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European Odyssey

February 2017 - October 2018
A 610-day adventure by Joel Read more
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    Day 11

    Day 11: More of Cordoba

    February 26, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    Another full day to explore the rest of Cordoba. Again though, it was chilly and overcast which is not just a bit disappointing, it's apparently also very unusual for Spain this time for year! It's odd - it doesn't rain, just low and sometimes high cloud, but very little sun. Sometimes it breaks through in the afternoon, but so far we've only had a couple of clear sunny days.

    First stop today was the Roman temple ruins. Cordoba was actually quite an important Roman settlement, one of the first on the Iberian peninsula and several famous Romans were born here, including the philosopher and writer Seneca, plus future emperor Hadrian. The remains of the temple were quite impressive, though it wasn't clear how "old" it actually was, nor whether we were looking at a heavily restored version.

    We had another long wander around the old town, again just checking out the cobbled streets and narrow laneways, letting Schnitzel do his sniffing and inquiring. He's pretty relaxed out on walks now which is nice, he's not bothered by horses or even really by other dogs. It's just at home where external noises set him off.

    We stopped for lunch at Victoria Mercado (markets), which was a gourmet food-court style place in the middle of the Victoria Gardens. It's fairly upmarket though, more like a David Jones food hall type place rather than a Westfield food court with 90% fast food options. Shandos had a tortilla which is actually a potato and egg omelette, while I had a local dish called a tarakin - thinly-sliced pork rolled into a tight wrap and then deep fried. It was interesting but not delicious, maybe not the best example.

    Retired to our apartment for the rest of the afternoon, where we had a couple of drinks out on our terrace and enjoyed a brief moment of sunshine. Schnitzel made the most of it too, dragging his bed into the sun and laying there.

    In the evening we visited a tapas bar a few hundred metres away that was quite highly rated. Had some wine, cheese & bacon croquettes, fried eggplant strips topped with honey, and an oxtail and red wine stew. All dishes were delicious, and fairly cheap too - I think the total bill was only about 30 euros. Nice way to spend our last evening in Cordoba, as we're moving on to the countryside tomorrow!    Read more

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    Day 12

    Day 12: South to the countryside

    February 27, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    Definitely an interesting day today! Spent the morning relaxing and doing not much, before packing up and catching a taxi to the main station in Cordoba to pick up our rental car. Yes - rental car! We were heading to our house-sit just outside the small town of Lucena, about an hour to the south of Cordoba.

    Picked up the car without a hitch, and it was an automatic so my greatest fear was thankfully unfounded. The only issue with the car (aside from it being left-hand drive) was that it was an Opel Insignia, not a large car but definitely larger than I'm used to driving. And with no parking sensors or cameras either! Quite a tight fit getting out of the carpark, requiring a few reverses and three-point turns.

    Once we'd gotten out of the carpark and loaded up though it was fairly smooth sailing. Drove on the freeway down to Lucena in about an hour, and since it was lunchtime and we had about 45 minutes before our scheduled arrival at the house-sit, we had lunch in town. Navigated our way into a tiny underground carpark where I eventually managed to squeeze into a parking spot, then headed up into the main square and grabbed some pre-made pizza slices from a bakery.

    Lucena seems like a very quiet town. No tourists about at all, just locals, though there isn't really any reason a tourist would come here. The central area is nice enough, lots of white buildings and little streets as usual, but lots of ugly low-rise apartment blocks too.

    2pm approached, so we got back in the car and headed out to our house-sit about 10 minutes out of town. We are sitting a pair of dogs, a cat and some chooks while the usual occupants, a retired Belgian couple head back home for a week. We might be in for a difficult week since one of the dogs (Dogue) is a large Bordeaux mastiff and terrifying for Schnitzel. The other, Whimpy, is a small jack russell cross type dog and is quite old, so I imagine they'll get along fine. The cat is very old and has its own veranda cordoned off away from the other animals since it's a bit grumpy.

    The couple are very nice, and after showing the house and a few things took us into town to show us the supermarket and where a few other things are. We grabbed some provisions and then shared a drink and quite bite at their favourite local tapas venue.

    Back at the house, Shandos and I headed out for a walk in the olive groves with Schnitzel. The sun wasn't quite out, but it wasn't super-gloomy for a change which was nice. Countryside very pretty, with rolling hills, hundreds of rows of olive trees, and lots of country villas dotted around. This is a "summer house" area, where citizens from other European countries have a country house that they occupy during the summer. Certainly on our walk we didn't see many people, and most of the nearby villas seemed to be empty.

