¡Madrid! (parte uno)

I heart this city so massively it's not even funny: the people, the tapas, the views, the bars, the five am party culture. I don't even need to 'do' things in the city, just walking around fills me with happiness and love. Madrid gets me. I get Madrid.

Five years ago, I headed there for a post-edinburgh-study-abroad celebration. It was Christmas, I was in a relationship, It was magical. Five years later, things were very different, but that didn't stop the magic.

After our four-hour flight delay, Anita, Natasha and I arrived into central Madrid around 11pm on the 19th of August. Our hotel was right in the centre of the action, a 30-second walk from the Plaza del Sol. We were exhausted and thus sussed out rather trashy american food and then fell asleep. But we hit the ground running the next day:


the bear where all roads in Spain are measured from. so, technically, this is the centre of the spanish universe

in the Plaza Mayor
more Plaza Mayor

this 'deer' had a pullout comparment in its flank where the rather odd man pulled out things to decorate it with
as a vegetarian, i can still appreciate the vast beauty that is meat-filled window displays


Due to various planning snafus and train schedules, we only stayed in Madrid for 1.5 days. But we made the most of it and got our tourist on on one of those hop-on-hop-off red buses. We also enjoyed the greatness that is El Corte Ingles, where we picked up one euro wine in a juice carton and vey cheap bubbly, which we consumed in our very cheap (cheaper than a hostel) hotel room before spending a night out on the tiles.


Details of our night out are scant. All I remember is a tapas bar with wine barrels as tables, beautiful gambas con ajillo in another place and dancing to Ricky Martin's 'The Cup of Life', to which I know all the words in Spanish, with a group of rather camp Spanish men gyrating their hips to the music. That, and stumbling home sans Anita at 4:30am, asking Spanish policemen for directions in Spanish (my language improves with my alcohol intake) and finding Anita sprawled out across three beds when we got back to the hotel.

Fun night.
Rough morning.

Terminal 4 First Class Lounge

This moment warrants its own blog post. i sit in the borgeious delight that is The First Class Lounge in Heathrow Aiport Terminal 4. My mother has a way with words, and I can only thank her for this experience.

Pictures would not, could not, describe its lavish opulence.
Words hardly do it justice.

There are video games and squishy leather chairs. The toilets have seat warmers. The breakfast food, breakfast beverages, breakfast cocktails are free, FREE. and they're tasty, not your run of the mill economy class stylie stuff.

So the silver lining in a three-day-heathrow-airport-doesn't-know-how-to-deal-with-the-snow-delay is this...
First Class, aahhhhoooeee. (angels were singing just there).

Detroit this afternoon, hopefully!

Croatia: The End

We spent one final morning, and afternoon, hiding around Hvar before catching the catamaran back to Korcula. We parted with Matt and Rosa, who headed off to Plitvice and Croatia's other inland national parks.
Devito and Schwarzenneger in 'Twins' comes to mind
climbing and viewing Hvar from the top of the monastery



In Korcula we made friends straight off the ferry with a rather spry senior citizen called Ante, who put us up in his beautifully viewed house just outside of the old town. Sadly, the room was infested with ants, which seems rather punningly appropriate considering our proprietor. This guy: also tried to break for freedom into our spacious triple room.
the view from Ante's

We spent one final day basking on Croatia's only sandy beach and then left Natasha to seek out the vineyards of south Korcula. This was not in vain; we made friends with another spry, old Croatian man who made us taste, for free, the vineyard's many 10, 20 and 30 proof dessert wines. Considering we communicated in broken German, this was no small feat.
Vineyard and the view from:


grapes!




We ended our stay in Croatia with a bus ride back into Dubrovnik, a four-hour delay in the world's third smallest airport and a series of bad sandwiches. I managed to impress Natasha and Anita with my srappy American fighting to make my way on a public bus antics--for this, I am proud to be an American. This year's Croatia trip was very different to last year's, and I think I would recommend Northern Croatia to southern, if only in terms of the level of quietude i experienced. Again, i was impressed with the food, level of beauty and hospitality of the people we met along the way.

Croatia--thirty thumbs up!

Brac

For probably obvious reasons, the five of us headed (some more hungoverly than others) on a day excursion to the Island of Brac, pronounced Brahtch. It boasts to have Croatia's most photographed beach, called Zlatni Rat. We shared the two-hour boat ride there with several snoggy holidayish couples, a Croatian lunch and some dolphins jumping just meters away.
Zlatni Rat (seeing as i don't own a chopper, aerial imagery courtesy of google images)

From faraway the beach looks sandy. But close up...
Rocks!

We sunlounged, we swam in rather cold water and got carried away by the waves, we ate ice cream. And that's about it.

Croatian grocery stores

the boat back into Hvar

And then we danced at Hula Hula, ate at Dalmatina and had run ins of the Italian and American kinds. They involve me yelling at self-important, xenophobic strangers on the street, and they are not necessarily blog appropriate. All I will say is that we spent the next day hiding under hats and sunglasses rocking the incognito look. Leaving Hvar could not happen fast enough...

