Ah Spain. The land of tapas and siestas. Although leaving the laid back culture of Lagos was tough, the Spanish lifestyle certainly isn’t one to complain about. I could definitely get used to the daily routine of starting the day at 10, taking an afternoon siesta and spending a few hours over drinks and tapas with friends. Other than booking the bus from Lagos to Seville on Wednesday morning (I actually didn’t even reserve a seat, just decided to show up at the bus stop), I had no plans for Spain. I just had to catch a flight from Barcelona on the 28th. I was hoping to go to Morocco for a few days, but due to extremely high tides and rough waters, they cancelled all the boat trips between Gibraltar and the African country. It was probably for the best, as my motion sickness is most susceptible on water. I remember when I went on a cruise with my family as a child where we first found out I was quite prone to motion sickness. To provide some context, I used to be a fat kid. I ate as much then, if not more, than I do now. Growing up, I pretty much skipped the Happy Meal phase and went straight to the Big Mac combos. Yes, I would have actually sacrificed getting the McHappy toy for more food. That’s how much I loved eating. As you might know, cruises are pretty much all you can eat. Put one and one together and you can imagine the stuff coming out me as soon as the seas were even mildly choppy. I’m certain the cleaning staff we’re mumbling under their breath each time they saw me, “stop eating you little fat bastard!”

Seville

I had absolutely zero knowledge of Seville before I arrived. All I knew was that it was close to Portugal and the bus ride was reasonable. I was very happy I made the stop. The city is rooted from a layered history as evident with the multifaceted architecture of its buildings. There’s a great mix between Moorish, Baroque and Gothic architecture in addition to some pretty impressive new age structures such as the one below. Add in narrow winding alleys, cobblestone streets and non-stop sunshine, you got yourself a very charming city. 

I arrived in the afternoon and after checking into my hostel, I decided to take a stroll through the city. However, it turned out that most of the city was shut down! The siesta is still in full effect in Seville. Many stores were shut down between 3-5. I learned that you pretty much have to push your watch back 2-3 hours to adjust with the Seville schedule. Lunch is typically eaten around 2 pm, dinner around 9 and don’t even think about going out to the bars or clubs until 2 am.

I decided to save most of the sightseeing for the following day and made my way back to the hostel for a quick power nap. To my surprise, when I arrived in my 4-person room, an older Asian who could very much be a grandma, was unpacking her things. To leave her in peace while settling in, I ended up heading to the rooftop bar, where it conveniently was happy hour. After downing 4 or 5 1 Euro cups of sangria and making several new friends, we determined it was time to hit up the tapas bars. I was pretty pumped as I never had tapas even though I spent a few days in Barcelona a few years back. To even sweeten the deal, tapas restaurants supposedly originated in Seville, so the setting couldn’t get more authentic for my first experience.

It was everything I imagined it to be. An assortment of small seafood, meat, cheese and vegetarian dishes accompanied by drinks and good company. Not much can really beat that.

After hopping through a few tapas establishments, there was a bar that one of the hipster backpackers in our group wanted to check out. We all obliged thinking “What could possibly go wrong?” A lifetime of nightmares, that’s what could go wrong. I’ve been to a lot of odd bars in my lifetime, but without a doubt the one he brought us to was the absolute weirdest. It turns out, Bar Garlochi had previously been voted the most unique bar in Seville.

You couldn’t make it passed the front entrance before you knew you were in for a ride. As soon as you enter, you’re greeted by this statue of some saint sitting atop an altar and adorned in flowers you would normally see at a funeral. 

It gets even more interesting once you pass through those doors and get a strong whiff of burning incense. I immediately got the chills. The entire bar is covered in maroon and gold drapes and decked out with religious statues and portraits. Carefully placed altars and other religious paraphernalia decorated each corner of the bar. Right behind the counter, there was a huge statue of the Virgin Mary, just watching you as shamefully drink.

