If it's November this must be Spain
To start November and get to Spain, we flew a godforsaken European airline, Air Europa, that got us safely to Madrid, but disgusted us and annoyed us in the process. (The timings weren't good for Milan-Madrid flights, and this airline offered the most convenient time.) I missed the first night in Madrid with food poisoning courtesy of a Milanese airport ham sandwich -- not recommended.
We had several hopes and goals for the Spanish leg of the Great Adventure to the South -- not all of them culinary -- Goya, Alhambra, and Mezquita. In Madrid, we wanted to soak up the Spanish cosmopolitanism of the imperial capital and see the Museo del Prado, hoping to recreate our Louvre success with our nascent art fan. In Andalucia, we wanted to explore the tapas heartland and the multicultural history (again, with the multicultural family's interest in multiculturalism...).
I was worried how Bobby would react to his constricted pasta supply in Spain. Back in London, Bobby would almost always say he wanted pasta when asked what he wanted to eat. In Italy, he didn't quite understand why he could have pasta for lunch and dinner but not breakfast (it was never offered for breakfast by the hotels!). But his pasta fix seemed to have been successfully met in Italy because he was not asking for pasta in Spain. In fact, by the time we got to southern Spain, his favorite food seemed to be octopus (as well as his old standby, tomatoes)!
Madrid
Madrid is indeed an imperial capital along the lines of London and Paris. The cityscape is defined by its wide boulevards, grand architecture, and manicured parks. It often looks very 19th century or baroque with frequently ornate and impressive facades. Europeans are famous for their political commitment to greenhouse gas reduction, but this commitment is apparently not shared by car owners in Madrid (or, indeed, in many European cities at all). The wider you build the streets, it seems, the more cars drivers can pack in there. In other news, Madrid's metro system is in 2019 celebrating its 100 year anniversary; we took a few rides.
From the informal sampling I did in the center, Madrid may have more restaurants per capita than any other city in the world. Ham, often many varieties of it, is frequently on offer. There is even a chain of restaurants called El Museo Del Jamón (the Ham Museum). Vermouth is a very popular aperitif and can even be found (frequently, in fact) on tap. I am not able to drink much these days and didn't fancy a glass of vermouth anyway (and maybe wouldn't even fancy one in healthier times!), so we passed.
We stayed in a small hotel on a street famous for its many tapas bars and restaurants (Calle de la Cava Baja). One night, just down the street from our hotel, we sat at the bar and had an early, quick pintxos dinner; it was really fantastic and facilitated a normal bedtime -- some restaurants don't even open until past 9pm, too late to facilitate a normal bedtime. By the time we were on our way back to our hotel, the street was filled with the tapas-seeking hordes. Often on this European tour I am reminded of Yogi Berra who said "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." Everyone wants at the European real estate that everyone else also wants.
Being the imperial capital, it's common to find food from Spain's regions, such as paella (from Valencia) and pintxos (from the Basque Country). From what I can tell, tapa basically just means a small plate of food, and often, when you order a drink, your server will also give you some tapas/snacks, such as olives or a slice of tortilla, composed of potatoes baked with eggs. Pintxos are tapas consisting of food morsels on a small slice of bread, skewered, and are found spread out over the bar or in a case at the bar. Often the pintxos offerings are very diverse. We also had hamburgers from an entrepreneurial chain of restaurants started in Venezuela. This was actually the second time we ate at a Venezuelan restaurant on this trip (first time was in Genoa); note, Venezuelans seem to like barbecue sauce. We also had Chinese food twice -- or, as the restaurant billed itself, Chinese tapas.
With all the pintxos, we were sad we didn't make it to the Basque Country on this trip like we had one time planned. US visa delays prevented us from taking our San Sebastien honeymoon, but maybe the honeymoon would be better enjoyed without Bobby or Wee Baby Siobhan. And when Bobby and Siobhan are tall enough to stand at a bar, I will take them also to San Sebastian. Hopefully I can drink wine and beer by then!
I believe Madrid has many fine art museums in addition to the Prado. I find Spanish painting to be an interesting counterpoint to the more famous French and Italian paintings. Goya paints with bright feathered strokes like one of my favorites from my French student days, Delacroix. We also learned that Rubens, a Flemish painter, as a favorite painter of a Spanish king, became a Spanish diplomat and was an international superstar speaking multiple languages in his day. Bobby, however, was less interested. We managed to spend a considerable amount of time at the Prado, but also a lot of time disciplining our little anarchist who barely tolerates such statist institutions. We tried to get him interested in the paintings, and we tried to get him to nap while I carried him; the guards didn't like him playing with his cars near the paintings, and he was whiny and wanted to leave. So while there may have been more art museums, we didn't see them on this trip.
