Spain - the rest of it
I haven't been able to hit the internet for long enough in the past
week to be able to send an email. So here's the rest of our Spain trip
(we're in Boston now).
Toledo: Very nice old city. Has a good cathedral (better than Seville)
which had some cool features. We pretty much just wandered around the
city. We had lunch in a jungle themed bar which was strange (we chose
it because of our desperate need for a toilet rather than its decor).
Stayed in a 4 star hotel for 39 euro at night which was fantastic. We
weren't expecting too much from our room but it was a fantastic room.
View of the city. HUGE bed. Tomas could lie sideways on the bed. Had
tapas and watched football in the local bar for dinner.
Segovia: Another nice old city. Has a disappointing castle which costs
6 euros to get in and not see much except for some suits of armour.
The main attraction here is a Roman aqueduct that was constructed
without mortar that is very big and impressive. We had the local
speciality for lunch - cochinillo (roast suckling pig). I also had a
soup that I suspected contained a lot of bread (my suspicions were
confirmed about 36 hours later). Tomas had to make a frustrating phone
call to the Peugeot place to return our car. The guy on the other end
of the line only spoke french (no english or spain) and we had both
forgotten the little french we knew. It got really windy that night.
Pamploma: Only a quick stop but it looks like a nice town. Good
shopping but it was lunchtime so the shops were closed. Walked where
they run the bulls. We had lunch in a Hemingway bar and the bartender
bore a striking resembelence to Hemingway which was strange.
San Sebastain: Nice sea-side town. Was feeling very sick thanks to my
bread soup but we walked around for a while and walked up the big hill
to the Jesus statue. The views were good but not spectacular.
Thankfully the park was nice. Saw some more wild cats including a
siamese one. We also saw some Basque Separatists. They were armed with
paint guns and drove big vans with funny number plates but all they
did while we were there was stand around. Some of the government
buildings around town had paint splats on them. The guy at the hotel
we stayed at didn't speak any english and my spanish wasn't too much
help thanks to his accent and my stomach ache. Our flight was good
despite being on a small plane. We even left on time which I wasn't
expecting.
Madrid: I loved Madrid. We were staying in a really cool area with
really funky shops so that helped. The city itself isn't that
monumental but I think that'd why I liked it. It wasn't geared towards
tourism. It also had good shopping. Both Tom and I bought new shoes, I
bought some new clothes and we finally managed to get some presents
for people. We went to the Prado museum which was filled with
tourists. Saw some very famous paintings though. We also went to the
Renia Sofia museum which is a more modern museum. It has a lot of
Picasso and Dali stuff. Picasso's Guernica is there and it is a really
good painting but there were heaps of people around it so I looked
mainly at the other Picasso works which I found really moving.
On our last night in Madrid we stayed in a five star hotel. It was
fantastic and was worth all the money we spent on it. It's a "design"
hotel and every floor was designed by a different
architect/designer/artist. The floor Tomas had selected wasn't
available when we got there so he choose floor 8 by Katherine someone.
The porter (cute little spanish man) described it as the Star Wars
floor and he was right. It was really cool. Everything was white, the
beds were designed to look like they were extended out of the wall,
the bath was huge and the toilet was in its own little cabiny thing.
We requested a double room but ended up with a twin but that was okay
because the single beds were almost as big as a double and we slept
quite comfortably. We had expensive breakfast in the morning (20 euro
plus taxes each) but I'm glad we did. I had two courses, the hot
course (eggs, tortilla, ham, bacon and a potato) and the fruit course
(yoghurt, strawberries, watermelon, grapes and a strange cheesecake
thing).
