Part Three - Some of Spain

Hello again everyone!

We were only in Morocco for a few days, so the whole last post only covered about 3 weeks. When we left Africa we went to Spain, just the Southern bit of Spain, and here is the (very short) story of that...

We spent almost the whole time in Spain in Andalucía, which is one of the states/provinces of Spain, and I have to say, it was one of the nicest places I have ever been! It is so full of history and old buildings and just interesting stuff to see… so first off I’ll fill you in on some of that history!

The history (as I remember it) is that all of Spain had been part of the Roman Empire, and was vaguely barbaric (and somewhat Christian) until some time after 600AD when quite a lot of it got conquered by the expanding Muslim empire. Before I went to Andalucía I didn't even know there ever was a Muslim empire... But there was and it was huge and impressive and brought 'civilisation' to a lot of places, including southern Spain. They also brought some very impressive architecture which will come up later in this email. The Muslims got kicked out of Spain (not easily might I add - they seem to have been pretty darn tough) in 1492 - the year the Spanish Inquisition started. Incidentally, the Spanish Inquisition seems to have been a great excuse to steal/take over a lot of the stuff the Muslims had set up in the years they were there. Andalucía was the first part of Spain to be taken over in the original conquest by the Muslim empire, and it was the last part holding onto Islam.

But back to our story of Andalucía...

Basically everywhere we went in Andalucía we did the same thing - walk around the old town, taking in the views or historic buildings (or in most cases both). So I wont tell you about each place in a list, as I'd be repeating a lot of the same stuff ie: walked around beautiful old town, saw a church, had some yummy food...

Instead here is a summary of some of the cooler things we saw/did/learnt/found interesting in Spain...

• White towns which are super crammed with really old buildings - every building is painted white, and they’re all built in good defensible positions –  They’re basically the perfect postcard pictures J We saw on built on the edge of a cliff, one built on either side of a huge gorge (cool bridge), and one built into the bottom of a mountain - literally - they built it into the rockface.  

• Creepy churches! The Spanish love their disgustingly graphic statues of jesus dying and pretty much any other gruesome thing you could think of. We saw crucified babies, jesus in coffins and even a couple of full skeletons that were apparently saints. It got a bit sickening looking around some of the churches we went into. 

• Impressive churches – if you overlook the artwork in the places they were beautiful! So huge and impressive… and a lot of times suprising – they were often surrounded by white buildings so close that you couldn’t see how big they were until you got inside.

• A cool mix of muslim/Christian architecture – the Seville cathedral includes a beautiful minarette which was part of the mosque that stood in that spot while Andalucia was muslim. When the Christians took over they did what they did in a lot of other cities and turned the old mosque into a church (we saw a bunch of examples of this everywhere we went, but Seville's cathedral was the best). So they have this really ornate building that looks like a normal European church, but in one corner there is a huge Islamic tower - even though they've stuck a cross on top. It's kind of surreal. Apparently they did it for a few reasons: So they didn't waste the great architecture that was there (the christian architects were apparently just not up to that standard yet); and to really drive home the point that the Christian had well and truly taken control of the place. (All of Seville has cool architecture though - it's worth seeing) 

• An awesome crypt – it’s in Cadiz, under the main cathedral, it was round and very nicely set out (if I had a crypt I would use their interior designer) and it had these awesome acoustics that made everything in the middle echo! We got a bit carried away down there - stomping around and making other sounds (quietly so we wouldn't get told off) to hear the echos bounce around and around the space. It was cool :)

• The rock of Gibraltar! Gibraltar is cool - very English while still being quite Spanish - there were a whole lot of English pubs that served the normal fish 'n' chips and pie type english food alongside tagines and tapas. And the rock itself is amazing. It's huge and has an amazing view all the way to Africa! It also has a whole bunch of monkeys that live on it. You have to be careful of these monkeys though - they know people and they know where we store our food and they will try to take it from you! I had one open my bag while I was posing for a photo - and Chiraag didn't take a photo of it! I was pretty annoyed. 

• Driving on the wrong side of the road and in some pretty crazy places. I had the first drive because Chiraag had his licence stolen in Bali. It was terrifying but we survived. Much more impressive were some of the places Chiraag drove without killing us or even damaging the car… White towns are super old and not designed for cars – but you can drive in them and our stupid GPS took us into a couple – think super tight turns on roads so narrow I had my head out the window checking we would clear the buildings on my side – and the traffic goes both ways on these things!   

• A picnic dinner – we stayed in a little town that had some cool ruins nearby. There we managed to find a hotel that opened a room for us... but not any food. All the shops were shut in the down season. Luckily we'd bought some cheese, salami, olives and bread that day so we had a picnic in our room with a bottle of wine we had been able to get from the local shop. It was fun :)
  
•  Hanging meat. In all the bars there are massive pig legs that they cut bits off for you. They're not refrigerated, but the meat is very yummy and we didn't get sick... In the supermarkets you can get these legs - not something I'm used to seeing in Coles...
  
• Cheap wine – like super super cheap. In the supermarket there were boxes of wine for 60 cents, and bottles for 2Euros. It doesn't even taste that bad.

• Free Tapas! Granada has a reputation in Spain for it - with every drink you buy they have to give you free food! We ate so much, it was ridiculous :)

• Sherry Bodega tour complete with ‘train ride to a vinyard’. We weren’t sure how this train ride thing would work as we’d walked around the walled complex in about 20 mins and not seen any tunnels out… In the end the train  was a tractor made to look like a train with some carriages pulled behind (like at Perth Zoo) and the vineyard was about 10x15m and had some really young vines in it. It was like they were aiming this drinking tour at 5 year olds… We met an awesome old couple on this tour though, and saw the maddest tour operator I’ve ever seen. She was hilarious.

• Drove through the province of Spain that produces 10% of the entire world's olive oil. Take a moment to think about that - this one very small part of Spain makes 1/10th of the olive oil the whole planet uses. Unsuprisingly there are a shit load of olive trees – often you can see them going all the way to the horizon. Amusingly there are a few olive plantations in the national park too :) I guess they've been there longer than it's been a national park.

• Castles! We saw so many. They're everywhere in Andalucia. Some were just random towers, some were huge and rambling, some were ruins, some were well preserved... They were all interesting though, and you could pretty much guarantee a good view, because they were mostly put in easily defensible places. 

• Museo del Prado - the Art Museum in Madrid was fantastic! They have free entry for the last couple of hours each day. We went twice and still didn't see everything. By the end of the second visit we were talking like pros. We each had our favourite Artists, styles, eras and countries. Unfortunately now I cant remember any of them, but I know that if pushed I can get cultured...

I'm sure that doesn't cover everything (we did a lot in those 3 weeks) but if I dont post something now I never will, and then some of you will forget us and never speak to us again. That would make me sad..