My last week on the road has been spent traversing the nation of Spain. While I usually can dedicate an entire blog post to a single city, my time in Spain has whirl winded past and with no single city really leaving a significant enough mark: I’m going to a brief review of the entire nation in one post.

Barcelona:
Our first Spanish port of call was the port town of Barcelona. Barcelona feels somewhat like a stone wrought hedge maze, narrow roads lined with four or five storied tenements carve a thin line of sky above us to light our way. When not scurrying though the stone labyrinth, you will either find yourself on La Rambla, the busy open market place or the rather stylish Marina. The recently established Marina stands in contrast to the old city by being lined with fancy modern buildings and ultra-chic, somewhat bizarre modern art.

Barcelona carries a reputation of being one of Europe’s biggest party cities, located deep in the Mediterranean it’s hot and brimming with shops, pubs and clubs, spilling into the streets and staying open way into the wee’ hours of the morning. While such things bring the tourists over by the bucket load, Alyce and I dismissed most of this in favour chasing culture, cuisine and history. Thankfully Barcelona, has enough of these things to keep us occupied for a few days too. One unique piece of Barcelona was a bizarre parkland named Park Guell, designed by visionary (some might argue mad or over-rated) architect Gaudi. Another definite highlight of our stay was taking a Spanish cooking class where we prepared and ate plenty generous servings of Sangria, Tappas and Paella, much decadence occurred that night.

Valencia:
Next stop was the large but much quieter city of Valencia; The historic birthplace of Spain’s national dish: Paella. While our hostel was located quite near a traditional bull fighting ring (currently hosting an Oktoberfest event) and various old forts, city gates and churches, the heart of Valencia is surprisingly contemporary. Valencia once had a large river running through the middle, but generations ago it flooded, so the officials had it drained and in the space where the river ran, they have now inserted a beautiful green park. This huge streak of greenery cuts right through the centre of the city providing an excellent retreat from the everyday busyness. One of Valencia’s most spectacular sites is the museum district, down in the park. Stepping into the museum quarter feels like a step into a future depicted in comic books and science fiction movies: giant crisp white rings and obelisks dance around glass formed buildings as turquoise waters provide a Xen-like calm, seriously it’s like the space ship from Wall-E.

Madrid:
Finally we made our way to Spain’s capital city. Madrid, to me felt a bit like a busy version of Canberra, sure it’s an important place but it’s not really the most spectacular place in the country. Madrid has the same maze-like quality of Barcelona, broken up with a few large plazas, but with construction running rampant city wide and a much denser population, I found it very hard to relax in Madrid. Another point that irked me somewhat was everything costed a little more than I really wanted to pay in this city. Between the language barrier and some tricky business practices like surcharges per person, per item ordered, per table used and paying (and seeing prices) after you’ve finished, Madrid is loaded with nasty tourist traps.

However despite minor annoyances, we did have some fun in Madrid. The city is loaded with beautiful and ornate architecture and we eventually discovered the central park, which was thankfully very green and peaceful. While in the park we hired a row boat, paddled across the pond and chilled out in the sun listening to buskers. Eventually, however, Madrid’s lack of excitement drove us into a bout of boredom, so we hit the movies to see the new Tarintino flick, known here in Spain as Malditos Bastardos.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 3:29 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.