OK, quick thoughts from an internet cafe in Grenada (cut and pasted in later because World Nomads is down at the mo).
First, the meeting with SCB in Sweden was great and very interesting. No luck on the work experience though - looks like they´re having a bit of a restructure and no-one wants to be responsible for me. They said try again in September, but I won´t get my hopes up. Pity, because they were all very nice and I think I´d learn a lot from working there.
We then started the Kumuka tour in Madrid. Actually, first we went to Stockholm where Emma´s cousin Jonas was the hero of the day for putting us up at his place (in his bed while he slept on the couch) and then driving us to the airport at 6am. Words can´t quite express how grateful we are to him...well just one: "Champion". We also got to meet his mother, Emma´s aunt Tuula and were treated to a lovely evening of mixed Swedish and English and talk about Emma´s Dad´s family (Tuula doesn´t speak Englich as well as most Swedes, which is to say that he still puts us to shame in the bilingual stakes, but it was great to have an excuse to practice our Swedish).
The flight to Madrid on the ineligantly named Spanair (including the inflight magazine "Spanorama") was not quite as spantastic as it might have been. My annoyance at having to pay for my meal (SAS had offloaded us to another carrier it seems) was tempered by the steward forgeting to take my money. Then we landed and had a hard time working out which carosel our bagage would some out on. We eventually found our flight number under the less than helpful origin of "Estocolmo". The baggage then came out on the carosel next to this one - looks like even the Spanish were confused by this one.
Madrid is nice. It´s got a great big huge massive green-with-flowering-trees park in it (between the hotel and the city centre), lots of fountains, bidets (bum washers) in every hotel room and a severe water shortage. They´re attitude to their drought is not to turn off the fountains or put low flow shower heads or low flush toilets in any room or even maybe tone down the park a notch on the colour sheet, no, their solution is to put stickers up in the hotel rooms with the slogan "Madrid needs more water" and helpful hints like "Don´t put trash down the toilet". More idle wishing han an effective management plan I would think, but what do I care if Madrid runs out of water, that park is awsome and I´ve already left. No wonder they lost the empire.
Madrid itself is like a messier, grubbier, car-horn-honkier version of Stockholm. Whereas the Swedes chose to paint their monuments cheery colours and keep them clean, Spain prefers the bare stone look. Highlights were a drunken evening following an American skier called Kevin through the streets looking for the next bar (if you´re over 40 and love me or Emma, it wasn´t as dangerous as it sounds, we were in a group of like 20 from the tour and it all turned out well...if you´re not, we were way drunk and it was a great way to start the tour bonding process). Lowlights, the poverty and the tourist markup on drinks. Travel Tip: ask how much a drink is before you order it, that way they can´t just charge you what they feel like at the end.
Toledo was the first stop over on the drive south to Granada. The old capital, it´s got the whole cobblestoned alleyways thing in spades. Despite the lack of cheery Swedish colours, there was a certain aesthetic to the spectrum of earth tones on the roof tiles. We deliberately got lost so we could enjoy finding ourselves and ended up finding a chuch tower we could climb and get views over the city and fortress (I forget the name, look it up if you´re interested) and cathedral. Travel Tip: Get off the main tourist drag ASAP and find an alley way, that applied especially if you´re ever in Gamla Stan in Stockholm).
Then after 4 more hours on the bus, which passed pretty well thanks to Peta and Coco (tour leader and bus driver respectively) on the mike - highlight Coco playing Barryoke (as the jingle cheerily sang in close jingle harmony "It´s just like karaoke, but it´s sung by people called Barry") from English radio. In case you´re confused, no that last sentence didn´t have a main verb, if it did, it would have ended with the phrase "we made it to Grenada", but I couldn´t work out how to squeeze it in without removing something else to aid the flow. And it turned out that it was all necessary.
Anyway Grenada, the final part of Spain the Moops were forced out of during the reconquista. (One for the Seinfeld fans there - ¿are Seinfeld references retro and kitch yet?). So it´s got more Arabic influence. The main attraction is the Alhambra fortress/palace, known as the best example os Arabic architecture in Europe (though there can´t be a lot of competition there, unless Constantinople is in the running or something) and pretty much the sole reason for coming to this end of Spain. Now, we´ve known we were going to the Alhambra on this day for about 4 months. We also knew that we had to book the entry ourselves over the internet (Kumuka were quite clear about that). ¿So, you´d think we´d have gotten around to it before, say, 2 days ago in Madrid wouldn´t you? Well we didn´t, and it was booked out. Not pointing any fingers here because we both dropped the ball pretty spectacularly on that one. Anyway, after much worry, we got up early enough to hear drunken Spaniards from the night before still yelling in the street outside (or early morning students greeting each other for a hard days study in the University Medical College Library up the street, it´s hard to say in Spain), skipped breakfast and got the bus up an hour before the non-pre-booked ticket office opened. Well, after taking our place about 300th in the pre-dawn queue and waiting 3 hours (including talking to a charming Canadian chap) and hearing repeatedly that the morning tickets were sold out and that there were only a few hundred afternoon tickets left, we somehow succeeded in getting tickets for the morning session. So we went to the Nasarid Palace and waited for our time to go in (if you miss your time, you miss out). Success. Anyway, the Nasarid Palace was good, but being the highlight of the complex Í´d have to say that I enjoyed everything else moe - the Fortress, the gardens and the other gardens. The palace has lots of intricate carved reliefs with all abstract patterns (the Moops not being particularly into offending Allah with graven images of real things) and Arabic quotes from the Koran. But to a big picture person like me it just registers as "walls with lots of stuf on them" which can´t really compete with "bloody great big stone tower with panoramic views of Grenada and the snowcapped Sierra Nevada" for my enthusiasm. Plus they used to be painted lots of bright colours (some of the blue remains in the odd patch) so it´s a bit like seeing a bleached coral reef. Mind you, with lots of paint there´d be more intricate detail for me to overlook. Plus the Nasarid Palace is facing a bare hill opposite with a few buildings from the cty creeping up it. So every view from it is of the least impressive angle possible. You´d think a theocrat that could build such a complex might point the place he lived at the Sierra Nevada or the city and distant plains. No wonder they lost their empire. The gardens were great though, with roses smelling of lemongrass and fountains and channels of water in all sorts of directions, inclusing as a balustrade down one set of steps.
Anyway, tired now and Emma´s hurrying me up. Off to Barcelona next. Adios.
