messiestobjects: More Travel Chanties: Oh Sevilla, Barcelona, Alhaaaaambra, España! You Were Fun But Now It's Over, Dreadful Sorry, Clementine.

We took a night train from Lisbon to Madrid. I've been on night trains in Europe before, and once from Cairo to Aswan, Egypt, and they are awesome. You get a bunk bed room with a sink. You hang out, drink some wine or whatever, pass out. Then you wake up at your destination well rested and ready to sightsee. For some reason, the Lisbon to Madrid night train wasn't so restful. I mean, we did everything right; we had a private room and a bottle of genuine Porto bottled Port Wine. (Which we learned was invented by the British in the Portugese city of Porto. They didn't like Portugese wine, so they mixed it with Brandy and voila!) Maybe I'm just getting... well certainly not older. I'm the same age I always was. Maybe just out of practice.

At any rate, all we saw in Madrid were train stations as we attempted to find a way down to Seville. They don't make it easy, the damn Spaniards. But we made it, and spent a night. We didn't like the tapas, but the old Cathedral that looks a bit like a mosque in the last two pictures was pretty. We opted not to pay the overpriced entrance fee to check out the interior, however. How's that for hard-hitting travel journalism?

This was a museum which we also didn't go in to, but I dig the lion device over the archway. Hey, we were still a bit jet and train-lagged, and we were just glad we had the energy to wander around town at all at this point, ok? So after Seville, we got an early morning train to Granada.

Again, still exhausted, and Granada was extremely stressful and confusing at first. But after hauling our packs onto many buses and over many hills, we finally found what we were looking for, the Alhambra.

To be honest, I'd never heard of the Alhambra before Julie convinced me that we had to go see it if we were going through Spain. I feel a bit confused by that now; it's like never having heard of the Louvre, or the Roman Colliseum. How does that one go under one's radar? Washington Irving lived at the Alhambra for a time and wrote a book of tales about it. And I'll be embarassingly honest once more; at first I was a bit cranky, and did not enjoy walking around it. My excuse? Again, train-lagged and we had hiked over a lot of hills already that day, and the place is HUGE.

But you can't stay cranky for long with these kinds of sights. On the one hand, the place is awe-inspiring. An aggregate of palaces and gardens, constructed by various conquerors of contrasting empires over a period of centuries. On the other hand, my inner proletariat was outraged once again by the excesses of the wealthy at the expense of the subhuman working class.

But at some point you just have to let the rage go and enjoy the views.

Or not, you know. Bitterness is a good frame of reference for the traveler. And either way, it IS beautiful. It's not like I want to visit the shanty towns of South Africa as a sightseer, or even the poorer districts of Granada. Bloody rich people.

If I seem conflicted, it's because I am. You can't walk around this planet without a healthy dose of confliction. I despise the overly wealthy, not because they're wealthy but because they seem to spend their lives and their wealth making sure that the mass of humanity gets screwed, but of course when you travel as an American, one realizes that I am overly wealthy compared to much of the world. Which is kind of sad and makes me even madder. And then I try to put it all out of my mind and just enjoy the trip.

So you know, Travel for the self-loathing! I oughtta work for Carnival or Disney. At any rate, the Alhambra was really wonderful to see. But the best part of the day was dinner. After hiking back down into the main district of Granada, I found a Doner Kebap place! Doner Kebaps are the Turkish version of Gyros and are way awesomer. They are all over Europe, but I have yet to see one in the States which is crazy. You could make a small fortune if you opened a Doner stand. One last view of the Alhambra, and then it's off to Barcelona.

We spent a few days in Barthelona. That's how they pronounce it. It's a really neat city, with loads of the usual city life kinds of things. Nightlife, sidewalk cafes, museums, etc. Our first night there though, we hit the Gaudi stuff.

Gaudi was a religious nut, and judging by his architecture at least partially insane. But you know, that's a good combo for art. They started building the Sagrada Familia cathedral in 1882, and it is still under construction, to be completed in 2026. That's freaking crazy right? But it really is an amazing looking building.

And honestly, it also looks a bit demonic. Like a big church made out of flesh. Maybe that's why I like it.

We also checked out his Casa Mila, which is awesome but I feel like it falls a bit short of his vision. I don't understand why all of the windows aren't desgned the same way as that big one on street level. The webby soap-bubbly like pattern of the door frame is awesome, and the other windows are all just, square.

The next day we hit the Picasso museum, once again at Julie's prompting. And I have to say, it did it's job. I'm a convert, I like Picasso's stuff now. I didn't really care about him much before, though I always thought that his attempts to render the idea of actual three dimensional vision rather than two dimensional representation of the third dimension onto canvas was rather awesomely nerdy, if a bit inherently flawed as a concept. But being in a room full of his weirder stuff is definitely one of the few times in my life where I actually felt wonderfully affected by art, because I'm not normally big on paintings and sculptures and such. But, you're not allowed to take pictures of his paintings, dammit.

We spent a lot of time in Barcelona just walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. I have loads of pictures but they're mostly touristy, so I'll leave off with this one.