The boy was more interested in the flamenco show. We were worried he would be disruptive, but we learned that flamenco isn't exactly like going to the symphony. Well, in one way it is like the symphony. At a symphony, many musicians are playing in syncopated harmony. The flamenco we saw had four dancers, mostly dancing individually, along with two guitarists and two singers, with dancers using their feet and hands for percussion while dancing, with crescendos to very fast tap dancing sequences, and at least one dancer sat on a box playing the box percussively. So while all of these instruments are playing together in a symphony, the artists are also encouraging each other with small cheers and some veteran fans also calling from the audience. So, in this regard, with a more casual atmosphere and less formal structure to the performance, it wasn't so bad that Bobby was losing interest toward the end and resuming his constant chattering. He seemed to like the flamenco enough to do an impersonation afterwards that involved a lot of shaking and jumping up and down. He's interested in guitars, or, as he calls them, 'tars.
Another thing he liked: the forest inside the Atocha train station. We hunted (from the sidewalks through the forest) the elusive Mummy Bear, while we also waited for our high-speed train to Granada, after four nights in Madrid.
Andalucia
We did the whole Andalucian greatest hits tour: Granada, Córdoba, and Seville. In his earnest student days, studying the Romantic art movement, Baba became interested in the remains of Spain's (and Portugal's) Islamic culture. He even took a class on Islamic law. Visiting the Mezquita (Grand Mosque of Cordoba) and Alhambra were life goals from an earlier period. Seville was an important city during Spain's overseas colonial adventures/plunders, so of course it's clickbait for the grown-up Baba.
The Arab armies, first raised under Muhammad, overran the remnants of the Roman Empire and its successors, starting in Arabia, then through Egypt, across North Africa, and from Morocco into Iberia (8th century AD). Córdoba was the most important city in Al-Andalus, the name for the European arm of the Arab empires. The Córdoban Emirate survived when the Arab capital at Damascus was conquered and became the Córdoban Caliphate, with Córdoba becoming the world's largest city at one point (10th century), until overrun again by Christians in the 15th century (Reconquista). What remains now of the Córdoban Caliphate seems to be not much more than the buildings with their distinctive Middle-eastern architectural flourishes, most famous being the Mezquita and Alhambra.
The Mezquita is wild, being a mosque, with a huge floor area under a roof supported by various Roman columns found nearby and repurposed, with a Renaissance cathedral in the middle of it. As it is grand as advertised, our tour, spent entirely on our feet, lasted about an hour, with Bobby sleeping through nearly the entire thing. Boy, were Baba's arms and back tired, and boy, was he missing the Ergo Baby. After the tour, the tired Baba and pregnant Mummy plopped their butts in a Mezquita cathedral church pew to "have a rest," as Bobby says.
Alhambra is more ruined than the Mezquita, which is still being used as a Catholic church, and over the centuries has been home to various squatters. An emir originally built Alhambra as his palace, while the rest of Al-Andalus was falling to Christian re-conquerors, and Granada became its own isolated Islamic kingdom, tucked away in the hills. Now it's all polished up to be a very popular tourist site, with its Arabic poems stamped into the walls and intricate geometric patterns also adorning surfaces. Bobby was not happy that he could not run his cars along these walls.
A recurring theme in our visits to these historical sites is how under the Arabs, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims were all allowed to practice their respective religions, but once the Christians took over, everyone was forced to convert, leave, or, I guess, die, one way or another. No doubt there were very fine people on all sides. Now I will decline further comment.
Current Seville is a cosmopolitan city, while Córdoba and Granada feel much more provincial. Córdoba's medieval center, while a UNESCO world heritage site, is a bit of a tourist trap. There's nothing wrong with a tourist trap per se, but one reason to prefer tourism in a large city is its greater mixture of types of people and institutions. By my informal tally, Córdoba's medieval center has the most t-shirt shops per capita this side of Venice.
