16th Nov – 26th Nov 2023
We bade farewell to Almerimar and the desert conditions of the southern Spanish Mediterranean coast and headed inland to the city of Granada. This route took us up into the foothills of the western Sierra Nevada mountains onto a far more scenic inland plateau. Here there were thousands of acres of olive groves – welcome greenery after the coastal barren hillsides and the unsightliness of its endless growing houses. Davide easily pulled up the hills, his youthful 170 horses barely noticing that we have been slowly adding to his burden. Aside from the things that we are carrying around that are unlikely to be used again on this trip (tent, double air mattress, spare camp chair, BBQ, boules, ukulele, beach towels, etc), there are the plenty of aquisitions (ten European Lonely Planet books -thanks Dave & Anita, a watering can to top up the tank, a ground sheet, a drinking water container, a doormat), and there are the things that we are likely to need as winter kicks in and we move north (coats, boots, plug in heater). We also usually have a fridge full of food, cans and packets in the pantry, and of course, the ‘drinks cabinet’. Luckily we have uprated Davide’s total legal onroad weight from 3500kg to 4000kg to allow for our increasing payload but there will be a ‘review of onboard possessions’ on our return to base’ in January.
Granada’s setting is beautiful as it sits in a broad depression surrounded by mountains and fertile agricultural land. Camp here was about 8km out of the city centre and was a small family run place situated down a narrow lane. It had the whiff of medium security prison compound about it being essentially an acre of gravelled parking with a solid 8ft ft tall perimeter fence. We bowled up and rolled in without a booking to find it unexpectedly busy and the owner a little flustered. Happily she found a space for us and we squeezed ourselves into our compact pitch and plugged in. Close proximity parking like this is usually absolutely fine as most van dwellers are fairly quiet folk. Unfortunately our initial neighbours were a British family with two toddlers who sounded like they were amusing themselves by ricocheting of all the internal walls of their motorhome. This sound carries. I felt sorry for them and intense annoyance of them in equal measures.
The main benefit of this camp (apart from the security, electricity, hot showers, water and sewage facilities) was its location of the tram route into the city. With the aid of a travel card provided by the camp host, the half hour journey into the centre was the princely sum of 33c each. Nuts. These cards get passed around the guests, with the ability to reload money onto it at the machine at the station. Otherwise the journey without the card was $1.65. Still very reasonable for a clean, efficient and well executed service that took us right where we wanted to go. Bingo! People take the tram and the city centre isn’t full of cars. It’s not rocket science.
We headed into Granada late afternoon with a vague plan to soak up a bit of early evening atmosphere and have dinner. This inland city of about 225,000 people has a different vibe to Barcelona and Valencia. It felt more Spanish, and although it still has alot of tourist visits, the crowds felt more domestic than international. The ‘big ticket’ tourist drawcard for Granada is The Alhambra. A vast Moorish palace and fort complex build atop the rocky hill overlooking the city. This Unesco World Heritage Site is one of the most famous monuments of Islamic architecture in the world. Building commenced in 1238 by Muhammad I Ibn al-Almar,the first Nasrid emir and founder of the Emirate of Granada, the last Muslim state of Al-Andalus. It was added to and modified over the centuries with Charles V commissioning up a Rennaissance-style Palace addition in 1526, which was never finished. The whole place fell into disrepair for a couple of hundred years until it was rediscovered in the early 19th C by British and American intellectuals and ‘romantic travellers’, including the American Washington Irving who set his 1832 novel Tales of the Alhambra here. Anyway, this is one of Spain’s most visited tourist sites and (as we had underestimated the public’s enthusiasm for visiting it) there were no (reasonably priced) tickets left for sale for the days that we were here. We weren’t too disappointed as by now we had done a lot of viewing ‘old sh*t’ and knew we would be content to see it from the outside.
