Valencia, Spain

After taking my rental car back to Madrid airport, I enjoyed another high-speed train journey to get to Valencia. Only in standard class this time, but I had booked the quiet coach (Coche en Silencio) and it was perfectly civilised. 250 miles, 1 hour 40 minutes, non-stop, 33 euros. Bliss.

Two interesting things about Valencia. First: the river Turia, around which Valencia was built, was artificially rerouted in 1957 following a disastrous flood. As you'll see from a glance at the map, the river is no more. It has ceased to be. It's an ex-river. The empty riverbed has been converted into a very long and very thin park, full of ponds and pavilions and pitches and other nice pleasant things. At the far eastern end of the park is the City of Arts and Sciences, an impressively huge combination of aquarium, science museum, IMAX theatre and performing arts venue. It deserves praise as a large and striking assemblage of contemporary architecture that is, against all odds, not completely hideous. See pictures below.

The other interesting thing about Valencia is that it's the official home and birthplace of paella. To get proper official authentic paella in a reputable restaurant, you have to order two portions at once, because that's how big the paella pans are and it's always cooked to order. I'm reliably informed that paella restaurants selling individual portions do so with the aid of freezers and microwaves. Since I'm here by myself, and since there are limits to my greediness (honest), I've opted not to bother.

In Spanish, officially, the name of the city is pronounced with the ending '-thya'. But the Valencian region has its own language, a variety of Catalan, in which it ends with '-sya'. And that's how the locals say it, whatever language they're speaking. So if anyone ever smugly tries to correct you for not using the 'th', you can be extra smug right back. I myself haven't had the chance to do so just yet, but I'll be ready when the opportunity comes.

Continuing on the linguistic theme, some of you may have noticed that although my blog title from Cádiz included the accent on the 'a', my Seville blog was titled in that Anglicised way and not as Sevilla. I try not to worry too much about always using the 'correct' spellings, and certainly I think you would all roll your eyes at me if I datelined a blog from Münschen rather than 'Munich'. In the same way, I'm sure none of us Brits are bothered about Spanish tourists asking for directions to Londres, or la plaza Trafalgar. I certainly wasn't troubled to hear footballer Gareth Bale's surname referred to as 'Bah-lay'. Anyway, the point is that there's always ambiguity when it comes to pronouncing the names of foreign places, not least because Spanish - like almost all foreign languages - uses noises that just don't exist in English. In this blog, I shall simply continue to make it up as I go along, so please bear with me.

And mentioning Gareth Bale leads me to explain how his name came up in my hearing. I paid a visit to the Mestalla stadium, along with 45,832 others, to see Valencia 2 Real Madrid 1. (Spain thus becomes the fifth foreign country in which I've watched professional football. The other four are Chile, Argentina, the USA, and Scotland.) Outside the stadium, the pre-match milling masses were producing exactly the same acrid cloud of lager, sweat, tobacco and testosterone that I'm used to back in England. Inside the Mestalla you can smoke, but you can't buy or drink alcohol, which is surprising because so far on this trip I've benefited greatly from liberal Spanish licensing laws. You can generally get a glass of wine pretty much anywhere. Just not at the football.

It was a good game, and an unexpected triumph for the home team. Watching Ronaldo and co ping it around, even though they finished on the losing side, was a bit of a step-up from what I endure at Sunderland every other weekend. And the pre-match TV interviews reminded me that, no matter how bad my Spanish is, at least I'm trying. Which is more than can be said for Gareth Bale, who's still spouting his cliches in English, three and a half years after signing for Madrid. Yellow card.

Town hall

Pre-match at the Mestalla on a hazy early evening.
Note the ridiculously steep stand to the right.
The stadium is squeezed into the downtown street grid: they had to build up, not out. 

Valencia's indoor market. It's one of the biggest in Europe.
Sort of like Jacky White's in Sunderland, but times twenty.

Museum of Fine Arts, and trees bearing oranges.

Palau de la Música
('Music Palace' or 'Palace of Music' are the only realistic translations...
...neither of them seem to work.)

Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, at the City of Arts and Sciences.

Verdi's 'La Traviata' was on, but it had already sold out.

From this angle you can clearly see the 'Roman helmet' design, facing left.

