The Pilgrims’ Progress Pt2: On Belief and Robbie Williams

I’m not saying our hotel is unique, but we’ve certainly never come across anything like it. As well as accommodation, the premises offer a clay pigeon shooting range and a go-kart track. It seems an unlikely combination aimed at a very specific clientele. There’s not a sign of any other building for miles around; even the closest pub is a 15-minute drive, which may well be an English record. For a modern business hotel, it could hardly be less well situated. Even so, we struggle to get a room, partly because we’re in Dorset in the high season and there are no rooms available at anything like a reasonable price anywhere else in the county, but also – and I like to think this is the clincher – because a Take That tribute band is playing here the following night.

We’re not looking for fake Robbie Williamses, we’re just glad to have secured somewhere that is clean, spacious and well appointed. After the day we’ve had, we need a lie down.

It starts in the gently peeling seaside resort of Worthing, chosen entirely for reasons related to Oscar Wilde. But soon we are on the road: next stop, Chichester Cathedral.

More than anywhere on our trip, Chichester Cathedral feels like a modern, relevant church in touch with the community. Which is not to say there’s a lack of awe. It is, after all, a bloody great stone structure built in the 11^th century; one of the stained glass windows was designed by Chagall; and there’s an astonishing tapestry that was commissioned in the 1980s.

Chichester Cathedral stained glass window designed by Marc Chagall. Image by Arjen Bax

But there’s also a kids’ school holiday activity going on in a room next to where the cathedral keeps its treasures; and at one point a fully cassocked man takes to the pulpit and addresses the visitors. He explains that he is about to pray, and that he’d like us all to share in it. If we are not believers, he says, just pause for a minute to reflect: on family or friends, or perhaps upon the everyday things for which we should give thanks but never do. As the prayer echoes through the building, I wonder what, as a non-believer, I’m missing out on. It’s moving enough for an agnostic; I can’t imagine what it must be like for Christians.

Our next stop, Salisbury Cathedral, is more austere, a sombre place, less homely than Chichester. That’s fitting, because it houses an original copy of the Magna Carta, the founding legal document of Britain, and therefore the founding legal document of most English-speaking countries, including ours. It’s the reason we and dozens of others are in Salisbury. The Magna Carta is short – just a single, one-sided sheet of paper – and housed in a locked, darkened cabinet. It’s almost disappointing to discover it doesn’t glow, illuminated by its own importance, but it’s a privilege to see it none the less.

Salisbury Cathedral photographed by Bjoern Eisbaer. The scaffolding has been up since 1986 but will come down for Magna Carta’s 800th birthday, which is celebrated in 2015

By now it’s getting on for 4:30pm and we’re tired after a long day on the road. We’re about 90 minutes from Stonehenge and at this point it feels too much of a hike. It’s only a bunch of stones (the giveaway is in the name), and we’ve seen numerous pictures of it. Here’s a tip: even if you’re tired, whether or not you’ve seen numerous pictures, heck, even if there’s a Take That tribute band awaiting you, you have to visit Stonehenge.

During our trip, people told us you can no longer get anywhere near the stone circle. Not so. It’s true that a rope fence means that these days you can’t walk among the stones or touch them, but you’re never more than about 10 metres away. In an era of selfie sticks, and on a holiday we’ve often had to experience through other people’s iPad screens, it’s a relief to have some breathing space. Which is just as well, because Stonehenge takes that breath away. We get lucky with the weather (is it luck or something else? Stonehenge makes you contemplate the alternatives), and a shaft of sunlight pierces the threatening clouds, illuminating the stones in a ridiculously cinematic way. If I’d seen it in a movie I’d have scornfully dismissed such cliched Hollywood scripting. As it is, I’ll never forget it.

RICHARD

 

Stonehenge, complete with Hollywood lighting. Image: author’s own

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Magna Carta turns 800 in 2015. Happy birthday!
• Britpop-era CDs flood charity shops, which is great if you’re looking for driving music
• Catatonia’s International Velvet is much better than you remembered; Blur’s 13 much worse
• Just how much cocaine went into the making of The Stone Roses’ Second Coming?
• We didn’t watch the Take That tribute band

The Pilgrims’ Progress Pt1: Magical Mystery Tour Edition

A lifetime ago I wrote that San Francisco managed to dispel a bunch of (unfounded) negative preconceptions I had about America. That’s nothing compared with my reaction to Liverpool.

