Sunday 27th April - Gibraltar

The drive down from Granada towards Gibraltar was another opportunity to experience the superb road system in Spain and to marvel at the extraordinary development that is occurring in its southern provinces. It is almost impossible to travel more than five or ten kilometres without encountering a cluster of hammer head cranes all assisting in the creation of new or the expansion of existing residential and commercial property.

This particular area is the destination for large volume of European tourists and could be described as being like the low rise sections of Australia’s Gold Coast but on a massive scale. The coastal developments are literally hundreds of kilometres in length and under active expansion.

Again the master travel agent Merie had managed to find us accommodation for less than A$100 a night in what seems like a five star traditional hotel. A quick check-in into the Hotel Reina Cristina preceded our visit to the fabled rock.


Now this is confused and slightly miserable looking regal monument. There is no getting away from the majesty of the rock itself or from its command of the entry straits to the Mediterranean – I found that brought some chills to my spine.







On the other hand the place looks dilapidated and unkempt. It is crying out “you could not do without me in the war …. But now you don’t care!” . The poor old place knows it is British but believes itself to be Spanish and is inclined to think it would like to be North African – there has been trivial efforts to maintain the place for its historical and strategic importance – rather it seems to be the subject to the erratic spread of ramshackle holiday accommodation. Alas my boyhood visions of Gibraltar have been dashed for ever.

Lest the reader might think I did not enjoy the day … nothing could be further from the truth … another great experience … I must really learn more history.

Saturday 26th April – the Alhambra

A Letter to the Editor

People of Granada. The custodians of your magnificent La Alhambra have become fat and lazy. They sit comfortably in their offices manicuring themselves like the fat, contented cats that they have become. They complement each other on attracting an excess of visitors each day while their clients and your guests line up at the gates sometimes standing in queues for three or four hours like the beggars of medieval times

If you ask them why they are treating your guests like this they will tell you that there is nothing they can do, that the site can only accommodate a limited number of visitors each day and they will tell you that it is all the fault of your guests if they miss out on getting in through the gates. They will tell you that you can get tickets on line and they will tell you that the beggars should know that they need to be early. They will not tell you that they only open one of two ticket windows thereby forcing people to wait in line for hours. They will not tell you that there is only one toilet and one small café accessible to the beggars nor will they tell you that they have designed the route through the venue to maximise congestion and to minimise the enjoyment of the experience for your guests.

It is clear that the fat cats have come so complacent that they have not subjected their management of the site to appropriate external review nor have they examined in detail the technologies that could be used to maximise safe visitor throughput while minimising inconvenience for guests.

People of Granada it is time for you to hold the fat cats to account.


Mike Rebbechi
Australia


As is obvious our visit to the Alhambra was not an entire success. After waiting in line for almost four hours we came within about 30 people of getting tickets for the Palace and ended up only getting general admission. In effect these only provided access to the gardens themselves. If it wasn’t for meeting a lovely American couple in the queue we would have been driven to distraction by the unnecessary inconvenience of the whole situation.

There were queues for everything – there were queues for tickets, queues to pick up prepaid tickets – there were queues to pick up audio guides – their were queues to meet tour guides with all of this in an absence appropriate of multi-lingual signage.

When we eventually got into the gardens we found that in effect they had created a forced route which brought more chaos and inconvenience as the various tour groups surged up to constriction points like ticketed entrances to garden rooms and structures – you felt constantly under pressure and had to search out the occasional garden seat to get refuge from the incessant waves of tour groups all jostling to stay in a group for fear of losing their guide, missing their bus and ending lost in the environs of the Alhambra for ever.

Having said all of this the gardens are magnificent and site is large and thought provoking. I think my irritation at the experience was not at the site itself but rather because one inherently knew that the experience had been sullied by the poor and complacent management of the site.

I sound really annoyed don’t I. You will be surprised but I think I was the least annoyed of those in our small party – I can only imagine what the poor American couple felt – this was the second time that they had lined up in the queue for tickets only to be told that they would not be granted access to the Palace.

Again the resilience of Merie and Bernadette saw us sitting in another square in centra Granada drinking beer and enjoying a very pleasant lunch. This is a lively, very pleasant, if quirky city.

