On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good morning all,
As we begin seriously hurtling towards Spring – for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.
I know I’ve been pretty down on Spain so far. I would say that’s just me, but let’s face it, that’s also Spain. Anyway, off we go.
What would Spanish culture be without creepy dolls? There were these clown ones, but also the ones of the Virgin Mary that would scare the Catholicism out of toddlers. I will say, the museums at Valencia are pretty decent. Small, but decent. Unlike those I visited at Barcelona, which were medium-to-big and mediocre.
OK, this one I genuinely like. A very nice carriage in which you can picture dukes and earls riding around in Regency romance novels. I believe this one belonged to a Spanish marquess. It was in pride of place at Valencia’s Museum of Ceramics, Sumptuary Goods, Etc. (it has a really long name that I definitely don’t remember correctly).
Granada was my favorite city on this Spanish grand tour, mainly because there’s much more non-Spanish cultural stuff going on. Including the food, we ended up saying “screw this” to lousy tapas and buying back roast chicken from Syrian refugee shops for our last two dinners. I endured the “ni hao”s from well-meaning Syrians just to get at this chicken, it was that addictive. ANYWAY, this picture is of part of the inside of the Islamic Cultural Center (god, I’m sure I’m not remembering that name right either), where medieval Islamic art and architecture has been protected and restored as closely as possible. We had a really good tour guide who was studying art history at University of Granada, so I highly recommend doing these things with tour guides. Even at the Alhambra, where they practically force you to buy tickets from tour guides, and then you start with baseline resentment about the Alhambra-tourism-company collusion.
More of the beautiful Islamic Cultural Center. Spain (and Europe in general), please stop being Islamophobic, their religious art is way better than yours.
OF COURSE we had to go see the Alhambra, I really only agreed to this trip with my dad and brother because of it. And because it was my dad’s 60th birthday that year, which is a huge deal in Chinese culture (zodiac coming back full-circle 5 times), but whatever.
It’s one of those rare huge tourist attractions that actually lives up to the hype. (*cough*notyouSagradaFamilia*cough*) And maybe because of the tour guide cartel they’ve got going on, it’s not as crowded as it could have been. The little kids I saw inside were occupied with playing on their parents’ phones rather than destroying precious art and artifacts. Putting aside the wonder of the art and architecture, it was a pretty well-run operation that didn’t rely on security guards yelling at tourists. In fact, I don’t remember any guards… huh.
So purdy.
The other major tourist attraction that is also totally worth it is flamenco. We didn’t go to the historic caves, but got to enjoy a very nice hour-long show within walking distance of our AirBnB. You’d think they’d get tired of performing for tourists every night, but unless they were incredible actors, they were so into the music and cheering each other on during their dance solos. And that was pretty much it, I think we flew back the next day. Can’t say I loved all of Spain, and I don’t have more positive photos because they would have been of food, which I never bother taking pics of anyway, but yeah, go for the museums and paella in Valencia, then just spend the rest of your time in Granada. Maybe northwest Spain would have been worth seeing, maybe someone can tell me?
JeanneT
I’m SO glad you got to see the Alhambra – when I started reading today’s post that was what popped into my head: I hope they at least got to enjoy the Alhambra…..
It was actually fun to read about the sucky parts of your trip as well as the good. Thanks for sharing all of it!
JB
We lived in Spain for a year and have gone back each summer since to see places we missed. We’ve been to Madrid, Cuenca, Albacete, Murcia, Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona, Benidorm (if you can call that Spain), Córdoba, Granada, Seville, Torrevieja, Oviedo and neighboring Asturias village, Bilbao, and San Sebastián. Definitely visit the northwest and north. If food is your thing then you have to go to San Sebastián. Oviedo is also pretty nice and is where the Spanish go on vacation, minimally touristy. Happy to provide opinions on other parts.
Doug
It has been probably 10 years or so since I have been to Sagrada Familia, so maybe continued construction has made it worse, but I found it breathtaking, an amazing achievement, like walking inside a forest of wonders. Much different reaction from Emma’s.
debbie
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing!