Science museum at the City of Arts and Sciences

Edd vs Food #53
Home cooking. I was getting a bit sick of tapas. Recipe as follows:
Slice and fry three chorizo sausages. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes to the pan.
In a different pan, boil some pasta for however long it says on the packet.
Drain the pasta and serve.

Castilla-La Mancha / Andalusia

My time in Madrid came to a close, so I went off to the airport to pick up a rental car for a leisurely look around rural Spain. I'd booked the car weeks ago, a cheap deal on a little hatchback, just 35 euros in total for four days. The guy at the counter pushed a 'special offer' at me: a slightly larger hatchback, for an extra 60 euros. Does anybody ever take them up on that? Or do they just target the customers who look particularly stupid?

I'm pleased to report that I didn't crash the car or hit any pedestrians, despite it being my first time in a left-hand-drive car with a manual gearbox. But the weather has been a bit hit-and-miss, which isn't ideal for photography; there's also the fact that rural Spanish roads don't offer too many places where you can safely stop and get out and take photos. Nonetheless, I did get some decent snaps, so see below for a brief selection from my tour (4 days, 1000 miles) around some of central and southern Spain's Parques Nacionales, Parques Regionales and Parques Naturales.

Trevélez
A small town in the Parque Nacional de Sierra Nevada, Andalusia.
The Parque is named after a famous American craft beer. I think.

My cruddy little rented Fiat Panda, in the Parque Natural de Despeñaperros.

The E5 highway, going through a mountain in the Despeñaperros.

Cuevas del Valle, in Castile & León

Parque Regional de la Sierra de Gredos, Castile & León.
This is where the road ends and the footpath starts.

As above

Admittedly I've forgotten where this was exactly.

Manzanares el Real, Community of Madrid

Madrid, Spain

My journey from Seville to Madrid was by high-speed train. It's a long way - roughly the same distance as Sunderland to Brighton - but it took just two and a half hours, and it only cost me 45 euros for a first-class ticket. I'd like to think we could have this kind of thing in Britain one day. Ha ha, I'm only kidding. As if.

I liked Madrid more than I thought I would. It's not that I was expecting to hate the place, but I'm not really a big-city person and I was bracing myself for an unpleasant culture shock after the languid pleasures of Cádiz and Seville. In fact Madrid is surprisingly relaxed, liveable and affordable, at least by the standards of capital cities. Most of the main tourist and cultural attractions are situated within walking distance of each other, while the Metro is fast and frequent when you need it. Fine wine and luscious food issue forth from behind every counter. My culinary highlight was a big plate of juicy morcilla (black pudding) that was not accompanied by anything else and didn't need to be. I would have taken a picture, had it not meant pausing between mouthfuls.

When not stuffing my fat greedy face, I took time out to visit three museums. The Prado is of course the standout, containing several works that even I can recognise, such as Hieronymus Bosch's 'Garden Of Earthly Delights' and Goya's 'Third of May 1808'. The Thyssen-Bornemisza museum was a bit less inspiring, because I didn't recognise anything there and I readily confess that I'm not informed enough to be able to tell one Old Master from another. Finally there was the Reina Sofia, which contained almost nothing of any interest to me, except for Picasso's 'Guernica'. Indeed I paid my 8 euros entrance fee purely for the sake of seeing this one painting, and it was more for the benefit of my 'been there done that' list than for artistic edification. Up close it was bigger than I expected, and messier. I do of course understand what it's about, but I can't say that I care for it, or that it makes me feel anything.

Continuing with the cultural theme, but on a more positive note, I tickled my literary tastebuds by visiting the museum of the preserved 17th-century house where the writer Lope de Vega lived and worked for the last 25 years of his life. For some reason Lope is almost unknown outside of the Spanish-speaking world, but to the cognoscenti he's a towering genius of unrivalled fecundity. The Spanish people and their government are fiercely proud of him, and I imagine that's why the museum gets enough funding to offer free tours to the public. Admittedly I've never read a single word of his, but I'll get round to it. Eventually.

The other central literary figure here is of course Miguel de Cervantes. His statue is the centrepiece of Madrid's Plaza de España. It's a long time since I read 'Don Quixote', and if my language studies go well enough then I'd like to think one day I could read it again in the original Spanish. At this moment, however, such an ambition seems frankly a bit, well, quixotic.

