Not so hot and sunny Mediterranean

Trip Start Mar 23, 2007

Trip End Jun 20, 2007

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Flag of Spain Almeria, Spain
Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Almeria,

    A much bigger town than we realized!! We went to Almeria because we needed a place to stay before we go to Sevilla for the Big Semana Santa festival!!! However, because the festival is going throughout all of Spain and because it is "holiday" for most of Europe many places are booked up, expensive, or not a place we can get to via train or bus. So Almeria it is.

    We arrived to the town of Almeria via train only to find that no one spoke english...no one. Throughout our trip we have been practicing our poor excuse for mexican spanish, but have found that pointing and nodding gets us a long way...of course those who speak english help us even more!! Almeria...no one speaks any English...and it is a large town...anyway, after about 1 hour of walking around with no map and asking every young person on the street where the tourist office is in spanish...and they don't know...or they do but they tell us in spanish but there's a problem, we don't know right, left straight ext. in spanish. Then finally a few people tell us via pointing but after asking 3 different people and they all pointed 3 different ways, we realized we were in for it. Well we finally found it after we asked a Pizza Hut employee who said "I know good English"   Thank You!!! Luckily the lady at the info. office spoke "good English" and helped us out.

    Our hostel...turned out to be a 2 star hotel...SCORE!!!! A bathroom, in our room...you have no idea how nice that is. We were able to do our laundry...in the sink...

Entrance to the Alcazaba

because we stayed for 2 days, which means we have enough time for it to drip dry.

    This town is very old and the streets are the most confusing I think of all the cities we have been to. I am not sure why but we cant seem to get anywhere without getting lost. The first night we were here is was a nice 18-20 degrees...i.e. 64-68 F. We meet up with the people we met from england at the train station and Mathew became our translator. We gave them some extra maps we had, so they did not get as lost as us and made plans to meet up with them later.

    Jake and I went to the Alcazaba monument, which was built by the Moorish in the 12th century and was later taken over by the Christians. From the top of the building we could see all of Almeria and the Mediterranean Sea...breathtaking. Of course the Fortress was beautiful too. That night we were wondering the streets and came across a Semana Santa
precession we were able to see it up close, very cool. I will explain this later when we see more of it in Sevilla.
    The next day we decided to go to the beach, because there isn't much to do in Almeria. We took a bus, to Cabo de Gato beach area. Where there was several small fishing/ salt towns. The whole thing was little confusing. The beach area is called the Cabo de Gato, which is 30 km long, but the town we were dropped of in is also called Cabo de Gato. The maps we had talked about a beautiful beach just a couple miles down. So, we walked to the next town. The weather was windy and a little cold even when in the 60's.   We reached the town and found out that the beach looked pretty much the same as the last town.

Inside the Alcazaba

We were a little puzzled. Apparently, The map was nowhere in scale and it left out most of the small little towns. We walked on the beach, it was very nice, less wind, the temp about 65...then all the sudden in the distance we could see dark clouds coming towards...then thunder and lightening (which travels sideways here)...so we decided to lay on the beach and soak up the last few minutes of sun left. We found out that the bus did come to this little town, so we ducked into the little cafe and had tapas and wine to wait out the oncoming storm. Then the hail came and we thought our day was over, but it only lasted about a hour...very weird. (We later found out that it was warmer in London and back in the U.S., go figure) So far our experience with the rain in Spain has been interesting, nothing like Washington...the rain comes fast, everyone hides under the eves of the buildings and it rains for less than and hour and it stops, the sun comes out like nothing ever happened. The ground is still warm that the water evaporates away and you can hardly tell there was a rain storm....so nice. Unfortunately, this was not the Mediterranean experience we were hoping for, but good weather for Washingtonian standards.

We got back to town, Our friends were hoping for a expensive seafood dinner (out of our daily budget range), so we went off to do our thing. We walked to the run-down part of town on the back side of the Alcazaba.

Passionate flemenco dancing

Of coarse we left our passports and valuables behind.   Most of the people we going or gone to the Semana Santa precession, so it was very quiet. These parts of town are very cool. There are little grocery stores/ restaurants tucked into small spaces. You usually have to go down stairs and duck t go inside. Ever inch of the grocery stores are covered in merchandise. No space wasted. The walk way is one person wide, so you have to squeeze by people to work your way into the store.   They are cheap and have fresh baked pastries, breads, fruta (fruit), and vegetables. Salted ham legs hang from the ceiling and queso (cheese) wheels are stacked on the counters. Ever thing is by the kilo ( 2.5 lbs per one kilo) and the prices are comparable to one pound in the U.S. of gourmet organic food. We consider it a specialty to be organic and fresh, free of preservatives and these little hole in the wall places have it as the only option. It is great for us, we have been losing weight and eating very well. More ham and cheese than we are use too, but all good.
     We headed out deeper into the back alleys. We found a steep staircase dropping to the street below. It was good place to sit and scan over the the city area. We were surprised to see house doors cut into the soft stone cliff walls above town.   There must have been 20+ houses in just one area! A narrow paths, staircase and ladders linked them all together. A dozen people were standing around on the cliff-side.   There are whole villages like this in the dry arid areas of Spain, but this area was clearly poverty stricken.   There is a lot of this through Spain.
   We were going to go further, but Kristin got pretty sick to her stomach, so we headed back to the hostel. This has happen to us in the last couple weeks. Must be our bodies adjusting to the new food. It never last long, so far :)
    The next morning we headed back to Madrid to change trains to go to Sevilla. We met up with our british friends (Mathew and Clare), again. They showed use there previous finds of good tapa bars and flamenco dancing and decided to met up later in the evening to go see flamenco dancing.