A Run Through of Spain! (Finally...)

Our awesome hotel in Barcelona right along the beach! Only a little awkward because their ultra-modern rooms had a bathtub in the bedroom and the toilet and shower were glass enclosed-not wall enclosed...

Barcelona had me on architecture overload. My main things to see in Spain were in Barcelona and they started with Gaudi's Sagrada Familia as it helped to inspire me to do architecture!

More Gaudi (roof of Casa Batllo)

Frank Gehry's "Copper Fish" at Port Olimpic (we could see this from our hotel room at the W)

View from Gaudi's Parc Guell (it was pretty hard to get to, but well worth it!)

Torre Agbar by Jean Nouvel -it was awesome to me! I took hundreds of pictures, while Burt and Dolan didn't seen as enthused. haha

Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion. We saw this on our last day in Barcelona (Wednesday September 29) after we had already picked up our rental car. We also drove the rental car up to Montjuic (the Barcelona Pavilion was at the base of the mountain which housed the Olympic stadium from the 1992 Olympics) where we had been the day before (ridden the cable car up to). The castle was quite a walk from where the cable car dropped us off, so we thought it best reached by car. Dolan and I had arrived late in the evening of Friday Sept. 24th and Burt arrived the following evening on Saturday Sept. 25th, and even with all of our time, I was sad to leave Barcelona.

So due to the general strike on Sept. 29th, we were not able to take a train from Barcelona to Valencia like we had originally planned. As the citizens encouraged all businesses to be closed on this day to send a message to the government about their anger towards the current economic situation, we had few options. Burt luckily found out about the strike a few weeks before we left and was able to rent us a sweet Volvo SUV to drive. After taking awhile to get out of Barcelona (the map and signage was a little tricky), we stopped at the sea-side coastal town of Sitges for some lunch (recomended to us by the guy at Hertz). We were so starving we found the Burger King and ate a burger and fries there (not chancing it with the somteims questionable Spanish food). Upon leaving the town, I consulted my Rick Steve's Spain book to see if there was any information on it. It said that the town is a most popular vacation get-away for the gay community. I wonder if the Hertz guy thought Burt traveling around Spain with his friends meant something different (one of the only radio stations we could find in English was playing "It's Raining Men" when we stopped to ask for directions from two other men)! haha

Valencia oranges!

City of Arts and Science (Cuidad de las Artes y de las Ciencias) by Santiago Calatrava. Didn't actually go in, but it was pretty cool to take photos of. The complex was HUGE!

Valencia at night. As we had to catch a night train to Granada and it wasn't until 12:44 (or so we thought), and we had to check out of the hotel at 10 a.m., we were effectively homeless for about 12 hours. We spent some of the day out at the City of Arts and Science, some time walking around the city and riding our tourist hop-on/hop-off bus (our ticket was only valid for 24 hours and I think it ran out pretty early in the day). But our most significant chunk of time was spent in McDonald's playing "Angry Birds" on Burt's ipad and reading up on Spain, as McDonald's was one of the few places we could sit at without being noticed for hours at a time as it was two-stories. I think overall we went to two different McDonald's and spent about 5 hours total there and one hour hanging out at Starbucks. We got our bags around 10ish from our hotel and headed to the train station to wait for our train for what we thought would be about 3 hours...

Too bad our train was delayed 2 hours until 3:06 a.m. (it was further dealyed after taking this photo). So we spent about the same time at the train station as we did in McDonald's! We finally caught the train on the morning of October 2nd and got a bed for about 7 hours until the train arrived in Granada at 10 a.m.

Granada! This shot was taken from our tourist bus (Burt really liked getting these buses to see an over view of the city). This is the sign we saw all over Spain to rally citizens for the General Strike.

The Cathedral in Granada that we didn't ever get a chance to go in

These were the lamposts lining Gran Via (one of the main streets) where our hotel was in Granada. They went down as some of my favorites!

I went out one of our nights there to explore a bit of Granada. It seemed quite dead during the day, but around 10 or so at night, it was a completely different place with tons of life! As it's home to a large university (as is Seville), I wondered where everyone was, and I found them in the Islamic markets which were hidden in winding alleyways, in the Hookah bars that only opened at night, and all of the families (including little kids) were running around the fountains in the various plazas. Because of this and a walk I did the morning we left Granada (into the Moorish quarter of town), it was my second favorite place to visit next to Barcelona!

