Travelling the world, cathy style!

Seville was alright. I preferred granada better. Probably because we weren´t very long in either city we weren´t able to really enjoy it to its full potential. The hostel we stayed at was practically empty, and we got to know the other backpackers pretty well. There was Barney & Charlotte from Melbourne, Geoff from the UK and Madeline from South Africa. Madeline was in a room with us, and she´s been travelling for a few months on her own now. Looks like travelling through europe on your own isn´t such a big deal after all. Makes me think i can do it. Makes me want to do it. One of these days i think i will.

We also found out that granada is the only place left that does free tapas. We did go to a tapas bar in granada, but we left around 12 cause we were pretty tired from the night before. If i´d have know it was the only time we were going to get free tapas i would´ve stayed up later! Doh!

There was a cathedral and alcazar in Seville, the cathedral is meant to be the third biggest in europe, and it probably was. But cause we´d seen the one in granada already it didn´t seem all that impressive. It was very similar, absolutley huge, big columns holding it up, lots of intricate sculptures and carvings on the walls and ceilings. But it was made of some darker stone, and i just wasn´t as blown over by it as i was by the one in granada. There was an alcazar too, which is meant to be another muslim palace. Apparently it has the entire koran carved into the walls. But we ran out of time and didn´t get a chance to check it out. From the postcard photos it looked alot like the alhambra, but minus the magnificient view of the city of granada. So i wasn´t too fussed on not seeing it.

Seville is meant to be the bullfighting and flamenco capital of spain. Since it wasn´t bull fighting season we wanted to at least catch some flamenco. Geoff from our hostel pointed us to a flamenco bar close by. It didn´t open until 12am, but it was pretty good once it did get going. It was free, which is what we were looking for (cheap), but not so fancy as the more expensive ones. It was just a cute cosy pub with a few middle aged guys playing instruments and singing. I think they did about 3 or 4 dances. Not many, but it didn´t feel really touristy. More relaxed and groovy. There were a few backpackers there, not many though.

Every hostel we´ve stayed at has aussies. It´s crazy! Everywhere we go it´s full of aussies, canadians, and american students who have finished their semester abroad and are travelling a bit. There are a few guys from other countries, but not many.

Went to the Alhambra this morning. Kinda woke up late, and didn't get going until 11 which was probably later than we wanted. Lisa let off a sigh of relief once we finally got on the bus, but a second later i realised i'd left my camera back at the hostel (not locked away). I had to run back to the hostel and hope to god that no-one had stolen it. Thankfully the receptionist at the hostel had it. Wow! that NEVER happens to me. Every time i´ve ever misplaced something it gets stolen within 5 minutes never to be seen again. My luck must´ve turned! *touch wood*

There´s this palace in the Alhambra. And for some stupid reason it´s only open half an hour at a time, and you have to buy tickets to go into each half hour session. We got tickets to the 11:30 session, and it was 11:25, with the actual palace apparently being a 10min walk from the ticket booth. So in typical cathy style, we were running late, and had to make like maniacs to make it there by 11:30. We sprinted off towards the palace, and didn´t even have time to get an audio guide. I swear i´ve never run that much in so many clothes before!!! I had on my thermals, my big down jacket, and almost every other piece of clothing i owned.

The alhambra is a fortress-place-thing. I´m still not completley sure exactly WHAT it is, but it includes a palace, a summer palace, as well as a fortress. It´s very beautiful. The palace dates back to the 13th century (forgive me if i´ve got any of this wrong, i´m just going by what i remember. we didn´t get the audio guide so we just walked around the place oohing and aahing without any real idea what it was we were looking at).

The palace is heaps beautiful, in total contrast to the royal palace in madrid, there´s no marble, no fancy carpets or paintings. Just plain and carved walls. Really intricate carvings that you would expect on some small ornament, not a whole bloody wall! Lots of arches, old doorways, water fountains. It looked like it was from a much older era, where things had more of a simple beauty. The Generalife (a place where the sultans would go with their harem) was my favourite. Just really nice gardens and fountains. Very calming. I almost wanted to just sit there for hours and soak it all in. The Alhambra is also a fortress, so it sits at the top of this mountain looking down-across at the city of granada. The view of granada is breathtaking!! Rows and rows of little white houses along the side of the mountain. I swear i took like fifty bizillion shots of the city!
I have to say it´s my favourite place so far. A pitty we only stayed there for one day though. I think i will have to go back one of these days.

