Andalusian Holy Week and Tom’s “Grand Tour” of the Iberian Peninsula
My longest break this semester was in April around Easter, during what’s referred to as “Semana Santa” or Holy Week in Spain. The amount of vacation time we got for this holiday was certainly nothing to scoff at, just one day shy of a full two weeks off from school! Of course, I had to make the most out of so much free time, and I decided to spend it traveling.
My trip was 100% self-organized (transportation and lodging), self-planned (things to do and places to see) and self-financed (so logically, I kept everything as cheap as humanly possible), something I’m pretty proud of. To top it all off, I decided to make this adventure a solo one, partly because I wanted the freedom to do whatever I wanted, and partly because it’s hard enough to coordinate a trip to one city with multiple people, let alone a trip with 7 different stops!
(From this map, it looks like I did an almost complete circuit of the Iberian Peninsula while intentionally excluding the Cataluña region. I did skip this area for a reason - I’d already been! See my blog on Barcelona here.)
Because most of my trips up until this point had been to other countries in Europe, I decided to stay in Spain this time around (the one exception being my stop in Lisbon, Portugal). I also strategically planed my visits to Granada and Sevilla to coincide with Andalusian holy week festivities. All throughout Andalucía (a community in Spain, similar to a state here in the US) there are festivities and processionals throughout the week of Semana Santa (Easter), so it was a great opportunity to visit those cities and experience such a unique and important element of Andalusian culture.
It’s been over a month since I got back from this trip, and I’m just now finally getting around to writing a post about it! And as you could probably imagine, it’s a pretty sizable post too, with just over 300 pictures (and trust me, there were at least double that amount on my camera roll before I started picking and choosing) so fingers crossed it won’t crash your phone/internet browser. I tried to fill this post with lots of details - possibly making it a little boring for some readers, which is totally okay! My justification for so much verbiage is I want to be able to look back at this blog later in life and remember my travels. If you’re not interested in the writing and just want to quick scroll through to look at the pretty pictures, I won’t be offended in the slightest :)
2 weeks, 7 cities, 1 Thomas. What could possibly go wrong?
A lot, actually. Well not really - just one thing. But a pretty major thing. Every millennial’s worst nightmare: I couldn’t charge my phone (gasp!)
Yeah, I know, you can groan and roll your eyes about how my generation is dependent on technology - I get it. However, when traveling alone in a foreign country, your phone is your lifeline. Not only does it serve as a camera (which is a convenience thing but not a necessity), it also serves as a map, translator, and emergency contact device (all of which are essentially necessities). Not to mention, I was traveling alone. So needless to say, having a functioning phone is important when traveling abroad!
After taking a train from Valencia to Granada and listening to music/texting most of the ride, my phone battery was pretty low. I wasn’t worried though, because I always keep a backup battery pack on me when I travel. I arrived at my AirBnB, got ready for bed, plugged my phone in to charge (or so I thought) and went to sleep.
The only problem was, my iPhone cord (for some inexplicable reason) chose that night of all nights to stop working. Being the dimwit I am, I just plugged my phone in overnight without bothering to see if it was actually charging. When I woke up the next morning and realized my phone was on 8%, I was an unhappy camper (to put it lightly). I needed my phone to navigate through the city and arrive at the Alhambra in time for my tour. If I was late, I would be denied entry, and I was not about to miss out on seeing it. The Alhambra is a famous Arabic palace, and is actually the most-viewed monument in Spain (see pic below).
Friends who previously visited raved about how absolutely beautiful the Alhambra was and how I had to take a million pictures there. Well - that’s not so easy if your phone is your camera and it’s on death’s doorstep! I pulled out every trick in the book to make my phone last as long as possible: battery saver mode, airplane mode, even turned the brightness completely down. Luckily, I arrived in time for the tour, but using the GPS brought my battery down to around 2-3%. Miraculously though, my phone lasted on such low battery for almost the entirety of the visit! Normally, my phone would drop that much battery percentage in three minutes, let alone three hours! Even though with the backlight off I could hardly see what I was taking a photo of, I got pictures of the majority of the tour, and I think all things considered, they turned out pretty decent!
It’s a bit hard to make out in this shot, but on many of the walls of the Alhambra, the word Allah, the name for God in the Islamic faith, is spelled out to adorn the walls.