After two nights in Granada and two more in Córdoba, we ventured to Seville, where we intended to rest up and soak up the Andalucian vibes for four nights. Seville also has some grand buildings with diverse cultural influences (an Islamic palace, the world's largest Gothic cathedral), but Bobby's interest in these sites is fleeting, as is his parents' interest in corralling him and trying to get him interested, which works only for a little while. At Bobby's request, we did a bit of rowing in a park. Seville also has a tram, which we chased a few times, at Bobby's request, and in Córdoba and Seville we managed to find all of the playgrounds. In Seville, I visited a barber so that I look less unkempt in our photo documentation of the journey; it is marginally funny that there is a famous opera called Barber of Seville, but not funny enough to laugh.
In Seville we stayed in a three-star hotel (Hotel Amadeus), which offered a better experience than our five-star (Alhambra Palace) in Granada. Luckily, everything in southern Spain feels cheaper than Italy. Hotel Amadeus has a rooftop patio with a bar, and breakfast is served there. Bobby would wake up and say "I want to go to the roof and have breakfast," even once we left Seville and there was no more rooftop breakfasts.
In Seville we had good and interesting food. Throughout Spain we've noticed Asian ingredients and recipes in Spanish dishes and on Spanish menus. We had some Spanish curries, Spanish stir fries, Peruvian tapas (twice), fried noodles, tuna tataki, and fried maki. Seville offered more innovative food options than Granada and Córdoba, which tend to serve Andalucia's greatest hits, which consist mostly of fried foods, with croquettes being very frequently on offer. Bobby often would ask for octopus, and luckily it is offered on nearly every menu.
Spanish geography
Spain may get a bad wrap in the economic press from time to time, but it is pretty successful in terms of infrastructure and agriculture. The high-speed AVE train links Madrid, Granada, and Seville. The land south of Madrid has rolling hills and light brown, scrubby land. As you get further south you see more and more groves of trees, mostly offering olives I guess. Even further south we found orange trees, and we had delicious small oranges while in southern Spain, Bobby becoming a bit obsessed with tossing and rolling and talking about constantly the oranges.
The Guadalquivir is the great river of the relatively fertile Andalusian plain. While the plain is agriculturally productive, between all the groves of trees you can still see that the land isn't exactly covered in grass but is actually still that light brown Spanish dirt. On the banks of the river, upstream from its mouth near Portugal, are Seville and then Córdoba. The Romans and Arabs were able to navigate all the way up to Córdoba, but later it became navigable only to Seville. During the times of the Spanish overseas empires, all goods flowing from overseas were required to go through the port of Seville. In Seville there is a giant tobacco factory, built in a grand style in the 18th century, where tobacco from America was processed (e.g., rolled into cigars). Even into the 20th century, tobacco was being processed there, but it was shut down due to constant labor unrest and shoddy and expensive workmanship; now today is part of the huge (~70k students) University of Seville.
Granada is up in the hills above that Andalusian plain, and the high-speed train slows to a crawl to creep around the increasingly large hills as you roll east. The high-speed line to Granada just opened this year. It was over four hours from Madrid; we were comfortable in first class, and Bobby had a great nap while lying, as he has on vehicular transport all over Europe, with his head on his Baba's shoulders.
The mountains get even higher past Granada. Granada is, in fact, at the base of the highest mountains in Spain, the Sierra Nevada. Being in a city at the base of the mountains reminded us of Denver, although the mountains sort of cradle Granada in a bowl rather than streak in a line from one cardinal direction to another à la the Front Range. You can see how Granda became the Muslims' last European redoubt. Europe's most southern skiing mountain is a 45-minute trip from Granada. Interestingly, from the mouth of the Guadalquivir across the expanse of southern Spain and up to its east coast we find extensive mountain ranges, the Baetic System. There is even a desert locked away in there where some Spaghetti Westerns were filmed. The landscape of southern Spain and even the old rural buildings do look reminiscent of the old Mexican part of the US.
No rail links southern Spain and Portugal, so we took a bus to our next stop: Tavira. On the ride we got a good look at the intensive agriculture on the Andalusian plain. Bobby had a good nap on his Baba. Just when Bobby was learning to say gracias instead of grazie, now he has to learn obrigado. If it's the second half of November, it must be Portugal.
We had several hopes and goals for the Spanish leg of the Great Adventure to the South -- not all of them culinary -- Goya, Alhambra, and Mezquita. In Madrid, we wanted to soak up the Spanish cosmopolitanism of the imperial capital and see the Museo del Prado, hoping to recreate our Louvre success with our nascent art fan. In Andalucia, we wanted to explore the tapas heartland and the multicultural history (again, with the multicultural family's interest in multiculturalism...).