To make things even more interesting the bartender that night whom I’m assuming was also the owner, was probably 140 years old, if not a ghost. I generally don’t believe in that kind of stuff, but even though the bar was empty besides for our group, you can just feel that there were other spirits surrounding you. It’s just passed midnight now as I type this and I’m certain I’m going to have night terrors tonight from reminiscing about the experience, but I have to give the readers what they want (#fortheblog). See all the dedication I’m putting into this!

Of course the only drink special they had was called the Sangre de Cristo, or translated to the Blood of Christ. It took the bartender roughly 20 minutes to make the concoction, but then again, that’s quite impressive for a ghost. As you might have predicted, we decided early on that we would only have one drink there. I pretty much chugged my beer immediately and was ready to bounce at any moment. Once everyone finished their drinks, I quickly gathered my things and was leading the way out. However, as I reached the main entrance, I struggled opening the door. During that split second, the lyrics of Hotel California came rushing through my head, “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…”

Naturally, we went back the next night with a few new additions to the crew. It just wasn’t the same though. This time, what looked to be a church group showed up. I couldn’t tell whether they were individuals with strong faiths or those who considered drinking at this bar as their annual trip to church. Regardless, the atmosphere just wasn’t the same. To make matters worse, the 140 year old bartender was replaced by your average guy with a beating pulse. We did ask him where the older gentleman from the night before was and he replied with “he’s resting”. That rather odd response 100% confirmed to me that we in fact did see a ghost that day and that he’s probably been “resting” in peace over the last 40 years. One thing to note from this night was that when I got back to my room at 3 in the morning, the older Asian lady was not there and I didn’t see her until the following afternoon. She did have a full smile on her face though, so I’m pretty sure she got lucky. Maybe she met a guy from the church bar?

The day following night 1 of the odd bar, I was determined to hit up all the main attractions Seville had to offer so I could move on to the next city with a few of the friends I just met the next day.  A lot of walking was involved but I pretty much reached my goal. In fact, my phone informed me that I walked more than everyone in my hometown of Oakville that week. Not entirely sure how accurate that is though…

Seville had some pretty fascinating sights within its boundaries. The Seville Cathedral is the third largest church in the world and also takes the title of the largest Gothic cathedral. It took over a century to build and contains mostly Gothic design but since it was built on the site of a former mosque, it does have some Moorish influences. It supposedly houses the remains of New World golden boy Christopher Columbus.

Just around the corner from the Cathedral is the Alcazar or the royal palace. I initially tried to visit this attraction the day before, but it was closed. This place was used to film parts of Game of Thrones in the past and from what I heard, they may have been filming there that day too. Tip, if you are planning on visiting the Alcazar, I recommend purchasing a ticket online in advance as the lines are massive. Surprisingly, I was wise enough to do that this time, but when I got there, I still had to wait in line. Supposedly the king of Spain was there that day and decided to check out the Alcazar. 

While I was waiting, a little girl was savvy enough to step out of the line, place her open purse on the ground and play which surely was a newly bought recorder. After about 20 minutes of playing the same two notes, her purse was still empty, but I was pretty sure her intentions were to get some money out of it. I ended up tipping her a Euro and everybody had a good laugh. She smiled and ran to her parents in line. A few minutes later, she returned to the stage with an empty purse. She definitely has a career in sales ahead of her.

For the last leg of my sightseeing excursion, I headed to the grounds of 1929 world’s fair. The expo was intended to foster relationships with the countries in attendance such as Brazil and the United States and to show off what Spain had to offer. However, from what I learned on one of the tours, it turned out to be a huge disaster. It was held right at the onset of the Great Depression and hardly any countries showed up. Nevertheless, it did produce some pretty impressive sights such as the Plaza de Espana.

On my way back to the hostel, I stumbled upon a store named Taste of America and was quite intrigued. The theme of the store was to sell brands of popular food items from the States. I was delighted to see they had Oreos there, but the price shocked me almost as much as Bar Garlochi. It cost nearly 11 Euros for a pack of Oreos! That’s $16 CAD! The box of Lucky Charms was even more outrageous at 14 Euros.