Lunch was enhanced at the expense of car bound tourists who had booked into hotels in the city centre that were only accessible through Taxi and Bus lanes. These poor individuals, having driven miles across country, then having encountered the narrow streets of the inner city and finally having found their way to their hotel zone, now found their access to sanctuary from travel stress blocked by pop up bollards controlled by magnetic swipe cards – of course they didn’t have a card as they were yet to check into their hotels so they were forced to control their tempers while communicating with the machine in a foreign tongue while taxi and bus drivers showed their support by blasting on their horns.

We are in Granada a few weeks before a major feast day in early May. The tradition is for the ladies and girls to dress in appropriate formal attire. Accordingly the shops are full of beautiful, brightly coloured, flamingo style dresses adored in wide variety of dotted patterns.

Friday 25th April – A parade of Sierras

We headed off from Murcia towards Granada a little apprehensively given our travelling experiences of yesterday. By contrast with yesterday this drive started well and rapidly progressed to stunning and then to amazing.

The route took us 280 kilometres along a secondary motorway past spectacular scenery and stunning infrastructure development. There are cranes everywhere.

We passed through and along various low mountain ranges towards the snow covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada’s and Granada itself.

Coffee in Spain ranges from magnificent to poor. We sampled the magnificent end of the scale at a little wayside café where we sat on the veranda and enjoyed the morning sunshine.

Lunch was equally pleasurable with bread, cheese and fruit purchased in a small village outside Granada and consumed at a little roadside park looking out over farmland and back towards the mountains.

Experiencing adversity makes you strong. Adversity can come in many forms one of which are GPS navigation systems that have yet to learn the full intricacies of the streets of Granada that are sometimes limited to buses and taxis in one direction and to other traffic in the other direction. Getting to the hotel for Bernie and I was a complex procedure – for John and Merie it was a nightmare involving close encounters with Police, steel bollards and irritated taxi drivers.

One of the many things you can say about Merie and Bernadette as travel companions is that they will not let any form of adversity get in the way of enjoying the trip so within a short time of checking into the hotel, John and I found ourselves accompanying them to an Arabian bathhouse, soaking in hot and cold pools, sipping sweet Arabian tea and enjoying a pleasant, gentle massage.

Our hotel is a nice two star venue close to the city square. On a Friday night the square is alive with families, tourists, young people and diners. We enjoyed tapas, Paella (“paya” ) and Sangria before retiring early. We were unable to get pre-purchased tickets for the Alhambra tomorrow and accordingly we would need to rise early to be at the site well before ticket sales started at 8.00am. The chosen arrival time at the venue was 7:30.

Thursday 24th April – Road to Murcia

What’s at Murcia said Merie. Nothing that I can find said Bernadette -I booked it because it is about half way between Valencia and Granada – don’t worry - it will be a beautiful drive – I wonder?

Was the scenery spectacular – not really!

Could we find a decent place to have coffee on the way – No!
Could we find the hotel when we reach Murcia – No!
Did we arrive tired and a little cranky at Murcia at 15:00– Si
Did we discover that there are three different Avenedia Primerio Del Mayo’s in Murcia – Si
Was the hotel we were at the last one we tried – Si

Was there anything good about the day?

The company? – Si

Did we stumble into a little, almost deserted village being used as a film set – Si

Did Bernadette finally get to photograph the wild red poppies that adorn the roadside through France and much of Spain – Si

Was the hotel any good – Si – It was the best of the trip so far ….

We were determined to turn the day around so having considerable time to read up on the area on the trip down from Valencia Bernadette and Merie had decided that we simple had to head for Lo Pagan about 60 kilometres from Murcia to experience a mud bath in the lagoons beside the Mediterranean. The area is a rapidly developing holiday refuge for the inhabitants of the colder European climes. It was simply amazing to see what seemed likes thousands and thousands of really quite up-market residential accommodation.

The reality is that everywhere you look in Spain the development is extraordinary –it is difficult not to look at a skyline and see hammer-head cranes. The road system is stunning and there are wind farms everywhere. In fact the investment in infrastructure is so substantial that it constantly made me wonder about the lack of infrastructure investment in Australia over the past 15 years or so! … I wonder it is not time for Australians to stop believing its own rhetoric about it economy and get on about the future.(there end’th the lesson” )

Murcia itself is a large town of around 400,000. It was not the most attractive city that we had encountered in our trip. Having said that it did boast the best hotel of the trip, served a magnificent evening meal and may have had even a denser population of hammer head cranes than was the norm for Spain.

