Advertisement
San Sebastian
whatever you do, avoid wearing flowy skirts while walking along a windy boardwalk...trust me, it's an issue So just about a week ago we headed from Bordeaux, over the border of Spain, to the small beach town of San Sebastian. This was our first beach stop of the trip and it was absolutely amazing. We basically spent two days lounging around the town, shopping and...eating. Yes, traditional Spanish tapas are going to be my downfall. The process of tapas is pretty awesome. Basically you head into a bar, and there are about a dozen different platters of exotic appetizers laying out in front of you. You help yourself until your stuffed, then the waiter adds up how many you've eaten and you pay. Generally the prices are just over 1 euro per morcel, which means you can get mighty full for a few dollars. Food highlights were deep fried cheese balls , and my new personal favorite, tortilla which is basically a bit of egg, stuffed with fried potatoes, and served on a baguette. Stupid fatty Spain. But so very very delicious. We have also adopted the Spanish siesta traditions quite easily, and spent our afternoons in San Sebastian lounging on the beach at
catching some ray's and zz's...except for when we were baywatching in the water. Harhar. Ya we had a montage moment and stormed the shore singing the baywatch theme song. Looooooooosers. Luckily for Danielle something happened to my memory card and banished the Baywatch photos to the great beyond, never to be seen. But stay tuned for more Hasselhoff moments to come hehe.
One of our post tapas nights we headed out to one of the local bars where we did what we do best and made some really weird friends. One was a Corsican, who I immediately started spewing off facts about Napoleon to, whereby he quickly lost interest in my friendship and went to talk to someone else. Who doesn't love talking about Napoleon in a bar?! Oops.
So after two nights of stuffing our bellies and sunning our pasty Canadian selves, we said a sad farewell to San Sebastian, a city I will definitely plan on returning to sometime in the future. We hopped on a train for Madrid and spent 7 hours in boredom, trying to occupy ourselves with Spanish dubbed movies and weird little
Bar Tas Tas
Making new friends...just don't talk about Napoleon...you'd think it would make you popular but it won't Spanish kids. Our arrival in Madrid was a bit of a whirlwind, as we were all hungry and tired from the train ride, and feeling slightly disoriented in massive, congested Madrid, after coming from tiny San Sebastian where the street cleaners try and plough you off the road 24/7 . It's big city life in Madrid that's for sure, and it certainly didn't help that we arrived in the midst of viciously polluted rush hour. Our hostel was amazing though...anyone passing through Madrid in the near future, Cat's Hostel is THE place to stay. It's a converted 18th century palace with a massive common room surrounded by stained glass and with a water fountain as the centre piece to it all. Wow. We were getting a little bit spoiled though, seeing as how our last two stays were in private rooms, but we got back to basics in our biggest room yet...14 bed mixed dorm. Yuck. We checked in at around 6pm, and there were still 5 stinky creatures asleep in the room. Such is the life of a traveller I suppose.
Madrid was a great city, but in terms of big city's
Saying Goodbye to San Sebastian
...with our Bar Tas Tas hats hehe I've definitely have had other favorites. My favorite visit of the trip was to the Prado Museum, which was jam packed with Goya's, El Greco's, Velasquez, and our new favorite El Bosco's Garden of Earthly Delights. We spent most of our afternoons in Madrid, lounding in El Retiro, a massive city park with a huge pond and great grassy areas for relaxing. In a city as crazy as this one, this green space was always very welcome.
My favorite part about Madrid though was definitely the hostel. We met so many great people there, it left us all with some amazing memories of Madrid. Basically on our second night we met a couple guys from Toronto, and the group grew from there. By the end of the night we had nicknamed ourselves The Commonwealth, as we were comprised of various Canadians, a Scot, and two Auzzies. Plus an American but that doesn't count haha. We had some great times in the hostel bar, and went for round 2 the next night. The hostel had a flamenco guitar group that came in and performed on Friday nights , so we met
El Retiro Park
An oasis in the middle of Madrid up with our friends from the night before, mixed in some more Americans and some Italians, and headed out into the city. Luckily for us we showed up at the very end of a concert that was happening in one of the squares , so after wasting some time there, we headed off to check out some of the local bars. Unfortunately for us, we had not been made aware of the fact that you pretty much cannot get in anywhere in Spain in sandals, which about 60%!o(MISSING)f our group was wearing. So we did the traditional Spanish thing and went to an Irish bar where anything goes hehe. Good times and good friends...good ol Madrid.
Yesterday was our last full day, as we were booked on the overnight train to Lisbon, so we packed our crap into storage for the day, then went out to see the El Rastro Sunday flea market, the biggest in Europe. This was pretty much the coolest shopping experience we've had all trip . The market spanned for over a dozen blocks, and branched off in too many directions to keep track of. Jewellery and clothes stands were our
main focus, but you could pretty much find anything you could imagine here, and for cheap. The heat was a bit of a factor though, as pushing through hoards of people in 30 city weather is not exactly the most pleasant thing on earth, so after the market finished off at 3, we made our last visit to El Retiro Park, and eventually headed off to the train station for our 1045pm train to Lisbon. Ew. I will make no comments on this journey other than I've definitely slept better in my life. But that's ok. Point being, we arrived in Lisbon at around 9 this morning, and after doing the hike of death with a 20lb backpack, arrived at our hostel, which is quite simply amazing. It basically feels like we're staying in someone's house, complete with MONOPOLY , a massive courtyard patio with bbq, kitchen, satellite tv, etc. etc. Oasis Backpackers Mansion indeed. Tonight we're gearing up for our three course, 3 euro Portuguese feast, that the hostel chef will be preparing at 9pm, which for some annoying reason is dinner time here in Spain. Ya it's a rough
life.
So that's Spain part 1, as we have 4 nights here in Lisbon, then south to the Algarve with 2 nights in Lagos, then back for Spain part 2 as we travel across the south. We are having loads of fun, and getting some pretty ugly tan lines hehe.
I hope everyone is doing well at home...we miss you!!!!
Adios!
xoxo,
Hulia
Advertisement
Tot: 0.167s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0856s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
10kJuan
non-member comment
Small (blog) world
Hey Ju, I´m one of the Americans that went to the pub in Madrid (and I resent that comment, hey!)... got some more photos of you guys from that night if you´re short, also have a blog on here (or something resembling it), http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/10kJuan/ ... safe travels!