Interesting tidbit that our tour guide shared with us - although these windows look to be the same distance from the center of the wall, they're actually intentionally mis-aligned by 2 centimeters (that is, if you could fold this wall down the middle, the windows wouldn’t line up just right). This is because the creators of the Alhambra believed that there is no complete perfection except their God Allah, and any attempt to create perfection was blasphemy. The palace was constructed with many very tiny and virtually undetectable, intentional architectural and geometric errors due to this belief.
Palacio de los Leones, perhaps the most famous room in the Alhambra.
My luck got a bit better when the tour started - I had a reasonably small group. In fact, it was just me and one other family. And believe it or not, the other family was from Valencia! We got along really well, made some nice small talk, and the dad even emailed me some photos after the tour because I told him my phone had died.
The weird earpiece thing I’m wearing in the picture above is the latest in tour-guide technology - the guide speaks into a microphone softly and we can hear her explaining history and other details while we wander around and soak in the sights. While this is convenient, I suspect the main reason they do this is so that snoopy passerby don’t get to hear the tour without paying.
Some beautiful views of the Albayzín, a historic district in Granada.
After this point in the tour, my phone finally gave out. However, I was all-in-all pretty impressed at how long it lasted with 2%, so I couldn’t complain. After the tour, the first order of business was to find a working iPhone cable (which was already difficult because most Spanish stores have weird hours, made even worse because it was a holiday) but eventually I found a charger at a sketchy mini mart and revived my iPhone. After that, I went to a bar to get a bite to eat. Although I didn’t think to snap a picture, I was reminded that I was truly in Andalucía when I ordered a drink and received free food that I didn’t even chose along with it. Although other areas of Spain have added tapas to their menus to try to reel in tourists, in their most authentic Andalusian form, tapas are free bites to eat that come with drink order, without you asking or choosing what you get. Cool huh?
After a quick siesta at my AirBnB, I paid a visit to the beautiful Cathedral of Granada
One of the many, many processions for Holy Week. Religious orders dress up and wear white robes and cone hats that I think look alarmingly similar to KKK outfits (but thankfully, there is no relation, and these processions far outdate the Klan anyways).
Many times in processions, members of religious orders carry an effigy of the Virgin Mary on a sort of pilgrimage. The candles you see are all real and lit, and the smoke is from incense.
Every so often, the procession stops at designated points and a vocalist sings a blessing in traditional Andalusian style over the Virgin.
A huuuuge baked potato I got from a street vendor, stuffed with just about everything you could imagine: carrots, corn, cheese, pepper, and other ingredients I can’t recall now.
El Ayuntamiento (town hall) de Granada
Exploring the Albayzín (the little white village I saw from up above in the Alhambra earlier that morning).
Mirador de San Nicolás, with a great view of the Alhambra.
When I arrived at my AirBnB in Sevilla, I was greeted by traditional Andalusian tiling on the stairs and wall. It can be a little much at times, but I still think it’s so pretty!
View from my AirBnB of la Giralda, the bell tower of the Seville Cathedral
Plaza de España. My pictures simply do not do this place justice. I got here and absolutely fell in love - the plaza is simply beautiful. The ambience is distinctly Spanish and is filled with different sounds: street flamenco dancers and their shoes on mini-tablaos, the clip-clop of horse drawn carriages, the music of street performers, the chatter of castañuelas... I could have stayed there for hours.
Every Spanish province has its own bench/monument in the plaza
I found some Valencians, and we took each other’s picture :)
The view from the rooftop of my AirBnB
Another Semana Santa procession, this time in Sevilla. You should be able to make out the cone hats a bit more clearly in this one
I learned that I had to be very flexible while navigating the streets of Sevilla. Not only were they a virtual labyrinth to begin with, many times I would finally find the right street to follow, only to be forced to turn around because it was blocked off by a procession. This trip was an exercise in patience and flexibility for me in many ways - in this case, instead of getting frustrated, I decided to just relax and enjoy the procession!
The Cathedral of Seville, the third largest cathedral in the world
El Real Alcázar de Sevilla (the Royal Palace of Seville)
The palace gardens were gorgeous and very peaceful
One of the processions either entering or leaving the cathedral (don’t quite remember which)
Flamenco Show. Unfortunately, there was no photography allowed until the very end. Although most spaniards would never really go out to see a flamenco show (it is almost solely a touristic attraction at this point), this show was performed in authentic style (or at least, that’s what the reviews on TripAdvisor told me!) and the dancers and musicians were very talented.
