Our adventure begins here in Seville with our two valiant protagonists Matt and Caroline. This photo was taken in the gardens of the Alcazar where Caroline just had an intimate encounter with a duck. Not really sure I should continue with a description of that little situation... this site is only rated PG-13. |  |
 | Ah, more gardens and no more ducks (thank goodness). |
We eventually migrated to the cathedral in the centre of town and, being faithful fellwanderers, felt obligated to climb the tower. The corridor to the top was very strangely constructed. It was almost entirely made up of ramps, very few stairs. Caroline eventually deduced that it must have been built that way for men troops on horseback to ride up to the top of the tower (lazy bums all of them). On our way down from the tower we ran in to a huge group of tourists who managed to create a mass traffic jam. As we pushed our way through the crowd my blood sugar level plummeted (after not having eaten for ages) and my evil alter-ego "Negamatt" appeared. Caroline and Negamatt had a lively discussion on the evolutionary characteristics of language which eventually developed into a generally not so pleasant debate (Negamatt doesn't deal well with other peoples' opinions). Fortunately, Caroline knows me well enough to know how to banish my alter-ego - so she suggested we eat immediately. And it worked, normal Matt returned to the scene and almost immediately recanted all of Negamatt's sayings! |  |
 | As we were leaving the Cathedral's courtyard we ran in to this rather large Anti-Le Pen demonstration. The front banner reads "Le Pen es el enveneno de la union europena"... Le Pen is the venom of Europe. I would heartily agree. |
The real charm of Seville was the general ambience rather than the large tourist locations. This is one of the alleys where many of the paths are still made of dirt. |  |
 | Ok, so I am smiling now, but I wasn't just ten minutes earlier. I KNOW I asked for non-smoking seats on the train to Cordoba. There is no doubt in my mind that I said "quiero sillas sin fumando." Well, we got to the train and our tickets brought us to a smoking car. Caroline, being quite level headed and sensible, suggested that we probably got a smoking car because the train was full and that most other people were likely in a similar situation. And with this logic, she concluded that the car would probably not be very smokey, so we boarded. HAH! We got on the train and were met by a cloud of toxic gas. Really, I would rather have hot coals poured into my lungs. We reached our seats and I went berserk. No, actually berserk isn't quite the right word, I went into a panic. I got off the train, found one of the train staff, and she stuck us between two cars where the toilets were. Was it pleasant? No. Was it a reasonable solution for our 45 minute train journey? Oh yes. Anyhow, this photo will forever capture this lovely extravaganza. |
This is the Cordoba Jewish quarter. Today there are fewer than ten Jews left in it, but before the inquisition there were hundreds that lived here. If you look carefully you can see the street sign, "Judios." |  |
 | This was taken inside the last remaining temple in Cordoba. The only reason it still stands is because it was turned in to a church after the Jews were removed from the area. Most of the walls were covered over with Catholic decoration, but some were left in tact. This is a panel of Hebrew that I was actually able to translate for Caroline, it really was good fun translating this stuff. I must brush up on my ancient languages one of these days, everything I learned in anthropological linguistics seems to have faded from my mind. |
Cordoba has a huge mosque. It is so large that a cathedral was actually built inside of it! Anyhow, I ended up standing in this pool of "holy" light and looked very penitent, so Caroline snapped a photo which has been rather aptly named "Holy Matt". |  |
 | In Granada we had one main landmark that we both wanted to see, the Alhombra. I had read that the queues were typically huge and that arriving early was the only sure way to get it. Caroline, however had heard that we could buy tickets in advance from a Spanish bank and indeed this was exactly what we did. Unfortunately, the only tickets they had available were night tickets to see the chapel. This didn't sound so wonderful, but I was assured by Caroline that the rest of the Alhombra didn't require a ticket for entry. Well, she was wrong. We got to the main ticket gate with our night tickets and were sent away immediately and told that we would not be able to see the gardens or any of the other buildings with night tickets. I didn't know how to fight this, so I immediately stuck Caroline in the enormous standard ticket queue while I started plotting ways to get around our problem. My faithful companion told me I was being stupid, that we were fighting a losing battle, we would never make to the front before the afternoon ticket sales closed for the day, and that we should just go and do something else... I ignored her. And in the end it payed off, we were the last people to enter before the gates were closed. These two people in the photo with us were just before us in queue and watching as the gates closed just behind us. |
Once we actually got in we became the terrors of the Alhombra. No fountain in any of the gardens was safe from the inquisitive mings of Caroline and Matt. If we could block up a section of a fountain or cascade, we did. This was not out of any sense of destruction, simply out curiosity. On this staircase we blocked up the falls on either side and then simultaneously let them down in the classic tsunami style. The water would rush down, fill the lower canals, partially spill over the edge onto the unsuspecting dolts below, and gush out of the spouts even further down. Really was good fun, I am sure the Alhombra gate keepers would been glad to have kept us out if they had known the havoc we were going to cause. |  |
 | Hey, its me! This was taken on top of the guard tower in front of the Alhombra. |
After our time in Granada we traveled back to Malaga for our planes. We had four or five free hours before we even had to be at the airport, so, in the typical fellwanderer fashion we wandered. The weather was lovely, so we headed for the beach and trekked the length of the Malaga coast. Seemed like many miles due to the fact that we were walking in loose, wet sand with rucksacks on our backs, but I suspect it was only a couple of miles. Great beach though, lots of sun, saphire blue water, and topless sunbathers... I mean really, could I ask for a better way to end our little excursion? |  |