The bus pulled into Madrid station at just after 2.30. As if to prove my ineptitude at integrating into big city life, the first thing I managed to do was get stuck in the metro barrier (almost as embarrassing as the time I got stuck in the revolving doors at Chicago airport). After examining the metro map, we were able to make our way to our hostel, which was on a side street near to the city centre. It was pretty amazing value when I think about it - twelve euros each for a private dorm in the city centre. Of course, just as everything else seems to be pointing to Annalisa’s absence, it was a five-bed dorm, leaving a very poignant empty bed.
Once we’d checked in and dropped off our cases, we used our little tourist maps to get to Retiro park. It wasn’t as warm in Madrid as in Murcia but it was still a beautiful sunny day, perfect for hiring a little rowing boat on the lake. This was not as serene and gentile as it sounds. Lina was first to row; after ascertaining that the oars needed to be pushed the other way, we managed to drift crookedly away from the pier, before careering into every other boat on the water as well as nearly getting drenched by the stone fish fountains on the bank. Luckily she did manage to get the hang of it after a while, and we all got to have a go without actually capsizing the thing.
After the boat hilarity we headed to the Reina Sofia museum for a bit of culture. By happy coincidence our visit coincided with a huge Dali exhibition - one of the favourite painters of Lina and me (probably because he was nearly as mental as we are). Not only that, but because we’d arrived after 7, the entrance was completely free.
A couple of hours later we were dead on our feet and ready to go and find some food. Of course, we were used to Murcian prices now, so everything in Madrid seemed outrageously expensive. Eventually, though, we found a Menú del día (three courses plus bread and a drink) for under ten euros, which in reality is more than reasonable, especially in the capital. After we’d eaten we met one of Ali’s best friends from home, Beth, who was in the city for her Year Abroad, and by another bizarre coincidence had been in my Spanish group in Exeter last year.
We were all tired from the journey and the huge amount of walking we’d done that day, so didn’t stay out late that night. Unfortunately, the loudest roommate known to man arrived in the middle of the night, waking us all up and meaning that I had to move my mountain of belongings from the spare bed. Then, not only did she take about an hour faffing around getting ready for bed, but she left just as loudly the following morning at 7am. We were not impressed.
The next day was a disaster from the very beginning, when I dropped my half-full bottle of expensive Clarins foundation all over the stone bathroom floor, shattering it everywhere. I had half a mind to leave the foundation-splattered bin as it was, a Kandinsky-esque memento of us for the hostel staff. Unfortunately the ever-practical Alicia was at the rescue within seconds and within minutes, the only positive manifestation of my absolute failure at life had disappeared forever.
To make matters worse, we arrived at breakfast to find that the cereal bowls were fit only for pixies and not for actual human beings with human-sized appetites. Breakfast is, sadly, one of the highlights of my day, and the pixie bowls did not help improve my mood. But it was Alicia’s birthday so we needed to make the best of everything; so, several tiny bowls of cereal later, we were on our way to Starbucks, which, in our obsession with mocking the British upper-middle class, Lina has affectionately renamed Rahbucks. Lina and Ali had their obligatory rah photo taken before we made our way to the bus station.
The series of unfortunate events continued on the metro when some suspicious-looking immigrants made a clear attempt at pick-pocketing my handbag. Luckily, Alicia was alert enough to notice straight away and warn me in time, but that didn’t stop my mini suitcase from coming open of its free will on the stairs on the way to the other metro line. It was just one thing after another that day.
We arrived to the bus station to great disappointment; considering it was in the capital city, it was the worst bus station I’ve ever seen. There was construction going on everywhere and not a decent shop or cafe to be seen, not to mention the extortionate prices. We couldn’t get on the bus soon enough.
During the journey we gave Alicia the rest of her presents, which included some jewellery and accessories, and another photo album just from Lina, just of the first semester when we weren’t here yet. The journey passed quite quickly, by the time we’d had chats and watched both Breaking Dawn and Taken 2 (which I have now bizarrely only seen in Russian and Spanish, never in English).
When we got off the bus in a tiny town mid-way to Bilbau, we were met by a shocking wall of cold. We were still wearing our shorts and T-shirts and were absolutely dismayed to find ourselves somewhere with a temperature of just sixteen degrees. It was unbelievable how much of a difference travelling two hours north could make. When we got to Bilbau it was even worse - and, horror of horrors, it was drizzling. Disappointed, we booked our tickets to San Sebastian and trudged to our hostel. Even in the hostel it was freezing, as some crazy person had left the windows open. We begrudgingly changed into our jeans and hoodies, which had been neglected at the bottom of our cupboards for weeks, before walking along the river into town.