On our first foray into the city I convinced my brave and loyal companion that (as suggested by a few tourist guides) it might be good to walk across town and ascend the hill opposite the Alhambra, thus gaining a good view of it as sunset approached. Then we could have an aperitif at one of the bars nearby before finding somewhere to have dinner down at lower altitudes. This was a good idea in theory, but one that about a million other people had had too. The climb up to the Mirador San Nicholas, a small church, was along steep cobbled streets, up steps and through noarrow alleyways. It was sunny and hot and a pointless endeavour as when we got to the top, sweaty and thirsty, with all the other sunset pilgrims, all the best lookout spots had been taken and were five people deep, the bars and restaurants with any view had long queues to get in and actually, sunset was still about 30 minutes away. Another great idea ruined by Instagram. There was a good view of the Alhabmbra. We took mediocre photos and walked down again. My brave and loyal companion might have done some swearing about how pointless the whole exercise had been. I am inclined to agree with him.
Down in town we found a place for a Vermut Rojo or several, (they are so good!) waiting until Nick’s restaurant of choice opened at 7pm. When the hour came we relocated to the back street Tapas intitution expecting to find it empty, still laying tables and the wait staff expectantly greeting us as their first customers of the evening. This is, after all, Spain. They don’t come out until 8pm at the earliest……………well no. The place was packed, loud, full of already well-oiled people of all ages but mainly students, and the wait staff were in a state of controlled frazzle. It was bonkers and very obvious that the online advertised opening time of 7pm was a lie. After several attempts to flag down one of the waiters we managed to procure a rare and valuable available table-for-two in a corner. This was located between another small table situated so close that we were basically sharing a table for four with a delightful pair of young German sisters and on the other side there was a row of backsides belonging to half of a group of loud, boistrous students stood around a neighbouring high-top table. Having said that, they were not being antisocial, just some of the bums came a bit close for comfort! We were concerned for the safety of our wine. As we were ordering our dishes for dinner our German neighbours had a delivery of one that caught Nick’s eye: a plate of salted crisps draped in anchovies. A salty delight that was rapidly added to our order. We were in the process of ordering an additional dish when our waiter said ‘no’, ‘that’s enough’. A wise man that either despised food waste or knew that our tiny table had limited space for plates. Either way, he was right. By the time we were finishing off our meal the German sisters had been replaced by an older Spanish couple from Valencia who spoke no English. Despite our corresponding lack of Español we had a nice chat and a laugh with them about….well, no idea really. But they were also delightful.
We revisisted the city the next day for further exploration. It was Sunday and the streets were busy with folk dressed in their Sunday best, cruising around and starting to settle into places for lunch. This seems to be a theme in the Spanish cities that we have visited thus far. It all feels very civilized. Our strollings took us past, and into a few churches and the cathedral. It being Sunday most had mass in progress, so our stays were brief. We hit a tidal flow of humanity heading in the direction of the Alhambra (we presumed), so followed it for a while. The route took us past a sunny plaza upon which there was an open session of couples tango dancing. They were all shapes, sizes and ages, although mainly a bit older, and all were doing quite a good job. We wandered on and the road got narrower and more crowded. Pavements were non-existant and the two-way human traffic was battling with this also being a bus route. We peeled off for a time-out (and beer, obviously) in a small bar and then rejoined the masses. The route took us up and around the Alhambra, approaching it from the rear via a wide cobbled path. At the top, after the wheezing had diminished, we confirmed that there were no tickets available to go inside and which bits we could see for free. We did the free bits on our way back down the hill and headed back into town in search of a late tapas lunch. Our initial choice, another Anthony Bourdain haunt, was perhaps predictably, rammed, as were all the other recommended establishments. We finally found a place that brought us back from the brink of near starvation with the aide of a plate of fried anchovies, some croquettes and our first flamenquins (Serrano ham wrapped around pork loin and battered and deep fried. MMMMmmm). With full tummies we shuffled back to the Gulag with the aid of the tram and decided that Granada was a thoroughly fine place.
The following day took us to Jerez De La Fonterra. Home of Sherry. This involved a reasonable drive of about 3 hours through more olive groves with mountain views. All very scenic. Jerez camp was interestingly located, being on the site of a large out-of-town shopping centre. What amenities do we look for close to a campsite? Well how about KFC, Burger King, Five Guys, C&A, an outlet village, a hypermarket, a full shopping mall, a go-cart track and an Ikea? We settled in then couldn’t resist a wander. We ended up in Ikea, a store we hadn’t visited in over 20 years. It was interesting doing a recreational tour of the Swedish retail giant whilst being in both the position of really not needing anything and also being very limited on space. We came away having spent the princely sum of €1.49 on two cork drinks coasters. I think this might be a record world-wide.
