We arrived in Barcelona in the morning after taking an overnight journey on the ferry from Ibiza. After dropping off the bags at the hotel, which was very nice, we walked to the Ramblas, a huge pedestrian walkway in the middle of two streets. It was 9am and there was no one there, so we caught some breakfast and headed over to the Picasso museum. After the museum we went to the Cathedral, which was amazing. They had a huge dome inside, and an inside garden where there were geese attacking each other and making lots of noise. Outside of the Cathedral was a metal sculpture spelling out BARCANO, which was Barcelona’s old name. Like most of Barcelona, it displayed very modern design.

There were lots of statue people all over Barcelona. They would stay perfectly still until someone put some money in their hat/box/whatever, then they started moving around like mechanical toys, and let you take pictures with them. It was pretty impressive.

After the cathedral, we walked down the Ramblas to the Boqueria, the market. It was amazing how much fresh fruit/fish/meat/vegetables/etc there was. I really wish there was a place like that by where I live! After walking the Ramblas for a bit, we sat down at a cafe in the middle section and had lunch. We both got toasted and decided to go check our email. Theresa was so bad she had trouble typing.

After we sobered up a bit, we walked up to the Eixample, the new part of Barcelona. This section was created in a modular way, with each intersection having its corners cut off for more room. On the way back to our hotel, we got lost in the old Gothic Quarter. We saw a SMART car, which were prevalent in Barcelona. It was a really cute small car. Not a bad idea in a city where parking is terrible. Later, I read that they might bring this car over to the US. I thought it would make a killing in NYC.

After getting ready for the night, we walked to the port, which is relatively new and had restaurants and clubs. We had dinner at a place that had an interesting mix of Spanish and Asian foods, overlooking the water. There was a dip that we dipped our pitas in that we both liked a lot, and after I realized it was mostly made of liver, I caught Theresa finally liking liver. After hanging out at the port, we walked back to the Ramblas. We saw lots of black hookers speaking English trying to pick up johns. I thought it was interesting that all the hookers there were black. Where did they come from?

The next day, we took the metro to Plaza Espana. From there, we walked up the hills by the Olympic Village and got a great view of the city. They had this cool spaceship thing there. We went to the Joan Miro museum, which had modern art by, who else, Miro. The statue outside looked innocent until I looked closer and saw that he had a little penis sticking out. The art was mostly cool, including a mercury fountain. That’s right, it actually had mercury instead of water. All other paintings were labeled either bird, woman with bird, or some combination thereof.

We took the teleferic up to the castle on the top of the hill, and got more awesome views of the city and the port. Theresa found a little kitty stuck in the sewage system by the ramparts. Whenever we tried to feed it, we got clawed at. There wasn’t much vegetation up there, but there was this funky tree/plant that we never saw before.

When we were finally done, we had to walk back down because by that point we had run out of money and there were no ATMs in sight. That was quite a walk. When we got back down we went back to the Ramblas (see a pattern here?) and had some tapas. After we were there for a bit, I realized that it was the same cafe that we got drunk at the day before (only this was the inside rather than the middle-Ramblas tables).

The next day, the first thing we did was walk up to the Paseig de Gracia, to see the modernist architecture there. There were a few buildings designed by Gaudi (where the word gaudy comes from). We went to Casa Mila, which is one of Gaudi’s masterpieces. Inside, we saw a recreation of an early 20th century apartment. The window facing out shows some of the metalwork on that can be seen from the outside. It was cool to see how the elite class lived long ago. On the roof they had many pez-like statues. We could see the windows in the inside court from above, and the Sagrada Familia in the distance.

We walked to the Sagrada Familia (I jokingly called it Sangria Familia), a church designed by Gaudi but never finished. This must be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, hence all the pictures I took. Inside, we climbed a narrow winding staircase almost to the top. We were getting claustrophobic and not moving very far. However, we did get some great views from up there.