After all the rushing around to get there, they didn´t end up kicking us out of the palace at 12 like we thought they would. Must be that they only let people in between those hours, but once your in you can hang around as long as you like.

There was also lots of cats at the palace. Not sure if they were there for a reason, but they were really cute, and i couldn´t help taking lots of photos of them either! Especially the little kittens.

We went to the local cathedral after the Alhambra. IT´s MASSIVE!!! So huge it´s kind of insane. think the caves of Moira from Lord of the rings. A huge room/cavern with massive pillars olding up the roof. It honestly hurt my neck to look all the way to the top of any of the 2m wide pillars. The alter is also huge and decorated all around with gold edges, paintings and other fancy things. The organs are about 5m off the ground, and the doors to the outside of the chapel are almost 10m high! Even the books containing the organ music were a metre tall! I felt like alice in wonderland having fallen into some wierd ´giant´ world. Being in a place like it gets u thinking about god. He sure has it good! Convincing mere mortals to build you such huge and extravagant houses. I sure wouldn´t mind if someone built ME a house like that! I just totally couldn´t get over the size of it. Crazy stuff!!

I´m constantly amazed at how different lisa and I are. Especially when it comes to organising stuff and packing. She likes to book in advance, and know where we are going, what we are doing. I like to just wing it. For example, i booked the granada hostel online. But forgot to write down the address or the phone number. Luckily lisa went and looked them up later, otherwise we wouldn´ve been in a bit of strife. So having learned my lesson, when i booked the hostel in seville i wrote down the phone number, the address, and even the directions! I was so proud! Except that i forgot one tiny detail which is the name of the actual hostel. Lisa just kinda gave me that expaserated look and shook her head. Luckily we met two aussies at the train staion who were staying at the same place and knew the name of it. But honestly, if you have directions and a phone number is the name really that important? hehe, okay, i admit it. i´m just hopeless!

Another fiasco with the spanish rail system.
Yesterday me & Lisa decided to go see some actual historical sights in madrid. Mainly the Prado and Thyssen museums.

The prado was ´nice´. Lots of old paintings, never seen so many depictions of christ, the nativity, the virgin mary, the crucifiction, or the lamentation in one day before!!! ChRIST! After a while i kinda got sick of seeing just the same scenes over and over again. There was this one painting by some dude (i suck at remembering actualy names of stuff), but it was a three piece painting depicting the garden of eden, earthly pleasures, and hell. It had lots of fantastical animals, and scenes, kinda like an ancient where´s wally where you look for the man eating tree on two legs, or the two people making out in a bubble, that kinda thing. Unfortunately there were no cameras allowed, so i can´t really explain what it looked like.

The thyssen was laid out chronologically, but we didn´t realise, and kinda went backwards. Oh well. Otherwise it was heaps smaller than the prado, and there were a few too many landscapes for my liking.

We had planned to catch the 5pm train from Madrid to granada, and get there at 11:50pm. Got to the station around 4:20 so we wouldn´t be late. AS i said before, there´s there´s three train systems. The middle one is called the ´cercanias´. Turns out this train was a cercanias train, not a Renfe train as i had originally thought. So we spent about 20 mins figuring out exactly where we should be boarding the train. Unfortunately, when we tried to show people our tickets they just kept pointing us in the direction of the information office (where no-one spoke english), and the guys at information just kept just made hand guestures for us to stay there and saying ´no mobil´. With 5 mins to our train we were getting kinda worried we´d miss it. Some random chinese girl came up to us and started talking in chinese. Her train to some other city was delayed since 4pm, and she was hoping we would help her out. We have no idea!!! do we look like we know what we´re doing??? Stupid woman! We don´t even speak spanish!

Eventually a kindly old man who spoke english informed us that a truck had fallen on the railway tracks. Okay... so that means???? The train is delayed? cancelled? People kept telling us ´el tren es demorado´, which wasn´t in my spanish phrase book and we eventually found out it means ´the train is delayed´.