Gran Via at night

So Granada, Seville, and Cordoba are most noted for their Islamic and Moorish influences. The Alhambra in Granada is a palace and fortress complex built in the 14th century by Moorish rulers. We had all heard it was one of the best things in Europe to see (and between the three of us, we had seen a LOT in Europe) and one of the top 10 architectural sites to see in the world. They only allow 6,000 visitors a day, and apparently tickets sell out weeks/months in advance depending on what time of year you go. So we booked our tickets in advance, and got there extra early for our 2 p.m. entry time. When you book, you also have to book a specific time to go into the Nasrid Palace which is supposed to be the highlight of the complex.

Although it was pretty cool, I wouldn't say it was better than a lot of the other things we'd seen. I think it was a little too hyped up for me. Plus, the hoards of tourist groups were pretty annoying as sometimes you couldn't get past them!

Coming out of Nasrid Palace

We arrived in Seville by train on Monday October 4th. Pictured here is the Cathedral. It is the largest Gothic cathedral and third-largest church in the world.

View from the bell tower in the Seville Cathedral

So this Italian restaurant near the Cathedral was a great value and the food was my favorite in Spain (yes, I understand it's Italian...). We went three times while we were in Seville and got to knwo the staff quite well. Our usual waitress Josie was probably a little creeped out that we went so much!

Cute second-hand book store right outside the Bario (We stayed in Bario Santa Cruz which was full of windy narrow streets and little shops and cafes. We took a different way out everytime we left-not always on purpose!)

The more modern shopping area of Seville was covered in these fabric tarps to keep the street cooler during their really hot summers.

We took a day trip to Cordoba on Tuesday October 5th to see the town and its main attraction-the Mezquita. Started in 600 AD it was once a Moorish mosque that later had a Gothic Cathedral and Roman Cathedral added. It's red and white reminded me of candy canes and Christmas. I'm sure this wasn't the look they were going for, but all they needed was a Christmas tree and a little tinsel...

It is most noted for it's 856 columns made of jasper, onyx, marble and granite

Ceramics (and fans) were very large in the region of Andalucia (where Granada, Seville, and Cordoba were located)

We arrived late in the afternoon to Madrid on Thursday October 7th and went out to do a little sight seeing. It was good we did because this is about the most of Madrid that I saw. The next day I took a day trip to Toledo while Burt and Dolan stayed in Madrid to go around the world famous museums. Burt left around 5 a.m. the following morning (Saturday October 9th) to head back to Houston. Dolan and I stayed one extra day, leaving the morning of October 10th to head back to London. However, it poured all day on Saturday, and as we were allowed to stay in our 5 star hotel suite in the Westin Palace until we had to check into our hostel at 3 p.m., I didn't feel inclined to leave the luxury to go into the rain and get wet socks! This is one of the main plazas-Plaza Mayor.

It rained a little on our first evening there, then got sunny again creating this rainbow and great photo opportunity!

Rain Rain Go Away!

I feel like this photo best summed up my time in Madrid on Saturday. I followed this couple around a few corners to try and get a good picture...haha. I also followed around people with nice colored umbrellas, small children with pint-sized umbrellas, and took quite a few pictures of puddles with cool reflections (or so I thought at the time), and anything else that showed the dismal weather in Madrid! So needless to say, didn't see much of the sights.

I thought about going into the Prado, but then decided that I would probably more enjoy my time lounging in the hotel with a hot chocolate.

So I know it has been a little over a month since my last post and that's for a very good reason! I went on a great two week trip all over Spain with my friends Burt and Dolan. As I didn't have my computer while we were there, I couldn't upload any of my photos, and when I got back and saw that I had over 6,000 photos, it was quite a daunting task to go through them to figure out what to post. I have posted 3 Spain albums on facebook to show more photos as photos are hard to post on here. I only posted a few of Toledo, so I will have a separate post for there as it was probably my third favorite place in Spain!