    A little more settling in before Dominique and Isabel invited us upstairs for dinner - pasta with salmon. We brought the wine, and had a nice evening chatting away. Dominique doesn't speak much English (though he seems to understand a reasonable amount), so a lot of the time his wife was translating for him, but we managed OK. Back downstairs to our quarters which are essentially a self-contained granny flat on the ground floor of the house. Chilly out here since we're a bit higher up and the houses here are built for coolness in summer, not warmth in winter. At least from tomorrow morning we'll be upstairs in the heated areas!    Read more

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    Day 13

    Day 13: Countryside Relaxing

    February 28, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    Nice and relaxing day today. Our "host" family invited us up for breakfast (though we'd already eaten), and then headed off for their flight at around 11am. We were on our own! We did basically the nothing the entire day, just working on our various blogs and projects. I did some writing, and started up on a new project that I'll be showing off soon.

    Sandwiches for lunch and then spaghetti for dinner. Went out for a short walk late in the day but otherwise nothing happening - weather still not that great!    Read more

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    Day 14

    Day 14: More relaxing

    March 1, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    Again not a lot happening today, more work on our writing and various projects. Went into Lucena for lunch where we had baguettes at a small bar, then visited the supermarket for more supplies. Weather was much nicer today, so on the way back from town we drove up the hill just nearby - there's a small church on top which would've been a huge effort to get to in pre-automotive days!

    Had a supermarket-made tortilla for dinner which was quite good. I should explain that a Spanish tortilla is different from a Mexican tortilla, in that it's essentially an omelette, not a floury flatbread. In central America where both exist, the former is known as tortilla española! This one had potato chunks in it as well, so it was kind of like a frittata.    Read more

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    Day 15

    Day 15: Antequera

    March 2, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 14 °C

    Fantastic weather today, and time for a daytrip! Loaded up the car and headed south to the town of Antequera, about 40 minutes away. It's a small town with a beautiful castle, church and a nice Old Town, but we skipped all of those things in favour of the UNESCO World Heritage Site on the edge of town.

    The UNESCO site is actually a group of dolmens, ancient burial mounds that date back to the bronze age approx 4000 BC. Essentially they are large burial chambers dug into man-made dome hills, with gigantic stones marking out the walls and ceilings. One of the ceiling blocks was incredibly large, weighing in at a staggering 180 tonnes! That's four times heavier than the blocks at Stonehenge. One of the dolmens is also notable for facing directly north-east, so that on the summer solstice every year the sun rises directly over a distinctive mountain a few kilometres away, and the sun's rays shine directly along the passage into the main chamber. Incredible engineering, if it can be called that.

    We spent an hour or so exploring the dolmens, then headed to a highway McDonald's for lunch since we didn't want to deal with the likely parking situation in a cramped Old Town. Afterwards we headed south again, up into a craggy mountainous area known as El Torcal. These are giant limestone formations where boulders are balanced at impossible angles and lots of strange shapes jut out of the rocks.

    Parked the car and went for one of the loop walks here - great scenery and perfect weather despite the chilliness from the altitude. Schnitzel seemed to enjoy himself, though he was a bit slow at times, not used to skipping around boulders as he is! After an hour-long walk we had an ice-cream and a drink in the sun, enjoying the location and the scenery (and the large family admiring Schnitzel at the next table). Although I already knew that "perro" was Spanish for dog, I've learned very quickly that he is "perrito", or little dog (I guess it probably actually means puppy, though they refer to actual hot dogs as perritos so who knows).

    Back down the mountain and then back on the hour long drive to Lucena. I've been coping fine with the roads, driving on the other side of both the car and the road. Roundabouts are a little tricky since they work the exact opposite way I'm used to, but honestly the biggest drama has just been small car parks. So I've avoided them as much as possible! The freeways are in great condition here too, the limit is 120km/h which I've mostly stuck to, but when people blatt past you doing 160+ it's tempting to chase them a little bit. Though the biggest difference is that people don't sit blithely in the fast lane like in Australia, people stick to the kerb lane and only move over to make their pass and then move back.

    Back home where we were greeted by a pair of happy dogs, then settled in for the evening. Unfortunately we couldn't get the fireplace going so we shivered a bit! Ended up just using blankets instead. Spanish houses definitely aren't built for winter!    Read more

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    Day 16

    Day 16: Lucena

    March 3, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 11 °C

    Nothing to report today. Very rainy and windy, so we spent the entire day indoors working on various things. Dogs getting along fine, though Schnitzel and Dogue are still a bit tense with each other.