I’m relieved. We’re here entirely at my behest and I’m anxious about what we’ll find. I’m in search of The Beatles and Liverpool Football Club but my expectations beyond that are low. I expect all the deprivations of post-industrial Britain. I expect the tattered remnants of Empire. I expect the place that – as was revealed in declassified documents – Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was urged to let wither and die, a place set alight by civil unrest, a place in the grip of drugs and generational unemployment.

That’s not the place we find. We’re not looking too hard and a tour guide says we can find those things if we ferret them out, but that’s true of any city. The Liverpool we experience, though, is absolutely buzzing, a town determined to rise again, with two fingers metaphorically raised aloft at those who were willing to cut adrift this once great city.

The word on people’s lips is ‘regeneration’. You can see it everywhere but nowhere more than along the river. The contemporary architecture is daring but it complements the historic buildings that flank the Mersey, creating new, dynamic shapes but preserving sight lines and history. It’s a model of what a waterfront can be if you don’t let politics or special interests get in the way.

Clever planning means that, despite recent waterfront development, historic sight lines are preserved on Liverpool’s riverbank

I find what I’m looking for, too. I presume our tour of Anfield, Liverpool FC’s stadium, will be overly reverential but it’s not. I anticipate our Magical Mystery Tour of Beatles sites will be cheesy but it’s not. I expect Liverpool to be hardened and charmless, but it’s  wonderfully, confoundingly, emphatically not.
RICHARD

Strawberry Field: Liverpool landmark. Cheese: author’s own

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Thank you to the hotel worker who not only let us check in four hours early but also gave us a view of the Mersey
• Thank you to the driver on our Magical Mystery Tour who responded to our non-Beatles questions about Liverpool with such enthusiasm
• Thank you to the taxi driver who took us on an impromptu tour of the city then refused to accept an extra fee for his efforts
• Thank you to the guy who sold us tickets to the Mersey ferry, and still found the will to laugh politely at my Gerry and the Pacemakers quip, even though he must hear it all day, every day

 

When Paris Looked Like Paris

I experienced my favourite moment in Paris when we weren’t supposed to be there.

Our plans derailed by a French rail workers’ strike, we were meant to be 300km away in Dijon, at the start of our rural Burgundian idyll.

Instead, we found ourselves tired, frustrated and uncertain, tumbling out of a TGV from Barcelona onto the forecourt of Paris Gare de Lyon at midnight.

That’s when Richard halted, a look of wonder on his face, to declare, “Holy shit, Paris really looks like Paris.”

And there it was. The Belle Époque facade of the station behind us, a cafe with its sidewalk chairs, tables and aproned waiters in front, all lit by the neon signs of the bars and hotels.

Gare de Lyon train station. Image credit: Metro Centric

Paris carried a burden of expectation possibly heavier than Barcelona. The Catalan city was new to both of us. But the City of Light not only carried its traditional reputation, but my desire to share the magic I had experienced on earlier visits.

When we returned to Paris as planned three weeks later, the city responded with true Gallic indifference to delivering what I wanted.

It rained part or most of every day, with unrelenting steely skies. The peak season holiday crowds meant at best queues, at worst bodily crushes and obscured views of any given sight. The combination of the upcoming Bastille Day celebrations and a terrorist threat meant a disconcertingly high police and military presence.

But there were glimpses. The rain refracting the lights of nighttime Paris; the winding, cobbled streets of Montmartre; the voices of a youth choir in the stillness of La Madeleine. The sheer pleasure of seeing Richard’s face when he saw the glass of Sainte Chapelle, Chagall’s ceiling in the Opera Garnier or Van Gogh’s brushstrokes at the Musée d’Orsay. Sitting together at sidewalk tables, watching the Parisians go by.

The Chagall ceiling of the Opera Garnier. Image credit: Wiki Commons

And I’ll always have that first moment of delight, when Paris really looked like Paris.
MELANYA

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Parisian parking. Wow
• After weeks of threatening to do so, Richard finally bought his yellow Lamborghini Euro scarf in Montmartre, home of Amélie and, briefly, Van Gogh
• Trying frogs’ legs for the first time, at a bistro in Île Saint-Louis. Tastes like chicken

In Which Richard Triggers an Alarm at the Louvre

In France, are you still guilty until proven innocent? I ask because I have just set off an alarm in the Louvre.

