Moderate Swell

Here's how the phrase "moderate swell" particularly applies to me:
1) The Atlantic Ocean currently has "moderate swell" conditions meaning the ship is rising and falling in unbroken waves of moderate height. "Moderate" in seaman's terms I think means "a lot."
2) My throat currently has the condition of moderate swell(ing). I just thought I'd squeeze in one more disease before we're done and decided to go for strep throat this time.
3) My emotions are in a moderate swell. Happy to be on my way home, sad to be leaving the ship, happy to see all my friends at home, sad to be leaving my friends from SAS, happy I don't have to be preparing for another port, sad that I'm not going to be preparing for another port.
4) Moderate swell as in to bulge out slightly, as in my stomach after five days of awesome Spanish food.

So Spain. It was great. Terrific port to finish with in my opinion. It was easy to make of it what you wanted. Some people wanted to party and stay up late, it's a great place for that. Some people wanted to just relax and stay near the ship, it was good for that too. Some people wanted to squeeze in more culture and beauty, perfect place. The weather was great except for rain one day. And guess what! I can speak Spanish! Used to be if you asked me if I could speak Spanish I'd say "No way, Jose." But turns out I can. At least compared to most ports where I spoke the language at about what a 8 month old can speak, Hello, Bye-Bye, Thank You. In Spain I can say "Donde esta la farmacia?" And people tell me where the farmacia is and I understand. I can say "Un otro mas por favor," and I get another beer. I can ask for ham and soap... jamon y jabon. I speak Spanish at least at the level of a 2 or 3 year old and that difference means the difference between getting laughed at, and getting laughed at and also getting what you want. There's no peeing in the streets when your with Erika Day, because she can ask for a bathroom and tell you if your a caballero or a damas. Want a table by the window? "Yo quiero un mesa circa la fenetra." Ta Da. It was really like discovering I have some sort of super hero skill. If I had had that level of fluency in every country it would have been a completely different trip.

My friend Marc and I took to the highways. We decided to rent a car rather than be at the mercy of trains and busses (or SAS trips). We ended up with this cool hatchback Citroen Picasso. It was a standard, which I can't drive, so I just got to look at the scenery and navigate. We picked up the car about 1:00pm on Thursday, that was after waiting around in the rental place for an hour for them to finish our reservation and get our car. Then we headed out to Granada.

The scenery on the way was out of this world. Gorgeous green mountains and olive trees as far as the eye could see. Giant modern villas, and tiny farms, and castle ruins. The drive was about 4 hours or so, which was kind of longer than we were expecting, but not too bad. The map I had for Granada was really inadequate so we struggled trying to figure out where we should go to look for a hotel, but ended up settling on a place right by the Alhambra with free parking on the street in front. The hotel was just what you'd want from Spain, lots of wood, lots of red, winding stairways. If you're ever looking for a hotel in Granada I'd highly recommend the Hotel Guadalupe. They have a dining room on the second floor where we ate dinner. I had paella and fried calamari, paella was delicious and calamari was the best I've ever had, tender and flavorful.

The next day we went to the Alhambra first thing in the morning. The Alhambra is a giant Moorish palace complex, including a fort and a little town and exquisite room after exquisite room. Most of the rooms open to courtyards and gardens, and the whole thing sits on top of a hill overlooking Granada so everywhere you look is an amazing view. We wandered around there for a few hours, but one could easily spend a day or even two if you wanted to look at everything. The winding paths and pretty gardens kind of gave me the feeling of going to a zoo. Something weird about Granada is that everywhere you go there's some reference to Washington Irving. There's a Washington Irving hotel, and street, and cafes. I didn't know this at all, but Washington Irving lived at the Alhambra for awhile and wrote a book, "Tales of the Alhambra" and for this he's probably more famous in Granada than anywhere in the US.

We left about 12:00 or so to go find lunch. But the thing about Spain is people eat really late. Wanting to eat lunch at 12:00 would be the equivalent of wanting to eat at 9:00AM in the US. You certainly can't find anything open until 1:30 or so and then it doesn't really get hopping until 3:00 or 4:00. But considering they don't have dinner until 9:00PM or 10:00PM they have to eat a late lunch. Also, you might as well eat a late lunch and take your sweet time at it, because things close between 1:30 and 5:00. The guidebook said that people weren't taking naps during this time, but come on, what else could they possibly be doing? Watching TV? Playing soccer? I think that some of them at least are taking naps. They didn't even get done with dinner until midnight, they must be napping. I'm not making any kind of judgement at all on this, in fact I think I'd probably really like that schedule, but if your tummy is telling you it's time to eat at noon 1:30 is a long ways a way. Fortunately we found a little pub that was open, because 12:00 is not too early for beer. They served us garlic soup (delicious) and I had sauteed ham and mushrooms (delicious). After lunch we went back to the hotel and took naps.