Amir Khalid
The Islamic Cultural Centre, with beautiful calligraphy incorporated into the design, is mindblowing.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Beautiful pics and what sounds like a great trip
Betty
Emma, now you need to read “Rosinante to the Road Again” by John Dos Passos. Especially the part about flamenco. You will understand the enthusiasm.
PST
My wife and I took a fun trip to Spain a few weeks ago, flying into Madrid and then using the excellent rail system to visit points south: Toledo, Cordoba, and Seville. The most fascinating place we saw was the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba. The cathedral is plunked down in the middle of a mosque, the first part of which was constructed from columns and other spare parts recycled from the preceding Christian and classical buildings. It’s the turducken of architecture. And it is even more complicated than that. The quality of the construction as the mosque was expanded section by section illustrates the birth, triumph, and decadent stages of Islamic civilization in Spain.
TaMara (HFG)
Emma, the photos are great, but your narrative is what really makes it. So much fun. Thanks for sharing.
Emma
Oh look, I figured out the reply system :) or I thought I did, until I submitted and saw that it went into moderation…
@JeanneT: you’re welcome, those were the fun parts to write too! I’m the sort of person that really likes the niche genre of deliberately cringey travelogues on British TV, so this trip was actually really up my alley from that perspective. My dad has his own insane story about being pickpocketed on a previous trip to Barcelona, I really have no idea why he’s so attached to the place. Also, I didn’t mention it in the post itself, but while I was getting pickpocketed, my brother was trying not to get beat up in a confrontation on the train between football hooligans. What a city.
@JB: Yes, food is definitely my thing, along with museums :) A lot of the cities you mention are places we would have gone to if we had a month instead of 2 weeks. I’ll remember to get in touch if my dad decides to return for his 65th!
@Doug: Yeah, I’m notorious in my family for being extremely unsentimental and hard to impress. Also, atheist. Unfortunately, that meant that I was trying very hard not to blaspheme by laughing at the turtles at the front door carrying Jesus and other peeps, because all I could think of was Terry Pratchett’s Discworld turtle.
@debbie: You’re welcome :)
@Amir Khalid: Isn’t it? I wish I could remember exactly what the tour guide translated it as, because it was the family motto of the ruling dynasty, and I remember it sounded pretty cool. The Alhambra does that too, intertwining the family motto with artwork.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: thank you :)
@Betty: OK, although I do have to say that it’s been so long since I’ve read “serious” literature that I’m not sure I can do it anymore :) :/
@PST: we would have liked to use the rail system, but for some reason, they don’t have a straight Granada-Barcelona train, which we needed to catch our flight out. So we had a road trip, which is a whole other thing I could have griped. My brother driving stick-shift in a European city is something I never want to repeat. On the plus side, I could see why Spanish colonists really liked California. Apart from the odd minaret sticking out in a field, the countryside in that part of Spain looked like driving around southern CA. Would have really liked to have the time to visit Cordoba and Seville, I knew I was missing out on more awesome art and architecture.
WaterGirl
@Emma: You did great!
You just didn’t know there is a limit of 7 links in a comment, and you replied to 8 people.
One more trick – when you reply to more than one person you can remove the extra line that is in there, if you want.
Emma
@TaMara (HFG): Oops, missed your comment, thank you :) I will have to go on another cringey trip to satisfy the jackals!
Emma
@WaterGirl: Got it, thanks! I actually like having the extra space in there, but yeah, maybe a bit much for 8 replies…
J R in WV
We spent 2 weeks in NE Spain and SW France, much of that time in the Pyrenees mountains. The principal object of our tour was to visit caves with vastly old art in them, and IIRC we went into 13 caves, large and small, mostly protected by various government agencies. One cave was fascinating because of the vast array of mineral formations, it had no discovered art but was a walking tour through a professionally lit cave.
One major museum had a total perfect copy built of one of the most famous painted cave ceilings, built at some great expense to allow visitors to see the wonderful art work without further damaging the real cave with human CO2 and moisture from too many people passing through that cave. Many caves had strict limits of the number of people allowed in. We had a very professional Cambridge man (Paul Bahn) as our tour guide for the group, and every cave had its own tour guides. Paul was typical Brit academic, wry humor and fascinating ability to pun. He knew all the caves and all the people as well.
