Now That Is a City

As soon as we got close, it became readily apparent that Madrid is for real. This is a legitimate city. It reminded me a lot of New York actually, the outskirts started as suburb kinda places then turned into dozens of identical tall brick apartment buildings. A few laps around the neighborhood my friend Guillermo recommended we stay and we had a parking spot. It was a very cool place, no worries about our next task (food finding). We rang the Olé Hostel bell. Like ten times. Then finally they let us in. It was a dark and narrow stairway and nothing was really marked. I rang the first doorbell a few times, knocked on the door and yelled let me in. To no avail. They were not open. Apparently I had let myself in somehow...We decided our time would be better spent eating at this juncture, so we went to a hip little tapas restaurant across the street and got some delicious Asian-fusion tapas. It was a trippy place – the bathroom had a half dozen of those hippy door beads one right after another and it kinda felt like you were walking through an automatic car wash.

After refueling we reluctantly started looking for a place. We found three equally unideal options. The first was a hotel for a hundred euros. The second two were Spanish-style hostels…we went with the cheaper of the two, which once we had escaped from the next morning, we lovingly referred to as Antonia’s closet.

Seville

Picking up where I last left off, we were at the parking stage (since we did food finding on the road) upon arrival in Seville. It was pretty late, Tuesday night, but the city was alive. We hoped to do the same thing as in Granada – walk around to see what kind of sleeping place we could find – but the city was far too big. We found another itty bitty parking place and wandered around one of the bigger city squares, stopping for an occasional beer, and although there were dozens of bars and restaurants, there was only one hostel. It didn’t seem much like a hostel, as it had no dorm-style rooms and it was quite expensive, but at 2am we gave up the wander and gave in to the ‘hostel’. It was kind of the shittiest hotel there ever was, but we were tired and they had wifi, always a plus. I slept well and when I got up I called my friends in Madrid.

They recommended a good hostel (this time a true hostel, not a Spanish-style hostel) and we set out to see the city a bit. It was a beautiful day - 20° and sunny, with big fluffy clouds floating about in quantity enough to bully us into carrying umbrellas. We walked south from the Plaza de Hercules where the car and hostel sat, looking for food. The city was bustling again, I have to say it must be a city with great regard eating and drinking and for this, I offer it my respect. It was midday on Wednesday, every bar was packed, every restaurant overflowing. We walked through city square upon city square, with historical highlights like ancient castles interspersed amongst the commercial sprawl. We found a cool little restaurant and ate what I would like to consider a typical Spanish meal (ok, for a tourist at least): tapa upon tapa, coffee con leche, orange wine, churros con chocolate, more coffee. 

We headed out of the city right on schedule, the rain started once we were in the car – right on schedule. This time I had big plans though. Nearly 3000km into the drive I was tired. Since it was still light out and the rain wasn’t coming down too hard, once we got outside of the city we began driving lessons. Rey had spent a week driving through Nicaragua a few years ago so he had at least some experience with a manual transmission and the Partner practically drives itself, so he picked it up like a natural. I’m freeeeee! It was a great drive to Madrid.

Grand Palace, Large Rock

To continue the last episode, we got up and began wandering and food finding. This time we wandered rather intentionally up to the Alhambra and found a croissanteria on the way. The Alhambra was pretty spectacular, my favorite part was the bathouse, where the entrance was marked by a waiting room with vines for a roof and a bench to rest. Each little room had stars in the ceiling except the biggest which had this:

Throughout the place were those most exquisite tiles. I think the fact that there were typically just fragments of them left made them seem even more special. At the top of the fortress the wind picked up and when we noticed it was only noon, we decided we had time to hightail it to Gibraltar before the sun set. I wanted to get a glimpse of Africa.

We stepped into the car, and the traffic, the moment rain started falling again. It took an hour to get out of the city, but we still had an ETA of 4pm, so there was a chance. It was a bit of a gamble, since it was a couple of hours of extra driving, and we weren't sure what was actually there, but since we were so close…we figured why not. If it was cool, we thought we’d stay the night, otherwise head up to Seville after seeing the Straight.

As we drove south through rolling hills of olive trees, the rain left and the sun came out with just enough overlap to produce the most perfect rainbow I believe there has ever been.  And finally, the temperature picked up. 16. 17. 18. 19! It also began to feel more and more familiar, like Mexico almost. It is actually a very similar climate to southern California and it is the same chaparral landscape. The sun came out and I rolled down my window, pretending it was summer.  The last bit of Spain before Gibralter (which is its own country, but owned by the British so the official language is English) looked practically third world, which was a bit of a shock, as everything else had been utterly European. After a few circles around the Gibraltan round-abouts I finally found the border and I eagerly handed the guards my passport, crossing my fingers for a stamp. Nope. I still have gotten only a single shred of official proof of my existence in Europe, the stamp I got upon arrival to the Dusseldorf airport in July.

