Hablos Ingles ? ( Do you speak English ?) - - - This is the foremost question I have asked numerous times while in Spain. :)) Of course you all know English, so I can go ahead. lol :)
Whenever we travel, I always used to think that I need to write all those interesting facts in my blog. But it never did happen! So chances are more that I might have forgotten many things when writing a past experience.
We started our 10 days trip to Southern Spain (Andalucia) during Christmas holidays when Britain was suffering from terrible winter. We were in for a surprise with a pleasant weather and the city & crowd of Malaga welcoming us even at night 11.30 pm.
As it was Christmas time,the streets were full of lights, decorations and surprisingly People!!! Even 7 -12 year old kids were playing on streets at midnight. If you want a true Spanish experience I reckon Andalusia region. Only a handful of people can speak English and our taxi driver said he knew little English. He could say only kms, numbers, money and YES or NO!! Perhaps he was right when he said that, knew only what was needed to him. :)
I had rehearsed a lot of Spanish words as a precaution and even downloaded many Spanish dictionaries and translators onto our itouch. All these homework because we knew we might travel to Spain more than once and glad we did it. Most challenging was to identify vegetal food in the menu!! Gracias (thanks) to iTouch for translation, without which we would have surely ended up in eating Tuna or Sausages! By the end of the trip we knew most of the Spanish food names. Like. Azucar, Sol,fretos,Pimiento,Acita,Hueva,Pollo,Jamon,Aten etc..
We were warned before by many friends and on-line forums about non-availability of `vegetal` food in Spain. Fortunately we could locate a Kabab shop which had 2 veg options- Falafel & Patata Bravas (which became our only choice for most of the remaining days there).
Spain is known for Bull Fighting and Flamenco dances. Tennis is their favourite sport;no wonder why most top 100 tennis players are Spanish. Orange like fruit trees are seen everywhere.
One strange thing that we noticed is the timings to eat.
Breakfast :8 - 12 pm! (Even 1pm in some restaurants)
Lunch: 1 - 4/5 pm!!! Dinner: 8-12pm!
We then travelled to Granada, Sierra Navada - snowy mountains, Seville-big city famous for beautiful cathedrals & monuments and Estepona. On a rainy Christmas day we had nothing to do except to roam around Granada (walked for almost 6-7 hrs), because only on this day that the whole country shuts down except a few restaurants.
It would not be fair if I don't mention a stranger who helped us to the max in Seville while we were struggling to find the way to hotel. (Google Map was not right). He took me to a pub to ask if someone else knew the address as he was not aware. We started walking as per their suggestion which was actually wrong way. The stranger after knowing the right way, he followed us in his car and dropped us all the way to hotel. I asked his e-mail address, but it's a pity that I could not make him understand even that in Spanish. :(
The Mediterranean coast is an absolute beauty! Loved the beaches in Malaga, Estepona and the Marbella coast. In Spanish 'll' is pronounced 'yy'. (Like Marbeyya).
Spain, I would say is like a 'developed' India. Resembles our country in many aspects like late closure of shops,shut down in the afternoon for 2 hrs, tiled roof for the houses,informal gatherings,lively folks talking to even strangers in bus & trains, hanging of clothes in the balcony,black (long) hair, small shopping streets like Bangalore's Chickpet and also very similar weather. Famous 'Alhambra' is in Moorish style which represents our Taj Mahal.
Vale Vale.... So many lines keyed down already. Let me stop here. I will write about my 2nd trip to Spain (Barcelona) which is completely different city, in another post.
Adieos
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