I heart Portugal!

I have been working and just generally doing the day to day of living in a small medieval town - drinking coffee, walking the streets, writing in my 1500AD apartment... What a fortunate life!

I thought I should check out Portugal and flew to Lisboa for the weekend... I am in lurve! I was in the old city near Praca de Restaurades which is down by the massive river Tagus (which begins around Toledo) as it goes into the ocean. It is low, shabby and absolutely delightful! THis is in the old city and this viewing tower lets you look around Lisboa...

The food is absolutely amazing plus... every single morsel was divine... The pasteralia is everywhere and the windows are stacked with lovely treats including the portugese tart of course, but all manner of savoury delights as well.... I also ate at little bars where you stand, have a pastry, a beer, and then at the appropriate time, they begin cooking meats etc... how much crumbed pork fillets did I have, but even a lettuce and tomato salad was exquisite...

My little hotel (very funky!) was down here near some restaurants. I could see lobster in the tanks, but could small a gorgeous charcoal cooker but didn't ever quite locate it...

Just a couple of blocks from my place was the Praca Commercia right on the river... still wet and cold here even in Southern Europe... Even got offered some hashish on the streets! Lots of San Francisco touches like the red bridge (designed and built by those who did Golden Gate), as well as trams and furniculars up the hills that go on either side of the streets above Rua Avaica (I think)...

It looks like there is some sort of bike ride up and down the streets where the furniculars run...

Apparently there is a new city centre built for expo but they are trying to rejuvenate the old city centre and the buildings are just divine. Of course with the financial crisis, and after the decades of dictatorship etc etc, the young people who would usually do up these old buildings have of course had to move overseas for work... so there are quite a lot of abandoned buildings... this one is not totally abandoned but you can see just how lovely they are... The outside is all blue tiles - gorgeous! other colours are pink and yellow and being by the sea/river its just lovely

 Lots of African muslims as well adding to the city scene - Portugal of course had Mozambique, Angola and some other African nations in its empire...

Granada and Alhambra

Not sure anyone was quite cured of the shell shock of Costa De Sol as we made our way, not too far to Granada... About an hour or so from leaving the sunny shores of the Mediterranean we had snow capped mountains and more amazing palaces - from the dominant Islamic period through to Catholicism... Most of this is around 1100-1500... Granada had water but still quite close to the coast so was touted as the new capital and Spain and certainly and important place to hold for Europe. Not sure if anyone has noticed that the reclamation of Spain by the Christians from the Muslims is 1492 - the same year that Columbus discovered America. So having control of the Mediterranean also gave access to trade with the new World and Granada was touted to be capital of Europe and America (I did think of this this afternoon when I heard some yanks yelling at a Spanish waiter that they wanted the price in US DOLLARS por favor!!).

 I have a squillion shots of palaces and gardens so here is a small selection...

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A couple of interesting things to note, the lattice screens on the upper floor (white) was where the harem lived...

Mercenary Gypsies assisted the Christians to reclaim Granada. In return they were given the caves on the hills opposite the Alhambra to live in. See about the houses on the hill side there are some things that look kind of like house fronts - these are the caves which are still inhabited today...

Snow capped Sierra Nevada ranges behind the new part of the city.

After all this travelling and hours wandering Alhambra, spent the afternoon in a cafe on the boulevard near our hotel (note Hotel Los Angeles if you are visiting Granada - family owned and has a nice feel)... Anyhow, sat in the sun eating Paella with the snow capped peaks at the end of the street... lovely!

costa de sol on the mediterranean

I particularly went on this trip to see Costa de Sol... I am both appalled and amazed... On the interesting note, tourism, with the growth of consumerism from late 50s and 60s, and the latter years of the Franco regime meant that a tourist mecca in the south of Spain made a massive contribution (and continues to do so) to the Spanish economy. I think they said 90million visitors a year...  OK enough facts and figures, here is the beach ....

We stayed in a resort on the beach front. I can only think of those images of Brighton beach holiday camps. They were like enormous compounds with pools, shops, dining rooms etc with untold numbers of English and German (particularly!) tourists mobbing en masse... You were literally fighting through prams, zimmer frames and wheel chairs to get around, let alone the line up for dinner (at 7PM!! you are seeing the fighting off the zimmer frames) for serves of chicken and overcooked peas with a bit of tropical fruit and ice cream!