The third world country look didn’t end inside Gibraltar. I followed signs to the Upper Rock and we literally just drove up it. We drove up the rock of Gibraltar. At the top, it was pouring rain, windy as hell and totally socked in by fog. I could totally feel Africa though. I swear.

The next hour and a half we spent sitting in Gibraltarian rush hour. I will note for the Americans in the crowd most streets in Granada and all of them in Gibraltar were one lane. Plus parked cars on one side. It was really quite impressive that anyone, including myself in the big ol’ Partner, could maneuver through them at all. However, I'm not sure if you can consider 1.5 hours to go about 2 miles ‘maneuvering’… as you can imagine this threw off my food finding schedule and put us in less than sparkling moods. Let’s just leave the traffic of Gibraltar out and skip to Seville, perhaps simply adding that a pitstop for beer (for Rey only, of course, Mom) and a nice ham and asparagus omelet helped immensely.

Umbrellas and Paellas

 Once we got outside of the city, the radio thingy started to function, although only marginally. Still, staticky beats you have playlisting control over are better than staticky beats you have no control over so we endured. In a belated surge of ingenuity triggered by about €150 in toll payments, I remember the ‘Avoid Toll Roads’ setting in the GPS. Thanks to this, entered Granada around 8pm via an empty one-lane mountain road which ended directly into what I am going to assume is rush-hour traffic (figuring that the siesta pushes closing hours back a bit).

We had forgotten to find a place to stay for the evening, but driving through the tiny little streets surrounded by shoppers and umbrellas lured us to just leave the car and wander around. We found a teensy, tiny little parking spot outside of a church and left the Partner for the slightly more spacious Granada alleyways. The rain was light, the air was warm and the streets were busy. Hungry again, we found a small restaurant and tried to get Paella again. This time it went quite well, until a few hours later when we both felt a bit ill. But by then it was late enough to go to bed, so no harm done. We had found a little Pension between the restaurant and the car, and since it was so late she gave us a pretty good deal on our beds.

I believe we have settled into a pattern:
Afternoons (during the rain and siesta): driving.
Evening: Arrive & park (always an ordeal). Food finding.
Night: Wandering.
Morning: More wandering, food finding and preparation for the next journey. Repeat.

Valencia, as in the Oranges

After settling in (aka dispersing my belongings throughout my room), drinking my coffee, getting cleaned up, attempting to fix the broken TV, eying the radio with consideration but then rental-car-induced animosity and getting a recommendation from my suddenly not so nice and sunny front desk lady, we set out for dinner. The ‘mellow twenty minute walk’ was nice, but lent on the ‘full city tour’ side, which was a little difficult on my hungry stomach. We followed the sound of drunk people and by 11 we found a nice little Spanish restaurant. Or so we thought. Rey later relabeled it ‘memorable.’ It started with absurdly full glasses of free red wine. What could be better, right? Wrong. That was to hide something…something called their food. I got the paella, but sent it back. Rey got lamb chops (yeah, he’s crazy), but sent them back. They gave us some nice ice cream though, and played an upbeat, jazzy lounge singer covering the most serious pop hits of the nineties. Think Frank Sinatra plus Alanis Morissette’s ‘You Aughta Know’, Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’, Nirvana’s ‘Rape Me’, etc etc. Added bonus: if you are sitting in my seat and look to your left, you see this:


It was definitely memorable.

Over the course of dinner I made a single, solitary goal for the next day: finding an ipod adapter for the car. When I finally woke myself up, about 2 hours later than I had planned, it was noon. We wandered around looking for food and ipod accessories. The former proved much easier than the latter, although neither was easy. We ended up in a little corner bar/restaurant that didn’t have a menu. In every restaurant there are these little refrigerated cases with trays of tapas on display. The waiter pointed at his display and said just choose which ones you want. I bemusedly chose meatballs, potatoes and roasted peppers, to which the bartender/waiter/chef said ¿Bocadillo? And I shook my head yes. My selections showed up on the table surrounded by bread. New vocab word: bocadillo means sandwich.

Everyone responded to my queries about electronics stores with lots of puzzlement and very little information, so we decided to just head towards a mall and hope to find something suitable there. I selected El Centro Nuevo in the GPS and pressed ‘Go!’. Seventy round-abouts and about that many declarations of ‘recalculating…recalculating’ from the GPS lady-voice we were nowhere near a mall, but Rey spotted a Media Markt sign (Euro version of Best Buy). Hoooray. After much deliberation, we chose the only radio tuner ipod adapter thing they had and gleefully hopped back in the car. Now driving will be fun! As Rey fiddled with the new whatchamacallet, I fiddled with the ignition, unable to get the car started. [Quick side note: Rey doesn’t drive stick, so at this point I am the sole Partner operator. This will be revisited later, I promise.] Around the time he realized that the reason they only sell one type of FM radio ipod adapter because there were no open radio stations and they didn’t actually work in the city, I started the car with absolutely no realization for any reason why it took ten minutes to get the silly thing to agree to let me turn the key. Maybe the poor little Partner was tired, I don’t know. But we were on the road again, this time towards Granada.