I was worried how Bobby would react to his constricted pasta supply in Spain. Back in London, Bobby would almost always say he wanted pasta when asked what he wanted to eat. In Italy, he didn't quite understand why he could have pasta for lunch and dinner but not breakfast (it was never offered for breakfast by the hotels!). But his pasta fix seemed to have been successfully met in Italy because he was not asking for pasta in Spain. In fact, by the time we got to southern Spain, his favorite food seemed to be octopus (as well as his old standby, tomatoes)!
Madrid
Madrid is indeed an imperial capital along the lines of London and Paris. The cityscape is defined by its wide boulevards, grand architecture, and manicured parks. It often looks very 19th century or baroque with frequently ornate and impressive facades. Europeans are famous for their political commitment to greenhouse gas reduction, but this commitment is apparently not shared by car owners in Madrid (or, indeed, in many European cities at all). The wider you build the streets, it seems, the more cars drivers can pack in there. In other news, Madrid's metro system is in 2019 celebrating its 100 year anniversary; we took a few rides.
From the informal sampling I did in the center, Madrid may have more restaurants per capita than any other city in the world. Ham, often many varieties of it, is frequently on offer. There is even a chain of restaurants called El Museo Del Jamón (the Ham Museum). Vermouth is a very popular aperitif and can even be found (frequently, in fact) on tap. I am not able to drink much these days and didn't fancy a glass of vermouth anyway (and maybe wouldn't even fancy one in healthier times!), so we passed.
We stayed in a small hotel on a street famous for its many tapas bars and restaurants (Calle de la Cava Baja). One night, just down the street from our hotel, we sat at the bar and had an early, quick pintxos dinner; it was really fantastic and facilitated a normal bedtime -- some restaurants don't even open until past 9pm, too late to facilitate a normal bedtime. By the time we were on our way back to our hotel, the street was filled with the tapas-seeking hordes. Often on this European tour I am reminded of Yogi Berra who said "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." Everyone wants at the European real estate that everyone else also wants.
Being the imperial capital, it's common to find food from Spain's regions, such as paella (from Valencia) and pintxos (from the Basque Country). From what I can tell, tapa basically just means a small plate of food, and often, when you order a drink, your server will also give you some tapas/snacks, such as olives or a slice of tortilla, composed of potatoes baked with eggs. Pintxos are tapas consisting of food morsels on a small slice of bread, skewered, and are found spread out over the bar or in a case at the bar. Often the pintxos offerings are very diverse. We also had hamburgers from an entrepreneurial chain of restaurants started in Venezuela. This was actually the second time we ate at a Venezuelan restaurant on this trip (first time was in Genoa); note, Venezuelans seem to like barbecue sauce. We also had Chinese food twice -- or, as the restaurant billed itself, Chinese tapas.
With all the pintxos, we were sad we didn't make it to the Basque Country on this trip like we had one time planned. US visa delays prevented us from taking our San Sebastien honeymoon, but maybe the honeymoon would be better enjoyed without Bobby or Wee Baby Siobhan. And when Bobby and Siobhan are tall enough to stand at a bar, I will take them also to San Sebastian. Hopefully I can drink wine and beer by then!
I believe Madrid has many fine art museums in addition to the Prado. I find Spanish painting to be an interesting counterpoint to the more famous French and Italian paintings. Goya paints with bright feathered strokes like one of my favorites from my French student days, Delacroix. We also learned that Rubens, a Flemish painter, as a favorite painter of a Spanish king, became a Spanish diplomat and was an international superstar speaking multiple languages in his day. Bobby, however, was less interested. We managed to spend a considerable amount of time at the Prado, but also a lot of time disciplining our little anarchist who barely tolerates such statist institutions. We tried to get him interested in the paintings, and we tried to get him to nap while I carried him; the guards didn't like him playing with his cars near the paintings, and he was whiny and wanted to leave. So while there may have been more art museums, we didn't see them on this trip.
