It was a bright and early start on Thursday 22nd June when two weary eyed travellers got on a buget airline plane that shone irredecent orange and white into their barely awake eyes. Mere grunts were a means of communication as they buckled in and tuned out from the far-to-smilie air hostess’ instruction on what to do in case of emergency.
Two and half hours later they arrived into the heady heat of Spains capital city. Almost instantly they travellers awoke from their plane induced cloud of lethary and realised that they were, in fact, officially ON HOLIDAY!!!! The first taste of Spain was going through passport control when the devillishly handsome posspot controller man tooka sidelong glance at Jayne, then her passport and said “Welcome to Spain Jay-nee”, she giggled, not quite sure what he was saying in his rustic accent, and moved on. I then walked up and granted, he took a double take on the passport photo* but then smiled and said “Athalee, welcome to Spain”, I blushed, giggled and spluttered some kind of Thank-gracias-si! combination back. And thus the adventures of Jaynee and Athalee began.
We had four nights in Madrid, the clubbing capital apparently. Jaynee and I were really on a quest to eat tapas and drink wine and just RELAX. Which is exactly what we did. From shoe shopping to meandering up little streets to find cafes serving the richest of hot chocolates with deep fried donuts, Madrid was a good city. We embraced the spanish lifestyle and had our siestas back at the youth hostel from about 3-4pm onwards. Waking up about 9pm to get ready and go out for dinner and a few drinks. The food was great where ever we went and while some reds were a little dodgy, we weren’t exactly hard to please!
Thanks to the lonely planet guide we managed to complete a few walking tours and see most of the sites in Madrid. We found it ever so slightly odd that where ever we went there seemed to be groups of people in either red footbal shirts or blue football shirts yelling and blowing horns.. we then realised that this weekend was also the final for Seville Vs Madrid. A HUGELY important game!! As soon as it dawned on us that this would mean half the Sevillian population would be heading back to Seville on Sunday we haul arsed to the train station to book our train tickets.. to no avail. There were no free seats except for first class at 180€ which just wasn’t going to happen. So we went to the bus stop and managed to get tickets! Thank god!!
So Sunday we got to the bus station and sat amidst the smelly, dirty and drunk fans of seville. We weren’t even able to sit together!! So some much needed catch up on sleep was had and even a movie on board which was nice!
We got to Seville and found our way to another bus station where we could get another bus to Cadiz on the coast. We finally got there and managed to befried some american girls who fortunatly knew how to speak spanish, so with a little help we managed to find a hostel to stay in for the next couple of nights. We realised that its far more convenient to just get a double room at a small hotel rather than hike all the way to the hostel on the other side of town. So we made our home in Fantoni Hostal which was right in the heart of the town.
Cadiz is a port town but has this amazing other side to it that is golden sandy beaches. It’s a bit surfers paradise with tall apartment blocks right on the beach but in the old town where we stayed it was typical winding streets and cobblestoned streets. The old town surrounds a massive church – third biggest in the world – which we had breakfast in front of every day!
Then we hit the beach, and like typical Brits Abroad, I got a little bit more sun than anticipated! The worst of it was that I had said to Jaynee that I was going to smart about it this time and lathered up before we even went out for breakfast. But due to the wind that is ever constant in the south, I was unaware of just how hot my englishified skin was getting!!
Anyway, Cadiz was nice. We read, ate, slept, ate, shopped, ate, drank, drank, slept, ate.. well you get the idea. After a couple of days we moved on to Los Canos De Mecca which is a tiny town a couple of hours eats of Cadiz. It’s one street and thats about it.
We found another great Hostal with a backyard and a swimming pool. We spent the next two days sitting down on the beach and reading. The view was spectacular and the atmosphere was relaxing. We noticed that this area seemed to be a popular holiday destination for Spanish people rather than English tourists which was great – I stuck out like a slightly sore thumb being the only other pale skinned person around, but it didn’t bother me too much!
The seafood was pretty good, but they do like their oil in Spain, that’s for sure!!
After two days here we moved back up to Seville. It’s so damn hot there that we almost couldn’t be bothered to find a place to stay and fortunatly there was a dodgy lokking gentleman at the station that offered us a room with a couple of beds for 12€ a night – hard to beat that! So we found our new residence which while not ideal, was very well located near the bar and restaurant area of Seville!
Like I said, Sevillis is boiling. It got up to 48 degrees at one stage. So it was early-ish starts at about 9:30-10am to do some sight seeing at the Alcaza which was really really interesting. Because of the different religious followings in Spain there Palace had a real muslim influence on it. The architecture was great but the main highlight was the massive garden that went on for ever! We also managed to fit in some shopping. We also bought tickets to a tour bus which was quite good. Seville is a bit of an odd city – it’s the city of Expo’s and basically one side of the rive that runs through it is old and new exhibition centres. But the old ones have yet to be fully removed and just are there slowly falling apart.. odd.
We booked tickets to go and see a flamenco show which was recommended to us. It was a smallish venue but wine and tapas brought to you at the table and a short and sweet show which was all we needed really.
We then managed to stumble on a foods and jewellry fair, which proved to be rather good! We bought som things and then found the food stalls – food from everywhere! We had a Carona from the Mexico stand, a mini Yeeros from the Greece stand and a photo taken outside the Australia stand!! Highly entertaining!
Sunday we were leaving but we went and had a look at the Cathedral which was really really boring and then it was a rather extravagant lunch and then back to the train station top ick up our bags which we had left there for the day and to the airport.
So that was the adventures of Athalee and Jaynee in Spain!!