We took the Metro to Parc Gruell, another Guadi masterpiece. This is a park designed by Gaudi, with mosaic everywhere. It’s interesting to note that this was named one of the top places to trip in Playboy. The place was packed with people, mostly tour bus groups that stopped there. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Pans + co, a bread shop which we saw everywhere but had never gone into. I must say I was not impressed.

That night the first stop was Plaza Espana, where they had the Magic Fountain show. It was ok, but nothing worth writing home about. Later that night, on the Ramblas, we had some really really good churros. It was not like the ones in Madrid, which were greasy. The place we had it in was packed with people all eating churros.

This ended our stay in Spain. I thoroughly loved everything about it, and I would love to go back, maybe even to stay. Adios!

When we arrived in Ibiza, we had to find a cab to take us to our hotel. We found the hotel in the Fodors book, but it didn’t have too much information about Ibiza so we had no idea where the hotel was. It took us a long time to find a cab.. First, we didn’t know where the cab stand was. Then, no cab would stop for us. Plus it was hot and getting late.

Our hotel, as it turned out, was in an area of the island called Cas Pla. When we finally got a cab, the driver didn’t even know where it was and had to ask directions. We knew this was a bad sign right away. The cab driver was very nice and very friendly. He talked to us on the way about the people that live on the island and how it is peaceful and friendly except in the areas where all the tourists were.

After a 20 minute drive or so (Ibiza is a lot bigger than we thought), we arrived at the hotel. It was so far away from everything, though, and we weren’t sure if we should stay or try to find a hotel in one of the main touristy areas. After all, we were only going to be there for 1 night, so we didn’t have time to travel back and forth between the clubs and the hotel. Plus, our cab driver told us that getting a cab in such a remote location was going to be hard. We decided to stay, but as the cab was backing out of the driveway, we did an about-face and decided to abort. I ran to flag the driver down and luckily he saw me, or this story might have been completely different.

The cab driver tried to hook us up with a place to stay by calling a friend of his who owns a hostel. Unfortunately it was no dice because the place was full. We drove around San Antonio looking for a place. The driver was extremely helpful and after checking two more places, we finally found a hostel to stay at. I tried to tip the driver extra but he didn’t even want to take my money! I found that so odd. Of course I made him take it, but it was still an experience in these modern times.

By this time it was already night so we showered and went to eat in town. San Antonio is where all the rowdy British tourists come to party in Ibiza. San Antonio was one big frat party. It was like a mix of Wildwood, New Brunswick, and Cancun all rolled into one. In retrospect, I wish that we went to Ibiza town instead, which is supposed to be nicer and more upscale.

All this time I was looking for Wild On material, but there wasn’t much other than drunken British girls. The closest we got to a Wild On moment was when two of these aforementioned girls started making out in the middle of the street (on the concrete).

We danced at 3 clubs, one had 80’s music, one had British guitar rock, and one had house. They were pretty cool, but I was psyched to go to one of Ibiza’s famous techno clubs. We decided to go to
Es Paradis, which was in San Antonio. Again, I wish we did something else. The cab driver had told us about a Manumatic party at another club, but we didn’t want to take a cab if we could walk to Paradis. We walked in around 3am, and paid $50 (!!) to get in. That’s even more than NYC prices. I had one $10 Red Bull and vodka and I ran out of cash, since everything was so expensive compared to everywhere else in Spain. The music at Paradis was good, but the place was just so-so. UFO was there that night, and there were people walking around in stilts and robot outfits. That was kind of cool. We only stayed for 2 hours, and went home at 5am to get some sleep for the next day.

The next day, we took the ferry to Cala Bossa. Theresa wore her hippy outfit. Cala Bossa is a nice
beach in a cove on the island. They had umbrellas and rafts for rent. The water was amazingly clear, but a bit on the cold side. Part of the beach was all nude but only really ugly old men were totally nude.

After staying at the beach a while, we took the ferry back to San Antonio and
wandered around a bit. We had some time to kill until our ferry left for Barcelona, and the girl at the hostel let us take a shower even though we had already checked out.

At about 7 or 8, we boarded the ferry. At port we saw the same kind of ship that we arrived in.