So you get a gist of the scale of this operation, here is the hallway to my room... where I was kept up til all hours with the disco downstairs (not sure what the theme was), after the inmates, I mean visitors were having nice games of cards and backgammon in the 'bar' area... Oh yes and there were definitely strains of macarena blaring out as well...

After I finally managed to get my dropped jaw back in check, I did reflect that Bren and I nearly died of cold after 3 days in a wet London/damp dungeon room in April, after which any amount of warmth and fresh air would be pure bliss!! We are so very very lucky!

Standing in Europe, looking at Africa

I know this was 10 minutes of the trip but quite amazing. Alas it was a cloudy day and of course the phone camera has no lenses... but after Ronda we continued through very rugged mountains and at this high point you look across the rock of Gibraltar and see Africa...
OK, on the lower left quarter of the photo after the 2 distinct lines of mountains low in the white/cloud you see a small rock - that is Gibraltar and the smudge behind it is Africa... 

Ronda - province of Andalucia

Ronda is on the way to the Costa de Sol. This was the most southerly outpost of the Celtic empire, and like celtic cities, built on top of a hill. We were just here a few hours but a few points of note...

We couldn't walk through the streets at first as the 101km road race was just completing in the city. I was wondering why the runners were carrying climbing poles but I guess that is telling you how steep and mountainous this area is... here are a few of the 3000+ entrants

Ronda is also the location for the Spanish legion so a few of the boys were out taking care of civilian crowd control because of the race...

Ronda is also the site of the first bullfighting ring. I felt I couldn't go to spain without somehow investigating the bullfighting phenomenon so went inside the ring and to the museum... took the photo, felt creeped out my all that testosterone and aggression and left - been and seen...

Anyhow, as I was saying, Ronda is not just built on a hill top but has a massive chasm in the midst of the old and new towns... makes for spectacular views of which the restaurants take advantage...

And I know these guys will star elsewhere forever more, but caught this 'family' just sitting in the sun on a Saturday morning outside their place in the old city... totally priceless and reminds me of....

Sevilla

Seville was a wonderful and very mediterannean city... the houses are white, the atmosphere is wonderful and there are many interesting things to see. You could easily spend several days here...

First we went to the Seville Plaza de Espana - my phone photos certainly do it no justice but a most magnificent plaza with 4 bridges (for the 4 main era/dynasties of Spain I think) in central gardens, surrounded by arches and little tiled representations of each of the 23 (I think) provinces of Spain.... just lovely...

Seville is beautiful and certainly different to Toledo. Orange trees, gardens that are a mix of the roman style (garden at centre of building) with the arabic features of water and fruit trees. Of course tiles, ornate plaster and the shapes of the arabic influence are everywhere. White for the mediterranean. Palms. And the most wonderful roses (more photos from Granada)...

Getting any hints Bren for some tweaking of the Frith St garden (sorry about the random person in this photo...)

Seville day was completed with a night at the Spanish flamenco school... Just a beautiful production - of course these photos with no flash do it no justice...

So put Seville on your list!

Madrid to Cordoba

Long day of travel half way down Spain from the capital Spain, through Mancha de Castella to Andalucia. We took a short stop in Don Quixote country and saw the magnificent windmills. Don Quixote is apparenty the most translated book in the world after the bible...

Cordoba is an old city where we saw what had been the second largest mosque after that in Mecca. Construction of the mosque began in 7th century and is a fantastic design inside.

The pillars are recycled from roman buildings so are all different materials and heights... marble, granite, alabaster. The arches that are the mosque construction are brick and stone. The building held 20,000 people at once. Two extensions  were made by subsequent kings, one of which was elevated to calif status and had exquisite design. This is original, not restored.

In the picture below you can see some of the original work and where it was Christianised...

Above is from it was used as a mosque up until the Christians took over Spain in 1400s. The design of the altar uses the scientific knowledge of the series of inhabitants - phoenecians, romans and arabs. So if the speaker stood under this dome, his voice would transmit through this enormous building to 20,000.

When Spain reconquered by Christian in 1400s, they usually knocked down the 600 mosques. This one was considered so beautiful the minaret was converted to a belltower and a chapel placed in middle of building with small altars around the edges (We did then hear this story every cathedral we went to the further south we went). Anyhow, this saint in the treasury has his pooch with him :-) hence worthy of a photo.

Oh and here is a Roman bridge leading to the city.

Anyhow, certainly worth a visit if in Andalucia!