It was a pretty place, if somewhat drab from the weather, and the ultra-modern Guggenheim Museum on the river bank enhanced the view of the river-front. Unfortunately, the museum seems to be one of the only attractions of interest the town has to offer, and by late afternoon, after having looked around the old town and the cathedral, we were already stuck for things to do and went in quest of a bar to take refuge from the persistent drizzle. Another thing the town seems to lack is a decent supply of bars, which meant we were searching fruitlessly for over half an hour before eventually finding a little bar selling jugs of sangria for €12.50 (only around €6.50 more expensive than in Murcia...)
After our drinks-stop we headed to the high street, where Ali and I snuck off to El Corte Inglés under the pretense of finding me some new foundation (which, of course, would be ridiculously over-priced in the department store) but in actual fact going on a quest to find a birthday cake for Alicia. After much deliberation we settled for an Italian sort-of sponge cake (proper cake doesn’t seem to exist here) and some gluten-free cupcakes for Ali.
We pretended the shopping bag was full of gluten-free goodies for Ali and everything would have gone seamlessly if it weren’t for the fact that when I snuck the cake to the kitchen in the restaurant, they announced that they were closing in under an hour. I had to sneak the cake back in and out another half a dozen restaurants before we found one that was actually suitable for celiacs and open until past 10 o’clock. We couldn’t believe it; this was the time people started going out for dinner in Murcia.
Eventually we settled on La Tagliatella, an Italian restaurant chain we also have in Murcia. We all had huge, amazing meals and the cake was a success. We were practically the only ones left in the restaurant and the only ones singing Cumpleaños feliz, which was more than a little embarrassing when we all hesitated on the lyrics of the third line.
After dinner we darted through the rain, which was now torrential, to a deserted little bar on the next corner. We had another glass of wine before wanting to move on to somewhere else - but not before a ‘looky-looky’ man had convinced us to buy yet another cheap bracelet. He was pushing his luck when he asked for €3 per bracelet, and we bartered €1. In the end he went away and came back, offering us them for €1.50 this time. I tried to get them for €1.25 just out of principle, but the others had already given in so it was too late.
We tried to find a cocktail bar then, but only ended up getting drenched in the search. Eventually we found a cosy little bar where the bar-woman made us up rum, lemonade and lime. By the time we got back to the hostel we were feeling pretty happy, and the staff on duty told us preemptively that people were sleeping in the dorm. It was only 2am; what kind of a town was this? Unfortunately not only we were more than a little giggly but we hadn’t made our beds before going out and now had to deal with them in the dark. Then, to rub salt into the wound, after we’d woken up the entire dorm, Lina fell straight to sleep and kept everyone awake with her cacophonous snores.
The next day we got up at 9 to make the most of the day, getting out onto Gran Vía for just before 11. We looked around a few shops for my foundation, but after ascertaining that everywhere was ridiculously over-priced, I got a make-over done at Sephora just to get me through the day, pretending to be interested in the €50-bottle of Dior they were using.
Once I was freshly made-up for the day, we walked over to the Guggenheim Museum. Entrance cost €8 even for students so we hoped that the visit would worthwhile. In fairness, we did get a free audio guide - which was, inevitably, full of pretentious art talk about the deep meaning behind the sometimes baffling pieces. The first part boasted about the clever architecture of the building, but if you ask me there was too much style and not enough practicality - you had to go up a separate annex to get to the cafe, and the drainage on the stone steps was awful. The only practical part of the design was the umbrella stand in the entrance, and I doubt Frank Gehry had anything to do with that. Nevertheless, there’s no denying that the design was very aesthetically impressive and we couldn’t help but appreciate the modern structure with its intelligent combination of glass walls, steel and stone joists and pillars, and bridges on the upper floor linking the galleries.
I admit that I’m probably just not cultured enough to understand it properly, but the first exhibition, The Matter of Time by Richard Serra, a series of steel ellipses in the Fish Gallery, was an absolute let-down, and we were wondering what on earth we had wasted €8 on. However, the next gallery, which was filled with pop art from Warhol to Gilbert & George, was much more interesting, as was the Smiles exhibition by Alex Katz. The next exhibition, L’art en Guerre, which filled the second floor, was my favourite, as it consisted of wartime art from Europe from 1938-47. It included surrealists, anartists and some fantastically ironic depictions of Hitler by Joseph Steib.
