Granada: Explorations of a very wet city...

We got into Granada early this morning. I didn't get much sleep -- the train was just too noisy and bright. I think I have a touch of jet lag since I've been getting up very early. Not sure why since that doesn't really make sense. Anyway, Spanish night trains aren't the greatest.

The train station was suprisingly small. We took a taxi up to our hotel. It's right next the Alhambra, the Moorish castle that overlooks the city. We're about 500 feet above the city so we have some great views, although it is a bit overcast. You can see the snow-capped Spanish Sierra Nevadas looming in the distance.

We made the trek down the hill to have lunch -- I had a German hamburger which was a lightly cooked mix of beef and pork with mustard and saurekraut. Then we checked out La Castilla Real, the Royal Chapel. It's where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel are supposedly buried. Another church albeit a small one; we eschewed the less touted Cathedral next door.

Then we started a walking tour.. just in time for the rain. It was a depressing drizzle for a while as we toured Albaçin, the Moorish quarter of Granada. There are lots of narrow alleyways that wind up a hill that faces the Alhambra. Here and there you get some amazing views of the castle. Our stroll was cut short though as the rain intensified... and we didn't have our umbrellas! So we hopped into a tea house, Tetería Kasbah. It was a nice, cosy place with WiFi. A lot of places have it here -- they give you a key when you ask for it. And they pronounce it WeeFee. I had a local pastry that's a special for Granada, a piononos.

Clambering back up the hill, jet lag and the poor night's sleep caught up with me. I ending up crashing for a few hours. Despite the rain we ventured down to the town again in search of vegeterian food. We traipsed about town, a bit lost at times -- how I wish Google Maps and GPS worked here on my Droid! Eventually, we found a Moroccan restaurant. It was a teaser for our next major stop -- I had a tagine with beef, dates, and nuts; Sudha had a rice pilaf with vegetables. I'll write an entry devoted to food here at some point.

A trek back up the hill and sleep, perchance to dream....

Barcelona: More Gaudi

I'm writing this post on the night train from Barcelona to Granada. It's a 11 hour trip and we only have seats -- beds were 50 euros more. At least there's more legroom than a plane, so I hope I'll get some sleep.

We had breakfast at a little patisserie on Las Ramblas, the main thoroughfare for tourists. It's a lot like Harvard Square with street performers plus some tchotki stalls. The one thing everyone told us was to watch out for pickpockets. While Barcelona is safe (for a big city of 3m people), thieves apparently prey on naive tourists on Las Ramblas. Fortunately, we had no incidents.

The patisserie was excellent, and it was just one of many in the city. I have to agree with others in saying that California doesn't have anything to compare. Which is a shame since the apple pastry and pain au chocolat were amazing!

We finally saw the Barcelona Cathedral, already breaking my vow of not visiting another church. This was a large one again but different in style. In the cloister there were 13 swans, emblematic of the guardians of the patron saint of the church.

We came out in faint drizzle, but fortunately it didn't develop into anything worse. The weather has been cold and dry for the most part. I'm bundled up in 3 or 4 layers with hat and gloves on. Sudha says I look like a Gaudi work of art, bulging bulbuously! I can't understand how people here walk around without a hat or gloves -- it's been hovering around 40F. I'm glad I brought a thermal layer.

You can say today was El Dia de Güell (The Day of Güell). Güell was a rich count who commissioned work by Gaudi. His house, the Palau Güell, was just down the street from our hotel. Most of it was closed for renovation so we couldn't see the funky chimneys. They are very colorful and look like ceramic experiments out of a journeyman's kiln. Many of them are derived off of objects in nature.

Afterwards we headed up to Park Güell. We took our first subway ride. In retrospect, we should have taken it more. It was very effective, with clearly marked times to the next train (and usually marked in minutes). Again, California falls far behind when it comes to public transportation. You can see one metro train zooming away.

To get to the park, we had to climb up a large hill (with a few escalators in stretches), awarded with panaromic views of the city. It would have been excellent if it were sunny... The park featured more works by Gaudi and included the museum of his house. I've included a neat chair of his design here. You can also get a good idea of his ceramic style in the picture of me with a Gaudi lizard.

Since we didn't expect a real dinner, we had a fancy lunch, mingling with the businessmen and rich housewives that were shopping on the Barcelona equivalent of Fifth Avenue. We went Italian this time. We had an excellent
Margherita pizza. The house wine I had was a spectacular Catalonian red. Too bad it's hard to bring back bottles of wine nowadays...

Booking seats on the night train was something of a fiasco. We tried to book tickets at the metro stations a couple of times, but the system wouldn't let them do it. Actually, the second time we were told, "This is Europe, this is Spain.... the land of Dali, it's very surreal that we can't do this." Anyway, so we fell victim to Sudha's paranoia and got to the station 3.5 hours early. We couldn't actually book until an hour beforehand, but maybe it's a good thing since the train is full. I'm succumbing to fatigue here, so I'll sign off. Until Granada...

Commentary: The dollar strengthens

I happened to do a quick check of the exchange rate today. In the course of the last week, the dollar has appreciated 5%. While this doesn't help me with the dollars I converted before my trip, it's definitely good for any credit card charges, which is how we mostly pay. So... Europe, while still expensive, now seems just a tiny bit cheaper!

Barcelona: Churches, cathedrals, and more churches!

We made it into Barcelona and ate like a Spaniard! Okay, not as catchy as walking like Ramses... Anyway, we had paella at restaurant recommended by a cop at 11:30pm. I had the seafood variety with squid, octopus, clams, mussels, lobster, and crab. Sudha had the more pedestrian vegeterian variety, but it was still good. Huge portions and kinda pricy -- it's not easy to eat cheap in Spain if you want to try things at decent places.

