Well I sit here again, a darker, redder russet colour about my skin that was not there before. I take this seat, stretch out my fingers and touch the mud of my half-fulfilled dreams.
There is a glass of absinthe at my elbow, a stereo that I am learning to appreciate all over again, and a new line in vigour that took my room to the cleanliness that has been left behind by the passing of my freshly-home enthusiasm.
I’m back.
Allie and I had a conversation last night. I was arguing against viewing the return to work as a return to reality. Our holiday was a break from work, a time when we did different things to what we usually do, but it was real. It was just different. If you draw a line between your work and your holiday, and view one as real and the other as not...as unreal, then you will start to view reality as something that you can escape from, and avoid.
You can’t take a holiday from your life. Everywhere you go, there you are. Still living your life. Just...living a bit of it differently. You can take holidays from things, but I prefer to take holidays to things...places, people, dreams...
...and man, did we have a good time.
I apologise to people I promised postcards to. I take way too long choosing postcards, and by the time that I have any together that I like, I don’t want to part with them. Sorry...
Anyway, we hit Madrid, avoided our pre-booked hovel with the semi-leprous harridan who wanted us to upgrade into her flat’s spare bedroom, and checked into abject luxury after sliding up the Lonely Planet’s pricing scale at alarming speed trying to find a spare room in the city. We did the Prado at Mach 1 as most of it was closed off, Alice had her first taste of tapas and Mojitos, and it has to be said that the Mojitos in Madrid knock spots off the one I had in Manchester.
Funny that.
We met a couple from London who had been clubbing at 4pm on a Sunday, who didn’t know what a Mojito was, so we showed them.
Travelling (only slightly hungover) to Cordoba, we had a great little place by the river and smack bang in the centre of the old town, poised magnificently between the Mezquita, the old Christian Palace and the Juderia, the old Jewish Quarter, packed with tiny lanes and alleys, and unexpected tea shops and museums painted white rising on the banks towards the modern town.
Rolling on down to Granada, my favourite town in Spain, we spectacularly failed to book our Alhambra tickets in advance which meant I had to get up at 6.30 in order to queue for tickets...standing in line in the dark cold with thirty other international crap people, while bats span overhead and a feral cat wandered amiably up the line, savaging everyone who petted it. The Alhambra was swamped with tour groups but we found oases of calm and peace between them. The favourite (or worst) moment, was when we were resting in the beautiful gardens of the Summer Palace, the Generalife. A long thin pool of water bordered by rose bushes was swooped on by red dragonflies, and two lazy fountains welled at each end. A tour group dopplered by on the other side of an immaculate hedge. “THIS PLACE IS VERY SPECIAL HAVEN OF PEACE AND TRANQUILLITY! NOTE PLEASE THE ORDERED GEOMETRY OF THE GARDENS. VERY RELAXING AND QUIET PLACE! FOLLOW PLEASE!”
The next two days were spent in mild panic as I attempted to squeeze as much experience out of the town as possible before it was time to move on. One night in particular makes me smile as I type. I’ll heft out my diary as I wrote about it as soon as we got back, dog-tired, to the flat.
18th September...erm, no. 19th September, Hostal Gamarro Ramos, Granada, 0050ish
We-he-he-he-e-e-ee-e-ell, look where we are. A’stumblin’ through the barrio, after pasta and San Miguel in the Albaycin looking up at the lit Alhambra, with an intense flautist playing classical harmonies, through the basement of an Arab-run café, smoking shisha and drinking Café Turco and Té Jazmin, and to the end of the night with a swift couple of beers at Bar La Hacienda, the only non Granadese there, accompanied by jumping music and free, gorgeous tapas while spontaneous dancing broke out and died down and the lean guys posed for the thin girls and the fat boys talked and ate tapas at the bar, laughing and joking and drinking and chewing with thumping of the bass.
It was my kind of night.
After three nights in Granada, we sight our sights high and wound our way up into the mountain villages of the Sierra Nevada, Las Alpujarras. Our chosen place of hostelry was a walker’s hostel built to house labouring families during the Civil War, surrounded by gardens, and no road access...a goat path led off the main road (‘main’ is a bit of a misnomer). It was gorgeous, silent and the mountain stars were jaw-dropping, but on our final night in the place’s only double room, we were kept awake by myriad entities chewing crunchily through our roof. Distressing.
A 6.15am bus out of the mountains began our trek down from 1250m to approximately –1m, as we dived from the pastoral delights of the Sierra Nevada to the neon, chips and beaches of the Costa del Sol, and hit the beach twenty minutes after hitting Nerja. The next four days were spent sunbathing, reading and swimming, teaching Allie to snorkel, and attempting to coax a smile out of the girl who worked mid-morning shifts at a bakery near our hostel, where the service was short but the coffee and croissant breakfasts were to stab viciously for.
We flew out of Malaga at 2.20am on Saturday morning, and slept, after arriving home at 6am, until 1pm.
I have a diary which I kept up quite well until we reached the beach, but hey, there wouldn't be much point now...
Hello there again!
Leave a comment