Familiar Faces - The Spanish South

November 11-16, 2010.

Having enjoyed Barcelona for several days, we'd decided to take advantage of an opportunity to see a lesser travelled part of Spain.  Lindsay's Aunt Marlene and Uncle Frank, who were very hospitable towards us in Reading, own a vacation property in Conil, in the southern part of Spain. They were currently vacationing there and opened up their home to us.

A comfortable train ride through Madrid landed us in Cadiz, a beautiful old walled fortress town on the end of a long itshmus on the Atlantic coast.  We had directions to catch a bus to Chinclana, the closest bus stop to Conil.  However, Frank had procured a ride from a neighbor, John.  One catch, he had to catch us inbetween the train and the bus.  Unbeknownst to us, as we had just gotten off the train, someone was looking for us, having spotted us, Frank shouted my name, "Morgan!".  Now having not been recognized by anyone for over a month I was startled to say the least, then obviously relieved to see Frank smiling and laughing.

Back at their place, after a tour of the neighborhood, we were treated to a home cooked meal, another first for us since we'd left Reading.  For the most part during our stay, we rested, relaxed, and ate amazing food with the company of the our hosts and the neighbors.  There's a nice community established over the years of vacationing down there that made us feel very welcome.

Our first morning, we were lucky enough to be there for a weekly market down by the beach in Chinclana.  It was primarily clothes and house wears, mostly from locals and also merchants from Northern Africa.  The shouting at times  was awesome, nothing you wouldn't expect in a large market but in a smaller market as this, nothing was drowned out by background noise.  It would be two or three vendors going at it, and it seemed to get a little personal at times.  We, of course, were not there to shop, but loving the atmosphere did find our one weakness in markets, food.  We left with some candied peanuts, like none we'd ever had, and a huge bag of...kinda trail mix.

No trip to a new sea or ocean is complete, for me at least, without a dip.  Off to the beautiful sandy beaches, empty as it was a bit windy and the water far too cold for anyone who would be vacationing or of sound mind.  First I collected a pocket full of beach glass (shards of broken glass smoothed by tumbling in the sand and surf). Then, I was finally wearing swim trunks and bound and determined to use 'em!  Honestly the water was pretty nice, it was getting out of the water that lent me to question my decision making skills.  Nothing though compared to the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) polar bear swim that is bestowed upon the losing team in an annual football game every holiday season amongst some former employees and friends.

Saying goodbye to our gracious hosts, Marlene and Frank, was tough, having had such a great time with them again.  It's so nice seeing familiar faces and not knowing when we'd see family or friends again made it so.  Thanks again for having us weary travellers enjoy your hospitality. We spent our last day and night in Cadiz itself.  It was a very beautiful city, easily naviagated by foot.  The seawall, aka, the old cities old fortification, was a refreshing walk.  We enjoyed a beautiful sunset with the many stray cats and surf fishermen of Cadiz. Up early and back to Barcelona in time for our ferry ride to Italy, that's a story that's been told.

The Yank

The 19 Hour Couch Cruise - Spain to Italy

"So, you've decided to become a bum" - John Travolta as Vincent, Pulp Fiction.

To get to Italy from Spain, we decided to try out the ferry option offered by the Eurail pass. Getting to the Barcelona port, we ended up walking around in cirlces for an hour being pointed in several different directions trying to find the right ticketing office (Gremodli Lines). We finally found it and bought tickets to make the 19 hour boat ride across the Mediterranean. It would have cost us either 47 euros for a "reclining" train seat or 27 euros on a ferry (that's with a 20% discount, one of the many  bonuses offerred with the Eurail). Really though, the boat isn't much of a ferry at all. Actually, I had totally imagined ourselves bedding down with some local farm life fighting over hay space. Unfortunatly, there wasn't any farm-like quality about the ship. There weren't even rows of seats that you could pass out under like the ferry boats running imbetween Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Instead, more like a hotel lobby, you have ultra-sheek couches randomly arranged throughout the lobby ways.

It was here that we officially bummed out for the first time on our trip. We attached our packs together (good luck trying to lift both those suckers up together), made clothes pillows and wrapped our eyes with head wraps. Of the few couches we'd spotted, we obviously picked the one right next to the boat's arcade room, home to the world's loudest game ever. Every few minutes the game's computer voice would sound "Virtual Tennis, 3" followed by some whooshing sounds most probably a combination of dashing serves and aces. Not even the earplugs could block out C3PO's earsplitting jinggle. I wondered if Nadal would have anything to do with the cruise's top arcade game being ultimate tennis. I suddenly decided I hated tennis.

We woke up to one of the boat's staff telling us that we couldn't sleep there. That's 9 hours after we'd splayed out our best on the red Ikea shapes. All that changed was us parrallel to perpendicular. Still on the couch. For the rest of the day we'd have the ship's guests and passengers walk past asking if we'd had a good sleep. It was "Virtually" awesome guys, common. I know you all walked past us before you all snuggled into your premium cabins.