We got a late start and didn't get out of the hotel until noon. We didn't actually have a destination in mind, so we just wandered until we finally hit a couple of churches. Now I remeber one thing about my last European road trip -- you quickly get church-ed out!

Nonetheless, we continued on to La Sagrada Familia, mostly because it was touted as one of the last works of Gaudi. Gaudi is a Barcelona famous for his innovative style using mathematical shapes and contours (e.g. hyperboloids and other conic sections) as well as incorporation of various objects of nature into his works. Admission to the church was ridiculous -- 11 euros (we paid 2 more for admission into a Gaudi park which we'll go to tomorrow). As it is admission to many attractions here in Spain is ridiculously expensive. Here, I don't think it was even worth it. The church is still under construction, particularly in the interior, and you can see a lot of it from outside. And then they try to charge you more (2.50 euros) to take a lift up the towers, which we passed on. While it was interesting to see the work close up, especially once we learned about what was behind the designs, it wasn't worth that much. Turns out, though, that two other Gaudi buildings we passed on the way back were even more expensive! Anyway, here's a pic of the Sagrada as well as another Gaudi building. We'll probably have a lot more Gaudi tomorrow.

The rest of the day wasn't too exciting, just a lot of walking. We went down the shopping street which felt like 5th Avenue in NY. I peeked in Zara; the weak dollar could really be seen as everything was so expensive. We ended up walking 8 miles today, made a bit more due to my indecisiveness in picking a dinner place -- tapas aren't as exciting when you're the only one choosing meat ones...

Tomorrow will be another busy day! A lot to see, but we'll see how much we get to. We'll be off in the evening on the night train to Granada...

Seville: The Cathedral and Giralda

The second major stop of the day, the Cathedral, didn't live up to expectations. I guess churches seem similar after a while. This church was built in soaring Gothic style, like Notre Dame. There was tons of open floor space rather than a big central apse. Instead there were lots of little chapels arrayed along the sides. Like the palace, the church had Islamic 'roots', built atop a razed mosque, itself built atop Roman ruins. Though it's harder to see hints of those here. Given a place of prominence is the tomb of Christopher Columbus, who hailed from Seville. One pic from within the Cathedral -- it's not the brightest place for pictures...

We took a winding ramp with 8 1/2 turns up to the top of the Giralda, the bell tower (built atop a minaret). The views of the city were impressive. We could look right down into the terrace of our hotel. Promptly at 1:45, we heard three bells to signify the 3/4 hour.

Wending our way back down the tower and through an orange grove amidst the courtyard, we succumbed to hunger and got the tapas pictured in the first post of the day. Then it was off to the train station...

I'm actually writing this on the high-speed (AVE) train to Barcelona. We're cruising at 300 km/hr. I should have brought a work data card for "testing"! The one disappointment was that we had to pay a 10 euro reservation fee even though we had Spain / Portugal rail passes. It's likely this will mean that the passes will not have been economical.

We get into Barcelona at 9:30pm, so maybe a light dinner at traditional Spanish hours. I'm already feeling tired. Jet lag is easy to combat while running about, but much harder when you're sitting on a train...

Seville: Camera no obscura anymore!

And... it's working!!!

I didn't hold out much hope, since the camera shop in the middle of Barrio de Santa Cruz was the size of my bathroom back home. But there were enough innards of cameras in the shop that he must have known what he was doing. It turned that corrosion from water -- most likely from the Dead Sea a few trips back -- had destroyed the electric connections on the inside of the backplate. Somehow, he managed to come up with a spare Canon 20D back and got it working. I was shocked! It's not much to see, but here's a picture of the old back. If you squint you can see corrosion about the small hole at the bottom.

The only drawback was the cost -- 92 euros (about $140). But at that point I had to pay. I guess that's the cost for next day service. Must be parts, labor, and the weak dollar at work. At least, though, I have a camera that works.

Seville: Tapas y Real Alcázar

Last night's dinner was a bit of an adventure. We discovered how vegeterian unfriendly Spain is -- it's amazing that they can construct a whole tapas menu that is not veggie friendly. So we ended up tapas hopping... which is apparently a Sevillian tradition. I was happily eating jamón ibérico and octopus with paprika while Sudha had to settle for sheep's milk cheese, quiche, and stuffed mushrooms. As an example, here's a picture of today's lunch tapas -- chorizo, paella, and fried potatos.

Sudha tried an orange from one of the hundreds of trees here in Seville. Well, she learned why there are so many oranges left on the trees. Within moments, she was rushing to spit it out -- it was extremely sour. Later we learned that there are so many oranges on trees here because they're of a variety that is inedible.

Today we went to the Real Alcázar, the Royal Palace. There are actually sections that the royal family uses when they come to Seville, but the sections we went to were a museum. They were open to the air and cold! (The temperature here is around 40F.) The tilework in the palace was impressive. Almost everything was tastefully edged with tile. In the attached picture I'm standing next to some nice tiles. There's also a nice wooden cupola, but I don't think the picture does it justice. You can also see the Moorish influences here. Unlike in Istanbul, it is the Christian / European architecture that was built on Islamic buildings.

Another highlight of the palace were the expansive gardens, although they're not as grand or manicured as Versailles. Sure there is a hedge maze, but these are more Spanish in style with smaller gardens carved out, often centered around a fountain. Occasionally you'd come across a peacock strolling through the grounds.

We didn't go to the official quarters as we figured we'd see similar places in Granada. 'sides, we were on a timetable. To make things easier I'll split today into a few posts.