We visited many active archaeological digs, including some now well known for their recovery of Neanderthal remains including DNA, as well as many museums, a couple of cathedrals and an interesting Gothic church from around 1300 that included many pre-Christian stone “demons” integrated into the Christian mythology with an Abbot’s foot on top of the Gods overthrown by the flood of Christian missionaries into Spain. Evidently back when the church was being built local farmers would turn up ancient stone sculptures of pre-Christian gods every time they plowed, and to avoid the Inquisition all such monsters and demons were turned over to the church.
The walled cities were very interesting, we don’t see much of that here in the New World. Bilbao was interesting and vibrant… I wish we had spent more time at the big Guggenheim art museum, there’s some truly enormous pieces of art built using techniques invented for shipbuilding, giant spirals of steel, that one gallery full of giant steel work is bigger than many entire museums. Our tour started in Bilbao and wound up in Toulouse, and them we went on by ordinary train to Paris where we spent two nights at a very odd old hotel very near the Louvre — which turned out to be closed the one day we could have visited it!
Fabulous food everywhere, even small town bars up in the mountains had good eating.
I submitted several photo sets back in the day, can repeat if needed.
Our tour was organized by the AIA, the Archaeological Institute of America, which does a fine job so far as we can tell.
On another topic, our tiny water control pond is full of little 3-6 inch frogs frolicing about with each other, chirruping and splishing, happy to have a warm day in the pond full of water. Such happy noises they are making right outside my windows!!
The sun is shining, and I have to take the car in for minor servicing in a couple of hours.
Origuy
I was in Spain in 1995. I took a train from Seville to Granada. I got off at the train station, pulled out my Let’s Go, and called places for a room in my limited Spanish. When I got to the hostal, the lady told me something about the water being off at night. I thought she meant the hot water, but it turned out that Grenada was in the midst of a drought and the city water was turned off at night. The big tourist hotels had cisterns. I had taken a nap and when I woke up the water was off. I had to go buy bottled water just to brush my teeth. The Alhambra was a highlight of my trip and Emma got some beautiful pictures.
To take a train from Grenada to Barcelona, I had to change trains at midnight in Ciudad Real, a long way out of the way. I’d booked a sleeper from there, and had to fumble in the dark to get into one of four berths. Seems like they still don’t have direct service. I wish I’d gotten off at Valencia and spent a day there.
While I was in Barcelona, I took a day trip to Montserrat. There’s a monastery there with a Black Madonna. The setting is beautiful; you get off the train and take a tram like a ski lift to the monastery. But it’s really touristy and kitschy, if you’re not a believer. There are bus loads of pilgrims and tourists.
Gravie
We were in Valencia in 2013 for Las Fallas, that uniquely Spanish celebration of fireworks and anarchy (with a touch of Virgin-worship to placate the faithful). I have seldom enjoyed a place so much — the 1a.m. fireworks displays where throngs enjoyed mixed drinks and street-prepared paella from pop-up stands; the satirical statues and light displays; and the free-lance jokesters ambushing people on the street with petardos (cherry-bomb style explosives). So much fun!
JB
We had a blog about our time living there which covers some of the cities mentioned above but is more about expat life. If anyone’s interested in that sort of thing:
https://aventurasenespanablog.wordpress.com/
As with most blogs we got tired of updating it so it doesn’t cover the more recent places we went to on return trips. But it covers the pan-Europe trip we took the summer before settling in Spain- Iceland, Copenhagen, Majorca, Paris, Zurich, alps village, Bergamot, Munich. Also talks about pre-trip prep like visas.
Emma
Let’s see how commenting works on my phone… @J R in WV I’ve never been on an art/nature tour like that, sounds amazing with the right tour guide!
@Origuy: I did want to see Montserrat, but again, no time… there does seem to be a lot of religious tourism in Spain (at least for Christians), which surprised me, considering the increasing secularization of Europe. I guess there are always pilgrims from the Americas.
@Gravie: is that the one where they hoist a massive Madonna figure on a palanquin and parade through the streets? I saw pictures of that in one of the Valencia museums, but they certainly didn’t make it sound like a fun festival!