It has now been a few weeks since our last post and since then we have been back to the UK for an overnight stay and have been travelling around spain. I also forgot to mention in the previous post that on the way back from uganda, we stopped in on dubai again for a 2 day stay and managed to catch up with one of jays mates from uni, chris. He works at one of the very plush hotels in dubai and is the transport manager for them. 2 other girls that also went to uni with jay also work there. Chris also had the day off when we were there and we manged in 1 day to visit 5 of the 7 emirates. There isn´t much past dubai except sand and mountains, but we did drop in on a new hotel in fujerah (sp??) which is about 2 hours from dubai. As you can imagine temperates soared to around 47 degrees.....boiling hot!
We also had dinner with chris and his gf, gloria, at a very classy joint call JamBase which is a supper club in dubai. All very funky and they had jazz music playing all night and dim lighting etc....great night and fantastic food! It was located in the Madinat Jumeriah which is part of the complex where chris and gloria works, so we had the added bonus of getting 50% off the entire night!
So, onto spain......
As usual on the trip there we had a delay... this was because there was foggy weather in London on the morning of the day that we left... didnt seem like it from where we were staying, so we had a lovely time sitting in gatwick airport for about 2.5 hours with everyone else whose flights were delayed.
We finally got to madrid airport at 1:30am.. and the attempts to get a reasonably priced taxi started. We had issues with about 3 drivers in the arrivals lounge about the fare to the Hotel ibis madrid airport. we could see the building from the airport but had no clue as to the roads that we needed to use to get there, but were not going to pay 20 euros for the 1-1.5km journey. we finally were able to bargain with a taxi driver from the departures lounge with the help of a spanish speaking guy that also knew english and was able to translate for us, so that we only had to pay 10 euro´s. so by the time we got to the hotel, checked in a very tired nay and jay had a quick 4 hour kip then went to pick up the busabout tour from a hostel in the city. this was a 20 euro taxi drive that also has a story.. but for another time!.
we got dropped of about 100 metres from the hostel as the roads are funny and dont always allow traffic on them. we walked this 100 metres that contained 4 less savoury stores and about 20 of the less savoury workers on the sides of the road. so far we have had a great intro to spain!!
The busabout tours started with a drive to toledo, about 2 hours from Madrid. It's a beautiful little city that is famous for its steel swords and marzipan. As it was a rather early morning we had brekkie here and gave us hot chips, eggs and sausages.....how healthy....there is also a really large cathedral here (like most european cities). As the cathedral took such a long time to build, it actaully has different types of architecture, so some of it looks gothic, while the rest has lots of sandstone, but you can really tell the difference.
We also had dinner with chris and his gf, gloria, at a very classy joint call JamBase which is a supper club in dubai. All very funky and they had jazz music playing all night and dim lighting etc....great night and fantastic food! It was located in the Madinat Jumeriah which is part of the complex where chris and gloria works, so we had the added bonus of getting 50% off the entire night!
So, onto spain......
As usual on the trip there we had a delay... this was because there was foggy weather in London on the morning of the day that we left... didnt seem like it from where we were staying, so we had a lovely time sitting in gatwick airport for about 2.5 hours with everyone else whose flights were delayed.
We finally got to madrid airport at 1:30am.. and the attempts to get a reasonably priced taxi started. We had issues with about 3 drivers in the arrivals lounge about the fare to the Hotel ibis madrid airport. we could see the building from the airport but had no clue as to the roads that we needed to use to get there, but were not going to pay 20 euros for the 1-1.5km journey. we finally were able to bargain with a taxi driver from the departures lounge with the help of a spanish speaking guy that also knew english and was able to translate for us, so that we only had to pay 10 euro´s. so by the time we got to the hotel, checked in a very tired nay and jay had a quick 4 hour kip then went to pick up the busabout tour from a hostel in the city. this was a 20 euro taxi drive that also has a story.. but for another time!.
we got dropped of about 100 metres from the hostel as the roads are funny and dont always allow traffic on them. we walked this 100 metres that contained 4 less savoury stores and about 20 of the less savoury workers on the sides of the road. so far we have had a great intro to spain!!
The busabout tours started with a drive to toledo, about 2 hours from Madrid. It's a beautiful little city that is famous for its steel swords and marzipan. As it was a rather early morning we had brekkie here and gave us hot chips, eggs and sausages.....how healthy....there is also a really large cathedral here (like most european cities). As the cathedral took such a long time to build, it actaully has different types of architecture, so some of it looks gothic, while the rest has lots of sandstone, but you can really tell the difference.
Next, it was onto Granada, which is a university city, which of course means cheap drinks, but what we didn't realise until we got there, this also meant a full plate of tapas with every drink, therefore, not really any need for dinner! This was one of our favourities, so beautiful and relaxed. We also saw a flamenco show with the tour group which was awesome, the not so awesome bit was the start time of 11.30pm after being up so early.
We spent 2 nights in Granada and on the 2nd day of the tour we visited the Alahmbra, which is a huge kingdom, castle thingy....hard to explain, but it has a massive mosque. It took us 3 hours to see the entire place if this gives you an idea of the size. Lots of history of course and photos will show what we mean about the size.
The busabout tour was great, pretty much everyone was australian, and like us, young and out travelling the world. The dynamic was of course very relaxed and was lots of fun....would definately do a busabout loop/tour again. They are slightly different to contiki as they don't run entire tours, just basically provide the bus and guide and the rest you do yourself.
After Granada, we were onto seville. The further we went down, the hotter it got. Jay and I had the pleasure of being on the top floor of hotel we were in, so thats like 10 sets of stairs and no lift, so glad we travelled light. We managed to visit the bull ring in seville and they were so proud to tell us that only 1 person has died in their ring.
Of course, there is another massive cathedral in seville. This one is quite amazing as it used to be a mosque and has been converted to a cathedral. We did a walking tour in seville which was fantastic. That night the entire group went for a drink on a hotel rooftop which looks back to the cathedral. As it was a public holiday the following day, all the bells of the cathedral were ringing that night and what a sound that was!!!!!
After seville it was back to madrid.....a huge bustling city, with lots of great gardens and art gallleries......more to follow soon - valencia and barcelona...
No comments:
Post a Comment