On the way from Alicante to Ibiza, we had to stop in Valencia to drop off our rental car and catch the ferry. We drove to Valencia in the morning, taking major highways to get there fast.

When we arrived, we went to buy the Ibiza ferry tickets and dropped off the car. The traffic in Valencia was horrendous. People drove as crazy as they do in NYC. The lady at the train station where we dropped off the car was a bitch to Theresa, refusing to speak English to her. So we just left the car parked outside on the sidewalk and gave her the keys. Lucky for us, because they never noticed the scratches on the car.

We then waited for the ferry and hopped on board. The ferry took a lot longer than we though it would, and we had no clue what was going on because the announcer would start speaking English then switch to Spanish in mid-sentence.

From Granada, we embarked on a long road trip to Alicante, which is a beach town on the Eastern coast of Spain. Before the trip, I taught Theresa how to drive stick because the rental car we got was a manual. This was the first time in the trip that Theresa drove stick for a long period of time. She stalled quite a few times. :)

We stopped in a city called Cartagena on the way thinking we could find a good place to eat there. We were sorely mistaken. It was basically a military base and an industrial section. Pretty boring. AND it took us 45 minutes just to find our way out!

We drove along the coast for a while, with nice views most of the way. On the side of the road in a few places were large black bulls. To this day I don’t know what those were for. There was a restaurant chain on the highway where we had really good paella, and a half bottle of wine (we had to drive). It’s too bad you can’t find places like that in the US.

When we arrived in Alicante in the early evening, we checked out the town which was really nice. It had a nice boardwalk/promenade view from walk with bars and restaurants and plenty of people having a good time. The food, however, was not like what we have been having so far. We stopped by a boardwalk restaurant and had some BAD mexican food.

After hanging out at the bars, we headed in for the night. The next day we were going to Ibiza!!

When we arrived in Granada, we went straight to the hotel. The hotel was located in the old section of the city. To get into it we had to drive up to a little hydrant-looking thing and push a button. Then you have to tell someone through a microphone what hotel you are staying at. This lowers a few large metal poles in the road so you can cross them. Driving here was a nightmare. There were NO street signs and the traffic was insane. We had to circle around a few times, leaving the old city even, until we finally found the hotel.

After we got settled in we walked to the Plaza Nueva, which was packed by this time (it must have been around 9 or 10). We then walked up the Paseo de los Tristes, which runs along the river with a view of the Alhambra. After eating some Tapas for dinner at a bar there (mmmm.. Manchego..), we walked up the side streets of Granada. Granada is located on a hillside, so these streets were very difficult to climb at times, epsecially since they were old and were mostly cobblestones.

We climbed up the streets to Plaza San Nicolas, which has a great panoramic view of the Alhambra on the other side of the river. This is the famous plaza in Granada, and for some reason the one thing I remember about it was the Clinton went there when he was President, with his family.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped by an Irish pub close to the hotel for some Guinness. The Guinness there didn’t taste any better than here, by the way. While we were there I backed into this old man by mistake and he started yelling at me in Spanish.

The next day the first thing we did was go to the Cathedral, which was very bright inside for a cathedral. The huge organ there was playing, and it was really amazing.

The next stop was the Capilla Real (Royal Chapel) where we saw some artwork and the ornate tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella. After the Capilla Real, we hopped a bus to the Alhambra.

The Alhambra is a huge Arabic palace on the hills of Granada. The name Alhambra means “the red one” and refers to the color of the mountain on which it is built. This place, and the Generalife Gardens were really amazing to see. We had to buy tickets early because there are a limited amount of visitors per day, and you have to get them by time slot so that there aren’t too many people there at the same time. There were lots of carvings of stone and wood in Arabic letters. I looked for the O with the nose on it, which the books said means Allah. That was everywhere. Some stone carvings even had some of the original blue color left! The Patio de los Leones, or lion’s court had a fountain that was comprised of 12 lion statues in a circle. In old times, the hour of the day could be determined from which lion was spouting water. All in all, I was very impressed with the place.