The boy was more interested in the flamenco show. We were worried he would be disruptive, but we learned that flamenco isn't exactly like going to the symphony. Well, in one way it is like the symphony. At a symphony, many musicians are playing in syncopated harmony. The flamenco we saw had four dancers, mostly dancing individually, along with two guitarists and two singers, with dancers using their feet and hands for percussion while dancing, with crescendos to very fast tap dancing sequences, and at least one dancer sat on a box playing the box percussively. So while all of these instruments are playing together in a symphony, the artists are also encouraging each other with small cheers and some veteran fans also calling from the audience. So, in this regard, with a more casual atmosphere and less formal structure to the performance, it wasn't so bad that Bobby was losing interest toward the end and resuming his constant chattering. He seemed to like the flamenco enough to do an impersonation afterwards that involved a lot of shaking and jumping up and down. He's interested in guitars, or, as he calls them, 'tars.
Another thing he liked: the forest inside the Atocha train station. We hunted (from the sidewalks through the forest) the elusive Mummy Bear, while we also waited for our high-speed train to Granada, after four nights in Madrid.
 |
| Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Who knows what either of us were upset about, but there are a lot of ups and downs in our inter-familial relations -- mostly ups, though. |
 |
| In Madrid, Bobby discovered churros, and Mummy rediscovered them. Churros are usually served with a cup of hot, liquid chocolate (the real kind; not the kind from a packet). While not trying to put makeup on for Halloween, drinking the chocolate had that effect. |
Andalucia
We did the whole Andalucian greatest hits tour: Granada, Córdoba, and Seville. In his earnest student days, studying the Romantic art movement, Baba became interested in the remains of Spain's (and Portugal's) Islamic culture. He even took a class on Islamic law. Visiting the Mezquita (Grand Mosque of Cordoba) and Alhambra were life goals from an earlier period. Seville was an important city during Spain's overseas colonial adventures/plunders, so of course it's clickbait for the grown-up Baba.
The Arab armies, first raised under Muhammad, overran the remnants of the Roman Empire and its successors, starting in Arabia, then through Egypt, across North Africa, and from Morocco into Iberia (8th century AD). Córdoba was the most important city in Al-Andalus, the name for the European arm of the Arab empires. The Córdoban Emirate survived when the Arab capital at Damascus was conquered and became the Córdoban Caliphate, with Córdoba becoming the world's largest city at one point (10th century), until overrun again by Christians in the 15th century (Reconquista). What remains now of the Córdoban Caliphate seems to be not much more than the buildings with their distinctive Middle-eastern architectural flourishes, most famous being the Mezquita and Alhambra.
The Mezquita is wild, being a mosque, with a huge floor area under a roof supported by various Roman columns found nearby and repurposed, with a Renaissance cathedral in the middle of it. As it is grand as advertised, our tour, spent entirely on our feet, lasted about an hour, with Bobby sleeping through nearly the entire thing. Boy, were Baba's arms and back tired, and boy, was he missing the Ergo Baby. After the tour, the tired Baba and pregnant Mummy plopped their butts in a Mezquita cathedral church pew to "have a rest," as Bobby says.
Alhambra is more ruined than the Mezquita, which is still being used as a Catholic church, and over the centuries has been home to various squatters. An emir originally built Alhambra as his palace, while the rest of Al-Andalus was falling to Christian re-conquerors, and Granada became its own isolated Islamic kingdom, tucked away in the hills. Now it's all polished up to be a very popular tourist site, with its Arabic poems stamped into the walls and intricate geometric patterns also adorning surfaces. Bobby was not happy that he could not run his cars along these walls.
A recurring theme in our visits to these historical sites is how under the Arabs, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims were all allowed to practice their respective religions, but once the Christians took over, everyone was forced to convert, leave, or, I guess, die, one way or another. No doubt there were very fine people on all sides. Now I will decline further comment.
Current Seville is a cosmopolitan city, while Córdoba and Granada feel much more provincial. Córdoba's medieval center, while a UNESCO world heritage site, is a bit of a tourist trap. There's nothing wrong with a tourist trap per se, but one reason to prefer tourism in a large city is its greater mixture of types of people and institutions. By my informal tally, Córdoba's medieval center has the most t-shirt shops per capita this side of Venice.
After two nights in Granada and two more in Córdoba, we ventured to Seville, where we intended to rest up and soak up the Andalucian vibes for four nights. Seville also has some grand buildings with diverse cultural influences (an Islamic palace, the world's largest Gothic cathedral), but Bobby's interest in these sites is fleeting, as is his parents' interest in corralling him and trying to get him interested, which works only for a little while. At Bobby's request, we did a bit of rowing in a park. Seville also has a tram, which we chased a few times, at Bobby's request, and in Córdoba and Seville we managed to find all of the playgrounds. In Seville, I visited a barber so that I look less unkempt in our photo documentation of the journey; it is marginally funny that there is a famous opera called Barber of Seville, but not funny enough to laugh.
