MY last journal entry was posted in the evening of Tuesday 10th June – day 5 – and as I sit typing this on the bus to Barcelona, hostage to fluctuating wifi on winding roads hacked through the granite mountains between Madrid and Zaragoza, it is day 11.  A lot has happened.  Not least, I’ve lost my towel – Ford Prefect would be so disappointed.

This trip begins in Spain, rather than in perhaps Florence, on account of the vast series of Moorish palace structures which look down upon the city of Grenada: The Alhambra.  It’s one of the items marked with a star on my mental list.  The Parthenon, the Temple Mount, and the Valley of the Kings are others – the Big Five (big 12 maybe?) for this time-safari across the plains of civilisation.  This was not a while-I’m-here-it’d-be-a-shame-not-to; this was the Main Event.  So it was quite important that it didn’t disappoint!

The first glimpse I got was from the minibus on the way to the flamenco show on Tuesday evening.  The old quarter of Granada is called Albaicin (or Albayzin, or Albaythin, maps differ and the Spanish don’t seem to care) and the minibus climbed its narrow winding streets while the sun infused the clouds deep pomegranate red as it died behind the mountains below us.  As it set we stopped to take in the view of 11th Century city walls which predate most of the palace, but by the time we arrived at the San Nicolas lookout point, darkness had fallen completely.  Lost in flirtatious conversation with a pretty Kuwaiti as we dismounted the bus, I was halfway across the square before I looked up and out, and the view entirely overrode both mouth and legs.  I have tried not to Google to death the sights I’m travelling to see, and was unprepared for the majesty of the Alhambra, sensitively lit in the darkness.  It simply stopped me in my tracks.

To the right you can see the oldest walls: ancient, thick, rough-hewn fortifications of the alcazaba itself.  Walls to mock Christian trebuchets, walls to withstand a seige.  On the left, the more elaborate turrets and windows and towers of the Nasrid palace, final home of the last rulers of the last Islamic kingdom in mainland Europe: the emirate of Al-Andalus.  This is a complex rather than a single palace or castle, but covering as it does the whole summit of the outcrop on which it stands, it doesn’t ramble but rather, dominates, imposes, overwhelms.  Fair to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

After that, the flamenco show was… fine.  It was, technically, “in a cave” as billed, but only inasmuch as the restaurant was cut partly into the hillside, not quite the firelight-and-gypsy-mystique I’d allowed myself to anticipate.  The dancing was good, for brief moments even mesmerising, but I know I could have seen faster and better elsewhere in the city, or in Seville.

Wednesday’s daylight was mine to do with as I chose, since my entry to the Nasrid Palace wasn’t until 10pm.  The morning’s I ignored, and even did some washing at the hostel, qualifying therefore as “traveller” rather than “holidaymaker” according to criteria thrashed out in a lively debate over dinner back in Seville.  The afternoon’s bathed the labyrinth of Albaicin as I trekked around, getting hopelessly and uncaringly lost, retreading some of the streets and viewpoints of the previous night, walking into some impressive churches and monasteries [by which I mean entering, not headbutting], and mainly just trying to navigate from water fountain to water fountain in the oppressive heat.  I bumped into Raphael [c.f. Seville] who was doing a walking tour, and I joined it as it wound up out of Albaicin, up as high as San Juan del Alto (the highest church in the city) for a view which encompassed the whole city, the cathedral, the Alhambra, and the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada carving up into the horizon.

We walked out beyond the city, into real gypsy country, where the caves are hundreds of years old and cut deep into the hillside for secure and temperate days all year round.  The history of the gypsy people in southern Spain in a complicated and often unhappy one, and these caves were first carved by peoples persecuted and ejected from the city below by Catholic rulers who were, we might infer, a little fuzzy on the prince of peace’s views on brotherhood.  But recent relations have been better, and you’ll find one of the most highly regarded flamenco schools anywhere in these caves, as well as running water and electricity.

Despite a good six or seven hours of walking, I still had plenty of time, so it was a surprise to discover myself running up the zigzag hillside road towards the entrance to the Alhambra at 9.45, so as not to be late for my allotted timeslot at 10pm.  I shouldn’t really be surprised, I have barely once in my life converted “oh, I’ve got ages” into “look, I’m here in lots of time”, preferring my own incomprehensible alchemy which instead precipitates “oh shit lookatthetime!”.  They are famously strict so having cut it too fine I arrived drenched in sweat and panting – only to join the end of a long queue.  I had largely recovered by the time I reached the front of the queue, where they pointed at my ticket, to the large “22.30” printed thereon, and explained in patient Spanish that I was half an hour early.