After the Alhambra tour, we went back to the old city, checked our email (in this really crappy place where Theresa’s computer spontaneously rebooted on her twice. What was really funny was that I read an email from Bob about him hearing that there is dog poop all over Spain, which was not the case up to that point (as I wrote in a reply email). However, from that point on, there was dog poop EVERYWHERE we went in Granada. Go figure.

We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon shopping and walking around the shopping district in Granada. Around that area, there were weddings everywhere. We walked up to San Nicolas for the supposedly spectacular sunset view, but by the time we got there we had missed the sunset. While we were walking around San Nicolas, a little girl almost puked on Theresa. We did get lucky in our choice of restaurants that night. We found a nice looking place but they were reservations only. Luckily though, they said to come back in a half-hour and they would have a table open. We did that, and got an amazing table at the edge of the restaurant facing the Alhambra, which was lit for the evening.

The streets of Granada were so narrow that every time a car went by, we had to hide in the doorways to let them pass. Now that’s narrow.

On our tenth day, we left Arcos, and drove towards Granada. As we left the city we saw one of the infamous (to us, anyway) “No more Arcos” signs. On the way to Granada we were going to stop at Ronda, the place where Hemingway used to live and which inspired him to write about bullfighting.

The road to Ronda was very narrow and windy, and Theresa was too scared to leave the car sometimes. There were great views of mountains and the reservoir from the road, and on the way we stopped at a town called Zahara which had an old church and castle.

In Ronda, bullfighting is big. When we got there we went to the bullfighting ring. Outside was a statue of a bullfighter. Inside, it was pretty cool.

Ronda is split by a new bridge (200 years old), aptly named Puenta Nueva which splits the old city (”La Ciudad”) from the new. We took a walk around, and saw some interesting trees on the sidewalks. We walked to an old Prince’s mansion, Palacio de Mondragón. It was a beautiful house; some parts had water flowing through it. When we were there, they were exhibiting some art, including the interesting hippo sculpture below.

SHUPER HAPPY!!!

Arcos De La Frontera is a little town on the top of a mountain. There are sheer cliffs on both sides and Arcos resides on a strip of land in the middle. It was one of the prettiest places in Espana! The views from the top were amazing, and the streets and buildings were very romantic. Arcos is one of the “white villages” because of its whitewashed walls. Before we left, we saw Arcos in the New York Times travel section, where they mentioned a famous alley where we took a picture. There was only one major road in Arcos, and it was very windy and very very narrow.

When we arrived, we missed our exit on the top and had to go all the way back down and up again. But the views from the road were awesome. There were also great panoramic views from the city plaza and the hotel we stayed at, the El Convento. Below are some pictures from the inside of the room. (can you tell we liked it?) Our hotel was mentioned in our travel book and the author, Rick Steves, even got a suite named after him.

The first night, we went to a tapas bar in what was formerly an old castle’s dungeon. The food and wine there were terrific, and when it came time for desert, the owner brought us over to the ice cream stand. They had the usual blue sign with all the Camy ice creams on it. I saw one called Marty which looked like some kind of an alien. When I asked for that, the waiter laughed at me and called me a stupid american. Well, maybe he didn’t call me that to my face but he must have been thinking that. That night we decided not to go to Morocco the next day and stay in Arcos another day. We would have had to leave extremely early in the morning and we weren’t even sure that going to Algiers would be a true taste of Morocco (other than hustlers trying to take our money). Plus, Arcos was such a cool place, that it made our choice easy. The only problem, as we later discovered, was that the next day was a Sunday and everything was d-e-a-d.

On Sunday, we started out with breakfast on the patio of the hotel, which had an awesome view from the edge of the cliff. Then we went shopping in the “new town” part of Arcos, which was lower down than the upper part where the church was. We made sure to make a reservation for the Alhombra in Granada, which is one of the most popular tourist attractions in all of Europe. The best gazpacho I had on the trip so far was here in a restaurant in a small plaza (Plaza de Cecila). On the walk up the narrow street we took some pictures of the landscape This day was probably one of the more relaxing ones of the vacation.

