The travelling bug’s got me, and while unfortunate for my wallet (who needs money anyways, right?), I have another 2 months left of stories to make. To me, that means two months of exploring the weird and wonderful of the world, and saying yes when a friendly Turkish man offers fried sardines during my pre-breakfast grocery shop. In fact, I’m sitting at the airport right now waiting to get on a flight to Amsterdam, visiting a friend I met in Naples 2 years ago. A week today I’ll be in Dublin.
Not bad eh? Note that I don’t really know anyone nor know much about Ireland, but I like beer and red hair – my intuition says it’ll work out. Hopefully I can chase down a good Irish coffee and Guinness…or four.
My latest adventure had me in the south of Spain in Seville and a small Portuguese town called Faro before heading back home. Although it was only a week, it was great to check out this crazy Catholic festival called Semana Santa and have some relaxation time on Faro’s beach.
Getting to Seville was fun in itself. I used a ride sharing site called blablacar (huge in Europe), where people going to places say they have open seats and you chip in a couple bucks. I found this Spanish guy Jesus who seemed to be going my way, and booked the trip with him.
Unfortunately, the Mercedes he said he had on the site was a van (no Benz for this trip) and he was running some sort of illegal shuttle service, cramming 6 other blablacar-ers into the back of his Vito. This is only a hypothesis, as Jesus spoke no English or Portuguese. Great guy otherwise though.
Once in Seville, I thought that my google maps’d 5 minute walk to the hostel would be fairly straightforward. However, the city was flooded with crowds, and the walk quickly surpassed the better part of an hour. Semana Santa AKA Holy Week is when residents dress up like the KKK and praise Jesus by walking around with these huge, heavy floats on their backs until the deep hours of the night.
That’s a fun mouthful.
I’m also not even exaggerating! Thousands of people block up Seville’s already corridor-like streets to watch these processions and make it near impossible to move. Surprisingly, it doesn’t make it easier with a huge 30lb backpack.
The rest of Seville was really nice too, between the Alcazar’s beautiful gardens (and where Game of Thrones’ Dorne was shot) and the gorgeous Spanish palace. Although it was fun watching the Catholics confused faces after telling them I’m Jewish, I’d had enough of the festival after 3 days and grabbed another blablacar to Faro.
Hanging out on the beach and playing guitar all day was exactly what I needed. Faro’s a sleepy little town, with not too much going on. They had some great live music I scoped out, and my favourite: good food and cheap booze. I also finally found hot sauce that makes up for my estranged love affair with Sriracha.
Although there was a whole lot of nothing, sometimes, that’s everything you need.
That’s it for now. As always, lots of love from this side of the world.
Zev