I was ushered to a waiting area next to the front of the queue, and struck up conversation with a couple of obviously-English tourists while trying not to get caught checking out the obviously-Spanish girl five feet away.  Tall and olive-skinned, with bewitching brown eyes and a mane of dark curls which cascaded past beguiling curves to her waist, she was playing with her phone and studiously ignoring my presence until she laughed at something I said, revealing both her Englishness and a captivating, unabashed smile.  My focus on the fourteenth century marvel all around me was only slightly split throughout the tour while I worked on reigniting that smile, and on mustering the courage to ask her out for a drink.

The Nasrid Palace, and the wider palace and garden complex which Jasmine and I toured together the following morning, is not quite as breathtaking from the inside as from the out, and certainly no more informative.  There aren’t any information plaques, not even in Spanish, and the daytime audioguide is rather poor.  Nonetheless there are some breathtaking moments and rooms, and to walk at night in these Islamic courtyards, every inch of their plasterwork mottled with unknowable shapes and unknown koranic verse, their softly serene water-features reflecting the light of the full Spanish moon, is an experience I will not forget.

The thing I struggle to get my head around, actually, is the sheer time involved in the plasterwork and stucco.  Christian and ancient Greek monuments of those scale have unadorned walls and individual paintings, or tapestries, or statues.  And each of these might have taken a master craftsman or artist months to create, but they are finite.  The Islamic and Mudejar styles though have literally square miles of ornate, intricate plaster with designs so tiny they can be measured in millimetres not centimetres.  How do you do that? Who does that? How many thirteenth and fourteenth century craftsmen and artisans worked for how long on the walls and ceilings of these palaces, and for long were they apprenticed before they could?  It’s mind-boggling to me.

Jasmine and I spent perhaps five hours at the Alhambra on the Thursday morning, and to walk the halls and gardens hand in hand with a beautiful half-Egyptian artist lent the experience a warmth and a reailty it might otherwise have lacked.  That afternoon I abandoned plans to head on to Almeria and journeyed with her and her extremely welcoming and patient mother Julia back to Cordoba.  We stayed a couple of days in Cordoba, my interloping on their holiday to seeming mutual enjoyment, and the tiny streets and grand buildings of the little city that I’d preferred to Seville or Granada, were even more beautiful this time around.

I had planned to go to Valencia on my way to Barcelona, but from Cordoba the train was expensive and the bus ride interminable, so I left for Madrid with Jasmine and Julia and found a little Pension to stay in right in the centre of the city near the Plaza del Sol.  We spent the afternoon taking our time at the Thyssen-Bornemisza gallery, and then skipping round the Prado to see a few unmissable pieces before it closed.  Seeing well-known works in the flesh never ceases to amaze me, and to come across that ubiquitous Holbein of Henry VIII, just hanging there on the wall, a foot square of royal blue and royal jowls, was arresting.  But so much more moving to bathe in the light, that unique, glowing, earthsprung firelight of Caravaggio’s David and Goliath, or to lose yourself in the fantasmagoria of Bosch’s earthly delights.

Dinner was the best tapas I have ever tasted, a light sweet lemony goat’s cheese salad and fresh prawns drowned in an ungovernably rich garlic chilli glaze.  Superb.  Later on, Jas and I  had delicious watrmelon mojitos and immersed ourselves in the centre of Madrid on a Saturday night, where on every street and square there were chilled out diners and drinkers and smokers, thronging and talking and dancing and… calm.  Just having a great night out with friends.  At 4am, the streets were still packed and the clubs overflowing but I barely heard a raised voice, and felt perfectly safe.  The Spanish football team had lost their opeing world cup match 5-1 the previous night.  Can you imagine London or Leeds at 4am the following day? Would you want to?

I only got a glimpse of Madrid before our trip to Toledo the following morning, but I can see myself living there.  Seville, Cordoba, Granada were too small – nice places to visit but you’d go round the bend eventually.  Madrid feels big and robust enough that I – myself not a small and dainty thing – am not in danger of breaking it.  But Barcelona, they say, has all that and the sea… so we shall see…..