A procession the night before Easter.
Pro tip - if you don’t want to have to pay to tour the cathedral, go to a service!
It’s pretty cool to say I went to Easter mass in the Catedral de Sevilla, the third-largest cathedral in the world!
A procession on Easter Sunday - notice the robes are white today instead of black, symbolizing purity but unfortunately looking even more like klansmen.
Metropol Parasol, an exposition center in Seville.
La Maestranza, or la Plaza de Toros de Sevilla - The bullfighting ring of Seville
After having studied the culture behind bullfights year after year in Spanish classes, I finally got to see one for myself. Even though I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it, I decided I needed to witness a bullfight in order to form an educated opinion.
And... I hated it. I understand that bullfights are traditionally a way to honor the bull, but all I see is suffering and torture. The bull really has no options. If it is docile, it is prodded and goaded into attacking. If it is aggressive, it is tortured and then killed. What a way to spend Easter Sunday - paying to see the Lord’s creatures suffer unnecessarily :(
Although this bullfight had six bulls, I only got through three before I had to leave the stadium.
While I was waiting for my bus to Lisbon, they were filming a movie at the Seville bus station!
The leg of my trip from Sevilla to Lisbon was by far the longest of my two-week journey, lasting around 8 hours total. I was horrified upon boarding my bus to observe that there was no bathroom located in the back, knowing full well that nothing short of a miracle would allow me to survive 8 hours without being able to use facilities. I did notice a few elderly couples on the bus as well, and figured they would crack before I did. I assumed that if the bus had no restroom, it would have to make rest stops at least every other hour, but 3 hours into the ride it had not stopped once. It wasn’t until a girl got up from her seat and disappeared behind me that I realized the bathroom on board was ingeniously built (disguised) into the side of the rear-exit stairs. Although this location forces you to more or less climb into the lavatory, I was quite relived to realize that there was indeed a bathroom on board. Who would have thought?!
On a more serious note, traveling to Lisbon by bus really helped me realize just how cool the European Union is. Because both Spain and Portugal are part of the Schengen Area, the free-movement zone of the EU, they have no border control. Driving into Portugal was as simple as driving from one state to another in the US. There’s just a “Bem vindo a Portugal” sign and that’s it - you’re in a new country! In fact, I totally forgot I had left Spain, and when the bus driver took a break at a rest stop (this rest stop finally came after I had discovered the on-board bathroom), I accidentally tried to order food in Spanish!
However, speaking Spanish is still of some value in Portugal. I found that if the person I was speaking to didn’t know English, I could still have a jumbled conversation with them if I asked a question in Spanish - I would just recieve a response in Portuguese. Although the two are absolutely separate languages, they share their similarities, and I was surprised at how much Portuguese I could vaguely understand given my knowledge of Spanish. Written Portuguese was even better. I found that when I concentrated too hard on deciphering Portuguese, I psyched myself out, but when I just did a calm skim over the text, I could get the general idea. This was very useful in a wide variety of scenarios, from understanding instructions from my AirBnB host to reading public transit maps.
Praça de Dom Pedro IV (Rocio)
From my observations, Lisbon seemed to rely much more on tram cars than on busses for public transportation.
Some of them were older while a few were more modern
I just had to stop here and get some shots of the laughably difficult-to-navigate roads in center city Lisbon. Between cars, trams, busses, cyclists, and pedestrians, the roads are a mess.
Take this scene for example. A car is trying to go down a street that is completely blocked by two tram cars. This makes a further traffic jam because the car isn’t able to finish its turn, irritating cyclists, all while a pedestrian jaywalks in between the car and trams. Crazy huh?
Next, I went on the Elevador da Glória - similar to the trams I mentioned earlier, except it scales a mini-mountain. The picture right below is what the elevador is supposed to look like...
but the next picture is what it actually looks like.
Thank you street artists!
The ride was cool and all, but it was majorly overpriced and there wasn’t really anything at the top, so I was a little disappointed.
The street that my AirBnB was on - pretty jam packed with cars, but still pretty. I love all the different brightly colored buildings.
