So it was kind of a break-neck tour, but from what I saw; color me impressed. On my last day in Madrid I bought a bus ticket from a midget. I didn't actually need one, but my brain kept making jokes (Spanish midget = Spidget?) until I sort of found myself putting money into his tiny little hands. For the rest of the afternoon, I hopped from line to line, only exerting myself to make sure I didn't get too lost. It was a good idea. I saw a lot of the city, and fell that much more in love. The streets are lined with shade trees and deck furniture where Spaniards sit throughout the day drinking Sangria and beer. An almost incomparably beautiful city (Florence and Rome come to mind as equals) is the frame for its happy, youthful population. I rode for a good two hours.

And such was the tone for the rest of my trip. As I've said before, my only regret is not having had enough time. Happily, it's starting to register that the country is my new neighbor, and I'll have plenty of time to get back once I've settled in. I've heard Cadiz runs some badass wine tours.

If you're ever lucky enough to get over there, I'd really recommend no fewer than 4 nights in any one place. The speed and aggressiveness with which I usually try to case a region was profoundly inappropriate for Spain. I always got the feeling that the siesta culture that permeates Spanish society is mostly lost on someone passing quickly though. It's a country to be observed from a lawn chair, not glanced at from a run.

Madrid is a party, Seville is gorgeous, but Granada has swept in for the overall win. As wonderful as Madrid and Seville are, they're a bit sterile. Everything is wheelchair accessible. Tourists snap enough pictures to compile a real time stream of information to rival London's CC camera system. Elderly Americans ride around in horse-drawn carriages like they're taking in the sights at Moorish Disney.


Granada feels like the city on the approach to an ancient fortress. What makes that feeling particularly refreshing is that the city is exactly that. Claustrophobically narrow cobblestone streets, steep ascents, vantage points that make you feel like you're on defensive overwatch. And above it all; Alhambra - The Red Fortress. Granada is a working military outpost, overrun by Bohemia. Dreadlocked Spaniards wander the streets in their cheesecloth European parachute pants. Food and drink are cheap (the free tapas with every beer tradition that I've mentioned before is very much alive here). University students sit and read on every flat surface.


The city feels like more of a home, less like a tourist trap. I could imagine living here.

There's a lot more I could write... People live in caves outside the city limits. Alhambra and the cathedral are amazing. Expat 20-somethings make incredible lives for themselves here. My hostel feels like a North African version of The Beach. I'll catch up on it later when I can upload some photos.

Again, the only negative is knowing that I have to leave soon.

I've stayed in a lot of hostels. Slept around, as it were. And the two I've stayed in so far in Spain have been the 1st and 2nd best I've ever seen. I don't understand why you would stay in a hotel here. (...Privacy, I guess - but whatever)

This is the view from the terrace at the place I stayed at in Seville. $20/night, free breakfast, free tours, and if I didn't throw like a girl I could hit the Seville Cathedral with a rock.

Contrast that to the places I stayed at in Thailand: Prostitute next door, smelled like dead person, roaches, electrical outlets that looked like they were wired by an arsonist. Or Rome: Actually a tent, ten miles from the city center, scorpions. Or Russia: Hobo knife fights, blood. Not that I didn't love all of those places, but Spain plays in a whole different league.

I love this country.




Writing these things in bus stations is working out pretty well. Hopefully I can knock out another one between here and Granada.

The whole country of Spain is on the sleep and work schedule you kept during college. The day starts no sooner than ten o'clock. Anyone on the street before then (unless they are still out from the previous night) is pissed off and avoiding direct sunlight. Work for four hours, then go home, drink a couple beers and take a nap (siesta). Go back to work and keep things running until nine or ten, then remember that you're hungry and go get dinner. After dinner, hang out with friends and drink whatever's cheapest until two when you pass out. Same plan on Friday, but your 2:00 siesta segues into a 16 hour bender and you spiral into a nocturnal liver-punishing cycle that takes you through Monday morning.


That's not a joke. I was fortunate enough to have attended a big art festival on the streets of Madrid called La Noche en Blanco (The Night of White... or In White?) the night after I arrived. There were brochures for it on the turnstiles of the subway. Big city fold-out city maps covered in 115 numbered dots. The key on the reverse side covered the various art and music happenings at each dot. I couldn't read the descriptions, but I could read the time. 9 to 6. At night.

People throw around "the whole city" a lot in describing public events - "the whole city came out for the Rose Festival" - and it isn't true. Some statistically negligible fraction of the city came out. But when I say, 'The whole city came out for La Noche en Blanco', I mean it in a mathematically factual way. The streets were packed. The. Whole. Night. Apartment buildings were dark and the din of conversation and music blanketed everything I saw. Sleep anywhere but a soundproof bunker would have been impossible.