Granada

I met a couple of pretty cool backpackers at the hostel in Seville and we all decided that we would travel to Granada together. This is yet another city I had no information about, nor did I know what to expect. It was quite the pleasant surprise. Granada was the last stronghold of the Moors in this part of Europe, so it has strong Moorish influences in terms of its culture and architecture. I wasn’t able to make a stop in Morocco, but I imagine parts of Granada to look quite similar to the North African country.

I recall from many of the travel shows I have watched about Spain that a lot of restaurants offer free tapas with the purchase of a drink. I have yet to come across this and whenever I brought this up, people thought I was delusional. However, I’m not so crazy after all as almost all the tapas bars in Granada offer free dishes when you buy a drink. The best part was that almost all drinks were only 2 Euros! So a “toonie” could get you a beer and a dish of their choosing. How they prevent you from tapas bar hopping which is popular in other cities such as Seville, is that the more rounds of drinks you order, the better the food gets. For example, we started off with baked potatoes, but next was a ratatouille type of dish. Since the tax is already included in the menu price and tipping is not customary, 8 Euros can you get you a good buzz going while also filling you up. That’s certainly the best food and drink deal that I’ve come across so far.

 

The hostel offered a hiking tour through the Sierra Nevada National Park and I decided to sign up for it. It ended up being one of the biggest steals on the trip so far. For 15 Euros, they transported you to the base of the park, provided a guide, lunch, a big bottle of water for the hike and even tapas and drinks after the expedition. The hike was unbelievable. The sun was out but it wasn’t too hot and since it was a weekday, there were virtually no tourists in the park. 

What I thought would be an easy trek actually turned out to be quite challenging, but a ton of fun. There was a path during our entire route, but they were quite narrow and typically right next to the river or by the cliff. There were several times I had tiptoe on the path and hug the rock wall or get on all fours to sneak under boulders. 

There were a number of suspension bridges which were wobbly to say the least. It’s definitely not recommended for those afraid of heights. Firstly, these bridges can only support 4 people at a time. As you’re walking on them, they sway from side to side. Lastly, you have to be very careful with your step as there are quite a few missing boards and holes along the cross-way.

The first half of the excursion brought us along the river to some of the waterfalls of the park. After we paused for a picnic and refilled our water bottles with fresh spring water, we sneaked through this gated entrance which I barely fit through and entered the mountain range. Everywhere you looked offered magnificent views of the park. I found myself stopping every few minutes to snap a picture on our way up the mountain.

 

It ended up being quite the draining five hour hike which made the beer at the conclusion of the expedition that much rewarding. Exhausted from the day trip, we all decided to take a quick power nap back at the hostel before heading to a viewpoint to watch the sun set. What was supposed to be a casual walk to the vantage point turned into a journey in itself. 

We thought it would be a good idea to buy some road beers for the walk up so we can also enjoy the view with a beverage. However, the moment we started the route, we were bombarded by a religious procession. It was just Easter the weekend prior, so I guess they still had events going on around the city. It couldn’t get any more uncomfortable. We were already running a little behind so we wanted to get to the viewpoint as soon as possible, but at the same time, we didn’t know how to proceed through the march. We decided to do it anyway, so we sneaked along the side of the procession, solemnly sipping on our road beers as a statue of Jesus was being carried right next to us. If I wasn’t already going to Hell, I probably am now.

 

After what felt like the longest 20 minutes of my life, we reached the viewpoint and in time, but of course, the sun was setting behind the viewpoint. Regardless, we soaked in the scenery and enjoyed our beverages, but not all of it. Before our walk, we came across a 2 Euro bottle of wine and excitedly made the purchase. It was awful. I’ll generally eat or drink anything, but this was an instant hangover in a bottle. We ended up giving it to a bachelorette party along the walk and they were ecstatic. Not a bad 2 Euro investment after all.