Since even I am not pretentious enough to end a blog on the word 'quixotic', I'll just quickly add that I passed on the opportunity to tour the Santiago Bernabeu stadium. I settled for a quick photo outside. I'm not really bothered about stadium tours; I'd rather go back and watch an actual Real Madrid match there one day. Either a domestic La Liga game, or when Sunderland play there in the Champions League. Probably the former I think.

Retiro Park

The Arab Walls.
They sound like something Donald Trump might think about building...
But they were actually put up by the Arabs themselves, in the 9th century AD.

Madrid Cathedral

The Royal Palace. It's open free to the public at selected hours.
I like to imagine King Felipe taking air-rifle potshots at the plebs from an upper window.
Possibly accompanied by our own Prince Philip.

The Temple of Debod, an Egyptian relic from the 2nd century BC.
It was transported to Spain for preservation in 1968.

Casa Museo Lope de Vega (see blog text)

Velázquez on guard outside the Prado

Réal Madrid Club de Futból

Club Atlético de Madrid

Plaza de Toros de las Ventas
The largest bullring in Spain, with a capacity of 25,000 seats.

This is a sculpture called 'The Birth Of Venus', by Rodin.
(Not to be confused with Botticelli's famous painting of the same name.)
It stands in the entrance hall of the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.
Utter filth.

Córdoba, Spain

This was only a day trip from Seville, but I think it merits a blog of its own nevertheless.

Córdoba's main point of interest is La Mezquita, a building that over the past thousand years or so has served interchangeably as both a mosque and a cathedral. It still holds daily prayer services, but it's now principally a tourist attraction and you pay ten euros to get in. Even though it doesn't quite compare with the cathedrals in Cádiz or Seville - or Durham - for overall grandeur in terms of height and majesty, the building and the grounds are extensive and varied. Also there are some stunning visual effects produced by the interplay of dust, stone, stained glass and Andalusian sunshine. My meagre attempts at capturing these effects photographically can be seen below.

The area immediately surrounding La Mezquita is a spotlessly clean warren of souvenir shops and overpriced restaurants. You can't really blame the locals for that, given the sheer volume of tourists swarming around the place even at this time of year. Mostly those tourists arrive by coach and shuffle around behind tour guides in large groups, doddery pensioners and sullen schoolkids alike.

I don't know what annoys me more, the stupid noisy tourists or the ridiculous made-in-China tat of the souvenir shops. Or is it just the knowledge that I myself am a tourist like the rest of them; that I have become the thing I hate? Actually, I do know what annoyed me most today. It was the relentless 90-minute-long chorus of smartphone noise that assaulted me on the train all the way back to Seville. Sometimes I long to be back in Japan: there, even when the train carriage is sardine-squeezed, blessed silence reigns.

Having said that, I don't mind it here in Spain when people talk on mobiles, because I eavesdrop shamelessly in order to practice my Spanish listening skills. During the intervals when the person on the other end of the line is talking, my brain has a moment or two to try and process what I've heard at this end. I'm continuing to study Spanish every day, and I think I've already attained a reading age of about five. Admittedly my speaking and listening age is probably only eighteen months or so.

However, even when I get to two or three, I will still refuse to be fully potty-trained in the Spanish manner. Many toilets here have signs asking you to put toilet paper in the bin, rather than in the toilet. No civilised Englishman can consent to be degraded thus. Toilet paper, once it bears my imprimátur, so to speak, can only be flushed. The plumbers will just have to deal with it.

Cordoba, during la hora de la siesta

La Mezquita (1)

La Mezquita (2)

La Mezquita (3)

Remains of a Roman temple from the 1st century AD

This is a Guns'N'Roses tribute band.
To a Spanish ear, Gansos Rosas is what Guns'N'Roses sounds vaguely like.
It means, literally, 'Pink Geese'.

Airy splendour at Seville's Santa Justa train station.
It's the south-western end of Spain's high-speed rail network.
I took the cheaper slow train for my day trip to Cordoba.
Next time, however...

Seville, Spain

I'm eating very well on this trip, as you can probably imagine. TripAdvisor.com has been handy for recommendations - always with the 'Cheap Eats' option ticked - but it's by no means essential. I've never troubled myself, on my travels, with the anguished question of whether or not I'm eating 'authentic' local food. If you want to eat like the locals, then go and eat with the locals. You only have to walk a few blocks away from the main plazas and tourist attractions in order to do so.