Part of my certainty that no soul remained indoors comes from the distance that my group and I walked. Miles. We had no idea what was going on, so we just took to the streets and meandered toward whatever was making noise or shooting lights into the sky. We must have covered five miles between 11pm and 5am (when I finally made my way to a bed and coma'd out). And every last block, bar and plaza was packed.

This was after my first full day in Spain, by the way. I slept for 14 hours the night after.

Let's see if I can hammer this out in the eight minutes before my ride to the hostel gets here. I'm sitting in the Seville bus station after a pleasant 5-hour roll through the Spanish countryside. Most of the landscape was unremarkable, save a crossing between a bunch of interesting granite formations about 100km outside of Cordoba. Also, I was sitting next to the Smelliest Man in Spain, so I spent most of the trip dystrophically gnarled toward the aisle.

The best part of the ride was seeing Arabic starting to make its way onto the road signs as we got further South. I even saw the occasional building with what best translates as 'Reshtaa'rante' written across the top in Arabic script. (A lot of the most famous buildings in Seville and Granada are built in, or modified from, Moorish style.)

I know as much about art as I do whiskey. I love some of it, appreciate most of it, and throw up violently if I'm in Thailand drinking it out of a plastic jug. Happily, I have yet to experience any of the latter in Madrid. Today I got a chance to visit two of the best art collections in the world; the Reina Sophia and Prado museums.

I visited the Reina Sophia first, and probably spoiled the Prado for myself in doing so. The Reina Sophia is an overwhelmingly large complex of modern buildings fused to an old limestone foundation of columns and grand hallways. And much of the work it houses, contemporary art from the likes of Picasso, Dali and Gris, are mentally exhausting things to assimilate. Especially if you only have a few hours. Picasso's Guernica (I've mentioned it earlier), for example, is displayed in a large white room, flanked by two rooms of the artist's studies for the painting's many parts. It took me over an hour to get out of that wing of the gallery.

Like any contemporary museum though, there was also a bunch of stuff that I thought was retarded. Some jerkoff mounted a plastic tube to the floor of the lobby that had bubbles running through it. And some other guy framed a leaf. Stupid.

Like I said; the Reina Sofia was exhausting. So the Prado received far less mental energy from me as a result. The two really shouldn't both be squeezed into the same day. Minimally, I should have had a beer and a nap between them. But to be fair, classical and renaissance art doesn't usually resonate with me as much as newer stuff. Also, The Reina Sofia might be the best contemporary museum I've ever seen (next to the NYC MoMA). The Prado doesn't rank as well for Classics.

The only negative for the day was realizing how insufficient the two days I've allotted for Madrid are. Four should really be a minimum for this place.

I once asked my friend when Cinco de Mayo was. My Spanish is that bad. And to make things worse, the Spanish speak their language with such a delicate European flourish, I've started confusing it with Italian. It was with those handicaps that I wandered into the Madrid bus station and bought my ticket to Seville ("Sevilla" if you want people to know what you're talking about).

"Uhhh... uno ticket to Sevilla en mañana. diez... in the morning."

The piece of paper she handed me in exchange for my 20 euros looks like a ticket to Seville, so I assume I did it right. We shall see tomorrow after I get off the bus.

After I got my ticket, I had a late lunch that turned out to be one of the day's highlights. While I was walking to the metro station, I passed a tiny bar that was so packed with people that it was literally impossible to enter. People were jostling toward the door in an eight-deep mob on the sidewalk. That's a better recommendation than any website or guide book could possibly write. I made a mental note of it and returned later -- still packed, but with enough floor space to reach the bar.

I ordered by pointing at the guy who went ahead of me and saying "uno". I got an 8oz glass of light beer, and about 20 seconds later, a plate piled with food - tapas; potatoes with spicy sauce, toast with ham, and some kind of fried pork dumpling. I handed the bartender a 10euro note, and got back eight and change. €1.20 for a beer and a plate of food. And both were delicious. I ordered again - "uno mas" - and got the same beer, but a different, equally delicious, plate of food. I finished it, was stuffed, but realized that I had only spent €2.40. "Uno mas", again. I left without finishing the last plate of food, and half buzzed from the beer.

If any of you are ever in Madrid, I would strongly recommend you check this place out. One of the best, cheapest meals I've ever had. I was talking to the guy who runs the hostel I'm staying in and he said it might be the city's best place for free tapas. Apparently you can get tapas chasers for beer here, just like we get beer chasers for shots in the US. Awesome. It's called El Tigre (The Tiger)... two blocks North of La Gran Via - halfway between the palace and The Prado.