The craziness that is the Rua Augusta
Later that afternoon, I went to Belém (Bethlehem in English), a municipality of Lisbon that was by far my favorite part of my visit to Portugal. I didn’t take any pictures of it, but in order to visit the various monuments I walked through a beautiful park full of happy couples, children running around playing sports, and picnics in the grass. Oddly enough, passing by and enjoying the calm scene hit me with a wave of nostalgia for home - who would have thought a park in Portugal would make me yearn for an American summer?
Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, a beautiful monastery that I admired from the outside because I’m too cheap to pay the entrance fee for everything (and trust me, I had paid enough to enter various religious buildings by that point).
Padrão dos Descobrimentos
Lisbon trying to get that SanFran aesthetic?
Torre de Belém, beautiful at sunset
The next day, I took a short-distance train to Sintra, a famous national park on the outskirts of Lisbon.
Palácio Nacional de Sintra
To walk to the Moorish Castle, I had to hike through some of the forests of Sintra. The pictures truly don’t do the walk justice. On family vacations, I’m normally the one who complains about hiking, but this hike had even me blown away by its natural beauty and great look-out points.
If you look closely, you can see the Moorish Castle (Castelo dos Mouros) on the mountain in the distance. However, I couldn’t hike all the way up to see it, because there was a steep entrance fee and I’m a cheapskate.
The Palácio da Pena. Get ready for a ton of pictures of this one... I just couldn’t help myself. To me, the architecture is absolutely stunning and very original. For this one, I did cave and pay to go inside.
Like... is that incredible or what?!
Look closely to see the village houses out in the distance
If you look closely, you can see the Moorish Castle on top of the mountain.
What is a trip through Europe without unflattering selfies??
(See look I told you, I actually paid to go inside this once!)
After visiting Sintra, I took the train back to center city Lisbon to explore until I had to leave for my flight to Bilbao
Back in center Lisbon near the Praça de Dom Pedro IV. On top of the hill you can faintly make out the Castelo de São Jorge, where I took these next few pictures
The view at the top was magnificent - shame there was no Elevador da Glória to make this (significantly more challenging) ascent
The walk back up, not so much...
Igreja de São Vicente de Fora
For my flight to Bilbao, I was very frustrated that the online check-in did not work for me for some reason. I figured this was because I had purchased the flight off a semi-sketchy third-party website with a great deal on tickets. Knowing this, I got to the airport extra early to get in line and check in the old-fashioned way, intentionally leaving plenty of wiggle room even for an international flight just in case there were any problems with my ticket. Little did I know I would have the most incredible luck when I got to the airport.
First, as I was stopping to get something out of my backpack, a sweet random woman came up to me and asked if I would like some chocolates. Her suitcase was overweight and she was trying to get rid of things. Not too bad huh?
The nice happiness-boost from the chocolate lady wore off pretty quickly when I saw the check in line. It was colossal (the airport was busier than normal because of the Easter season) and moving slowly. I tried to check in on my phone and on the digital machines one last time, but still no luck - each time I would just get a message saying I had to go talk with customer service, so I grudgingly joined the humongous line.
I had barely been in line for 5 minutes, however, when a very kind airline employee came up and asked me what I was waiting in line for. Evidently, because there were so many people waiting to talk to customer service and he just happened to not be busy, he was working from the back of the line up to see if he could help customers and reduce the line. I explained that I just needed to check in for my flight, and he asked me to follow him. He accompanied me to another station where he allowed me to completely cut the line, after which he promptly checked me in and printed my boarding passes. He told me that I had actually purchased budget tickets that didn’t include a checked bag (thanks sketchy third-party website), and that I would normally have to go back to customer service to pay to check my suitcase. However, because the customer service line was already way out of hand, he said he would just go against company policy and check my bag for free. I was completely flabbergasted and could not believe my luck. I thanked him profusely as he hurried away to assist another customer. I honestly felt undeserving of such a stroke of good fortune - I had arrived at the airport with time to spare, and surely there was someone in more of a rush who could have used that godsend more than I could have. Either way, I just had to give that mysterious TAP Airlines employee a shoutout - you the real MVP man.
I really enjoyed my time in Bilbao. I happened to visit during the week they were doing a sort of “piano project,” where a number of pianos were placed in public spots and anyone could just walk up and play them. I was lucky enough to come across at least four while exploring the city!