Hvar (and Palmizana)

Hvar is not classy. It boasts about its yachts, snobs and impossibly expensive, well, everything. Honey, money don't buy class.

But we'll get to that later.

We took a catamaran from Korcula over to Hvar arriving early, early in the mid-August morning. Straight off the boat, Rosa managed to stalk a paranoid Croatian granny who happened to have space for five in her guesthouse. She asked if we were Australian, we (sort of lied) and said no. She wearily smiled and led us to her accomodation complete with air conditioning, my own single room and a balcony with views of the centre of town and the sea.

We paid for three nights and set out to wander.

Which is kind of where it all went wrong. And i'm not quite certain why, but things started to un-gel. We either felt ill, or sun weary or hungry or thirsty, and we all started to get separate ideas about what Hvar should be. This is probably how we all ended up on a taxiboat to Palmizana, a small island on the Elafiti chain just off the coast of Hvar.

We were promised sandy beaches, quietude and ample lounging space.
We got baking hot rocks, condoms in the water and a menacing colour changing octopus occupying the cratered shallows. Oh, and one Italian playboy bunny-type bathing in her g string with her nips out flipping her coarse hair extensions emphatically at her rather 'enthusiastic' moustached manfriend . I realise that I sound rather old lady here, but i promise you, it was not something you'd want to witness within close range.

The mood was bad.

We headed back to Hvar three hours later to find it filled with i'm-too-good-for-you, collar popping, yacht owning, i smell like i bathed in cologne instead of spritzing it a-holes. And Italians. Drunk ones. We persisted and had dinner at the lovely, lovely Dalmatina, where our waiter, Denis charmed the money right out of us. (a beautiful concoction of courgette, parmesan and pine nuts bathed in an oiled heaven)

Then we went to rub elbows with the richy rich wannabees and their silicone breasted companions. No alcohol is enough to improve this situation. I went home, blearly eyed, a couple of hours later, leaving the partying to Rosa, Matt and Natasha.

And that's day one in Hvar.

Korcula

On days three and four of the Great Croatian Adventure, I got in an argument with a Croatian waiter about losing my most favouritist hat, developed a wicked case of conjunctivitis and almost fell down a ladder.

So hatless, glassed and with knee pains, we visited the Island of Korcula, a queit respite between the bookends of Dubrovnik and Hvar. Korcula is known for its atypically sandy beach, plentiful local wine and the bar in a turret up a ladder. Our first glimpses did not disappoint:
The Old Town was built just before Venetian (or Roman) occupation and is designed like a fish skeleton to protect and harness the wind blowing from all sides of the sea. Ingenius! (and pretty cool looking).



Due to various snafus in ferry schedules, we ended up spending three and a halfish days on the island, but oddly. Two days on the way to Hvar, one point five days on the way back from Hvar. So we stayed in two different places but stuck to seeing pretty much the same things.

I've never travelled for three weeks in one fell swoop, and at 13 days in, all I wanted was a beach. so we beached ourselves here:

sandwiched behind these:


Then we cocktailed. In a turret. At night. Where we had to climb a fireman's ladder that the picture doesn't show. In dresses.

and some of this was involved:
at roughly £5 for a litre bottle, we were pretty happy to soak up tourists and bad accordian busking in the centre of town

Other scattered images of two days of rest...




up next, the impending hedonism of hvar...

Dubrovnik (dia dos)

In a perfect world, the internet would work and i'd like my job. But I live in London so we'll settle for what we can get. My ex-housemate and travel buddy actually commented on this situation recently. She's working in Pakistan now where her internet connection is better. Stand proud London, stand proud.

But I digress. The point of my bitter quips is that the rest of Summer 2010, half term(s) May and October 2010 probably won't happen till i hit michiganland at christmas in three weeks. But at this point and in a few weeks, I suppose it will still be nice to reminisce about summer Jennifer, that rare unstressed creature smelling faintly of sunscreen and hope.

So Dubrovnik.

We started by fighting our way through the bodies on Banja Beach. that wasn't fun. we wanted to have fun. so we got on a boat to an 'isolated island'. Liars.

south side of the harbour (i could totally be making up the south part of this caption, but it sounds good, doesn't it?)

some hidden cove on the island of Lokrum, a 40 kuna swindle of a boat ride away from Dubrovnik

they say no photos but they don't really mean it

After getting delightfully lost on this little island, we motored back to maniacville for a three-hour-tour of the city walls. This is where Dubrovnik shines. There were still a million people, but it somehow didn't seem to matter.

perhaps the prettiest views ever

the isle of Lokrum with its nudist colony from the city walls







my classy travel buddies (two brits, an australian and an american...With the power of these nationalities combined we could've annoyed entire busloads of europeans. And yet, we didn't. And we actually didn't kill each other. well, until Hvar, at least.)

I think the highlight was brilliant, cheap seafood and wine at Lokanda Peskarija right on the cove. Fresh squid, prawns, smelt and mussels for pre-war prices. ah, local recommendations always win out in the end.

But I stick with my initial impressions of this city. Tres beautiful. Tres far too many people.