In theory I could post five or six food pictures in every single blog. But tapas in the traditional sense - small bites being served one at a time, rather than all together - doesn't really lend itself to being photographed. Also, food isn't always photogenic. Mexican food in general, and refried beans in particular, are a good example of this. Similarly, here in Spain when you order a bocadillo (a baguette-type sandwich) or a montadito (similar but much smaller), quite often it's just two chunks of bread with meat in between, plus a dash of olive oil. It doesn't sound or look like much, but the bread is always freshly-made, and with a nice juicy cut of chicken breast or pork loin in the middle, you soon accept that lettuce is not required.

Having said that, with sandwiches containing jamón y queso, both the ham and the cheese are usually served in very thin slices and so the whole thing can be just a bit too dry for me, needing mayonesa or mantequilla to complete the picture. Usually it's jamón serrano, though you also get jamón York, which simply means the generic pink mass-produced cooked stuff that we Brits are used to. It's not actual Yorkshire ham.

Another interesting delicacy is flamenquin. This is jamón serrano wrapped in pork loin and deep-fried in egg and breadcrumbs. The name, meaning 'little Flemish', is of 16th century vintage: the Spanish associated the golden colour of the egg yolks with the blonde hair of the Flemish Belgians serving as assistants to the Emperor Charles V.

The food here is excellent, and the wine too, yet it's curious how complacent the Spanish are about beer, given how much they drink of it (which is a lot). In both bars and shops, there is virtually nothing but mediocre lager - specifically, pilsner. For a nation that boasts one of the world's great culinary traditions, it's surprisingly that they're willing to wash it all down with fizzy bathwater. Beers that are marketed as 'premium' are generally just stronger pilsners, wherein the extra alcohol shows through rather unpleasantly, without any compensating benefits of flavour or texture.

So I think there's an opportunity for someone somewhere to make billions by introducing the Spanish to proper beer. I'm sure it'll happen one day. In the meantime, I am but a prophet in the wilderness, taking solace in an occasional pint of imported German Hefeweißbier, as and when I can find one. It's a tough life.

Plaza de Espana, Seville.
Built in 1928, but obviously it echoes older styles.
It was used as a location for 'Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones',
and also for the video of Simply Red's 'Something Got Me Started'.

Hotel Alfonso X
Right in the middle of the city centre. 300 euros a night, or thereabouts.
Obviously I'm not staying here.

Catedral de Santa Maria

Iglesia de Santa Something-Or-Other

I didn't dare check out the front of this sculpture.
Perhaps a Spanish sculptor mistranslated the English phrase 'give a dog a bone'.

Edd vs Food #51
Tapas at Restaurante El Cordobes, Santa Maria La Blanca, Seville.
Montadito and flamenquin - see above.

Edd vs Food #52
Pizza Bomba:
Tomato, mozzarella, bacon, chorizo picante, veal, onions and a fried egg
At Pizzeria La Bambina, Calle Virgen de Regla, Seville.
Can't eat tapas all the time, you know.

Cádiz, Spain

Finally. This is where things begin to get real.

And things got off to an interesting start here when I checked into my digs, a small private room in a backpacker hostel downtown. The room was spartan and contained only a bed, a lamp, a chest of drawers, and a small bedside cabinet - in the top drawer of which was a Fossil watch, a pair of Ray-Bans, a diamond-encrusted necklace, and five crisp hundred-euro notes.

I went to reception and told them, in bad Spanish, that I'd found something in my room and would gladly hand it over to anyone who could tell me what it was. I didn't want to just leave it all at the front desk, because frankly if it was going to be stolen by someone then I wanted that someone to be me. But it turned out that the room's previous occupants were still in the hostel, having moved out of the private room and into one of the dorms. They were suitably relieved and grateful, and at a stroke I became the most popular and respected person in the hostel. I think I'd rather have had the five hundred euros, though.

As part of my ongoing attempt at learning the local lingo, I've been watching large amounts of 'Big Bang Theory' dubbed in Spanish and with Spanish subtitles. It's easier to follow than the local programmes, because it's a show that I know well and so I've got at least some idea of what's happening even when the words go over my head. The Spanish actors who dub Penny and Sheldon sound convincing: unfortunately Leonard, a nasal California nerd in the original, is here dubbed by some gruff Spanish hombre who sounds more like Julio Iglesias chatting up the backing singers after a long concert and a couple of cigars.