A practice fire alarm would sound and we'd be privy to hear the beforehand security warning reminding passengers that there was no smoking during a fire. A following announcement would call for a staff member's attention and went something like this: "Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima, Charlie Dima. Attention. Please report to Port 9, port side, port side, port side, port side. Attention please, for what?... Please report to Port 9, port side." Gotta love the Spanish.­­

There's a non-profit group called CouchSurfing devoted to creating memorable experiences for travellers by connecting them with local people. "CouchSurfing members share hospitality with one another. These exchanges are a uniquely rich form of cultural interaction. Hosts have the opportunity to meet people from all over the world without leaving home. "Surfers," or travelers, are able to participate in the local life of the places they visit. We also give more people the chance to become travelers, because "surfing" lowers the financial cost of exploration." Unfortunately there are no cruise ship options. See more about about how you can participate on there website.
http://www.couchsurfing.org/about.html

The Limey

Nov 10, 2010, Barcelona Spain, 22:00. FC Barcelona vs. Ceuta.

 Walking down the Ramblas on a cool sunny day, the first for us on our travels in flops and shorts, we came upon an official FC Barcelona ticketing agent.  Jersey clad girls with multilingual toungues selling "cheap" tickets to tourists.  €10 for upper level seats to watch "Barca" play....Ceuta.  Small coastal town attached to  Moracco.  As soon as we got our tickets in hand I notice that the face value is €7.  Nice.  Great idea however selling tickets to tourists at a reasonable price still, when the stadium is built for many more fans than Ceuta will draw.  Cheaper than the cheap seats at a BC Lions game as I recall.

We arrive on game day via the metro very easily, not very crowded at all, no armed police there to guide the opposing fans, I guess they're coming from a different direction.  We follow the crowd to the stadium, luckily our gate is the first we come across.  Through the gate, through security without a glance at our bags, up the numerous stairs to our seats...at the very top...very very top!  behind us is a standing area, great for pictures or smoking if you didn't want to leave your seat to do so.  The wind was cold and fierce, but being Canadians we toughed it out for the first 25 minutes, before moving down in our section. 
The crowd slowly filed into the stadium as we waited with the extra time due to the ease of our arrival.  But as game time approached we became painfully aware that the tourists weren`t here to fill the gaps.  Not even the best seats in the lower sections filled up.  The stadium couldn't have been at one third capacity.  I don't care if it is Ceuta, I couldn't believe the lack of interest.  The BC Lions have drawn better against the seven teams they play two to three times every year at home.  And this is futbol-mad Spain, recent winners of the Euro Cup and World Cup; and this is Barca, home to the enviable triangle attacking style that Perry told me about. That style and many of these players being on the national team no less.  The stupid Lions draw better with a third string QB whose name should be in porn! seriously, Buck Pierce, I'm not making this up.  I`m not in marketing, but maybe if the game didn`t start at 10PM more people could bring their kids to such an affordable event.
 Two minutes in, and before Ceuta could touch a ball that the wind hadn't blessed them with, Barca was up by one.  The sparse crowd went nuts.  I have to admit they made a lot of noise for their numbers and cheered and chanted through most of the game.  Surprising number of vuvuzelas made an appearance too.  There were some small chanting sections, but no distinguishable opposition fan section that we could see, when Ceuta scored on one of their very few chances to make the game 2-1.  Barca simply toyed with their foes, passing around them easily, dribbling through one, two or more defenders.   Ceuta's keeper  touched the ball more than anyone on his team: having made more impressive saves than his team had touched the ball on the other end of the pitch.  It didn't help that a  Ceuta player had gotten red carded putting them down a man.
Going into the second half we decided to sit in the section down and looking onto the other half of the field from where our seats were, there was plenty of room, and having had all the action in front of us for a half we hardly wanted to watch grass grow in front of the Barca keeper  this half.  Five minutes in, Barca regained a two goal advantage and never looked back.  They dominated to the point of passing to their keeper to prevent boredom.  With 30 minutes remaining the crowd was suddenly agast.  I couldn`t see what was drawing such a reaction on the field till my fledgling futbol fan training drew my attention to the sideline where Lionel Messi was limbering up to enter the game.  The anticipation in the crowd was awesome, and for good reason, within minutes of being on the pitch he had helped create a couple of good chances on net.   About 10 minutes later he capitalized sending the crowd into adoring chants of "Messi! Messi!"  One more goal by Bojan Krkic ended a 5-1 romp that could`ve been much worse.
An easy metro ride back and we were in our beds in less than an hour.  All in all, it was an effortless,  inexpensive, fun sports experience.  One I would definately recommend to anyone visitng Barca, even non-sports fans.

The Yank