España 2010

We are in Barcelona right now and its our last hours. One of us will leave a few lines about our stay but now I want to say something about driving in Spain.

Yes it was visible from out our car!

To say it in one word: Its nice! We drove 1944 kilometers and all the time I had to watch out to not looking to long at the countryside. Everywhere you can see big mountains, beautiful woods and now and than an occasional bull.

I don’t know what the maximum allowed speed is but we got through Spain very fast. Most of the highways were not so full of cars (especially the toll roads) and it was not raining. But I saw lots of 120 km/h signs 8). (What do they mean????)

At the end of our trip however there was one thing which was not so nice: Toll. From Granada to Javea there was already one long toll road – our GPS sends us next to it and we took 1 hour more than expected, so we decided to disable the “avoid toll road” function – but from Javea to Barcelona it was like hell. We started with one toll ticket over ~350 km and it costs 21 €. After that we came into ~5 toll stations to pay between 3 to 6 € each time. So we spent almost one full tank of gasoline in toll. German highways just ROCK!

But again: it were the loveliest 1944 km I ever drove  and with the “avoid toll road” function activated I would do it again anytime (at least to get back to Tarifa!!!)

In the south of Spain is a small town which was – for us – the most lovely part of our trip: Tarifa. If you see left (a.k.a. East) you can see the Mediterranean Sea and on the right (a.k.a. West) is the Atlantic Ocean.

Mediterranean Sea

Atlantic Ocean

Tarifa is full of young people due to its famousness for kite surfing. In the center are lots of small bars and restaurants which you find by walking through the tiny streets and yards.

The people in Tarifa have little worries.

On our first evening we were in a bar called La Cueva. We met some Americans and some Germans there. I now know what kind of glasses I want to wear in the future. The bar was really cool and we liked the music they played there a lot. Actually we wanted to join the American people on another party but we couldn’t find it 8-).

Buddy Holly is alive

The next day we decided fast that we will stay one day longer as planned. We even changed the hotel for it because we thought we will save a lot of money (it was just 5 € at the end).

Hostal Alborada

Hostal Las Margaritas

So we spent the day to visit the beaches of the two seas and Tarifa by day. The water and the beaches itself are really clean – especially compared to the beaches in Cadiz. Even the area around the port – where it is possible to go to Tanger in 35 minutes – looks nice.

You can see both Marocco and Tarifa.

We don't know who is living there behind.

The Tarifeans don't want you to shit on their beaches.

On our last evening we wanted to eat some NICE food and so we did it in a bar/restaurant which we found the evening before. There you could see nice looking young girls grilling steaks over a charcoal grill. Isn’t this great? It was 1000% better than Maredo (German steak house company) and also cheaper: believe me (and you can’t see nice looking young girls at Maredo as well).

Mjam

Mjam II

Even on our last day before we were going further to Granada we got to know nice people. First of all Miguel who is a diving teacher and offered us a course for the both of us for 140 € for 4 days. Unfortunately we didn’t had the time for this because due to the strong wind the course couldn’t start at the same day. But he was real nice anyway. He even came to the hostal just to speak to us in person about it. After that we got to get some breakfast at a bar which is called Trastorno (Disorder) and subtitled coffee and culture or crea zone. We had a nice breakfast with coffee, tostada con tomatito and egg for 3.5 € each and also a nice talk with a girl who worked in our hostal and seems to be there regulary. She told us that the hostal Las Margaritas has an offer for around 350 € including 3 days sleep, breakfast and a kite surfing course. We’ll get in contact with her soon and I will ask her about the details again.

Breakfest

Crea Zone

Could be the brother of Laika

He cooks eggs!

At last we tried to give an impression how windy it was in Tarifa. Maybe you can’t see it so good on the photo, but believe us: the wind is strong!

Tarifa just rocks!!!

We’ll definitely come back to Tarifa sometimes. It’s real worth it

..what is there to tell about Cadiz? To be honest, not too much. When there is no Carnaval, the city is nice and quiete. Perfect to do a walk through the parks (with humongous, old trees to sit on)

, to enjoy the atlantic ocean view (well, if you’re not afraid to fall into the sea –>see Tobi leaning against the stone wall to avoid sea view and resulting ’shitting in the pants’;)

.

Also, like in almost all places in Andalusia, you can sit in confortable bars, sip the light spanish beer and eat cheap tapas.

Today we arrived at Javea, a beautiful town located between Alicante and Valencia. We’ve had the chance to grab a nice hotel called „Marina“ which has a nice offer going on now (30Eu/2-bed-room). The price is quite nice considering the fact that you have perfect sea view. So when you get up in the morning and step out the balcony, the first thing that you see is a beautiful beach and a lightblue-shimmering sea as well as palm trees so that you can’t help it but feeling on vacation

One thing might for some people quite disturbing, that is that the „beach sand“ isn’t sand but pure, but amazingly beautiful, stones of all imaginable sizes. The seawater has formed them over the years so that they are all nicely smooth. (another advantage of a „stone beach“ is that it is much cleaner than a „sand beach“ since dogs don’t like the rather unconfortable, stony feeling on their paws while shitting ->so they don’t shit!!;)

Barely 5 minutes after I started from a really clouded Palma de Mallorca with my connection flight to Sevilla I saw the nice weather i would have in spain 8-). After lots of rainy days in spain I chose just the right day to arrive in Sevilla/Cordoba.

It was ridiculously easy to get from Sevilla airport to the Sixt car rental station and from there to Cordoba (since the station is right at the highway to it) and I had a nice drive getting there.

Cordoba is nice and full of people. I don’t like the cars that much but when you are in the center you don’t notice them. This means we had some nice two days in Cordoba making party and drinking lots of cervecitas 8-).

After Cordoba we got back to Sevilla; couch surfing at (in, by, with??) the Pelotas Club. It was just funny and I’m sure I would have liked it to join them on their carneval trip to Cadiz 8-).

We also made some pictures which I will add later, when I have a better internet connection than right now.

UPDATE:

The Sevillans care about the econimic crisis

Update (uke):

Sevilla is a pretty nice city. Unfortunately, we just had one night in Sevilla (we wanted to go on with the trip the next day), but the Pelotas Club, namely Antonio and Ramiro (also Nicola is a ‘member of the Pelotas Club’, but we just got to see him in the evening for a short period of time) made our stay perfect.

So we got to see the Cathedral with the tomb of Christopher Columbus,

tombstone of Christopher Columbus

the beautiful city with its white buildings, nice bars and horse carriages..

the nice view over the city…

the Plaza España with all the provinces, including the most important one: CORDOBA!!

..and we also got to party in the Blues Bar..

So, all in all: a real nice trip! Thanks Pelotas Club!