Wednesday 23rd April – Valencia – What would the kids know?

By mid morning we had developed out our rule for travel planning – Rule 1 – “never listen to your kids”

We strolled along the green belt past groves of trees that were the Spanish equivalent of a Boa tree towards the centre of town with Bernadette as our travel guide.

Having Bernadette as a travel guide is quite useful. On this occasion her unerring sense of direction meant that when were in the midst of the old city we were able to experience every lane, street and roadway and to wander past both monument and residential backdoor. Everyone should experience Bernadette as a travel guide – you simply – have faith and follow - then magically in front of you appears a superb coffee shop - this occurs right at the time at which you started to wonder why your parents had not genetically endowed to you an extra dollop of patience. For fellow travellers who come behind me – my apologies – I have no idea where the coffee shop was but I can assure you the coffee itself was superb.

A tour of the town on the double deck bus revealed Valencia to be a wonderful mixture of the old and the new. We found it to be a large vibrant place with some very adventurous architecture.

We were particularly impressed by the very large (the less refined would say huge so I suppose I should say huge) Science Park at the end of the green zone. The architecture is extraordinary and it is hard to imagine Australia giving so much freedom to an individual designer.

Bernadette could not wait any longer .. she had to have Paella Valenciana (Valencia gave birth to paella) for lunch so it was on to the Valancian tram system for a ride out through the suburbs to the port site with its brand new hotels, its beautiful wide beaches, its semi naked old sunbaking women who really should have known better and its beachfront eating strip. We arrived at 1:00pm so of course no one was there …. We did however find one of the places opened – as it turn out it was the one recommended by our hotel and again we play acted out the menu with a nice Spanish wait lady.

Our reaction to Paella is best left to the photographs.

A two hour lunch, a stroll along the beachfront to the hotel and a tram ride back through some quite uncomfortable suburbs back into town and back to the hotel rounded off the afternoon. Our trip through the suburbs on the tram made us understand why the hotel really suggested that we go to the port for lunch rather than dinner – I don’t think I would like the trip during the evening.

A long afternoon nap was the ideal preparation for Tapas and beer at a local bar. Dishes of Iberian ham, minced, skinless tomatoes and potatoes topped with spicy, minced eggplant. The Tapas bars open a little earlier so we were settled back into our hotel base at a respectable (by Albury standard) hour.

We loved Valencia!

Tuesday 22nd April – The Road to Valencia

We approached Valencia with the advice of our daughters in our mind …. ” Valencia – its is boring – there is nothing there!”. Our experiences on the way did little to ease our minds … the toll charges were almost frightening – in fact it cost us almost to the Dollar (Euro) the same for fuel as it did for toll charges – 30 Euros.

We stopped not too far our of Barcelona for our morning fix of coffee and cake at a place called Sitges. The coffee and cake was excellent but the town was less inviting and its TeleBancos took a distinct disliking to me taunting me at every push of a button. The travel books told us that the town was originally known as Arse. I have no idea why it changed its name as it original title seemed quite apt.

Along the way the scenery was pleasant enough but nothing like the delicate views and magnificent scenery of France – it was a little like country California and our attitude to Valencia was not helped much by keying in the wrong street address for our hotel therefore spending a fair amount of time driving in circles obeying the instructions of the Tom Tom to “turn around when possible”. Now experienced traveller we finally remembered to stay calm … look at the address – give the Tom Tom the right address and be on your way ….

The trip had done little to indicate that our daughters were anything other than excellent travel advisors.

In no time we had “reached our destination” – there in front of us was a very nice parking station, immediately beside us was the hotel which clearly qualified for not bottles of cheap wine but rather a celebratory glass of champagne … the hotel is excellent and is located in a restaurant district just off a nice square close to Valencia’s green strip some two or three kilometres from the centre square of the city.

John and Merie arrived an hour or so later and we headed out for a celebratory dinner. The little restaurant was lovely. We were the only customers and the waiter was a very nice young Spaniard who took delight in miming the menu for us. It was a great meal with great company but finding the restraurant did teach us that restaurants in this part of the world do not open for business for lunch before two and for dinner before 9.00.

By the end of the evening we were starting to wonder about the veracity of our daughter’s travelogue summaries.