It’s our second day in Paris and I am suffering culture shock. In contrast to the emptiness of rural Burgundy, Paris is heaving with life. I’m not really coping. The city’s museums, to which we have retreated as a way of escaping what turns out to be 10 solid days of rain, are not the answer.

This should have been obvious. It’s the European summer holiday season in one of the continent’s most populous and popular cities, a city that houses many of the world’s great artistic treasures – of course it’s busy.

I’m unprepared for what it’s like to experience these treasures in the flesh. They are so familiar but somehow they look different, more alive. Wandering through the Musée d’Orsay, you turn round and suddenly there’s Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles or a piece of Lalique jewellery. I know them from books but in person they are breathtaking, more moving than you can possibly imagine, even those objects that are so commonplace they have become the wallpaper of our lives. I once had Monet’s Poppy Field on a set of coasters. It looks better hanging in a museum.

Monet’s Poppy Field. Image source: Wikipedia

The Musée d’Orsay is, for me, the most engrossing of the major Parisian museums we visit. The Louvre contains wonderful things but it’s too big to take in. Although we follow a carefully planned route, restricting ourselves to only a fraction of the items on display, I suffer object overload.

And, of course, it’s the Louvre, so what seems to be the whole world is here to see The Picture. Except us. We can’t get near the thing. There are hundreds of people literally elbowing each other out of the way in an attempt to stand in front of the world’s most famous artwork and, once there, take a photo. It’s hard to appreciate a picture through someone else’s iPad screen. The Mona Lisa just looks bemused by all the attention.

Crowd struggling to see the Mona Lisa. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

The crowds finally prove too much, which is why we’re in the furniture section when I lean over to get a closer look at a typically exquisite Danish chair, thus breaking the hitherto unnoticed beam of light and setting off a thunderous alarm. Presumably this alerts a whole station-full of police officers, whom I expect to be armed to the teeth and who will soon skid, Keystone Cops style, in to the room, handcuffs drawn. I whisper a glum farewell to Melanya, mentally compose a letter to my parents and brace myself for the inevitable. Nothing happens. It’s slightly disappointing. We make a sheepish escape past two museum staffers. They say nothing but give us withering looks, just to let us know that they know.

Before heading for the exit we take a detour through the antiquities. Tucked away in a dimly lit corridor is a small, unobtrusive sculpture. It is a marble carving of a man’s head, produced in piercing detail. He looks like a young Laurence Olivier but his identity remains a mystery, a nameless Roman silently watching the four million tourists who dash past him every year on their way to the nearby Venus de Milo. For me he’s the highlight of the museum. While we are there, few people stop even for a moment to appreciate this beautiful, ancient man, but there’s something inexpressibly poignant about him. Someone knew him once, he probably had friends and family too, but now he’s anonymous. And yet 2000 years after those friends and family have turned to dust, here he is, sitting on a plinth in a Parisian museum, waiting for someone to see him. Out of place, out of time, immortal.
RICHARD

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• If you want a photo of every painting and object in the Louvre (apparently a popular aim), please just buy the book
• Photography is banned in the Musée d’Orsay
• There are numerous smaller, perfectly formed museums in Paris. Musée Galliera (formerly the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris) is a favourite of Melanya’s and didn’t disappoint on this visit
• If you think the Louvre is busy, wait till you get to Versailles

The Charms and Challenges of France

There’s a man banging furiously at the door. He has a gun. I’m not sure the fact he’s a gendarme makes it better or worse.

This is not necessarily the strangest thing to happen to us in Burgundy but it’s in the top three. The other two occurrences to make the list are, in no particular order: the day that, without warning, our water supply is cut off; and the day Melanya has an argument with a neighbour. The latter would be upsetting rather than than odd, except that it involves photographic evidence. And an axe.

We have rented a house in Tannay, a small village in rural France. The house turns out to be exactly as advertised. A former cafe, parts of it date to the 17th century. It has a spiral staircase hidden behind a door. Swallows nest in the beams of its porch. It’s everything we’d hoped for and we love it.

Tannay

There are a few things, though.