In the afternoon we walked down the hill (the Alhambra hill) and went to the main part of the old city. There was much more hustle and bustle there, than up where we were. Lots of touristy shops and cafes, but all in really fantastic gothic buildings. The cathedral was first on the agenda, and we went to the cathedral chapel first which had the most vivd alter piece I'd ever seen. It depicted tales from the bible and one tale was the beheading of John the Baptist, the second that it happened. The executioner is holding his head in one hand and the sword in the other and poor John is still kneeling there headless showing us an anatomically correct bisection of his neck, complete with gaping esophagus. The big attraction in the chapel though is that this is the burial place of Ferdinand and Isabel. THE
Ferdinand and Isabel. They're buried in a little chamber underneath and in front of the alter, and they have a few steps you can walk down and see their caskets, which are just very plain cast iron. The cathedral itself is very different. It's a huge Renaissance building, and very light and airy and refreshing to be in, and in the sacristy is Isabel's personal collection of Flemish art.

After the cathedral we walked straight up a very steep hill, to go find the troglodyte quarter in Granada. Troglodytes in this sense refer to people who live in homes that are carved out of the hills around Granada. I think we were both hoping for something a little more Lord of the Rings than what we found, which was just cute little homes that look more like they were right up against a hill than were actually in the hill itself. Though we did spot a couple of places where it was more like a grassy regular little hill but with a big wooden door in it. This area also has a really cool sounding name "Sacremonte."

We were hungry at 6:00 or so, so ended up in another pub that was smart enough to be open to serve the starving Brits and Americans. We ended up with a giant platter of meats and cheeses and bread and we were very happy.

The next day after a great breakfast of meats, cheeses and bread at the hotel we got an early-ish start and jumped in the Picasso and headed for Ronda. One of the professors on the trip made it sound like Ronda was a quaint little Medieval town that at some point in its history had been ripped in two by an earthquake, and that the town still thrived teetering on either side of this big rent. Not quite. It is a medieval town and it does have a big gorge through the middle of town, but I would say the reason for the gorge was the river that was running along the bottom. It
also wasn't this vast bottomless (Lord of the Rings) tear in the earth. It was just a good, pretty deep gorge. At any rate, the town was really pretty and the gorge was cool and we had a great lunch at a restaurant right on the edge of the gorge. I had a bird liver puff pastry. Yum. After lunch we got back in the car and headed for Sevilla. We got in to town just as it was starting to get dark and ended up having a pretty nerve wracking hour of driving around in these teeny tiny windy little streets looking for a hotel with parking. But considering how awry that could have gone it actually was pretty easy and went smoothly. We stayed at the Hotel Europa which was just right downtown, and I had a cool room with marble floors and big wooden shutters over the floor to ceiling windows.

That evening we walked over to where we read in the guidebook was a theater that had subtitled movies rather than dubbed, and we had the option of seeing Scoop or something about Goya. We went for Scoop because it was starting earlier than the other. It was pretty silly, I thought, but not silly good like Purple Rose of Cairo.

The next morning another early start and a trip to Starbucks for my first Gingerbread Latte of the season. Then we went to the Alcazar. I would defy anyone to visit the Alhambra and the Alcazar in such close succession and keep them straight in the mind. The Alcazar is another former Moorish palace, lovely gardens, awesome tile work and ornate carvings. The two coolest things about the Alcazar was 1) running into Larry Silver and his wife in the tapestry room. Larry is the art historian on the ship and his wife is a weaver. We learned A LOT about those tapestries, and one of them had a greyhound depicted. 2) they had a exhibit about these young men who recently recreated Magellan's trip around the world in a ship that was similar to the one he used. Watching the video of the their trip and seeing all of their photos and memorabilia on display, seeing their ship docked right where ours was in Hong Kong harbor, well it was kind of moving. It gave me this sense of really having been part of something momentous and historic.

After the Alcazar we walked to where the Fabrica de Tabacos is. At one time this was the second largest building in Spain and the largest employer. Also this is where the opera Carmen was set. How cool is that? Unfortunately you can't go into the building, it belongs to the University, but it was gated off. Then we walked and walked and walked to see the Plaza de Espana which was part of a World's Fair type thing, I was pretty exhausted and starving at this point so I don't think I truly appreciated it. But then we had actually waited long enough for lunch and had no trouble finding places open. We ended up at a cafe and I ordered something that turned out to be little pieces of cod between two thin slices of fried eggplant. Odd, but delicious. After lunch we saw the cathedral, which is probably the
grandest, most ornate, impressive building I've ever seen. It was dimly lit and cold and foreboding, but splendid beyond imagination. I would have liked to have visited it earlier in the day and earlier in the trip so I would have been fresh to examine every nook and cranny. If you only see one cathedral in your life, this might be the one.

Then in the evening we headed on back to Cadiz. The next day was exploring Cadiz and getting one last crack at some shopping. Trying not to dwell on the finality of everything. There was an enormous line of people trying to get back on the ship at 15 minutes to on ship time. I bet 50 people got dock time for being late on the ship.

The atmosphere on the ship now is subdued. A week from today is our last day at sea.