A few drinks in, as a group we came up with quite the ambitious plan for the night. So the main attraction in Granada is the Alhambra (pictured below) which is one the most visited place in all of Europe. We found out that all the tickets have been sold out for the next week, but the front desk staff at our hostel informed us that they release a number of tickets early in the morning. How early? Freaking 4 or 5 am. They recommended that we get there to line up by at least 5 am and even that’s not guaranteed. I spoke to another backpacker at the hostel and they said they went for 5 am the previous day and they were already sold out by then.

So our grand plan was to just stay out all night and then leave for Alhambra for 4. With the Spanish schedule, this seemed feasible since they typically don’t head to the bars or clubs until 2 am anyway. Ya, it didn’t happen. We did stay out until 2:30 am but we were all too tired from the hike. This just gives me another reason to come back to Granada.

The next day I attended the much controversial bullfight. On the onset of this trip, one of my goals was to immerse myself in the culture of the places I visit. Ethics aside, I didn’t think there was a better way to understand the Spanish culture than by attending one of these contests. The traditions and practices of a bullfight have virtually remained unchanged for centuries. This experience pretty much brought me back to how life was like back in the 1700’s.

To my surprise, a bullfight is quite risque to bring up even in the Spanish community. Nearly everyone I talked to was against the form of entertainment. It’s actually banned in a lot of areas throughout the country. Nevertheless, this further raised my curiosity to attend so I could form my own opinion of the morality of it. Other than seeing a chicken get its head chopped off in a market as a kid, I’ve never seen anything killed first-hand so I wasn’t sure how I was going to react. In fact, after the whole chicken episode, I wasn’t able to eat meat for a week. There was a strong possibility that I could vegetarian after the show.

For a standard Spanish bullfight or corrida de toros, there are three matadors and six bulls. Each matador faces two bulls, one at a time, for about 15 minutes. When the bull is released from its cage, the matador’s three assistants first play around with it so the matador can observe and analyze the movements of the bull. Next, two picadores, or men on heavily armored blinded horses enter the arena with lances. At this point, the men motion the bull to attack the horse so the picadore can stab the bull’s neck in preparation for the rest of the fight. They do this so the bull positions its horns lower for the rest of the event.

Once this is done, the three assistants take turns piercing two sticks into the bull’s shoulders, further weakening it for its encounter with the matador. During the last stage, the matador re-enters the ring alone with a red cape and the main event transpires. This is when you get to witness the size of the kahunas these matadors have. They’re basically judged on how close they can get to the bull and the amount of control they have over these one ton beasts. These guys are just dancing around them and at times even holding on to them when the horns are just inches away. I was scared to even wear red to the event and I was about 30 rows up from the ground. I did later learn that bulls are actually colour blind and that they attack moving objects.

Eventually a trumpet sounds signalling that it’s time for the matador to kill the bull. Ideally, if the matador is able to pierce his sword through the bull’s shoulder blades, it should pretty much die immediately. That happened to be the case for all the fights besides for the last one. I won’t lie, that final battle was pretty tough to watch. It took the matador several stabs before it could finally kill the bull. You could see that it was suffering quite hard for the last few minutes.

After much thought, my viewpoint is that this sort of event is morally out of line. In my opinion, killing another living creature for entertainment is unethical. I accept it when animals are killed for human survival, such as food, but this is a different story. It can be argued that the majority of these bulls live a better life than most before these fights, but it’s not like they had the right to decide for themselves. On the other extreme, it can be debated that it’s similar to the NFL where players sacrifice their bodies for the entertainment but get paid pretty well doing it. The difference is that these professional athletes have the choice whether they want to participate in the sport or not.

All in all, I did enjoy the event and certainly understand the appeal. It was exhilarating from the start and the atmosphere was quite entertaining. Locals even tossed me a satchel of wine and encouraged me to take a few swigs. Nevertheless, that experience will probably be the last for me. One thing I do wish North American stadiums adopt from these bullfights is how you can bring your own food and drinks. I saw people with charcuterie boards and whole cakes. Imagine heading to a Jays game with a six pack of beer and a bucket of KFC! Oh there was also this guy with his newspaper hat.