The building’s owner, an artist, splits his time between France and Holland. This becomes important when one day a guy pulls up and starts doing something workmanlike on the footpath outside the house, which, we soon discover, leaves us without running water. We presume the council is fixing something or other but six hours later we’re still without water. It turns out the owner has not paid the bill. After some frantic ringing around and various conversations in a language not our own and about things we wouldn’t understand even if we spoke better French, we are revisited by the chap who cut us off many hours earlier. We discover, perhaps to our surprise but definitely to our relief, that the person we have mentally characterised as an evil water company representative is actually lovely. Quite clearly playing fast and loose with the rules, he reconnects us so that we have water before the owner sorts things – from Holland – the following day.

Our neighbour is a bit of a problem, too. In our welcome pack the house owner has made a special note that no wood chopping can occur between 5pm and 11am. The house is lovely but the living room is cold, so Melanya cuts some wood. It’s 1pm, well within the stipulated time. Nevertheless, she’s only a couple of chops into her task when a fizzing ball of fury appears at the fence, armed with a camera, and screaming in incomprehensibly rapid – but utterly incandescent – French. Melanya tries to engage but he is having none of it, and continues his stream of consciousness ranting, before thrusting the camera triumphantly skyward – Melanya’s guilt now captured for posterity – turning on his heel and striding away, a gleam of victory in his eye.

Melanya pictured of an evening. Note transgressive woodpile in the background

Apparently, we’ve landed in the middle of a dispute.

This is confirmed when it transpires that the gun-wielding gendarmes (there are three of them) are knocking on our door in search of our house owner. His car has been left in the town square and its insurance has expired. We are told that this is Against the Rules. Well, yes. Except no one has been fussed until now, even though the car’s been there for months. The neighbour, it seems, has made a phone call.

These three things all take place within the space of four days and we learn to roll with the punches. And besides, we love our time in Tannay. We take long walks in the countryside and eat picnics by the canal. We visit lakes and chateaux, and other charming villages in the region. We buy fresh bread from the boulangerie every morning, eat more cheese than our clothes can bear and drink wine until it seeps from our pores. We are visited from London by a dear friend and together we sit until 11pm watching the bats flit around us, while owls glide above.

In other words, we discover the France we were looking for. Who cares if we went without water for a few hours?
RICHARD

The canal just outside of Tannay

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• We chose Burgundy as a destination in part for its exotic wines. Turns out 60% of Burgundy’s wine is chardonnay
• We also chose Burgundy because it would be less busy than, for example, the Dordogne. It was; there was hardly anybody around, and virtually no tourists at all
• Burgundians are excellent drivers but they go everywhere with foot flat to the floor. Do not try to keep up with them
• If you’re taking a cruise on a lake, make sure you do so with a group of drunk retiree trampers. It’s great fun

Inaction Stations

I was adamant that we would not write a travel blog. Who needs more mediocre travel writing? Travel writing requires drama to make it interesting. Our holiday was planned with precision; there was no room for drama, let alone interest.

I underestimated two things: first, the need to document for the sake of my own failing memory; second, the French capacity for industrial action.

And so it is that we arrive at Barcelona’s Sants train station for our connection to Dijon, only to discover French rail workers are on strike and that our train is cancelled. At last, the drama our blog has been craving.

A train, not moving

There is one train to France; it’s going to Paris and it leaves in eight hours. Oh, and the only available tickets are in first class.

We really need to be in France. We have precisely planned bookings. We take a deep breath, and the tickets. Once we’re in Paris, we’ll go to the place that has rented us a car, explain the situation, and pick up a rental, which we will then drive to Burgundy. They must deal with this sort of thing all the time. And hey, a first-class, cross-border train trip – it’ll be a luxurious adventure.

Our first class carriage turns out to be no flasher than the other carriages, just a whole lot more expensive. We’re not fussed, we made it to France. Just not the part of France we’re supposed to be. Still, we’re in Paris – Paris! – and we’ll sort it out in the morning.

In the morning we get more French disdain than is strictly necessary. Our car rental agency in Dijon has cancelled our booking and given our car away, because they didn’t hear from us. It wasn’t for lack of effort. We tried calling the previous day, but it turns out the number we were given – in fact the number on the website – works only from within France. We were ringing from Barcelona. We also tried emailing, except that the website doesn’t give the email addresses of individual branches. The chap at the rental agency in the Barcelona branch gave us Dijon’s email address (and with it a shake of the head and a regretful sigh of, “I’m sorry, your problem is with the French”) but no one received a thing. Allegedly. So they didn’t hear from us and gave our booking away.