I am not the kind of Brit who comes to Spain in order to seek out the Dog and Duck on the Costa for a decent pie and chips.  A people’s cuisine is the font and the mirror of its culture, and by not immersing yourself in one (not literally, you can drown even in a bowl of gazpacho) you deprive yourself of a route into the other.  Nonetheless, my old mate Terry Pratchett has these words of wisdom on the subject of guilelessly trying every “regional delicacy” in the [disc]world:

Any seasoned traveller soon learns to avoid anything wished on them as a ‘regional speciality’, because all the
term means is that the dish is so unpleasant the people living everywhere else will bite off their own legs rather than
eat it. But hosts still press it upon distant guests anyway: ‘Go on, have the dog’s head stuffed with macerated cabbage
and pork noses – it’s a *regional speciality*.

This quote leapt to mind [and to the back of the throat] today.  The guidebook tells you that “flamenquin” is the thing to eat in Corboda.  Don’t do it.  Don’t be convinced that scraps of  pork unworthy of any other dish, welded together into a phallus of equine proportions, then breaded and deep fried and served with chips and a bottle’s worth of mayonnaise,  will somehow be transformed by ingenious Andalusian recipes handed down from generation to generation, into something edible.  Or into anything from which your arteries will recover.  You’ll be deceived.

On the other hand, the local rabo de toro – bull’s tails – I can highly recommend.  Think boeuf bourgignon, but richer and more rib-sticking, with large tail vertebrae thrown in for free. TP has something to say about that, too:  Genuan cooking, like the best cooking everywhere in the multiverse, had been evolved by people who had to make desperate use of ingredients their masters didn’t want. No one would even *try* a bird’s nest unless they had to. Only hunger would make a man taste his first alligator. No one would eat a shark’s fin if they were allowed to eat the rest of the shark.

Apart from the mishap with flamenquin, the food and drink has been good here in Cordoba, which is smaller than Seville, prettier, and more fragrant.  Its story is that of all of Andalusia: wave after wave of rulers and cultures layering history and architecture on the city, so that as you walk the narrow Islamic street plan, which doesn’t wind so much as zigzag, you come across evidence left by the high water mark of each those waves.  In fact from a single  vantage point on the Roman Bridge, you can see the the work of 2nd Century Romans, 5th Century Visigoths, 8th Century Moors and 13th Century Catholics, not to mention all those who came after.

I arrived on Sunday 8th June (day 4) without a hostel booked and wandered with Jade to hers, but the only room available was a private one (a bank-breaking E30!), so I begged some wifi and booked into the Hostel Osio, closer to the river, the Mezquita and the centre of the historic heart of the city.  We walked around the Jewish quarter for a couple of hours in the early evening, when the light here is so rich that the sand-coloured stone buildings seem somehow more real against the azure sky, as if someone layered an identical slide on top of the first in the projector.  We walked along the river, and through streets too narrow to walk two abreast, past crumbling churches and tapas restaurants and souvenir shops selling those ubiquitous Robin Ruth “insert name of city here” bags that Temptation used to sell.  We saw the cathedral-mosque from all sides, but entrance is E8 after the first hour of the day, so we resolved to visit at 8.30 the following morning.  Before parting company we dropped into Salon de The, one of a couple of enchanting moroccan-style tearooms in the quarter, and had a bite to eat and a delicious Bedouin cardammom tea amid intricate plasterwork arches and the sounds of a trickling fountain and soft arabic music.  I was suddenly impatient for the later stages of the trip.

The evening passed uneventfully, finishing with the shisha and wine of my previous post, and against all odds and precedent I got to the cathedral for 8.30 when it opened.  One of the finest examples of Moorish architecture in existence (although I’m pleased I’m seeing it before the Alhambra), you walk in to a courtyard of palms and orange trees but step into the building at one corner to discover arches of alternating red-and-white voussoirs stretching away seemingly indefinitely in front and to the left of you.  I’d had no idea there was going to be so much inside, with the melding of cultures once again much in evidence: at one point I paused to take a picture of a wall of perfect Moorish arches-and-plasterwork only to take another step and see the crucifix adorning the wall.  And I have no idea whether the organist practices medieval hymns with his star choral soloist at 9am every morning for the benefit of penny-pinching tourists, but the pair of them certainly added an additional air of serenity to my visit.