In Seville we stayed in a three-star hotel (Hotel Amadeus), which offered a better experience than our five-star (Alhambra Palace) in Granada. Luckily, everything in southern Spain feels cheaper than Italy. Hotel Amadeus has a rooftop patio with a bar, and breakfast is served there. Bobby would wake up and say "I want to go to the roof and have breakfast," even once we left Seville and there was no more rooftop breakfasts.
In Seville we had good and interesting food. Throughout Spain we've noticed Asian ingredients and recipes in Spanish dishes and on Spanish menus. We had some Spanish curries, Spanish stir fries, Peruvian tapas (twice), fried noodles, tuna tataki, and fried maki. Seville offered more innovative food options than Granada and Córdoba, which tend to serve Andalucia's greatest hits, which consist mostly of fried foods, with croquettes being very frequently on offer. Bobby often would ask for octopus, and luckily it is offered on nearly every menu.
 |
| In the Mezquita, you can get a good view of the famous columns and arches, made of brick and limestone, which expand and contract with heat changes at different rates so should be strong because they have a lot of roof to hold up. |
 |
| Behind the boy you can see the Roman bridge and the cathedral part of the Mezquita. The bridge is called Roman but was actually built by the Moors to replace the old Roman one. |
 |
| Huge tourist trap, the Alley of Flowers, in Córdoba's historic center. Bob has travelled a good portion of Europe perched on those shoulders. |
 |
| A madman in Alhambra. |
 |
| Details in Alhambra |
 |
| Rowing in the canals at Plaza de España in Seville. We bumped the wall a few times. |
Spanish geography
Spain may get a bad wrap in the economic press from time to time, but it is pretty successful in terms of infrastructure and agriculture. The high-speed AVE train links Madrid, Granada, and Seville. The land south of Madrid has rolling hills and light brown, scrubby land. As you get further south you see more and more groves of trees, mostly offering olives I guess. Even further south we found orange trees, and we had delicious small oranges while in southern Spain, Bobby becoming a bit obsessed with tossing and rolling and talking about constantly the oranges.
The Guadalquivir is the great river of the relatively fertile Andalusian plain. While the plain is agriculturally productive, between all the groves of trees you can still see that the land isn't exactly covered in grass but is actually still that light brown Spanish dirt. On the banks of the river, upstream from its mouth near Portugal, are Seville and then Córdoba. The Romans and Arabs were able to navigate all the way up to Córdoba, but later it became navigable only to Seville. During the times of the Spanish overseas empires, all goods flowing from overseas were required to go through the port of Seville. In Seville there is a giant tobacco factory, built in a grand style in the 18th century, where tobacco from America was processed (e.g., rolled into cigars). Even into the 20th century, tobacco was being processed there, but it was shut down due to constant labor unrest and shoddy and expensive workmanship; now today is part of the huge (~70k students) University of Seville.
Granada is up in the hills above that Andalusian plain, and the high-speed train slows to a crawl to creep around the increasingly large hills as you roll east. The high-speed line to Granada just opened this year. It was over four hours from Madrid; we were comfortable in first class, and Bobby had a great nap while lying, as he has on vehicular transport all over Europe, with his head on his Baba's shoulders.
The mountains get even higher past Granada. Granada is, in fact, at the base of the highest mountains in Spain, the Sierra Nevada. Being in a city at the base of the mountains reminded us of Denver, although the mountains sort of cradle Granada in a bowl rather than streak in a line from one cardinal direction to another à la the Front Range. You can see how Granda became the Muslims' last European redoubt. Europe's most southern skiing mountain is a 45-minute trip from Granada. Interestingly, from the mouth of the Guadalquivir across the expanse of southern Spain and up to its east coast we find extensive mountain ranges, the Baetic System. There is even a desert locked away in there where some Spaghetti Westerns were filmed. The landscape of southern Spain and even the old rural buildings do look reminiscent of the old Mexican part of the US.
No rail links southern Spain and Portugal, so we took a bus to our next stop: Tavira. On the ride we got a good look at the intensive agriculture on the Andalusian plain. Bobby had a good nap on his Baba. Just when Bobby was learning to say gracias instead of grazie, now he has to learn obrigado. If it's the second half of November, it must be Portugal.
Comments