Despite being ‘out-of-town’ we were only about 3km from the centre of Jerez. and the next day we walked into town for the first of our two engagements. This was the midday show of the Andalucian dancing horses. Jerez is home to The Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art Foundation, one of the ‘big four’. The others being the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, The (French military) Cadre Noir and the Portuguese School of Equestrian Arts. The horses and riders are trained in conventional dressage and some perform other feats such as jumping in the air for photo ops. The 90 minute show was set to music and was an impressive display of both horsemanship and the time commitment it takes to persuade a horse to skip on the spot and look like it is enjoying it having riden it in circles for twenty minutes.
We were impressed, but equally keen for it to to come to its conclusion so that we could head to our second appointment: a sherry tasting tour. This involved a leisurely 45 minute walk across town which delivered the classic offerings of old town, narrow streets, churches, an Alcazar and hundreds of urban orange trees laden with ripening fruit. Research (ie asking Google) has informed me that these oranges belong to the local municiple bodies and are not free-for-all-fodder. They look and smell lovely, but ripe fruit can be both a ‘hit you on the head’ and a ‘slimy, slippery mush on the pavement skidding’ hazard. When ripe the bitter, non-eating fruit is picked by a legion of temporary workers, no doubt cauing traffic chaos, and then used to make marmelade or sometimes just composted. Seems quite a thankless endeavour all round and possibly not worth the aesthetics.
There are many Sherry Bodegas in this area but Nick had done some research and selected one called Lustau for our tour. This is a more boutique and quality brand than the bigger ones like González Byass (who make Tio Pepe), but the place was still vast. Our English-language tour had only two other people on it, a Scottish couple called Stuart and Kate who have lived in Conneticut for twenty years. The tour wound its way through the cavernous barrel storage warehouses with the tastings of the various sherries along the way. We learned many interesting sherry facts. Did you know that sherry barrels are not sealed but that the stoppers are loose so as to allow the atmospheric yeasts and bacteria to contribute to the maturation process? Or that it is so important to maintain a humidity of 80% in the warehouses that they water the sandy floors at least weekly? Well now you do. We got on like a house on fire with our co-tourers and spent so long chatting that our guide had to politely chivvy us along the tour and out of the tasting room/shop at the end. We continued our nattering at a bar across the road and then they kindly gave us a lift home in their rental car before heading off to Seville. It was a very good day.
A brisk wind and showers the next day prompted us to have a lazy day ‘à van’ and to extended our planned stay here by a night – Oh the joy of having no set itinerary! This meant that we could take our next excursion, a day trip by train to the nearby town of Cádiz, on the sunny day that followed. Now the simple way of visiting Cádiz would have been to up sticks, drive the 25 minutes there and find a parking space. Both easily done, but we chose the much more complicated and time consuming option of public transport. The bus to take us to the train station took 20 minutes but was late so we missed our planned train. We bought tickets for the train and killed the hour until the next train drinking a coffee in the sunshine at a nearby cafe. (Very pleasant). On our return to the station we discovered that our train had been delayed, but that there was another train – run by different arm of same company- that was going to leave sooner. The tickets were not automatically interchangeable but a nice lady in the ticket office made a phone call and having annotated our tickets by hand said that we were good to go. This other train operated from a platform that was barrier controlled, and of course our tickets did not have the magnetic strips to let us through. The help button did not work and there was no-one official looking to ask. The train was imminantly departing so we tailgated other people through the barriers and finally we were on our way. This other train was the ‘stop-at-every-station’ variety and took nearly an hour so when we eventually arrived in Cádiz it had been nearly three hours since we left home. What a (minor) adventure!
Cádiz is one of those impossibly lovely places. Originally an island it is now joined to the mainland and sticks out into the eponymous Bay of Cádiz as a huge fortified pennisula. It is a major port and cruise ship terminal but away from the bustle of big boats and the cruising crowd it is a picturesque collection of churches, fine houses, narrow cobbled streets, promenades and yellow sandy beaches. It was gloriously sunny and there were even a few people sunbathing on the beach and one or two brave souls splashing around in the sea. As usual we wandered about but we are finding that as time progresses we are less inclined to pay money to go into historical buildings/castles/fortresses/cathedrals and more content to just appretiate them from the outsides. We have dubbed this ‘Old Sh*t Fatigue’. In two and a half years on the road in the USA we never suffered from OSF, but here we are after two months of being tourists in Europe and such is the enormous magnitude of Old Sh*t on offer, it had kicked in already. We will endure. The focus of the day was finding a lunch spot that catered for locals rather than the cruise ship passengers and we accidentally discovered a perfect spot down a back street. Tapas was consumed in a moderate quantity and afterwards we continued our mooching until it was time to get the train home again, the reverse trip being far quicker and far less eventful.
