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Published: June 14th 2009
Leaving France to go to Spain meant that we were officially entering a European country that we had not yet visited and we weren't exactly sure what to expect of it. We had heard good things about Spain as we know a few people who have spent a bit of time in the country and so we knew a little about the culture, but it was still all going to be new for us. The train journey from Bordeaux to Madrid was farely uneventful except for the fact that we almost missed our connexion to Madrid and had to run through the train station making it onto the train with only a couple of minutes to spare. It wasn't our fault though. There had been a rail accident just out of Paris that really screwed up all the trains. Anyways, it all ended well and we were off to Madrid. It was a pretty long ride and we only arrived in the Spanish capital around 10:30 that night. We were a little nervous about walking around the city with our packs on so late at night, but we decided to brave the city centre and search for our hostel on foot
Madrid
Monument...to save ourselves the taxi fare, besides, the hostel was pretty close to the metro station so it shouldn't have been a problem. However, we ended up walking about 15 minutes in the wrong direction passing many slightly drunk people along the way before turning around and finally making it to our destination - Madrid City Hostel. At this point we were sweaty, tired and annoyed and we really didn't feel like having to check into a dorm room at midnight having to be quite and scrabble around in the dark. The hostel was a little funny and we kind of felt like we were going to be staying in an art gallery, but it was clean and that's all we cared about. We were so happy to see that our only roomate in the 6 bed dorm was still up and actually from Toronto so we ended up chatting a little before we decided to succumb to our exhaustion and called it a night.
Our first day in Madrid was spent walking around in the blazing sun visiting several parks and stopping at many attractions along the way. We noticed almost right away that the culture was very
different and that the Spanish lifestyle was much more relaxed than that of the French. Of course, the siesta was something to get used to...everything is closed from 3 in the afternoon until 6 or 7 in the evening. Though it's good in practice, it's extremely hard to get used to coming from Canada, a country where things almost never close. We spent most of our first day sitting at a tapas bar with our roomate from the hostel eating finger foods and sipping on 2L of sangria. The afternoon just flew by before we realized that we had been sitting for almost 4 hours. It was a really nice way to spend our first day in Spain. The tapas bar must have left an impression with us because we ended up going back the next day for some mojitos and more finger foods. It sounds like we spent our time eating and drinking, which I guess is true, but we justified it to ourselves by saying that it was all part of the Spanish culture so it was okay to do so. That evening we went out with a pretty big group of people staying at our hostel and
had a really good time. It was a pretty diverse group so we had many different conversations. It was a good night and we have many funny stories to tell. Though we didn't find Madrid necessarily that interesting ( it's a big city), we did have a nice time with the people we met along the way.
Next we were off to Sevilla, a small town in the South of Spain. Sevilla was absolutely beautiful! Exactly what we imagined Spain would be; streets lined with orange trees, bright purple lilacs in the parks and small, colourful, winding roads barely wide enough for a small car to drive through. We loved it from the moment we arrived. After checking into the hostel we joined a free walking tour around the city which was the perfect introduction to the lovely town. Unfortunately we only spent 2 nights in Sevilla and kind of wished we had had more time, though it’s so tiny that we had walked the whole city by the late morning of our second day. Our hostel was very nice because it had a nice roof-top patio where we sat soaking up the sun and enjoying the view of
Madrid
Egyptian temple the city. My favorite part of the city was the giant cathedral in the centre of town. Because Sevilla was once a Muslim town, the cathedral was actually once a mosque which, over the years, has been redesigned into a Gothic-styled church. It was so big and impressive and wasn’t at all like the other many churches we’re seen in Europe because of the obvious Muslim influences. It was very interesting. The history along with the beauty of the city made our short time in Sevilla very nice. It really felt like we were in Spain.
After Sevilla, we made our way to Granada. We were very excited to see what the city had to offer because we’d heard many good things about it from Brittany (my brother’s girlfriend) and our good friend Mystique, who both lived there on a school exchange. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the best introduction to Granada. We were staying in a not so great hostel with pretty bad roomates in our 6 bed dorm and though you shouldn’t let the hostel ruin your stay in a city, somehow it just can. We thought maybe if we walked around, we would get a better feel
for the city and we would start to share the same feelings about Granada that our friends had. Once again some unfortunate circumstances spoiled our feel for the area. We were offered crack and hash more than once and were surrounded by a group of guys with a big dog who asked us for money and than threatened to slash us down and steal it when we refused to give them anything. Nothing bad happened, but it was a little scary for us and was not the greatest first impression. Fortunately the next was a little better for us because we visited the Alhambra, a giant Moorish fortress overlooking Granada. It was absolutely stunning both inside and outside. The gardens were beautifully green with brightly coloured flowers and trees surrounding the different buildings. The palace itself was also quite stunning on the inside because of all the detail in the decor. Once again it was impressive to think of the amount of work that was put into the construction of such a big building. We had a really great day there and immediately started feeling better. The next day was also nice as we went for a hike in the
Madrid
King's palace mountains with a really great group of people staying at our hostel before taking an overnight train to Barcelona. So in the end, I guess our trip to Granada wasn’t so bad. It just wasn’t exactly what we expected.
We took our first overnight train since China to get from Granada to Barcelona and though it was cleaner than the Chinese trains, the seats were a little harder to sleep than the ‘beds’ we were used to having on trains. We made it through the night with very little sleep and food, but ended up meeting two sisters from Vancouver Island. They would end up being our traveling buddies while we stayed in Barcelona. We were expecting the city to be a bit of a disaster as we arrived the morning after Barcelona’s soccer team won a big game against Manchester United to be crowned the best team in Europe….or something like that (I won’t pretend to know anything about soccer). To our surprise, if it weren’t for the many different newspaper articles and many people wearing Barcelona jerseys, we wouldn’t even have known that there had been a big game on the night before.
Barcelona was a
really nice city and we had a really good time there. The architecture was very different with the many buildings and the park designed by Gaudi. It sometimes felt like we were in candyland or in a Dr. Seuss book. It was pretty cool. There was also a beautiful boardwalk along the beach where we spent some time observing the many different sunbathers varying in shades. We managed to have a good mix of walking and relaxing in Barcelona, exactly what we wanted. Originally, we were only supposed to stay for 2 nights, but ended up staying for four as both the city and our new friends made it easy to stay. Our time in Barcelona was the perfect was to end our two weeks in Spain.
Next stop was Carcassonne, a very small medieval town in France.
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Shalini
non-member comment
So nice!
Hey guys, I'm glad Spain turned-out good all-around despite a few setbacks. We miss you so much!! Can't wait to see you in 2 months!!!!!!! Love, Shal