Spain has been great! My first night in San Sebastian, I slept for 14 hours and then woke up and went to the beach with some others from the hostel. Exhausted from Paris and train travel, I lounged there for pretty much the whole day. There were quite a few surfers on the beach, and unfortunately one of them got swept away by a rip current and drowned. The rescue attempt was epic though.
San Seb is a really relaxed but fun Spanish town. One night I stayed there I just ended up watching movies in the hostel all night, and two other nights, I just went out to the bar, which consisted of having some wine and beer and playing many games of pool and darts. I realized that I'm actually semi-good at pool, ended up beating a guy who had a table at his house. Darts is a spectator sport here in Europe, some people actually watch it on TV, which I find rather strange.
The second day in San Sebastian I took a funicular railway to the top of a mountain. For those of you who don't know, a funicular railway is a train that operates on a very steep slope. The train going up the slope uses the weight of the train going down as a counterbalance, so the trains have to depart from the top and the bottom at the same time and they always pass each other on the middle of the slope. It looks like this:
And the view from the top looked like this:
One of the nights I also went out and took photos of the city with an Australian girl named Ashley who worked at a Canadian ski resort. Apparently a lot of Aussies move to Alberta and work at ski resorts, she was the third one I met who did that. We tried to climb a hill to get more pictures from the top, but the path was to dark to see up.
Since Ashley and I were both going to Madrid, we booked the same train there on Thursday morning (and slept the whole way there). The hostel we booked turned out to be in the perfect location, right above one of the archways leading into Plaza Mayor, one of the most happening places in the city. We had awesome views from both sides of our room since it was in an archway. The unfortunate part about being so centrally located was that we had a creepy guy dressed up as a baby in a stroller making baby noises outside our room from sunrise until after sunset every day. I felt sorry for the man as he probably lived a very deprived life.
In Madrid, Ashley and I went on a free walking tour with the same company that led the one I did in Berlin (New Europe). I learned a lot about the history of Spain and saw the house of Cervantes (who wrote Don Quixote), and the guy showed us a place where we went later to get churros and chocolate:
The next night we went on a tapas tour. Tapas, I learned, are small dishes that are supposed to be eaten with a glass of sangria (or beer if you prefer, but I liked the sangria more). Apparently the tradition started when one of the kings of Spain decreed that all drinks must come with a portion of food, since people were drinking too much and not eating enough. Of course this law does not apply today, but the Spaniards liked the idea. I was surprised to find that some of the tapas were seafood, considering that Madrid is landlocked; but apparently the seafood in Madrid is some of the best in the world, since the royals wanted fresh seafood in the golden age of Spain and started a thriving seafood trade.
Last night, I took a train to Barcelona and parted ways with Ashley and all of the others I met in Madrid. I had no idea what adventure was awaiting me when I arrived. It turned out that my hostel was just a few steps away from the FC Barcelona stadium and there was a game starting when I arrived (I guess its normal for soccer games to start at 10 PM here?)
Anyways, I decided to go check out the game. I was about to buy a last minute ticket off a scalper when I realized that I had no Euros in my wallet. I started walking back to look for an ATM, disappointed that I was missing the game at this point, when I remembered that the belt I had bought in Berlin was hollow and I had stuffed it with Euros in case of an emergency. Thankfully, I was wearing it, so I took off my belt, pulled out the Euros, and then also gave him the American money I had brought along to show the Europeans how boring it was (all the European bills are different colors). This added up to around the amount he wanted, so he gave me the ticket and let me in.
The match itself was intense. FC Barcelona dominated the game, being one of the best teams in Europe. They were playing Seville, who weren't nearly as good. I would say that Barcelona had control of the ball around 90% of the time. Unfortunately they never scored a goal, despite about 20 close attempts and a crowd that was very enthusiastic about clapping and chanting "Barca!"
Well that's all for now, folks! I'll be exploring Barcelona more the next 3 days and then head to Nice to meet up with Abbi again.
No comments:
Post a Comment