After breakfast back at the hostel I headed out to la Castille de Almodovar, 30 minutes from town.  It is a picture-book-perfect hill fort, rebuilt from ruins by the 12th Earl of Torravala in the 19th Century.  Undoubtedly an obsession bordering on mania, the project took his whole life and fortune, but the result is breathtaking.  It dominates the surrounding landscape with an Arthurian arrogance, and indeed was considered to be so utterly impregnable that when a 12th Century king faced a dangerous incoming horde, he sent his wife and family to Almodovar while he led the battle in the streets of Cordoba.  They say at the moment of his beheading in the battle, his queen awoke with a cry, and that every year on the 28th March her ghost can be seen walking the battlements of the castle on the anniversary of his death.  I didn’t see her myself, but then again, it wasn’t the 28th March.

What I did see, from the turret of the tallest tower, was a lake in the distance of a startling bright blue.  So having ticked my traditional box from where I stood (there was something tall and imposing, and I had stood on top of it) I decided to tick another box I’ve been jonesing to tick on this trip: to amble for miles through unmarked olive groves and swim in a lake.  The street signs in Cordoba that evening said 37 degrees at 7pm, so at 2 when I set out I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been well past forty, but the walk was blissfully liberating despite the heat.  The reservoir was entirely deserted for miles in every direction, and if the walk had been liberating, stripping off and skinnydipping in the cool water for half an hour was joyful.

The 6km walk back and the bus ride back to town earned me my evening treat: two hours in the icy cold, relaxingly warm, and soporifically hot waters of the Arabic Baths of Hamman and a much-needed (and excellent) massage.  This was an entirely new experience and well worth the £35, but I can’t wait for the real thing in Istanbul.

Today (#6, Tues 10th) has passed uneventfully after yesterday’s exertions.  Late start and having discovered the cathedral’s Visitor Centre was closed I spent four hours wandering the parish of San Pedro, looking for the non-tourist Cordoba and finding it largely unimpressive and mainly closed.  Ended up practically having to run with my pack to catch the 3.30 bus (after the terrible lunch about which I began, not fun!) but now three hours and some typing later I find myself in the much larger and so far, much less attractive and more interchangeable Granada.  But this 100-berth hostel seems friendly and professional and tonight’s entertainment is a flamenco show in the caves under the Alhambra, so maybe the day’s just getting started!

The city of Sevilla is the colour of orange peel.  Not the bright clean colour of Tesco satsumas, but the warm earthy hue of the wincingly-tart Seville oranges that grow by the sides of the road.  The size of a softball but surprisingly light in your hand, you can tear away the quarter-inch-thick pulpy skin to reveal tempting fleshy segments which should,  however parched you find yourself after a long day’s exploring, not be tasted unless you want a look of eye-twitching disdain etched on your face for the following twenty minutes.  They make great marmalade though, apparently.  I wouldn’t know, having woken up too late for breakfast on all three mornings.  Nightlife here means morning-life according to the clock, and burning the candle at both ends is really a job for the employed.  But I digress.

The ubiquitous orange accent colour of the city, found on everything from porticoes to roof terraces, from the lowliest pension to the grandest hotel,  is borne of the sand of the Plaza del Torros; a 12,000 seat  oval arena by the river which was one of the first grand bullrings built in Spain.  It holds shows every Sunday through the summer… apart from today.  Of course.  The tour and museum are interesting enough though, and I now know amongst other things that (a) bullfights start on horseback, with a rider injuring the bull sufficiently with a spear  for the matador to get close, (b) an easy killing stroke to the neck is not allowed, the matador must instead reach beyond the horns to the crest of the shoulder within three attempts to win his prize, and (c) I’d have a lot more sympathy for the whole enterprise if either the bulls got a reprieve on the occasions that the matador fails (they don’t, they’re executed by other means) or if there was higher death rate among matadors.  I don’t disrespect the primal, bravura, man-vs-beast of it all… but the statistics suggest this is not a fair fight or a real risk.  I still intend to see a fight in Granada if I can, but I’m pretty sceptical now that I’ll enjoy it.