Regular Morning in Barcelona

The plan for today was the following: get up, check out, put stuff in car. Find café with internet for breakfast, find non-hostel in Valencia for the night. Locate Euros from a Citibank. Buy Rey a green tie and pair of black shoes. And finally, find an electronics store to end the ipod-free radio insanity. All of this happened, in addition to me learning how to drive in round-abouts. I don’t mean the happy little things in small, northern-California towns. I mean the massive free-for-alls that litter Spanish (and if I remember correctly, every other Spanish-speaking country’s) cities.

Actually, we didn’t find any black shoes for Rey. But everything else happened. I also decided I wanted an Amelia Earhart hat, possibly because I was just about as cold as could be (the blue skies and sun had tricked me into thinking it was warm…leading me to not wear enough clothing, hence the jacket zipped up like I'm tomb raiding or star trekking…). I found the perfect hat, but the store was closed for lunch til 5 so we put the AE hat, along with the black shoes, into the next day’s list.

Although not on our list, we welcomed a stumble across the liberation of a wild balloon swarm. I recommend such an event so highly that, when combined with a life-long fear of killing both bird and fish with such an engagement, I have been inspired to create fish food- (for watery regions) or fertilizer- (for landy regions) based balloon.

Actually, we didn’t find an electronics store either. But it was a nice, sunny, not so long drive to Valencia and the Holiday Inn welcomed us with a nice, sunny front desk lady who spoke to me in Spanish even with my terrible Mexicamerican accent and even though she spoke English. And, unlike the Barcelona hostel, there was no squatter in Rey’s bed upon his arrival. And my shower had been cleaned at some point this year. And there was a watercooker. So I made some coffee.

Early, Early Morning in Barcelona

I picked up the Peugeot in Lindau, Germany in a fluffy snow storm a little before 10am. I drove slowly to get used to the car, the weather, the infrastructure, the GPS. Tom, a friend from school, gave me a crash course in German and Swiss road signs and driving etiquette and I tried to balance my new knowledge with not caring so I didn’t get too stressed out. Unfortunately my ipod adapter didn’t work, but I jammed out to Austrian radio (for some reason I tend to prefer it over German or Swiss) and felt very at home and comfortable (minus the aforementioned car, weather, infrastructure, GPS) almost like I was back in California in my Honda with Latino 96.3. The snow let up just long enough to pick up Rey (another friend from school & my co-pilot for the first, week-long leg of my trip) and the ridiculous amount of luggage a rental car enabled. By 11, we were off.

It was a long drive. A vicious, unmanned BP gas station in French Switzerland ate 80 dollars of cash without giving me any gas in return, helping me realize how much more German than French I speak. (Write this one down: 'Gaz' means 'Natural Gas' not 'Gasoline'.) (Oh, and don’t let me forget to mail in those receipts to get my money back.)

I had hoped to make it to above freezing temperatures before dark, and although measuring distance in kilometers instead of miles makes the journey go by much faster, it wasn’t until 11 pm, just outside of Barcelona, that the temperature finally hit a degree (Celsius). This was also about the time that two other great sources of stress were relieved (well, three if you count distance from destination): the radio became constant (providing unrelenting electronica instead of intermittent static, French babble and Christmas songs) and what I have come to regard as the largest, windiest place in the world ended. Proof that only time can give: my arms are actually sore now from trying to keep my Cowboy Windbox [see Peugot Partner Tepee. Yes, that is what my car is called.] inside one lane.

We dropped our stuff at the hostel, which brought back all of my summer promises never to stay in such an establishment again and planted a vow to find some other sleeping venue for my next few stops. At nearly 2am the streets of Las Ramblas, a large pedestrian area in the city, were chilly and void of all but the finest of characters. They maintained an unmistakable air of intention about them however. I imagined they sang something like this: para siglos detrás y siglos delante, he dado la aventura únicamente para las almas silvestres quien la anhelan. (Or in the blandness that is English: for hundreds of years I have been and will continue to facilitate adventure late into the night for those curious souls who wish to enjoy it.) The alleys are tunnels practically dug into apartment buildings, churches and Christmas decorations. In every corner is tucked a ghostly park or a perfect hole of a bar or enchanting little restaurant, the last of which we ducked into as soon as possible...the Bolognase-flavored chips and Mom's gingersnaps had warn off after the twelfth or so hour of wind wrestling. We walked out of dinner at nearly 3am, an incredibly agreeable feeling after the last few months with the incredibly unagreeable Swiss consumption hours. (i.e. want to eat after 6p? on Sunday? there is one, single, sad place for you: the gas station. Enjoy your pretzel.)