Nathan and I took the train from Sevilla to Granada, the first time we took it in Spain. Trains kind of reminded me of new things in China – without much character and style. But it was a smooth sailing so there’s nothing to complain about.
Granada
A drastic change from Sevilla, Granada is the lesser talked about Andalucian city but it’s definitely the one with much more character. It’s a much more distinct mix of Islam and Christianity, in terms of architecture and food, the two tangible things I could really see and taste. The basic history lesson that I gathered from my two days is that Arabs used to rule Granada until Queen Isabel and King Fernando decided to take over in 1492, resulting in the mixture you see in Granada.
As soon as we got to our hostel in Granada at around 11am, we realized that there was a free tour of Albayzin, a narrow and hilly area where the Moorish (Muslim Arabs from North Africa) people used to live. Hearing the word free, Nathan and I jumped on immediately. Well, obviously we knew it wasn’t going to be free and that there would probably be some kind of tip involved, but we had nothing better to do. The tour guide had a very hyper/active style that could have been annoying, but it kept me awake. We scaled the streets, listening to his stories and looking around. It sure beat looking at the Lonely Planet guide every 5 minutes so I was content. We ended up at some caves in the Northern bit of the city, which people used to live in, then Nathan and I bid farewell and went to the big daddy attraction of Granada, Alhambra. It was a palace/fortress/garden/everything so Nathan and I spent about 5 hours at – I’ll just post photos.
Alhambra was a damn good site and well worth our money. Great views, cool architecture.
Our tour guide. Super hyper. Oh, and also there were probably 25 girls and 3 guys on the tour. It’s like guys don’t go on free tours or something.
Next day Nathan and I looked at our Lonely Planet guide, realized we’d seen pretty much all the big sights in Granada and took a chill day with our only touristy event being the Capilla Real, a church-esque building where Queen Isabel and King Fernando were buried. It was our last night in Spain so we picked a good restaurant and had ox tail stew (which was actually quite similar to ox tail stew I have at home) and a sausage/cheese/pork platter. We slept early, anticipating a long journey the next day to Morocco.
SAUSAGE FEST (hah…)
Tangier/Traveling to Fes
Next day we made a big journey to Fes. Nathan and I didn’t find the idea of staying at either the Spanish port of Algeciras or the Moroccan port of Tangier exciting so we decided to do a 16 hour travel day instead: 4 hours of train, 2 hours of ferry, 5 more hours of train, and time in between. Sounds exhausting, and it was – but I have to say it was a lot nicer than the 16 hours I have to usually be on the plane going to the US from Hong Kong. It was definitely a lot more scenic. At the end of the day, we had a reserved a hotel right next to the train station at Fes, and it was a damn good decision because we were tired.
Yeah, they got McDonald’s in Morocco…
On the train from Tangier to Fes, a guy popped up right from underneath the seat in our train couchette/room. Scared the sh*t out of Nathan and I ‘cuz we thought we were alone. He was trying to avoid paying the train fare, but he was dumb enough to not wait until the train fare collector had passed. He got kicked off, which wasn’t too bad for us since he smelled like he hadn’t taken a shower in days.
Next Up? Fes, Rabat, and Casablanca!
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