Day 1 was Thursday 5th June, and it was reasonably uneventful.  Taking the path through the trees, rather than along the road, from my parents’ house into Amersham, I always recall taking the same walk in the summer of 2000, to collect my GCSE results.  Of the hundreds of times I’ve taken that route, I must have been especially adrenaline-heightened that day, and I remember it vividly.  I can even tell you the song I was humming, although wild horses wouldn’t get me to admit that it was from Jagged Little Pill.  Strange to think that that was half a lifetime ago, and stranger to imagine what that 16 year old would have thought of this thirty year old: the choices and circumstances that led him to this walk to the station and to Seville and the next six months.  He’d certainly be disappointed that I couldn’t afford to be chauffeur-driven and be startled that the backpack wasn’t a matching set of Louis Vuitton suitcases… but then, he always was a bit of a dickhead, that young man.

It’s only a mile, and I’m about a stone lighter with the 15 kilos on my back today, than I was without it at Christmas, so walking with the pack isn’t terribly arduous.  I’ve probably packed too much – haven’t left much room for souvenirs – but it wouldn’t break my heart to dispense with a few items en route.  This route was easy: Met line then the Brighton train to Gatwick, lots of time at the airport and then Ryanair – pleasant enough, for a couple of hours – to Seville.  A taxi would have been E30 but the bus only cost 4 and got me 200yds from the hostel.  It is a point of pride for the trip that I don’t intend to take a single taxi; but we’ll see whether bad planning, exhaustion, drunkenness or just plain laziness foil that plan.

La Banda Rooftop Hostel, owned and run by four twenty-something Brits (Sam, Tom, Ollie, and The Other One ) is welcoming and well-run. Cold beers for a euro, and excellent dinners en famille on the rooftop for E6.  From the rooftop you can see the roof of the Cathedral, stone crenellations and spires scything into the deep blue sky as evening falls, and magnificently illuminated at night.  Dinner (tacos, paella, mediterranean chicken with rice and beans… tasty local fare, generous portions, and seconds on demand) tends to be followed by drinks in the bars of Calle Alfalfa.  I keep saying “and we’ll live off the fat’o’theland”… but no-one gets it.  Not Steinbeck fans obviously.  It’s a nondescript  sidestreet ten feet across where almost every unit on both sides  is a bar, so the drinkers spill out into the street and intermingle until 3 or 4 in the morning.  A little touristy, but it’s close, and cheap, and the company and conversation has been good.

Day 2 therefore didn’t get going until after 10am, but made it out in time for the walking tour.  Reviews over dinner the previous night had been extremely mixed.  If you got Juan, you got pointless anecdotes about twentieth century history, character assassination of General Franco, and sore feet.  If you got Meddi,  you got fascinating insights into the soul and history of the city, from Roman beginnings through Arabs and Moors and Reconquista, to glory days as the sole clearing post for American plunder, right up to the great exhibitions of 1929 and 1992.  And sore feet.  I asked at reception: it was Meddi today.

A slight,bird-boned Morroccan of about thirty five, Meddi has the poise of a dancer and an encyclopaedic knowledge of his adopted city.  Take his tour, if you pass this way.  It’s mainly a tour of minor sights.  We saw the dodecahedral Moorish watchtower, the  Torre del Oro, so called because (1) it was painted in such a way that it shone like gold, or (2) it was there that the ruler kept his concubines, more precious to him than gold, or (3) because in the sixteenth century all the gold of the Aztecs and Incas entered Spain through Sevilla, past this tower on the Guadalquivir.  The historians tend to plump for version 3, rather disappointingy.  We saw the statue of Ferdinand III, father of the Reconquista, and learned about his son, Alfonso X (“the wise”), whose statue stands among the 23 greatest lawmakers in history in the US Capitol Building, and who is remembered for a farsighted inclusivity which sought to treat Christians Muslims and Jews equally and even-handedly, and laid the foundations of the intermingling of cultures which defines that era of Southern Spanish history.  We walked in the grand marble halls of the university, a building which for the first two hundred and fifty years of its existence was a tobacco factory staffed almost exclusively by women (the opera Carmen is set here.  In fact over 100 operas are set in or reference Seville, more than for any other city).  The “moat” around the university isn’t for keeping water in, it’s for keeping water out: Seville is built on a floodplain and although it rains very infrequently here floods are not uncommon because when it does rain, it really rains.  Under threat of inundation, the tobacco in the factory would be kept dry as floodwaters filled the moat rather than the building.  Finally we walked among the rotundas and plazas of the Great Exhibition of 1929, culminating in the impressive Plaza de Espania.  It would have been a vast grand circular building enclosing a courtyard perhaps 150 yards in diameter… if they hadn’t buggered up the budget and run out of money half way round.  So it’s a semi-circle, but no less impressive for that, with homage paid to each of Spain’s fifty provinces under each of its archways, and central fountains and a little waterway big enough to take the rowboats you can rent if you’re foolish enough.