The final exhibition, Riotous Baroque: From Cattelan to Zurbarán, on the top floor, was a little more difficult to grasp, as it was an attempt at mixing the Baroque and modern styles to ‘extricate the concept of the baroque from established clichés and traditional perceptions.’ [http://barroco.guggenheim-bilbao.es/en/exhibitions/riotous-baroque/] ‘With a clear shift away from pomp, ornament, and gold, the exhibition focuses on the baroque as a celebration of the precarious vitality that was hailed, rediscovered, lost, projected, and threatened by death. Riotous Baroque does not mark the emergence of a new neo-baroque style. Instead, the exhibition highlights the way in which several contemporary artworks have sought out the rubbing with reality, striving toward direct contact with existential aspects.’
To us, it just seemed a little bizarre, with traditional Baroque-style paintings juxtaposed with seemingly unrelated modern works. There was even a gallery dedicated to sexuality, which was presumably meant to show the way the over-sexualisation of women hasn’t changed throughout history, through the exhibition of some horrific drawings and comic strips objectifying women over the centuries.
To break up the day, we took advantage of our day passes and left the museum for lunch, diving into the first cafe we could find to get out of the torrential downpour. We were rewarded with the moodiest table service known to man and a hake fillet which Ali couldn’t actually eat since it looked suspiciously like it had been breaded.
After returning to the museum for the afternoon, we killed the last couple of hours before dinner by visiting the Edificio de la Alhóndiga, an entertainment complex in the town centre. We found a cafe and Lina and Ali began an enthusiastic but disastrous attempt at learning Basque from the Guggenheim leaflets, which resulted in the acquisition of the words for ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘during the school year’ and random months and days of the week. For dinner, we made our way to a nearby square where we found a casual restaurant for some salads, before finding a bar that sold cocktails for €3.50. We managed to finish just in time to catch the last underground (an unnecessary expense for such a small city, in my opinion, but one which I was grateful for at that moment).
The next day we had breakfast in the hostel before taking the bus to San Sebastian, arriving at 12.30. Since the hostel was quite a way from the bus station, we decided to take a taxi (roughing it like the true travellers we are). Once there we had to deal with the mystery of how to actually get inside, since there was a code on the door and no one seemed to be coming down even after I phoned. Luckily another guest who knew the code arrived after a few minutes and let us in.
We’d already decided whilst driving through the city centre that we were going to like this place better than Bilbau, but this was confirmed when we discovered that it was a favourite location of surfers and our hostel was full of Australians. We were talking to the staff on the desk when one of them casually walked past topless. Feeling reassured that we’d picked a good place to stay, we dropped off our luggage and went for lunch at a cafe (which happened to be very reminiscent of Wetherspoons) across the square.
After lunch we went back to the hostel to check in, lugging our cases up yet another flight of stairs. The girl on the desk offered to help but Lina politely declined, declaring proudly that we’d “been travelling since Monday” - which is slightly less impressive when you consider that most of the people in the hostel had been travelling for weeks on end.
By the time we got to the Tourist Information Office it had closed for siesta (classic Spain) so we were forced to take photos of the map on the sign outside and use this to navigate our way across the city. First we made our way through the narrow streets to the main square, but it wasn’t long before my fingers went numb and we had to take refuge in a little cafe. By the time we’d warmed ourselves through with coffees and teas it was nearly the end of siesta.
Whilst waiting for the Tourist Information Office to reopen, we walked along the coastal road with its stunning views across the bay. The scenery, with its high cliffs and lashing waves, was more redolent of Wales than of Spain; it felt like we had landed in another country just by driving a few miles north.
As we reached the end of the cliff face we took a glass lift to get to the picturesque docks below, where we browsed the souvenir shops and found turtle bracelets for the five of us (the fifth of which will be saved until we see Annalisa again). After that we walked towards the old town, where we found the beautiful old cathedral and, much to our excitement, a Smöoy with different toppings and the option of mixing the natural and special yoghurts. You can imagine our excitement when we discovered that the signs inside were written in Basque. Unfortunately no days, months or even ‘during the school year’ appeared.
By the time we’d had our Smöoys, the Tourist Information was open again, so we picked up some maps before making our way to the funicular up to the highest point on the bay. It was a half-hour walk and a very short funicular ride, but it was worth it for the views from the top. We may have slightly spoilt the tranquility of the scenery for the other bewildered tourists as we discovered the amazing panorama function on Lina’s camera and ran around trying to make duplicates of ourselves in the photos.