So we were just waiting around the station with no idea what was going on. We found two other english speaking backpackers who looked just as lost as we were who were also going to granada. We all sat around looking lost together. Strenght in numbers and what not. Alex (from melbourne) who can speak french, and Leslie from Canada. Eventually the nice old man told us that we could catch a train to chamartin (another station), catch a bus from chamartin to the station after where the accident happened, and then catch the train the rest of the way. yay, we could actually get there tonight!!!!

When we got to chamartin we found lots of spanish people looking just as lost as we were. I found the whole thing kinda funny, but i think lisa was freaking out just a little. Her 35Kg´s of luggage meant that it was kinda hard to move around from one station to another. So i just started going up to people and saying ´granada?´. If i got a ´si´, i would follow them. Sounds stupid i know, but it kinda worked! There was a cranky businessman who helped us out and spoke a little english. We also found two more canandian backpackers from quebec who were also heading to granada. We all just sat around waiting for the bus together. Lisa wasn´t being very social, which i figure is her way of coping with being stressed out. But the other guys were pretty fun.

In the end the bus eventually came, and we left madrid around 7ish. On the way to granda the quebec girls taught me how to say ´du e la station du tren´, (where is the train station) in french. Sweet, now i know how to get around in paris!

Eventually got to granada at 3am. Whoa! what a long day!

Started the day at the Palace. I figured, i should probably see SOMETHING in madrid before i leave. I kinda feel a bit bad cause pretty much all i´ve been doing is just going out partying at night, and bumming around during the day. Haven´t seen any museums, or historical monuments or anything. I was kinda waiting to do it with Lisa, but i´m getting sick of madrid already and don´t know if i really want to hang around for 3 more days here.

The palace was pretty cool. Big, Old, but still very well maintained. Vastly different from all the palaces i´d seen in china which were also old, but in a tacky sort of way. Each room had a completley different theme, and there so much effort had gone into the decoration of each, it was amazing! There were frescos on almost every ceiling, some even had porcelain shapes in 3D that matched the wall paper. Lots of ornamental furniture, portraits and statues of kings/queens, tapestries that covered an entire wall, marble floors, that kinda thing. I took lots of photos, but there´s no flash allowed, and it was kinda dark inside, so well see how they turn out.

AFter the palace, i got a messages from lisa saying she was at the airport getting her luggage and would be there soon. So i went home to meet her. I figured she´d be there by the time i managed to get there, we´d have lunch, get her settled in at the hostel, and maybe see some sights in the arvo. Unfortunatley it took her 1.5 hours to get her luggage, and she didn´t arrive until 3pm. I was so glad to see her when she go there, both herself and her 25Kg´s of luggage (Already)! Why the hell she needs so much stuff is way beyond me! But apparently she bought alot of stuff in the US. From what i could gather she spent a few whole days just shopping in NY. Now i have shopping envy. All i´ve managed to buy are a pair of shoes for going out in. She´s also got me a little paranoid that i don´t have enough stuff. Once i take my down jacket out of my back pack it´s practically half empty, and i have to use all the clothes i have to cushion that bottle of wine i´ve got at the bottom of the bag. I guess i could always buy more stuff, now i´ve got Lisa the shopping guru with me, it can´t be THAT hard!

Maybe we´ll try to see the Prado today. We´re going to granada this arvo. Apparently there´s an alhambra there. Lisa says it´s really worth seeing. Damned if i know what it is though.

The spanish are pretty relaxed. Morgan told us that they don´t do much work. Their working day starts around 9-10ish, and then they have morning tea at 11, which goes for about an hour, lunch at 2, which goes for about 2 hours, and they finish work at 6. Pretty sweet working day! There´s also only 4 high-rise buildings in the whole of madrid. One of which is Deutche Bank. Looks like the Germans are running the country! It´s pretty wierd in the morning though. I went for a walk the other day at around 9am and there wasn´t a soul on the streets. I had to check my watch cause it felt like 5am in the morning rather than 9.

So the original plan for yesterday was to go to Toledo, another quaint little town just outside madrid, for the day and look around, take some photos, the usual touristy stuff. After the fiasco of getting to Avila yesterday, i figured it would be okay if i didn´t get going until a bit later, and maybe the relaxed spanish culture is getting through to me. So i went to the sunday morning flea markets to start the day. Truth be told, they were a bit of a let down. Think Paddy´s markets strewn across lots of little spanish streets, just with fewer chinese people. Yeah. The only decent stuff seemed to be jewellery, but even then there wasn´t anything that i hadn´t seen back at home before.