I wasn’t, I needed lunch, so I walked with French-Canadian Jade and Swiss Raphael to the city on the other side of the river, Triana, (named for Emperor Trajan, native of the area and first provincial ruler of Rome) for some tapas.  We ate in a little restaurant in a covered market by the Queen Isabella bridge, where the sangria was good and inexpensive, and the food was tasty.  Refreshed and refuelled we decided to head to the Alcazar, stopping for photos outside the cathedral on the way.

The Real Alcazar (that’s rhe-all al-KA-tha) is a thirteenth century Christian expansion of a tenth-century Muslim fortress, and it is big.  The decorative style is predominantly geometrical Muslim mosaics, with water features and detailed plasterwork in keeping with that Islamic influence, but there are also biblical inscriptions in Old Gothic script, enormous tapestries depicting scenes from the discovery of the New World, and ceramic masterpieces from neighbouring Triana, long-famous for its potters and potteries.  The gardens with their fountains and peacocks are fragrant and peaceful, fit for the royal court of Castille-Lyon, who lived here, and even as a residence for Emperor Charles V when he visited.  I spent the better part of two hours at the Alcazar, rarely with any idea of which room I was in or which I hadn’t seen; with every corner revealing some new courtyard, or elaborate archway, or stateroom.  Or sometimes, this being me, a dead end.  It is a remarkable building, and the mixture of architectural styles and cultural influences should create confusion and discord but on the contrary, just like medieval Spain itself, they are brought together – for the most part – with great serenity and harmony.

Limping back to the hostel after seven hours of exploration, my feet were of course ready to take their leave of me, so I went for a swim.  To reach the city’s 25m pool was a further twenty minute trek, but it did take me to the Alameda de Hercules, where at either end of a long slim plaza four pillars stand in two pairs looking… well rather un-Herculean, actually.  Twenty feet tall and perhaps eighteen inches in diameter, the name rather flatters to deceive.  But the pool was cool and although busy was peopled with fit Spaniards with excellent lane discipline, so I have no complaints.  A couple of kilometres later my feet thanked me and my shoulders were done with me, so back to the hostel for paella, and later some Jack Daniel’s on Alfalfa.

Rather a lot of Jack Daniel’s actually.  But by lunchtime on Saturday I was alive and well-briefed by Tripadvisor as to the Roman ruins of Italica which lie half an hour away from the city, on the other side of Triana in Santiponce.   Lunch was constructed from supermarket bargains on the walk to the bus station at Plaza des Armas, and after being charmingly informed while waiting for the bus that I looked twenty not thirty (I was cleanshaven, and she was eighty-five…) the bus drove smoothly (take note please, Rio bus drivers) to Italica.

This Roman settlement originally dates to around 200BC, when some of Scipio Africanus’ legionaries needed some R&R, and some stitching up, on their way back from the Punic Wars.  But it gets exciting when local boy Trajan becomes Emperor, and in the 100s he and his son Hadrian (yes, that Hadrian) order a series of expansions and redevelopments which would make even the EU blush for sheer unjustified expenditure and pork-barrel politics.  The Forum and the centre of the Roman city now lie beneath present day Santiponce, but Italica remains almost completely untouched – at floor level at least – on the outskirts of the town.  This was the hill-town of the patrician class, with semi-public buildings which had a residential and public function: large houses with meeting rooms, large public baths, a Temple to Neptune and to Trajan himself, and a 15,000 seat amphitheatre.