For dinner we made our way into the old town again where, amongst the dozens of pintxos bars, we finally managed to find a cute little restaurant serving things that wouldn’t make Ali violently ill. Pintxos are little slices of baguette with interesting toppings like meat, fish, vegetables or cheese, and, unfortunately for Ali, who can’t eat bread, they are the Basque country’s speciality dish, served in practically every bar. Luckily, the place we found that night served celiac options that didn’t consist purely of salad, so it was a welcome change. I even got to be a little adventurous, with a salad made from local seafood (including eels), and at a more reasonable price than in Bilbau, too.
After dinner, just for a change, we headed out for some drinks (all in the name of experiencing the local culture, of course). We ended up at a tiny little club full of locals, which had lured us in with the offer of a free shot with our first drink. Despite being decidedly underdressed and clearly the only customers who were student-aged or from out of town, we had a good night and made our way back to the hostel in the early hours.
Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones who had been out that night, and some, it appeared, had had a bigger night than others. Needless to say, trying to fall asleep to the sounds of violent retching did not make for the best night’s rest we’ve ever had, not to mention the arrival of a group of loud and obnoxious Australians a few hours later.
The next morning I went down to breakfast on my own, where I met two Israelis, a Spaniard who wanted his picture taken with me, and one of the loud Australians who had shared our room, who kept talking about getting high and saying “You know what I mean” - actually, I really didn’t. He was entertaining in his accidental way, lamenting his first world problems about losing his tan - his solution to which was that when he got to Barcelona he was going to walk around everywhere with his top off. I admit I probably didn’t make the best impression either, judging by his confusion when I accidentally said I was off to Perah (not Peru) for the summer (an imitation of the rah in the Gap Yah video that has somehow stuck).
Soon we were on our way to Pamplona (which, according to the Australian guy, had absolutely nothing to offer). Admittedly, when we arrived at the bus station and found out our hotel was in a village a bus journey away, we had our doubts. However, we decided to make the most of it and a few minutes later came out laden with tourist maps and information.
Since we’d have to wait for the bus anyway, we decided to go to lunch before going to the hotel. We found a nice place in the main square, where there was also a local crafts market going on, before stopping off at El Corte Inglés and getting the bus to our hotel. We were slightly unsure when we got off at our bus stop to find only a huge hotel with an immense sign declaring its four-star status. It was then that we realised that this was our hotel; on our budget travels around Spain, we’d somehow managed to book ourselves in to a four-star hotel.
Having calmed down our laughter, we checked in and got keycards to our private room with two double beds (no wonder it was cheap, what two couples in their right minds would want to share a room?) We were amazed to find we had fresh towels, a huge telly and even a hygiene strip on the toilet. I thought we should demand this at the next hostel just to see the reaction.
When we had finally dragged ourselves away from our room we took the bus back into town to take a look around. There wasn’t all that much to see because the main reason to visit Pamplona is for the running of the bulls, which is part of the San Fermin festival in July and literally involves running around the town with a load of bulls. We did see the statue of the running of the bulls though, where we met a very strange man who decided to recite a Spanish love poem to me. Of course, my friends conveniently drifted away at this moment, leaving me to try and keep a straight face while this stranger recited verse after verse. When I’d escaped, we went to the fort, where another strange man who worked there kept apologising for the fact that a tour (which we had no intention of doing) would take forty minutes. After a fairly pointless trip up and down a glass lift, we continued with our tour of the town, which included a bull ring and a cathedral with disturbing stone baby heads outside, and several churches and administrative buildings.
My day was drastically improved when we chanced upon a Sarasate museum and a classical concert in the same building. Being a violinist, coming across a museum about one of the greatest violinists of all time was beyond exciting. It even contained some of the violins he’d played on. To make things even better, it happened to be some sort of music festival in Pamplona that day, so we got to see music from a string quartet and a guitar duo, as well as a choir in one of the squares.
By this time we were all ready to eat, and it just so happened that according to Lonely Planet, the number one tourist attraction in Pamplona was a celiac and vegetarian restaurant called Sarasate; it couldn’t get much more perfect than that. The sign on the door said it didn’t open until 8.30, so we went for a drink in the meantime before going to check it out. The only option available was a three-course Menú del día for €15, but this was such a find that we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Finally Ali and I had the choice of an entire menu.
The food was amazing: a real treat. What we hadn’t realised when ordering was that whichever drink you chose, you would get a huge bottle of it; Lina and Ali ordered cider and wine, so by the end of the meal they were giggling like lunatics, the only drunkards in the sophisticated little upstairs restaurant. After that we took a taxi back to our four-star hotel. It was official: we were the worst travellers ever.