When i eventually got to the statin, there were no available seats on trains coming back to madrid from Toledo. Bummer! Okay, on the bright side, it´s only lunch time. I figured this would be a good chance to go see the rest of madrid instead. Maybe a museum or two? Went to the Palais Real ( i think thats how its spelt) only to find that the line went half way around the block, and it was closing in little over an hour. NO way i´m gonna line up and pay an entry fee just to see 5 mins of the inside. So that plan got shot down too. Instead i ended up walking around city´s shopping district, thought maybe i might find some good bargains. No such luck either. Probably cause i was so tired and not really concentrating on shopping. So in the end i just went back to my hostel (at 3pm) for a siesta.

Forgot to mention that i checked into Cat´s hostel on Saturday night. It´s where i originally wanted to stay, but they didn´t have any spare beds cause of the stupid public holiday. IT´s also about half the price of where i was before, AND includes breakfast! Met some nice people at the hostel once i woke up. They were just sittin´ around in the hostel and i thought i´d join them; Rainy, from Latvia who has been travelling for the last 4 years funding his trip by busking as a human stautue. Hank & Felix, two Dutch guys studying journalism and trying to learn Swedish. Jonathan, from Sweden trying to teach the dutchmen how to speak swedish. Reni, a thai Swedish girl (we asians really get everywere!). Danny, from Hondurus who dances like a crazy gay man, and Jane from Perth who´s been travelling on her own for a year now. We sat around, drinking vermouth, eating peanuts and sharing travel stories. Not that i had any. The dutch guys told me all about their country and kept trying to teach me dutch and convincing me to go there. Hey, i´d love to go, if i had the money or the time! Apparently it´s the birthplace of licorice.

I´d arranged to meet the girls for drinks at around 11, and i bought these guys with me. We ended up being a group of around 10 once again. It´s cool how easy it is to make friends when everyone´s so far away from home. Although i kinda feel like the grandma of the group with everyone still being in uni. Man.. i really wish i´d have been bothered to actually save while i was at uni and do this a few years ago. I feel so old and cynical compared to everyone else.

At the pub we met two Canadians (Geoff and... damn, i forgot the other one´s name, but he was cute) Both from Vancouver. They danced with us for a bit, but were on a pub crawl and had to leave to go to the next pub.

The pub scene is pretty cool! Last time i went out with Liz & Co we stayed out til 4am, and the clubs were still kickin´when we left. Apparently theres this area of madrid that totally goes off on saturday nights until around 6am. But i was so tired on saturday (after avila) that i just went to bed and slept. Another cool thing about the clubs is that although drinks are really expensive, if you´ve got a big enough group walking past the pub, they have people who try to get you go go in by offering you free drinks. If you walk in with one of these guys, everyone gets a free shot and they waive the cover charge. It makes it alot cheaper to just go to lots of different pubs instead of staying at the same one all the time.
So we went to another pub, and the canadians were there again. This pub crawl seemed like a good idea, so we decided to join up. Lucky for us the guys running it were pretty cool and we didnt´have to pay. Gary, the Irish man, and a spanish dude who was kind enough to keep offering me his jacket each time we went to a new pub, cause i didn´t bring mine and it was bloody freezing! I have to say though, that of all the accents i´ve heard so far, the irish one is probably my favourite.

THere were a few more aussies on the pub crawl. James and Evan from Adelaide, and Lyle from the Gong. There weren´t any americans in the group, and as a result there was quite a bit of american bashing. Mostly from the canadian guys, should i be suprised?

All in all, was a great group, and we ended up staying out till 4am. Went back to the spanish dancing club, and i felt less uncoordinated this time cause i was dancing with Lyle, your typical Aussie bloke who´s got absolutley no idea about salsa! I think we were more barn dancing than salsa dancing, but it was fun.

Lisa arrives today, Can´t wait to see a familiar face. Although this travelling alone thing isn´t as bad as i thought it was. I think i´ve about had enough of madrid though, ready to try somewhere new. Everyone i´ve spoken to says barcelona is pretty awesome. I´m looking forward to it!