The town and its mosaic floors can be walked and explored exactly as they were laid out nineteen hundred years ago, and to see such a large site (walking around takes well over an hour) in situ like that allows for a very special and visceral form of that mental time-travel to which any historian can relate.  Even the landscape is as much Umbria as Andaluscia, and the sight and soft earthy scent of the rows of poplars transport you to a world of togas and intrigue and bacchanals.  The amphitheatre though is simply breathtaking.  It is also, (thank you, Spanish attitude to life) mercifully unmanned, so while many areas are railed off or gated, such rails are almost seductively jumpable.  I was able to cross the floor of the theatre itself, as well as walking the entire rotation at each level, clambering to the very top and even finding an unmarked (and unlit and in places almost untraversable) passageway into the subterranean centre where equipment (and the occasional Gladiator) would have been kept until needed.  I managed not to make any mention of my murdered wife or son, nor of finding vengeance in whatever life, but the place is simply alive with the bated breath and sweat and blood of the men whose armour chinked in the dark corridors before they burst out to live or die under the blazing Spanish sun.

There is, rather less poetically, a Roman theatre of the non-amphi variety at the other end of the town, but it is entirely sealed behind ten foot metal fences, and even the viewing platform was closed by the time I arrived.  Both this and Italica were built by Hadrian to an unsustainable scale, and by the third century the buildings were being re-purposed, by the fourth abandoned and by the fifth, cannibalised for local buildings.  Given all that it’s a miracle they survive as well as they do, early twentieth century  excavations unearthing all this and statues of Diana the Huntress and Trajan himself which now reside in museums while replicas grace their former site.

My return to Sevilla brought on Saturday night and my last night in town, so in a vain attempt to see some flamenco in its spiritual home (other options being sold out or out of budget) I went on suggestion from Sam to Casa Matias, just round the corner, where the wine was as rough as the locals who were drinking it but the music was roots-deep and the singing communal.  Needless to say I couldn’t understand the words, but belted out in that hoarse-tenor of Spanish and Arabic singing, you hardly need to.  The guitarist strummed so harshly it was almost percussive, while his friend kept the complex twelve-beat rhythm with his hands, and the patrons sang while the local Mr Charisma strained at the very edge of his range to bring the song to life.   It was clearly just a standard early Saturday evening at Casa Matias, nothing special or deliberate, but it was a little slice of unadulterated Sevilla that I feel rather lucky to have seen.  This is though a bar in which tourists are endured rather than welcomed, and before long I returned to the hostel and a more Anglicised version of Spain.  Dinner at 10pm was good and the better for being needed, and the night concluded in conversation about the vicissitudes of running a hostel and the healing period of a broken heart, at around 3am in a local bar.

Sunday morning taught me once again that I am constitutionally unsuited to making a checkout time, but that I’m getting marginally better at packing my bag, and then it was a tour of the bullring- see above.  Shame there was no fight – and that Mass until 2.30pm ruled out a full tour of the inside of the cathedral and the Tower – but it meant I got to see and climb the Metropol Parasol, the famous “mushrooms” of Jurgen Mayer-Hermann built in 2011.  The views of the city are almost as good as can be found anywhere, and the structure is surreal… but nice.  Thence to the bus station with Jade, who was also headed for Cordoba, and I finally pulled out my Chromebook to start to write.  I’m concluding this entry sitting outside a bar in the shadow of the Mezquita-cathedral de Cordoba, drinking good Rioja and smoking a watermelon shisha, having had a charming afternoon with Jade exploring the Jewish quarter and drinking a Bedouin infusion in a local tearoom.  But that’s Cordoba, and that’s a story for another day.

Seville

La Banda Rooftop Hostel

Calle Dos de Mayo 16, Seville, Spain, 41011

check in 5th check out 8th

So in order to go to Algeria I need to obtain a tourist visa.  In order to obtain said visa I need proof of employment and proof of address while in Algeria.  I have no job currently, and not only do I not know where I’m staying, I don’t know when I’ll be there.  The website is chronically vague and when I called for more details I was on hold for forty minutes and then the nice lady at the embassy hung up on me when I asked for clarification.

Add to all that, this email from Claudia’s father who has spent a great deal of time out there:

“…

Well, as your old grandmother used to say, “There’s one born every minute!”
He can get a visa at the Algerian Consulate in London and see what happens.  He might get in touch with the Foreign Office and see what their reaction would be.
I think he might find it rather difficult. I am not sure the Algerians will like the idea, but one never knows.  Is he an academic? There might be an excuse there. Fact is, there are few if any people going to Algeria except for business reasons, and going anywhere outside Algiers requires a police escort.

