Spain - Sevilla and Granada

I’d spent two extra days in Morocco, mostly because I couldn’t get a flight out and you could say that I was more than ready to get out of there and onto Spain. Although it is one of the not so prosperous EU countries, Spain was still going to be fairly different from the Middle East. Well sort of.

I was leaving Marrakech for Sevilla rather early in the morning, and sadly enough I had to say goodbye to the kitten that was sleeping in a basket under my bed. Hold on, let’s backtrack for a second.

The night before I was due to leave Marrakech, I was heading out to get some food with a group of Germans from the Hostel, when whilst walking through the closed markets, we saw a tiny kitten. Now, in most of the Middle East, Morocco especially included there are a lot of stray animals, mostly cats. Anyway, being a girl, I am a sucker for small animals, and I picked her up at which point she climbed up my jumper to my shoulder and refused to get off. I realised then that her eyes weren’t even open yet, she must have been born in the last day or two. Not having the heart to leave her in the freezing cold, I carried her around for the rest of the night in my jumper, and we eventually managed to get her some milk, which we fed to her in a water bottle cap. According to the Germans, they had been in a shop just around the corner from where we found her earlier that day, and had seen a cat that had kittens. We decided that the next morning they would cunningly try and put her back with her mother. So, we snuck her into our hostel and she slept in a basket on a combination of my scarves under my bed. Like a worried mother, I woke up several times in the night to check that she was okay, which she of course was. I attempted to come up with several plans to smuggle her into the airport and take her to Spain with me, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I left her in the care of the Germans and took off to catch my plane.

At the airport in the line for customs, I met some Americans (I really love that I can just rudely classify people into groups of their nationality) who I spent my time waiting with. Turns out they were also going to Sevilla and one of them spoke fluent Spanish. This was rather helpful in general being that Spain would be the first country that I was visiting where I couldn’t speak any of the language. Once we arrived, we met a Canadian/New Zealand couple, who happened to be going to the hostel I was staying at - funny how even when you’re travelling the world can be so small – so we went on together. It was absolutely freezing in Sevilla. Apparently about 10c lower than what it should have been for that time of year. Not great! But the city? Stunning.

It was the first time travelling so far that I arrived in a city and really thought it was beautiful, craning my neck to get a better look at the architecture, which was centuries old. In comparison to Australia where we only have natural sights that are that old, it was really something new for me. Unfortunately for me, I got really sick while I was there and aside from walking around the city, I didn’t get to go into the Cathedral – but looks like I will be doing that later on. We were walking along the river one day and saw that there were dozens of padlocks on the bridge with couple’s names written or engraved on them. I have no idea of the significance but hopefully I get to find out at some point – but it was a very interesting sight.

After 5 or so days, it was time to leave the home of Flamenco (which I also didn’t get to see) and head to Granada, the place that I had been told by many people to go and see. It took me about 5½ hours to get there by bus and then a lovely hike around the city, getting absolutely lost trying to find my hostel. I’d been recommended to stay at the Rambutan hostel – which was apparently hard to find but worth it. I can now attest to the degree of difficulty in finding the place and I would suggest that if you have 30kg of baggage then, perhaps get better directions than I did. However, when I did arrive, it was indeed worth it. It is in the upper older parts of Granada with a beautiful view of the Alhambra and the city. There is the stunning St Nicholas lookout which at most times of the day is filled with artisans selling their wares or just full of people in general playing music or hanging out.

After a couple of days I caught up with the Americans that I had met at the airport. Turns out they were doing Granada over the weekend. So I tagged along with them and some friends of theirs and we went to a Spanish Short Film Festival, which was really great. The first film had subtitles, but for the rest of the time, I barely understood a thing, but thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was nice to be out with a big group walking around the city. A very different feeling from walking around on your own, wondering if you would look like a loser going to eat Tapas on your own. It was mostly nice to feel like I was a part of the goings on of a city, not just as a tourist, but feeling like an insider.

Granada was a slow place for me, in the best way. I didn’t make myself do a lot and spent a lot of time hanging out with various people from the hostel, including a new group of Germans who were a band on holidays together. We shared some songs and beers etc, and they invited me to come to Berlin to stay with them, and said that they would book a gig for me as long as they had enough notice before I came. Extremely exciting stuff. There are a lot of places that I want to see in Europe, but when you meet people from a country and they invite you, you really know it will be different than trying to make your way around as a tourist. I’d also just noticed that one of my favourite Australian artists Sia was doing a tour of Europe and playing in Berlin. So the two things coincide and looks like in May, I will be in Germany!

After 9 days in Granada, it was time to head to the small town of Tobarra, 7 hours north of Granada, in which I would be living in for approximately a month whilst working on a Horse-Riding ranch as part of the WWOOF program.