To compound the problem, the car rental person on the end of the line doesn’t speak English. This is fair enough. She’s French, she’s in France, we should speak her language. Melanya does, very well, but explaining our situation is complex. Even so, “I understand what you’re saying,” the person from the rental company says, encouragingly. Then, less encouragingly, “So?”

So we are now in Paris, in an eye-wateringly expensive hotel. We’re supposed to be in Dijon, several hundred kilometres away. Even if we can get to Dijon, no car is awaiting us. That’s moot, because the train strike means that almost every rental car in Paris is accounted for anyway. Tears are shed.

We start going through all the rental agencies. We’re not having much luck.

Eventually, we meet Antoine. Antoine is a trainee at Avis/Budget in Paris Gare du Lyon railway station, and he is a marvel. He is friendly. He speaks English. And, crucially, he has a car, even though it’s a 4WD and we (we being Melanya) have to drive it out of Paris (if you think that’s no big deal, you’ve never been in a car in Paris).

Antoine, if you ever come to New Zealand, I will buy you a beer. You can stay in our spare room. You can stay in our room. If I had a daughter or son, I would promise them to you. I will adopt a daughter or son, and promise them to you.

Lacking the requisite offspring, on our return to Gare du Lyon some three weeks later, we instead leave Antoine a bottle of good Burgundy. We hope he enjoyed it. He saved our holiday.
RICHARD

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Everyone – everyone – in Barcelona speaks perfect English. Everyone, that is, except for the people working at Barcelona train station
• Spanish SIM cards stop working exactly at the border
• Even when you’re under stress, it’s amazing how much Paris looks like Paris

This blog entry is dedicated to my cousin Tracey, who died while the events outlined above were unfolding, and whose passing puts everything into perspective.

The Perils and Pleasures of Barcelona

We’re going to be mugged. Everyone says so. Everyone has a second-hand horror story about Barcelona, which is, according to these alarming reports, the most crime-riddled city in Europe, maybe the world.

Either that or we’ll absolutely love it. Everyone who doesn’t have a second-hand horror story about Barcelona says so. It is, according to these sun-kissed reports, the best city in Europe, maybe the world.

For us, Barcelona turns out to be neither the worst nor the best city in the world, or indeed in Spain. We see no crime at all, but the pre-trip warnings colour our whole visit. We spend so much time clutching our bags and scanning the crowds to spot our knife-wielding attackers that we sometimes miss what a cool city Barcelona is.

Barcelona’s a party town, the first great world city on our trip, and a shock to the system after the more reserved and stately experiences of Andalusia, with its sultry nights and friendly, promenading citizens.

When we get there, Barcelona is packed with 20-something Brits on stag and hen weekends but even so, and unlike the broadly homogeneous Seville, Barcelona is incredibly diverse, which is hardly surprising for a city of 4 million people, and which spans a wide geographical area. So there is no single Barcelona, there are many Barcelonas.

We’re staying in the funky Born district. With its narrow winding streets it’s not dissimilar to Seville. Elsewhere there are wide, straight boulevards that cross the city from one side to the other (the Diagonal, for example, runs in a straightish line for about 11km). There’s also a long boardwalk where the Mediterranean washes upon Barcelona’s shore.

There are further ways that Barcelona differs from the other parts of Spain we’ve visited. Most notable is the sense of Catalan nationalism. Barcelona may be in Spain but it hardly feels like it. Catalunyan flags hang draped from apartment windows, while the art gallery is quite pointedly the national (ie, not regional) art gallery of Catalunya. The language seems, at least when written, to be as close to French as Spanish, and everyone speaks Catalan. My carefully learnt Spanish for, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish,” draws stares that seem to say, “Me neither, mate, not if I can help it.”

One of Catalunya’s favourite sons is the architect Antoni Gaudi, and we anticipated falling in love with his work. We’re both fans of Art Nouveau and thought its marriage with Arabic design influences and the bright colours of Barcelona would charm the socks off us.

Sometimes it did; Gaudi’s undulating lines and Mad Hatter facades can be hard to resist. Casa Batllo and parts of Park Guell were delightful.