Barcelona

I’ve had a plane to catch on the Wednesday from Barcelona to Amsterdam, so I planned on leaving Granada on the Monday as I’ve already spent a few days in the Catalonian capital a few years back. Due to my last minute planning, flights and trains were extremely expensive, so my only option was to take the bus. It was 13 hours long. A bottle of Gravol later and I surprisingly made it to Barcelona without throwing up on anybody. I won’t lie to you, that’s probably my biggest accomplishment to date. That’s on top of obtaining my CPA, my Masters degree and demolishing 36+ chicken wings on a few occasions.

My friend Lindsay who I’ve been travelling with over the last two weeks was heading back to Canada on the Wednesday so I knew a proper send off was in order. However, being the responsible individual that I am and knowing that I had to fly early Wednesday morning, I thought it would be a smarter idea to celebrate on the Monday and take it easy on the Tuesday before my flight. Yup that didn’t work. As with standard Spanish tradition, we drank and stayed out until 5 am that night and my hangover lasted all the way through my flight. In fact, I threw up right before boarding which was two days later and I hardly ever puke from drinking. Being old sucks…

The one thing I wasn’t able to visit the last time I was in Barcelona was the famous Park Guell. I was determined to check it out this time, but when I tried to order the tickets online the day before it said they were all sold out, but there may be some available at the ticket office the next day. Those ended up being all sold out too. At that point, I was heavily considering trying to blend in with the many Chinese tour groups there just so I could get in.

Food

Tapas, tapas and more tapas

As explained above, tapas is a staple not only in Spanish cuisine, but in its culture. It’s more than just a meal. The food is just there to complement the time spent with friends and family. These are just some of the dishes that I had over the course of the week. Give me a shout if you would like recommendations in which ones to hit up in Seville.

Paella

Al dente rice simmered in a broth of seafood, spices and vegetables. Although the cities I went to aren’t specifically known for their paella, it was still unbelievably delicious.

Shawarma

Ok I know you can pretty much get a shawarma anywhere in the world at this point, but the one I had in Granada was life changing. Albeit, I did have a few drinks in me, but having the option to put a fried egg in your shawarma is just next level stuff. The egg whites just add another sensation to the texture of the bite. Oh, and don’t even get me started once you pierce into the yolk and it oozes all over the rest of the ingredients. It blows my mind how this isn’t prevalent in North America yet.

Chinese Food

A friend of mine had a craving for Chinese food in Granada and I decided to tag along. I knew I made a mistake when I read on the menu that they offered sushi as well even though they were ranked one of the top Chinese restaurants in Granada (tip: never go to a Chinese restaurant that serves anything but Chinese food). The food was awful. This was my last meal before my 12 hour bus ride to Barcelona and I was pretty nervous how my stomach would react leading up to boarding the vehicle.

Proper Dinner in Barcelona

For our last meal in Spain, we decided to eat like normal people and not ones on a backpackers budget. We found a highly ranked one online called Cera 23 and were not disappointed. Words can’t describe how good it was, so I’m just going to show you in pictures (I also don’t want to write anymore).

Concluding Thoughts

So no one suggested any solutions on what to do with my hands when taking a picture, but I really appreciate all the other feedback and advice that I’ve received regarding my last post! A makeshift resolution that I’ve come with so far is to pose next to railings so I have somewhere to naturally place my hands or wear a backpack and hold on to the straps. I know this is probably such nonsense, but it’s a serious problem I’m dealing with.

Also, if there are any volunteers out there who wouldn’t mind giving my posts a quick edit before I post, please give me a shout! These posts are turning to be a lot longer than I thought they would be and I’m just too lazy to go back and proofread any of it. So please ignore any spelling or grammatical errors that you’ve come across! Next up, King’s Day in the Netherlands.