In Jerez our camp neighbours had been a British couple with whom we had exchange pleasantries, but not names. We had ascertained that we were all heading up to Seville from here and, perhaps not too unexpectedly as our camping options were limited in the city, we found ourselves pulling up right next to them again in our Seville site. This was a glorified, dockside car park only 2km from the centre of the city that (sort of) catered for campervans but was also a staging post for the (moderately loud) loading and unloading of cars onto and off car transporters. It had a noisy end and a less noisy end and we made a beeline for the quieter, furthest reaches of the site. It was here that we discovered our British co-travellers and finally exchanged introductions as well as a few more pleasantries. Dave and Sarah are a far more dedicated and energergetic type of tourist than us and we barely saw them during our two day stint here. They were out for hours and hours. We were only out for hours.
We cycled to the historic centre of Seville which was suprisingly easy with the great network of cycle paths, providing one avoided the jeapordy of trams, tram tracks, tourist horse carriages and the multitude of pedestrians. Here we tied up the machines and headed off on foot. The big ticket item in Seville is its enormous, sprawling gothic cathedral. This, we decided, was worth paying the entrance fee to see inside. But nope, not going to happen. We continue to underestimate the appetite of the vast number of post-covid travellers to explore ‘Old Sh*t’ and all the (only-available-online) tickets had been sold for the next two days. Back to Plan A of ‘just looking at it from the outside’. It was still very impressive. There is an Alcazar here but we didn’t feel like tackling the ticket battle for that either so we mooched around the narrow lanes of the old town, had a drink in a roof-top bar and then went to find the ‘largest wooden structure in the world’ The Metropol Parasol.
This is a trippy, mushroom-like, latticed structure that towers over a raised plaza cost €76 million to build and was completed in 2011. It’s an impressive piece of modern art that seemingly serves little purpose other than to provide some shade and an unusual selfie backdrop. Our wanderings brought us back to the bikes and we headed home through Maria Luisa park and past the massive Plaza España. This was built to represent Spain in the 1929 Iberian-American World Expo. It was the biggest construction of the expo. Home advantage rules.
The next day we cycled up along the river cycle path to a more northern area of the central city area to visit a market that was hotly recommended in various publications, Mercado de Feria. By the time we arrived the market was winding up and lunch hadn’t yet begun. Another classic failure of timings. The hour was saved by a couple of glasses of beer sat in the sun at a small neighbourhood bar nearby and then we headed back to the central area through the narrow cobbled streets. This was a blast as on the the bikes we were as fast as any car can travel along these winding roads. With Google maps leading the way we were swept along in the slow tide of traffic through small squares and along ancient alleys and streets. Everywhere there were busy pavement cafes, and bars and restaurants with people spilling out of them as the Spanish took their aperitifs in big groups prior to Saturday lunch. Once back in familiar territory we tied up the bikes again and found ourselves a spot for our own lunch. This was no mean feat given the fact that the city was teeming with thousands of far more organised folk with restaurant bookings all doing the same thing. We finally found two seats at the bar of a slightly more upscale tapas place and managed to eat before we got too hangry with each other. It was delicious. Tuna tartare on mini toasts, cubed iberico pork on brioche, deep fried fish bites, hand cut chips smothered in a brace of delicious sauces and some crocquette things that I’m sure we didn’t order. All washed down with a couple of vermut rojo. Our cycle home was slower, with a food infused dreamlike quality.
The next day as we were all preparing to leave we struck up conversation with Dave and Sarah again. This conversation ended with not so much a ‘Bon Voyage and nice briefly chatting with you’ as a ‘Okay, see you later!’ as it transpired that we were, once again, planning to move on to the same campsite in the same town. Our free-form travel itineraries had synchronised and a friendship was born. Next stop Portugal.