It's been a while since the last blog and we've covered a decent amount of ground since then, but i'm gonna try keep this brief cos it's too hot and awesome over here to spend time on a computer!
Granada:
If you are looking for a hostel to stay in while in Granada, Granada Inn is where it's at. This place was seriously the nicest hostel I've stayed in. It was almost like staying in a hotel. We rocked into Granada late afternoon after a pretty sweet drive from Torrevieja. My average speed would have been in the vacinity of 130-140 km/h... and i wasn't anywhere near the biggest booster on the roads. Pretty sure the speed signs are just for decoration over here. There are some crazy road signs here, but i'll let you come see for yourselves, some just don't make sense...
Granada was a sweet place. We met up with Liz and Dylan (a couple from the topdeck trip) on our second day. They boosted down from Barcelona on an overnight train and were pretty juted when they arrived in the morning. Tess sorted out a walking tour for us to do to check out the sites, pretty decent job she did (didn't tip her tho). Ha. That night, we locked in a pub crawl (seems to be becoming a trend for us). The actual pub crawl was pretty average tho - the first bar was cool, but waaay too small. they other two "bars" were smaverage, and the night club at the end was full of 16 year olds.
Alhambra in Granada is Spain's #1 Tourist attraction (apparantly), so we locked in tickets to have a look. Alhambra was cool - was up a pretty decent hill, but the views up there were pretty sweet, and the gardens and palaces were cool. That night, Sayuri (japanese girl who is kinda working for the hostel for rent) hosted a sushi buffet and free sangria night. This was wicked. She basically had all the stuff for sushi, but we all sat round the table rolling our own mini sushi rolls. Was a good munch, and the free sangria was pretty awesome as well. This was our last night in Granada, so Sayuri took us to this epic bar/club up in Sacremonte that had an epic view of Alhambra. We didn't plan a big night, but they always turn out the biggest, which made the drive next day a bit rough...
Malaga:
For being a beach town, Malaga had some rubbish beaches. We had high hopes for finding the elusive epic beach in Spain, but Malaga didn't have it. We checked out the beach at Malaga, but it was rubbish. And by rubbish I mean the "sand" was more like dirt and the water was full of floaties (probably washed over from the port). We were pretty jaded from the night before, so decided to have and AFD (alcohol-free day). Sounds lame, but actually needed one i think.
Because the sun doesn't go down til roun 9:30pm here, all our meal times have been shifted back a couple hours... welll everything seems to have shifted. We don't really get up til 10ish, lunch is usually round 5pm and dinner around 9 or 10pm. At first it was strange, but i'm kinda enjoying it now. The sun setting at 9:30pm means that the usual late afternoon beers turn into just normal beers and you get so much more time for activities, which makes up for sleeping til 10 or 11am. ha.
Day 2 in Malaga, we decided to scout out an epic beach nearby. We ended up heading to Nerja (about an hour east of Malaga). Today was going to be a beach day, so we had to pick up some supplies. Tess suggested sun umbrellas, so we wouldn't end up lobstered at the end of the day. We wanted some liquids for the beach, so we headed to a supermarket for some waters. The supermarket were running a promotion on San Miguel beers, where if you bought a 24 slab, you got a free sun umbrella. We bought 3 slabs. So off we went to the beach with our 3 free sun umbrellas and our beers. The beers were warm, so we got some ice (hielo) and made a sort of reverse beer hangi to keep the beers cold (we dug a deep hole in the sand, lined it and filled it with ice and beers). Turned out to be an epic idea and set up our day perfectly. Epic day - 5 kiwis, beers, and 7 hours perched on a beach, all topped off with Taco Bell for dinner! haha.
Gibraltar:
Next morning we packed up and headed for the bottom of Spain. Tarifa was a small town in the bottom of Spain. We didn't know much about it, but wanted to check it out for shiggles and it'd also mean we could stop off in Gibraltar.
Gibraltar was cool. Was kinda strange driving into a place that is technically in Spain, but speaks english. We grabbed a feed from a pub/restaurant called the Horseshoe. It was pretty rubbish. I think it would've been easier to order in back in Spain. They had no clue what they were doing. Each waitress had a different table numbering system... was a shambles.
If you do go to Gibraltar tho, definitely get the cable car up to the top on the mountain. There's some epic epic views from up there, not to mention the monkeys that are all round the place. You could spent more coin and check out all the stuff up the top, but we ran outta time.
Tarifa:
Finally, we found our beach. Tarifa is probably the find and the coolest place we've been to so far. The beach was epic, proper sand like back home, none of this dirt/small pebble crap, and nice decent water with some small breaks. The town is wicked also. Old town has all these small winding alleys with little hidden cafes, shops, bars, restaurants, etc. We were gutted that we had only locked in one night here. There must be some decent wind round here at times, cos there were heaps of kitesurfing/windsurfing schools round.
We arrived fairly late at night, but the next day we perched up and had another epci beach sesh - except this one was at a decent beach. Didn't nail the whole "avoid getting burnt" idea, but was worth a little lobstering for the epicness of the beach.
After some pretty intense yarns on the beach, we didn't end up leaving Tarifa until around 7ish, but our drive to Seville wasn't too far, so that was sweet.
Seville:
Seville is another inland town in Spain. Being inland means that it gets freakin' hot. We left Tarifa were it was a warm 28 degrees and headed to Seville where it had been a ridiculous 36... did not bode well... We arrived late at night - around 10:30pm, but then we were faced with the task of finding a parking spot. We dropped the crew off at the hostel with our bags, while Tuffy and I went car park finding. After circling the free-parking stretch by the river for near an hour, we threw in the towel and headed to a carparking building. cost us 25 euro for 24 hours (after being told it was only 12 euros), but by this stage I was over it. really over it. Especially given the car park building ended up being over a half hour walk back to the hostel...
When we finally got back and showered, we headed out for a feed and some drinks. We ended up having dinner at 1am and were out til around 5am. Seville was pumping for a Wednesday night. The next day, when we finally emerged round lunch time, we went for a wander round Seville and found out why it was pumping the night before. There was a public holiday today, all the shops were shut and people were round everywhere. We were hot walking round wearing f-all, while there were local guys wandering round in full suits and were fine... Last night of the trip for the crew, so we decided we'd better end it the way it started - a massive night on Don Simon Sangria. We definitely over-estimated the amount we'd need, but to Alex and Dylan's credit, they stayed up and finished it all off. Liz hit the hay round 2, and Tess and I were done by 3. Not sure when Alex and Dylan finally finished up, but it must've been somewhere after 4.
The guys were flying back to London at 9pm, so we decided to go on a lil mish outta Seville for the afternoon. We ended up at some random site just a bit north of Seville, which turned out to be pretty epic. There was an old site of ruins in Santiponce with an ampitheatre and baths. We had a wander round for a bit, then retired to the pub across the street for a feed. The men's tennis semi between Djokovic and Fedex was on. Win. We ended up perching and watching that til the others had to fly out.
Now it's back to just me and the Tough One. We're heading to Lagos today, so get to cross another country off the list. If anyone's in Portugal, hit us up!
sorry peeps, no pics this time. will add some once I find some time.
Hasta luego! Catch you in a week spain!
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