    Decided to get pizza for dinner, so I drove into town and found a pizza shop with parking directly outside. Ordered and waited, only to eventually discover it was cash only and I had none! And of course there were no banks nearby, not that I was that keen on walking to one since it had started hailing!

    Eventually between my limited Spanish and the manager's limited English, we managed to agree that I'd come back tomorrow and pay - how nice is that! Pizzas were fairly tasty, though the bases seemed to be store-bought rather than freshly made.    Read more

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    Day 17

    Day 17: Lucena

    March 4, 2017 in Spain ⋅ 🌧 9 °C

    Still hibernating thanks to very crappy weather - lots of wind and rain. Ventured out at lunchtime to visit the supermarket for more supplies. Extremely crowded since it was Saturday lunchtime and it took way longer than I wanted. Also managed to visit an ATM (got soaked en route), then headed to the pizza shop from last night to pay for our food. The man wasn't there, but I google translated "I need to pay for my food from last night, I bought two pizzas" and mangled the phrase, one of the workers knew what I was talking about. They asked if I was Mexican - I guess my skin is olive enough to not stand out as English, but my accent is clearly not Spanish!

    Back home where we hibernated the rest of the day, and organised the next couple of weeks. Our hosts return on Tuesday the 7th, and we'll return the car to Malaga on the south coast. On that date we'll pick up another car and stay at a few various places around the south and centre of Spain, then return that hire car in Madrid in late-ish March.

    We're planning to drive a fair bit more than we expected, since the trains aren't super cheap and often aren't as convenient as we thought. Travelling with Schnitzel is fine, but the trains just don't go to some places, and if we travelled by bus we'd need to put him in the cargo hold!    Read more

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    Day 18

    Day 18: Gibraltar

    March 5, 2017 in Gibraltar ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    Decided to take my destiny into my own hands today and get out of the house. One place I'd always been curious to see was Gibraltar, and now that it wasn't too far away, I decided I'd drive down and take a look. Shandos investigated the options and decided she wasn't interested, and would stay behind to mind the animals. So I got up fairly early, breakfasted and showered and hit the road just after 9am.

    It was about a 2.5 hour drive from Lucena down to Gibraltar, and was freeway the entire way aside from maybe the last 5 kilometres. A few tolls which was annoying (and unexpected), since I was just following Google's directions! Arrived in the Spanish border town of La Linea de la Conception about 11:15 and parked the car in a large carpark a few hundred metres from the border. I'd read that your best option for a day trip is to park on the Spanish side and walk over, as the queue for cars crossing was usually quite slow (it looked slow this morning!), and parking is both scarce and expensive in Gibraltar.

    But with my UK passport I walked straight through with no lines, and only the most perfunctory of passport checks. The next part was quite exciting, as the main runway of Gibraltar airport directly bisects the main road into and out of the town. So I had to walk across! Thankfully it's not a busy airport, with only around 6 aircraft movements each day. Just as I finished crossing the bells started ringing and the gates came down. I got excited thinking I'd see a plane come in, but it was a false alarm as almost immediately afterwards the bells rang again and the gates went up.

    I headed into town, on foot rather than forking out several pounds for a bus. The old town is very English, with the building styles and trimmings all very reminiscent of the home country. Plus all the signs were in English and the brands were all English (Marks & Spencer, Natwest etc). Lots of nationalist slogans around which surprised me a bit - "Gibraltan and proud, British like the pound" and so on. Very fiercely pro-British, though I guess it should be expected given both referendums (1967 and I think in the 90s?) returned a "stay in the UK" result.

    Unfortunately all of the shops were closed since it was Sunday, so I had to content myself with window shopping instead. Still very un-used to that aspect of European life. But the upside was that all the pubs (which were of course open) had Sunday roasts available, so I picked out a nice looking place and ordered, only to discover the Sunday roast wasn't ready until 1pm! You can take the territory out of Spain, but...

    I had English fish & chips instead - I didn't want to waste 45 minutes waiting for the kitchen, as I had a Rock to climb!

    But I wasn't walking up, there's a cable car that takes you to the almost-summit. Seen in profile, the Rock actually has three summits, two about the same height at the northern and southern ends (412 metres), and a slightly lower one in the middle, which is where the cable car dropped us off. Great views during the climb - the mountains of Africa in one direction, Spain and the Costa del Sol in the other, and the UK underneath us. The weather wasn't quite co-operating; more high cloud causing washed-out photos, but it was clear further out so I kept up hope!

    Had a good look around from the observatory on the central summit - you actually can't go to the higher two as they're still active military installations, complete with radar domes, antennae and razor wire. Loads of monkeys around as well, which Gibraltar is famous for. Not sure exactly what type of macaque they are, but they were tail-less so very different to the ones we were used to in Asia.

