Spain June 2010

Well London has served up another typically inconsistent day of weather so with the rain coming and going it's a good time for blogging! While watching fat girlfriend, skinny boyfriend on Jerry Springer.
We arrived in London on Sunday arvo after 20-odd hours on a bus. A free bus from San Sebastian so we try not to complain too much. We are lucky enough to have a room to crash in, a friend from home who we won't be able to see as we were two days late getting to London (busses blowing up and what not) and Kelly had to fly to Paris Sunday morning.
We spent nearly a month in Spain, starting in Malaga in the south of Spain on the Mediterranean. A great hostel by the beach and caught some serious Spanish rays. The beach, I won't lie, was disappointing. The sand is more dirt than sand, the water seems really tidal and muddy and it was freezing! Malaga has an ancient fortress called Alcazar, similar to Azkaban but not so many dementors. Good views of the city and harbour and cool passages to pretend to be an invading Italian army. We spend three nights in Malaga before catching a lovely train to Seville.
Every town and city in Spain just has so much history. Apparently everyone didn't used to get on and so there's fortresses everywhere and palaces and churchs; it's exhausting. In Seville we had a local tour guide, Diego, a friend of my German Linhsay's (Linhsay studied in Seville for a year). He took us to amazing tapas - a table full of food for about $10 each - followed by a Seville by night tour, flamenco at an obscure bar with a guy singing about his yellow shirt and his brother being a baker, and classic drinking by the river with the under age locals. Phill also sampled the Sevillian nightclub scene and got rejected by chicks because he didn't have any shoes. Since when are thongs not shoes?
In Seville we were lucky enough (?) to go to the bull fighting, along with every other tour group and school excursion in town. It was an experience, but probably not one we'll do again. The whole show is not a fair fight between man and bull. The bull is bled for two hours before entering the ring. There are several matadors that tease and incite the bull and make it run around the ring until it is exhausted. Then they brought out a poor horse in padding and armour - BLINDFOLDED - and made it stand until its rider could get a good shot at the bull with a lance about one inch in diameter. So there's just a bit of extra blood flow for the measure. Theeennnnn one of the special mattadors with the lycra leotards and sequined capes comes in, does a bit of a dance then charges the bull, does a little leap and stabs the bull in the spine with two flowered (no kidding) spears and runs away before the bull can attack. Then a bit more teasing, a couple more spears, and the mattador finally kills the bull with a long sword through the spine and into the heart. Phill and I were the only ones cheering when a mattador got fucked up by a bull.
From Seville we went to Cordoba and saw the Mezquita - a millenia old cathedral that was first a mosque, then a Catholic cathedral, then a Mosque, then a Catholic cathedral...Luckily each leader recognised how cool the other one's buildings and decor was and so just kept adding to it instead of tearing stuff down - a really interesting conglomeration of architecture and orange trees. And of course, there was a fortress to explore and a gum tree-lined river to amble along.
From Cordoba we bussed past the ridiculously efficiently farmed countryside that is Spain. Where there were no orange trees or olive groves, there were massive wind farms or fields of solar panels. White houses grow out of the cliff sides, deserted in the midday sun. Actually the midday to five o'clock sun. Gotta love siestas.
We spent three nights in Madrid, representing the Socceroos in an Irish pub and drinking way too much Magners. Met some people from Sydney who, of course, know the same people we know. Such a fun night meant the next day in bed for me. We managed to do a bit of sight seeing but decided it's much nicer when not hungover. Saw lots of prostitutes strutting their wares in the middle of the day and random street 'performers' whose performance involved wearing funny clothes and standing very still.
From Madrid we caught an overnight bus made painful by the bitch behind me not letting me recline my seat. Arrived in Barcelona at 7am and wandered the streets and had a nap on the beach (in the only patch of shade) before we could check into our hostel, a monstrous 7-story, 12-bed-dorm kind of place with bitchy receptionists and not enough character.
Barcelona was stinking hot and awesome. We spent three nights there wandering the streets, climbing some hills and hitting the beach. There's this one bloke, some architect or something, called Gaudi. He did alright. His buildings and other buildings influence by him are all around the city. Without a doubt the awesomest is the Segrada Familia, a church he started...but then he was hit by a tram, was taken to a pauper's hospital because nobody knew who he was...and died! So 80 years later, the church is still being built to his original plans and style. It is still a massive construction site - builders in hard hats polishing new floors while thousands of tourists walk around admiring the building. In perhaps the best example of how parsimonious we have become, we hired one audio guide and I managed to repeat everything to Phill and we both had a grand old day out. I had gone to the Segrada Familia five years earlier - we will go back one day, maybe it will be finished.
From Barcelona we had a quick trip north west to Pamplona in order to catch a bus to Estella, about 40mins from Pamps and our base for the next hectic week of the San Fermin festival. It deserves its own post.