Park Guell: part genius, part Mad Hatter’s tea party

However, Gaudi’s most famous work, the still unfinished Sagrada Familia church, is awful. For a place of worship, it is remarkably profane. Partly that’s because it crawls with tourists, all ticking off their ‘must see’ lists, and we were equally culpable on that count. But Sagrada Familia was noisy and busy and flashes were firing and skill saws were buzzing and the interior was more gaudy than Gaudi.

Much more spiritual is Barcelona Cathedral. Flash photography is banned, silence is requested and people are turned away if they dress inappropriately for church. I’m not a believer but if you go to church I think you should respect those who are, and Barcelona Cathedral, unlike Sagrada Familia, feels like a place of worship.

Outside the cathedral we experience one of those special moments you sometimes get when you travel. In the square at the front of the cathedral, a man is playing guitar and singing Catalan folk tunes. The yearning music sounds more Cuban than Spanish, and completely different to the Andalusian flamenco we’ve been hearing. Out of the growing crowd, a couple of 70-somethings clasp hands and begin to dance, swaying gently to the rhythm, eyes locked. Lost in the moment, lost in each other, lost in their own form of worship.
RICHARD and MELANYA

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• We have become invisible to wait staff. They are not rude, unfriendly or incompetent. Rather, they practice a form of benign neglect. A shame, because the food is so good you want to order more of it. Good luck with that
• Across the alleyway, hearing the TV screen Spain 1-5 Holland and the viewers become increasingly subdued as their tragedy unfolds
• As well as speaking Catalan, everyone can speak fluent Spanish and English
• Sculptures on the roof of the Gaudi-designed La Pedrera gave George Lucas inspiration for the Storm Troopers in Star Wars

Recuerdos de la Alhambra

As a prelude to Spain’s greatest treasure, it’s quite the scene setter.

We wait at the edge of a rose garden, blanketed in twilight and a not-quite-cloying floral scent. Across the valley we can see the Albayzin district, where our apartment lies and itself a UNESCO world heritage site. All the while, swifts fly and call overhead.

Finally, at 10pm, we are ushered in to a dream world: the Alhambra’s Nasrid Palaces.

We’ve been waiting for hours and we are primed, yet neither words nor photos (or postcards – we checked) do justice to how these palaces look at night.

They are artfully and subtly lit, all the better to emphasise the intricacy, artistry and delicacy which make you feel you have stepped into the Tales of the Arabian Nights.

Barely a surface is left unornamented. The walls, the ceilings, the floors, all pay tribute Spain’s Arabic heritage with an artistry that is staggering. And despite the level of detail, there is no sense of fussiness, just beauty. Just perfection.

This sort of detail adorns almost every surface of the Nasrid Palaces

The moon plays its part, its path traced in reflecting pools as bats and the ever-present swifts skim the water. All you can do – the only appropriate response – is to sit and absorb the magic, in awe that now and again, maybe once every few hundred years, humans manage to get their shit together in a way that leaves you humbled and speechless.

But the city of Granada is a paradox. On one hand is the Alhambra, with its otherworldliness and enchantment. On the other are the graffiti, the dreadlocked hippies selling unremarkable trinkets from blankets spread out on the streets, and a callousness towards tourists that is in stark contrast to our other Spanish experiences. This Granada is more than a little frayed around the edges.

We do have one other special moment in Granada, though. The Capilla Real, in the town centre, houses a tomb that contains the bodies of Ferdinand and Isabella. These are the monarchs who unified the country, and you again get that sense of bearing witness to historical and cultural crossroads. Spain begins here.

The coffins of Ferdinand and Isabella. Image source: Wikipedia

In a simple display area above the crypt are personal items owned and used by the king and queen. Here, among these bits and bobs, you find real people: a battered crown, clothing – their actual robes, last worn 500 years ago – Isabella’s rosary beads, Ferdinand’s sword.

The weapon’s hilt is tiny; Ferdinand must have been a little man by today’s standards. You are reminded of the words of ee cummings: “nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.”

And for a few seconds you are no longer seeing history, you are hearing poetry.

MELANYA & RICHARD

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Tiny buses on tiny, winding streets
• Walking around the Alhambra’s Generalife garden and realising I’m humming Joaquin Rodrigo’s guitar work ‘In the Generalife’
• It’s 30 degrees celcius and you can still see snow

Road trip: Seville to Granada

I hate mountain roads. They make me dizzy and sick and very, very scared. Which is why I find myself swigging from a bottle of cheap brandy as we wend our way from Seville to Granada. (In case you’re wondering, Melanya and her father split driving duties – drink responsibly, kids.)