Jerez de la Frontera is the birthplace of sherry. According to legend, the name sherry comes from the British pronunciation of Jerez’s Arabic name. The white soil there is the secret to the flavor of sherry.

In town there are stacked barrels showing where the vineyards are. We stayed in Jerez only long enough to check out the Gonzalez Byass headquarters. Tio Pepe, made by Gonzalez Byass, is one of the oldest and best known sherries. The tour consisted of driving around the lot in a cheesy little train. After the train ride, we were shown the cellar where the sherry was aged in oak barrels. The tour was cool but when I had some Tio Pepe, it was horrible.

On the way to the next town, Arcos, we saw a field of sunflowers. We stopped to take pictures of ourselves and the car, including one where you can see the damage done in Toledo.

Sevilla was probably my favorite city in Spain. It was small, but full of culture. The only gripe I had was that it was a bit touristy, but other than that I would even see myself living there. We had a great time just walking around the old parts as well as the new.

When we arrived in Sevilla, one thing I noticed was the streets were super narrow again. Finding the hotel took a while too and the guy there had to park our car because the garage entrance had barely enough room for our car to pass (we had to fold the mirror in order to get through). The hotel, Hostal Sierpes, was really nice in the lobby and hallways, but our room was horrible. The worst part about it was the bathroom. There was barely enough light to see yourself in the shower, and it was dirty. The lobby here, and in all other hotels/hostals that I noticed, were very nicely decorated with walls of Islamic-style tiles. Very cool.

Here, as in other parts of Spain, we were warned about thieves. We were paranoid about never leaving things in the car, and we always carried our money belts. Nothing ever happened, though, and I’m not sure if it was because we were careful or we just had decent luck.

Our first day in Sevilla started out rainy, but then got nice and sunny. We had our laundry done with a drop-off service. That was cool because we didn’t have to waste time doing it ourselves.

Our first stop was the cathedral, with it’s huge bell tower. Outside was a little courtyard where I got pooped on by pigeons. Yuck! The ramp leading up to the bell tower was very wide because it was built for horses to go up. From the top of the tower, amongst the bells, we could see all of Sevilla.

The next stop was the Alcazar Real. The Christian monarchs Alfonso X and Pedro I employed Moorish craftsmen to build it in the 14th century. It was very cool, with a big elaborate garden in the back.

At night, we hung out by the waterfront which was very romantic. It was surprisingly dead at only 2 in the morning.

The next day, we went to the Plaza de España, which was modern addition to Sevilla. It’s a large open space with a water fountain in the middle surrounded on 3 sides by a huge government building. Inside, we went to the Museo Militaire where they had some old missiles and guns.. it was interesting (but Theresa got bored quick). When we were there, tour buses kept coming by with all the tourists getting out and taking pictures, buying souvenirs, then leaving. I swore I would never do that. What’s the point, really? You can’t get a taste of the local culture by doing that.

After visiting the Plaza, we went to the waterfront one last time before heading off to Jerez..

On our way to Sevilla from Toledo, we stopped by at Córdoba, which I think was officially the hottest place on earth that day. I swear my feet were burning just walking around. On the way, we saw a Mora sign. That was about the only cool thing on the way, which was mostly boring highways. Oh, and a rock hit our windshield and cracked it a bit. The car was taking a beating!

The only thing we did in Córdoba was go to the Mezquita, which is an old mosque-turned-church type deal. Theresa says she read about the Mezquita’s arches in her art history class. Before we went in, we hung out in the Orange Grove courtyard inside the walls of the Mezquita, which the Fodor’s book said was a good place to “rest and reflect.” That was funny as hell because it was basically a dump with some orange trees.

One of the most interesting things about the Mezquita was the blend of Arabic and Christian architecture. For example, there was a cross hanging right below an arabic arch. The main feature of the Mezquita were the red and white striped arches. There were a bunch of enclaves with old, fading (and some restored) colored arches, and a cool stained glass window. The ceilings were also very elaborate.