…”

Sooooo… given that the best Carthaginian ruins are in Tunis, and that the Tassili n’Ajjer is miles from anywhere, I think I’mma bypass Algeria.  That makes the North Africa trip slightly light, going from Egypt straight to Tunisia straight to Morocco, but maybe I can give those places more attention as a result.

Thanks but no thanks Algeria, I’ll see you another time.

Some good advice here

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/travel-tips

And especially must remember to get one of these

http://www.halifax.co.uk/creditcards/low-rate-no-fee/clarity-card/

Boom. Just done it. Application approved, card winging its way to Bedge.  Will save me 2% on the entire trip.  Result.

Athens and the Acropolis are the focus of this leg of the trip, and latterly – since watching a fantastic BBC4 thingy – I’ve really wanted to take a trip to Delphi too.  I’ve had Rhodes recommended to me as well.  And I’m not too fussed about artifacts and architecture from Greek Orthodox history.

Reference to Wikipedia articles about various places, plus my usual starting points –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_Sites_in_Greece

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/TravelersChoice-Destinations-cTop-g189398

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/greece

http://www.interrail.eu/plan-your-trip/interrail-railway-map

Tells me two things.

1. Sailing from Italy would take a LONG time.  I’d have to get back across from Sicily to Brindisi, and then sail for a total of over 15 hours, to get to a port town I’m not interested in seeing, Patras, in order then to schlep to Athens. So I’m going to fly directly from Palermo.

2. Given time constraints I’m going to have to make some very hard choices, and miss out extraordinary ancient sites which are too far-flung.  The key decision is probably the North vs the Islands

So, let’s bash some stuff down and plot it on the map…

• Athens – natch
• Delphi – natch
• Olympia – site of ancient games
• Mt Athos – extraordinary monastery complex closed to women and children
• Mistras – not terribly fussed, 15th Century Byzantine ruins
• Mycanae – key city of 12th to 15th Century Mycenean Greece
• Epidavros (theatre) – extraordinary acoustics (see Aeschylus play 12th July?)
• Islands:
  • Santorini – beautiful picturesque architecture
  • Crete – incl Minoan history and architecture, and Knossos, Europe’s oldest city
  • Rhodes – esp Lindos as recommended by TF
  • Delos – birthplace of Apollo and Artemis
  • Cyprus – um, it’s big.

TBC. Going to the beach.

I’ve never been to Italy.  I’ve long wanted to go to Italy.  Everyone I know says I’ll fall in love with Italy. And this trip is Roman-Empire-themed.  So I think it’s okay to give Italy plenty of time.  To be honest, less than 5 days in Rome itself is going to be pushing it. Sooooo… let’s start putting stuff on a map.  Starting with main cities and areas, roughly in the order I’d get to them:

• Turin – nahhh
• Milan – yes.
• Verona – yes – see Carmen in the Amphitheatre
• Venice – yes.
• Trieste – nahhh. Despite it being listed as Lonely Planet’s “most underrated destination” in 2012.  Too Habsburg-y for this trip. Maybe in the future.
• Florence – yes.
• Rome – yes.
• Naples – yes, and maybe Sorrento
• Sicily – yes
• Sardinia – maybe

So that’s sorted. Interrail from Milan from Barcelona on Thursday 19th June, and then go

Milan –> Verona –> Venice –> Florence (+Pisa) –> Rome –> Naples –>Sicily (+Sardinia?)

and then back across to the mainland, and to Brindisi, and from there by boat to Patras, and thence to Athens.  If I interrail it.  Flying direct from Palermo to Athens though only costs $160.  Hmmm. Would save me two of three days all told.  Hmmm, to be researched.

…

Flight booked.

Brainwave: start with UNESCO world heritage sites to make sure I don’t miss anything stupid.  For instance, I had Rome, Venice and Florence on the list but not Naples, just outside of which is… Pompeii.  Yes, I’m a  mouthbreathing idiot.  So The Map is about to get a lot more densely populated, and then the whittling will start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_Sites

OK. Wow. Shit.  Spain alone has like forty sites.  The map is going to get insane.  There’s no way I can see everything.  But okay, even if I plot it all on a map, and then find like a top 100?  Okay, I’ll just precis and map anything I’m particularly interested in.