    I hate monkeys. They're fairly aggressive, and snatch at bags and dive into pockets. I even saw a few people get jumped on, though they weren't hurt or anything. They're very quick to bare their teeth, and I'm always worried about being bitten and getting hepatitis or something. A few cute little baby ones around, but I generally steered clear.

    I wanted to check out some of the older military installations still visible on the Rock so I did some bushwalking - it's actually an enormous area. After a long and arduous climb I made it up to O'Hara's Battery, where the 9.2" guns faced out to the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately for me it was closed! But I managed to do some scrambling nearby and found my way to just under the military installation at the southern summit which had a great view. And unlike the cable car area, I had this all to myself - until a couple of British expats arrived with their dogs, having walked the entire way up!

    I started wandering back down towards the cable car station, stopping off at St Michael's Cave on the way. The Rock is chock-full of caves, tunnels, supply trains and hidden bunkers, both man-made and natural, though obviously many are still off-limits to the public. I was interested in checking out the caves, but it was 10 pounds for entry so I politely declined!

    Back to the cable car station and by now it was getting late in the afternoon and I had a long walk and drive ahead of me, so I bought a Coke, had one last look around and then descended. Long walk back through town, across the runway, across the border, then back to the car around 4pm. And off I went, back down the freeway from whence I came! One last look back to see the Rock bathed in sunshine - naturally!

    Two and a bit hours drive back was uneventful, though a bit rainy in places as I went through mountains. Southern Spain is surprisingly rugged, much more than I expected. Shandos had done a bit of cleaning in my absence but not much else! Dogs all happy to see me of course.

    Had a great day and I'm glad that I went. It's a strange place; not too touristed but I guess it's the winter months. Probably 75% of the tourists were Brits, and most of the rest were Spanish. The old town area is nice, but outside of that it's mostly grim apartment buildings on reclaimed land which reminded me a lot of Hong Kong. Not somewhere I'd want to live I don't think!    Read more

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    Day 19

    Day 19: La Alhambra & Grenada

    March 6, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C

    Another exciting day - another UNESCO Wonder of the World! It was a bit of a mission getting tickets for this one, as you need to buy them in advance from a Ticketmaster website which for whatever strange reason doesn't accept Australian credit cards! We checked online last night and could see there were some tickets still available (and they keep some in reserve at the gate on a first-come, first-serve basis), so we decided to chance our arm.

    Up fairly early and on the road by 9am, as it was an hour's drive east to Grenada. Again almost entirely freeway, which passed without incident. Seemed like quite a few people around at the entrance, but we managed to get tickets which was great!

    Firstly a bit of background. La Alhambra is a complex of several palaces and their gardens, built by various rulers of Spain. There's an old castle-style palace from the early Islamic era (around 800-1000 AD), the Nazaries palace which was built by the Muslim caliphs in the 13th century, the Generalife which was built by the same rulers around the same time period, and then the palace of Charles V who ruled from 1500-1558 (though this one was never finished).

    Most of these are still preserved in excellent condition, and sit on a hilltop overlooking the city of Grenada. It's a very dramatic spot on a high rocky outcrop, with the enormous snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains towering behind. Our tickets gave access to all four of the palaces, though since the Nazaries palace is most popular it has timed access. Our timeslot was 10:30, and as it was already 10:20, we hustled down to the entrance and queued up.

    Right on time we were allowed in, and suddenly all the annoyances and difficulties of getting here and getting in melted away. The palace is stunning, with intricate carvings, tilework, mosaics everywhere, lots of archways and reflecting pools, beautiful gardens, the works. We spent almost 2 hours here just wandering around and admiring the work. The ceilings especially were beautifully done, with hundreds of little alcoves set in, unlike anything we'd been to so far.

    The Alcazar in Seville felt like a much more functional palace than this one. Though both are beautiful, the Alcazar simply doesn't compare to the sheer spectacle and detail of the Nazaries. Finally after a couple of hours getting lost in the buildings, we decided it was time to check out the other palaces.

    After a quick bite to eat we headed next for the Alcazabar, the oldest part of the complex. This was a much more functional castle-style building, originally founded around 800 AD apparently on the remnants of an earlier Roman settlement. Aside from the walls and ramparts, there isn't much left of it, though situated at the front of the rocky outcrop meant it had the best views across town. Interested to see the low walls of the castle's internal buildings though; you could easily pick out the outlines of houses and the various rooms within them (kitchens, stables, storerooms etc). Obviously these buildings were started with stone and then topped off in timber which has long since vanished.