It’s quite some landscape. There are, in turn: craggy, raw mountains and precipitous edges; fields of thirsty-looking crops; cork plantations; and towering cacti that could double as props in a Sergio Leone movie. Dotted around the place are the enormous wind turbines that power so much of southern Spain. It’s beautiful. I wish I could experience it sober.

Our trip takes in a number of Andalucia’s white towns. ‘White town’ is a euphemism for ‘small group of houses clinging to the side of a cliff’. They are as attractive as the countryside we’ve driven through to reach them. Ronda, Grazelema and the troglodyte village of Setenil are gorgeous. The whitewashed buildings gleam in the sun, and there are few straight lines, which creates shapes and angles you simply don’t see in New Zealand.

Seriously, whose idea was that?

Setenil looks particularly alien. The dwellings jut defiantly from the rock face, and as we wander we can see, through open windows, how sloped ceilings are formed from the bare face of the mountain. They lend the impression that these are hardy homes for hardy souls.

Still, you wonder: how on earth do these people get by? If you own a whitewash business you’ll have plenty of work on. There’s agriculture, though the white towns all seem a long way from farms. Tourism is clearly important, there are lots of visitors; but what about the times there are no tourists? It seems a tough gig.

Setenil

Somewhere on the journey (I’ve had too much brandy to be certain of the exact order in which things happen) we stop at Bolonia. It’s an unspoilt seaside town, except that the sea happens to be the Straits of Gibraltar, and those lights you can see across the water are coming from Africa, just a few miles away. Magical.

Also magical is Bolonia’s other party piece, Baelo Claudia, a Roman city so large they’re not even bothering to excavate the whole thing. In some ways Bolonia is more arresting than Italica. For all its size, Bolonia’s ruins are on a smaller scale than Italica’s, more distilled. Its structures, including markets, give a keener sense of everyday lives, people just going about their business, doing what people do. You manage to convince yourself that you can identify with shopkeepers who’ve been dead for 2000 years. What a precious gift.

Richard

Melanya and her father, Robin, in Bolonia. That’s Africa in the background

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• Brandy works a treat
• Cultural dislocation #1257: watching expat Kiwi Zane Lowe interview celeb magician Dynamo on Spanish TV
• There is an insane number of road signs in Spain, giving detailed instructions for everything. The Spanish road code contains 64 pages of signs

Reasons You Must Under No Circumstances Visit Cadiz

Cadiz is the worst place in Spain. Don’t go there.

Do not take the ferry from Puerto de Santa Maria, because if you do your boat will not slip serenely in to the terminal, and you will not arrive at a magical world where the square has fountains that shoot playfully into the air, while around you people relax at a cafe, drinking freshly brewed coffee.

Cadiz, fresh off the boat

You should definitely not visit Museo Cadiz. Don’t believe anyone who tells you it contains priceless treasures, relics of a time when Phoenicians fashioned heart-breakingly intricate golden jewellery, or Romans produced glass objects so delicate that only an act of God could explain their survival.

Cadiz contains no ancient fortifications facing defiantly out to the Atlantic, but if it did, you would not be moved to feel that for people to build walls so sturdy, they must have realised the preciousness of what they were protecting.

Cadiz: one photo, nine centuries of architecture

You must under no circumstances visit the mercado centrale, a galleried market of fresh-caught fish, and meat and vegetables and fruit, because it most certainly does not include the ripest, juiciest figs you have eaten, figs that may well cost a fraction of what they cost in Auckland but which would nevertheless be better coming vacuum packed from Countdown.

When you walk down the street in Cadiz, the air is not alive with the sounds of canaries, and nor do geraniums punctuate the whitewashed walls with their vibrant red.

You will not have the finest meal you experience in Spain. Your plate will not be piled high with sardines caught just that morning, and if it is, they will not be about the best thing you have ever tasted, and the sun does not shine and shine and the sky is not the deepest blue.

And since you are not sharing that meal of perfect fish, the sea breeze does not tangle a wisp of hair in your wife’s mouth and she does not look as beautiful to you in that moment as she ever has, and you will not reflect that it is a great moment to be alive.

So don’t go to Cadiz. Don’t. But if you do, don’t tell anyone.

RICHARD