detour off the half way mark was a good idea!

View of Parliament and Holyrood House from the mini Arthurs Seat 

There were an awful lot of people on the zig zag path in the middle there - I love how natural the Arthurs Seat area has been kept, gravel paths only the entire way and no signs at all! 

We still got a pretty reasonable view from our vantage point!

Today we woke up very early and decided to catch the sunrise on the Edinburgh skyline - we were glad we did. The city was deserted and although it was a little nippy, the sun was beginning to shine - it was a promise of the beautiful weather we would have for the rest of the day. We walked across to Princes St Gardens and watched the sun rise through the clouds and then took the stairs up to Calton Hill to sit on the monument nicknamed 'Edinburgh's Disgrace' as they only ever built 1/4 of what was originally planned before running out of money.

In the forecourt of Hollyrood House

After heading back to the apartment, having a yummy breakfast of toasted bagels, sauteed mushrooms, smoked salmon and cheesy scrambled eggs (sorry about the detail, but it was so good, its a new fav of ours I think!) and doing domestic things like washing (yay for the apartment having a washer/dryer and not having to handwash my clothes in hostel sinks!), we walked out to Hollyrood Palace. Hollyrood is a 'working palace' (as our audio guide told us repeatedly and rather bullishly!), with many state functions still carried out here; in addition to being the Queen's residence for part of every year. No photos were allowed inside, here's a link to some online, but we got a few outside the front!

We decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner to celebrate the happenings of the week, it was pretty scrumptious and got ready to leave what will be a favourite place of ours forever.

Princes St Gardens in the sunlight! (Edinburgh Castle in the background)

The next morning we checked out and spent a few hours doing some last tourist shopping and relaxing in Prices St Gardens, soaking up the sun before making our way to the airport.