The rest of Spain

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Evening everyone,

how's things? hope everyone is fine and/or dandy.

'Dear diary, this will be my last entry for a while as I'm heading to Glastonbury tomorrow....'

Yes it's true. I'm taking the train to Glastonbury tomorrow to start the first of 3 (potentially 4)festivals for the summer. Glastonbury will be the big one as it holds the biggest mystique for me. The line up is pretty special, but more about that later.

In the meantime, I'll tell you more about Spain.

After Portugal, we headed through the southern parts of Spain, predominantly through Andalucia (Seville and Granada) before going north to Valencia and finally Barcelona.

Coming out of Portugal and towards Seville, you can notice the huge rock and desert areas that come straight out of some spaghetti western or road movie. The sandy desolation contrasts sharply with the lush green valleys of portugal, and especially the tall mountains and deep valleys of the pyrenees that we passed through to get from France into Spain. As we approached Seville we had to drive through the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, which was so grand and beautiful. These large mountains that seem to just jut out of nowhere. Their size and scale help remind you that no matter how great or important you may be, there are always other more powerful forces at work, whatever you happen to think that may be.

As I may have mentioned before, Granada and Seville especially was sweltering hot. Every day it was over 35 degrees. In Seville, there's this lovely square known as the Plaza de Espana. We arrived there for a photo stop (Japanese tourist style) and I found it very familiar, like I'd seen it before somewhere.

Carol Giuliano, do you remember bringing in a jigsaw puzzle to work that glowed in the dark? The one with a really elaborate looking bridge and a huge building? I was standing there in Seville and it was in front of me in real life. Talk about surreal....

Seville is home to many many little lane ways you can get lost in. These laneways sometimes get so narrow you can only walk single file, but at the end of most laneways it opens up to a square that's full of tapas bars.

In Granada, there's one thing to see: the Alhambra palace. If the Sierra Nevada mountains is an amazing feat of a terrestrial or god-like nature, the alhambra is a feat of human achievement. The intricate details of the palace itself, the inscriptions on the walls, the whole effort of putting a structure like that together is phenomenal. This of course is back in the day when buildings could take 50 years to build, which is why they're so beautiful and last til this very day. My Audioguide explains to me the importance of flowing water and gardens in design to represent balance in life. Maybe in 500 years time, people will be walking through our great shopping malls and marvelling at our great architectural achievements. They'll be walking through the ruins of a humongous shopping mall, listening to their audioguide commentary, and it will tell them how even though it was 300,000 square metres of floor space, every single square metre was climate controlled, and how back in the 20th century, this marketplace was divided into 3 main areas: ladies' apparel, men's apparel and the food court. Oh Look! there's where the Starbucks used to be!

Granada was also home to a very good dutch duo that played jazz and swing tunes to us while we were having dinner al fresco at the top of the albacin (arabic quarter). They came round to our table, looked at me, Bel and Chris and asked:
'Where are you from? Are you Japanese?'
'No. We're from Australia.'
'Oh Bonzer mate!' (We think he said bonzer anyway. It came out more like 'bonsai mate!' Maybe he did say bonsai and he was trying to tie it back to the previous japanese reference? We'll never know....)

They then proceeded to play 2 classic Aussie tunes: Waltzing Matilda, and AC/DC's back in black. Strangely enough, I was the only one that whistled in encouragement when they started playing acker dacker....

Ok, I'm kind of over typing now, but I'll give you a brief description of Valencia and Barcelona before I forget the memorable things about those places.

Valencia: Agua de Valencia (roughly translates to 'water of Valencia'). A lovely mix of valencia orange juice, champagne and vodka. Had a lovely night out in the old quarter of Valencia, had more Paella, and sat down to jugs of agua de Valencia afterwards. Served by an amazing waitress, there are photos to prove this 😊

Barcelona: Visited the Nou Camp, home to La Liga champions FC Barcelona. Didn't bump into Ronaldinho, apparently the team was in Japan. Also went to a popular waterfront nightclub (read tourist trap) and ended up paying far too much for drinks in Spain. Decided to leave because of prohibitive prices and after a couple of the ladies of the tour group complained of getting far too much unwanted physical attention from the locals (i.e. stray hands). Tried hailing a cab to get home in Barcelona at 4 in the morning. Yeah, that was a brilliant idea....ended up pretty much walking back to the hotel. Memorable experience though 😊

Write to you after Glastonbury (or perhaps Roskilde).

Miss you guys,
Ben

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