We spent the rest of the evening drinking sangria in our hotel room and the next morning took yet another taxi to the bus station. It was there that disaster struck; the cash machine swallowed my Caxton card. I phoned the number on the machine immediately but, it being Saturday, and it being Spain, nothing could be done. All I could do was completely cancel my card and send off for another. The money you put on a Caxton card is irretrievable and I had only just put €600-worth on there in preparation for Madrid. I could survive off my English account but it was incredibly frustrating knowing I had all those euros just sitting there.
With nothing to be done, we got on the bus and arrived in Zaragosa at 12.30. The temperature there was, to our relief, well back into the 20s, and bus station there was considerably more impressive, although it was another bus ride into the city centre. We would have been fine had the driver not told us to get off a stop early, leaving us miles from where we actually needed to get to. To break up the walk we stopped off to buy lunch from a trusty Lidl and picnicked on a bench.
When we arrived at the hostel it was gone 3pm. It turned out we’d been rahs again and had booked a hostel that had been converted from a palace. This wasn’t as romantic as it may sound; in fact, going down to use the computers in the dungeons was quite a disturbing experience.
The first thing we did when we left the hostel was take the glass lift up the cathedral tower to see the beautiful panoramic views across the city. Then we walked to the sunny square below, where we took yet more photos, including an obligatory cossack dancing one. After that we wandered the narrow streets, with Ali and Lina navigating, as usual, and Alicia and I following nonchalantly and complaining when the others went wrong, as usual.
It was so warm and we were so unused to the heat after a few days in the cold that we had to stop for drinks in the Plaza Circular. Whilst Alicia ordered a Diet Coke and Ali and I had iced coffees, Lina got straight on the alcohol with a mojito. After we’d finished we decided we’d better take her to Smöoy to sober her up a bit because she said that being this tipsy at 7pm while the rest of us were sober felt a bit odd.
Once Lina had had her Smöoy we walked to the bull ring and a palace, which by that time was closing, before making our way back to the hostel to get ready. Our room was on its own in a little attic annex, giving us our own bathroom, which we duly flooded. We also had the tiniest four-person broom cupboard of a room known to man and kept having to step over and under each other in a sort of weird Twister getting ready challenge. The mirror was too high for Ali to use without standing on tiptoes; Alicia said the hotel clearly wasn’t designed for disabled people.
Finding a restaurant was surprisingly easy, and we managed to find a Menú del día for €8.50. Unfortunately, we weren’t filled with confidence when the Chinese owner gave us one of the least reassuring assertions I’ve ever heard that Ali would be safe to eat there. Our suspicions were confirmed when her fish arrived and it seemed to be breaded, so Lina and I split ours in two and gave it to her - since we couldn’t have her vomiting all night for the sake of a bit of breaded fish.
It turned out that Zaragosa in general wasn’t all too celiac-friendly. Later that evening, when the clubs were trying to draw us in, they all claimed they had Smirnoff, the only vodka Ali can actually drink, when they actually didn’t, nor did they even have any wine. We had a great time in the bars beforehand though, including a slightly pretentious outdoor bar with cool blue lighting and people in cocktail dresses, which we gatecrashed in our jeans, ordering €2 glasses of cava. Luckily no one noticed when I went to cuddle the ‘dog’ I caught sight of in the hedge, which was actually a mini stone giraffe.
When we got back to the hostel we met the band who had played there that night and generally had a bit of fun chatting to whoever was around. We even asked the man on the desk if there were any ghosts in the hostel, which was probably the most bizarre enquiry he’s ever had. He had great fun pretending to Alicia and Ali that the place was dangerously haunted until he realised that he was genuinely terrifying them and had to assure them that he was only kidding.
The next day we had to leave the hostel at 10.30 to get to the station for our ridiculously long journey back to Murcia. We’d planned the trip exceptionally well apart from one tiny detail: getting back. It turned out there were no Alsa buses from Zaragosa to Murcia, so to use our tickets we had to go all the way back to Madrid and change buses for Murcia there.
The bus driver was a bit over-zealous and checked everyone was in their allocated seat before setting off, made unnecessarily long announcements at every stop, and prohibited the consumption of food, moving about in the bus and ‘disturbing other passengers’. Luckily despite there being no fun allowed we had no trouble making the journey enjoyable and filled the day chatting and playing games like Who Am I, Guess the Job and our own ‘friends’ version of Mr & Mrs. It’s a bit like Trivial Pursuit, where one person has to ask a question about one of the others, which the other two have to answer. Not only was it a really fun way of passing the time, but it made me realise that we’ve probably learnt more about each other this term than we have Spanish.
Getting off the bus back in Murcia and stepping into that wall of heat was bliss. Travelling up North had been an amazing experience but it had also made us realise how lucky we were to live in beautiful, sunny Murcia.
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