I've also watched a bit of dubbed 'Simpsons', but that contains too much quickfire wordplay and allusion for me to follow in a foreign language. Incidentally, most big American or English actors are appointed one specific Spanish voiceover artist, who dubs every movie they make; that same voiceover artist is also called in, for extra authenticity, when the stars make guest appearances on the 'Simpsons'.

Cádiz on the whole is delightful. It's exactly like you'd expect: old, sleepy, unspoilt, and full of Moorish influence. Some historians believe it to be the oldest city in Europe. It's especially nice to be here at this time of year, when there are very few tourists even though the sun still shines most days. It isn't a big place and in theory you could easily tour the whole of the old town in one day if you were in a hurry. I of course am never in a hurry.

My only complaint is that the local cuisine is overwhelmingly seafood-based, which is really not my kind of thing. I did have a tuna sandwich but it tasted way more fishy than tuna is normally meant to taste. (I know how stupid that sounds, and I don't care.)

Footnote: when saying 'Cádiz', the stress goes on the first syllable, not the second. It's pronounced like the English 'caddies'. Hence the accent on the 'a'. And you can say 'caddeeth' if you want, but most natives of southern Spain don't. Similarly, they pronounce cerveza as 'serbaysa' rather than 'therbaytha'.

Cadiz Cathedral, seen from the west as the sun goes down

Castillo de Santa Catalina

Inside the cathedral

Parque Genovés

The cathedral, seen from Calle Compañia

Plaza San Antonio

Sunset by the shore

Edd vs Food #50
Tapas at Casa Tino, Calle Rosa, Cadiz
Gratin of goat's cheese with caramelised onions and Pedro Ximinez wine sauce.

Gibraltar

At the end of my last little bulletin, I said I didn't feel like I was properly in Spain yet. So there is some irony about the location of this new blog. In fact I'm not staying in Gibraltar itself, because the hotels there are expensive and I'm travelling on a budget. Instead I have taken lodgings just half a mile over the border, in La Linea de la Concepción, which is Spanish for "the flight-path of a sperm".*

Crossing the border in and out of Gibraltar is simply a matter of waving one's passport vaguely in the general direction of uninterested officials, as you walk straight past them without stopping. It feels strange to be re-entering Her Majesty's territory so far from home: indeed, this is the first overseas British possession I've ever visited. Possibly the last, too, as we haven't got too many left and I don't envisage ever coming back here, or visiting the Falklands, or being rich enough to take an interest in offshore tax havens.

There are of course red telephone boxes, and double-decker buses, and pubs called the Dog & Sprocket or whatever...Even the police look the part, or at least they would if they didn't ride around on scooters. Another fun fact about Gibraltar is that it doesn't have enough flat land on which to fit an airport runway separately to the rest of the place. So the main road to and from Spain goes directly across the middle of the runway. The road closes completely as and when planes need to take off or land. Have a look at the map if you don't believe me.

The cable car to the top of the Rock was out of action, befuddling and bewildering the massed ranks of Asian tourists huddled at the border crossing. I myself was of course determined to walk up the thing under my own steam anyway. I may be 40.5 years old (to the day, at the time of writing) but there's life in the old dog yet. A 426 metre ascent, all of it on paved roads...merely a stroll. And from the summit I caught a glimpse of something I'd never before seen with my own eyes: specifically, Africa. Morocco is closer to Gibraltar than Calais is to Dover.

On the following morning I took the local bus for a day trip to Algeciras, across the harbour to the west. It was a bit wet and windy and I was the only tourist around, not just in the market but also in TripAdvisor's #1 Algeciras restaurant, La Casita. Despite the complete lack of English-language menus, I managed just fine...with one slight exception. See Edd vs Food below.

The next blog will definitely be from proper Spain. Promise.



* Not true.

The Rock of Gibraltar, seen from the Spanish side of the border

Who's a happy monkey?
Not this sour-faced little Barbary.

Looking north and east from the southern summit of the Rock

Looking south from O'Hara's Battery, to the mountains of Morocco

Plaza Alta, Algeciras
It was raining, but there was blue sky in the distance...

Edd vs Food #49
Tapas at La Casita, Calle Tarifa, Algeciras.
I thought the mayonnaise dish in the foreground was going to be huevos (eggs).
It turned out to be huevas (fish eggs).
Nonetheless I ate it all up manfully.