    Next up we headed for the unfinished palace of Charles V, from the mid-Renaissance period. It looked fairly finished from the outside (note: discovered later it was "finished" in the 19th century), but inside there was very little to see. It was a square building with an enormous central circular courtyard with loads of columns. Apparently these days the palace houses a fine art gallery and a museum, but both are closed for the winter months.

    Last stop was the Generalife palace, set slightly apart from the others and intended by the caliphs to be a summer palace. It was much smaller and only had a handful of rooms, the highlight here were definitely the two ornate garden halls with fountains and long water features. Not sure how original they are, but it definitely made for a relaxing environment. Or it would have, except our wander around coincided with the noisiest Spanish family we've encountered so far - yelling and laughing and carrying on like yahoos. I commented to one man "es un pato" when one lady was guffawing and he laughed - she really did sound like a duck!

    Finally by around 2:30pm we were finished with Alhambra. It had been a long trip and a lot of wandering, but definitely glad we'd made it! Since we'd decided against staying in Grenada, we figured we should at least drive down and have a closer look at the city. Parked in another extremely tight underground carpark in the centre of town and had a wander around.

    Very young vibe here, I assume there's a big university or something since most people were quite young and the bars & restaurants were all trendier and less traditional. We picked a random Mexican restaurant and had some late lunch, since our earlier bite wasn't particularly substantial. Found the gigantic cathedral, but decided against going inside since it was 5 euros each. Would've been interesting to see the tombs of Isabella and Philip (king & queen who unified Spain in the late 15th century), but neither of us felt particularly up for getting our 5 euros out of a cathedral.

    So a little more wandering before heading back to the car, squeezing out of the car park and then the long drive back to Lucena, arriving around 6pm. Spent the evening relaxing and doing a bit of cleaning before our hosts return tomorrow and we have to depart.    Read more

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    Day 20

    Day 20: Down to Ronda

    March 7, 2017 in Spain ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    Time to pack up and leave Lucena after an interesting week! Spent the morning cleaning the house and packing, before our hosts arrived back from their week in Belgium around midday. Had a brief chat with them before we headed off to Malaga where we had to return our car.

    Had a bit of difficulty finding a petrol station to fill up, and then again finding the proper entrance to the carpark at the main train station where the rental car office was. Eventually we managed everything, and dropped the car off with no problems. We had an hour to kill before picking up the next rental car from a different agency, and conveniently it was lunchtime so we headed upstairs to check out our options. Out of Burger King, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and McDonalds we opted for the latter. They actually have some special localised items which are quite reasonable - Shandos had one with camembert, caramelised onion and sweet peppers!

    Back downstairs to the rental office where our expected VW Golf wasn't available - they gave us a brand new Mercedes A200 instead! Nice. Though it's much smaller than the old car, it's also essentially brand new (about 1200km on the clock) and worth a lot of money, so I'm terrified of scratching it!

    Navigated our way out of Malaga with some difficulty again - too many one-way streets and confusing directions from Google! Finally escaped the city and headed south-west into the countryside to our next destination, Ronda. This is a small town that's very well known in Andalusia for a very tall stone bridge between the two halves of town on separate sandstone pinnacles.

    Our Airbnb accomodation was a farmhouse about 10 minutes out of town, so we headed their first. The proprietor, a friendly English expat named Will, was actually unaware of our booking as he'd been offline for a few days: one of his dogs had eaten a dangerous spiked caterpillar and was having surgery to get a partial tongue amputation. Poor thing! Will keep a close eye on Schnitzel here.

    Thankfully our room was ready anyway and we settled in before heading into Ronda for some dinner (it was 7pm by this stage). Had a wander around and watched the sunset from a clifftop adjacent to the giant stone bridge, then headed for the various plazas to eat. First up we had some paella and a beverage from one place on a square popular with families, then we headed for a quiet side-street and a small tapas bar where we had more delicious food. Beef cheek in red wine was the highlight, closely followed by a sheep's milk cheese. Great prices too, will definitely be back!

    Squeezed the car out of the carpark (though I put a tiny scratch in the front bumper navigating to the ticket machine, stupid Spaniards put it at the outside of the furthest apex of the corner, so it was almost impossible to reach the machine from inside your car). Dang. It's only tiny, hopefully the rental company don't notice. Back to the farmhouse where we used our enormous clawfoot bath to rinse off and relax! Will had said there was good star-gazing from our balcony, but unfortunately it's only a few days from the full moon so the starts were mostly blotted out. Maybe next time!    Read more

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