Another neat thing about Bilbao (and Basque Country) in general is their language, Basque or Euskera. Words in Basque can be pretty intimidating to pronounce, to say the least. I didn’t think to snap any pictures at the time, but the picture below I found on Google of a street sign gives you a bit of an idea. Thankfully, everyone (or mostly everyone) also speaks Spanish, so I didn’t really run into any trouble.
I think the snapchat caption just about says it all. My AirBnB hosts had to get up early the next morning for work and I had already arrived a bit later than anticipated, and I didn’t want to irritate them even further by waking them up at such an ungodly hour - so I just sucked it up and waited until morning.
Churros and cola-cao, a delicious breakfast (even if it is pretty meager)
Parque de Doña Casilda Iturrizar
El Cachorro (the puppy), a sculpture made of flowers that’s supposed to look like a west highland white terrier. Unfortunately, the flowers were not quite in bloom yet.
Catedral de Santiago de Bilbao
La Alhóndiga. This is a cool one - it’s a multipurpose building in center city Bilbao to serve various needs for city residents. Among other things, it has restaurants, shops, a library, a gym, a movie theater, and an auditorium.
San Sebastián is a very popular beach town to the east of Bilbao. It’s actually quite close to the border with France, and I heard just about as much French spoken while visiting as I did Spanish. Although the water was too cold to swim in and the wind made even laying on the beach a bit chilly for my taste, the city was absolutely beautiful.
To get from Bilbao to San Sebastián was only about an hour ride by bus. When I purchased bus tickets online, I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the type of bus, and €15 seemed a reasonable price to me so I didn’t think anything was out of the usual. However, I was blown away when I saw a sleek black bus that said “ALSA Premium” on it pull up to the station and realized it was for me. This bus was by far the fanciest I’ve ever been on. I mean, it had a flight attendant. On a bus. What? Did I mention complimentary snacks and beverage service? I sure wish I had this bus for my 8 hour ride from Seville to Lisbon! I was almost sad when the ride ended. I found a picture of the bus model online so you can get a better idea.
The Río Urumea, that flows through the city of San Sebastián and into the Bay of Biscay.
El Ayuntamiento de San Sebastián
Such amazing artistry - a man down on the beach was drawing all these designs in the sand, and passerby on the bridge where this photo was taken would throw money down for him.
Catedral del Buen Pastor de San Sebastián
Basílica de Santa María del Coro
For the end of my two week traveling spree, I decided to splurge and treat myself a bit by booking a private single room in the cheapest hostel I could find in Madrid, instead of staying in a room in someone else’s house via AirBnb. This was the view from my balcony!
Because Madrid is the most globalized city in Spain, I was overjoyed to find a place where I could get a real, hearty American breakfast (breakfast in Spain is very, very light fare). It was so delicious (or maybe I had just missed real breakfast so much) that I ended up coming back here for breakfast again!
“I heard it and I forgot / I saw it and I understood / I did it and I learned.”
Cool spot in the park where you could rent a game of chess!
Plaza de Cibeles. This building serves as the town hall of Madrid. Notice the “Refugees Welcome” banner - wishing our president could take a page out of Spain’s book.
Edificio Metrópolis along the Gran Vía
Estatua del Oso y el Madroño. This statue represents the Coat of Arms of Madrid and is also the 0 kilometer mark for all roads in Spain.
Estatua de Carlos III de España in the Puerta del Sol, the Spanish equivalent of Times Square.
Estatua de Felipe III de España
Real Basilica de San Francisco el Grande
Palacio Real de Madrid (Royal Palace of Madrid) seen from a distance.
More pictures of the Palacio Real
Templo de Debod, a temple that was disassembled in Egypt and reassembled in Madrid, now located alongside a nice public park.
Biblioteca Nacional, the Spanish National Library
It’s really cool to me that Spain has a ministry (government department) of equality.
A protest by Venezuelan expats living in Spain, decrying political corruption in Venezuela and trying to raise awareness of their country’s economic crisis.
Las Bicicletas son para el verano (Bicycles are for Summer), a play I read for my Spanish Literature & Cinema class during the semester. I had the chance to see the play live in Madrid!
I was always taught it’s good to arrive to the theater a half-hour early, but here, the other spectators were living up to the stereotypes about Spanish punctuality.
The last stop on my two-week adventure was Toledo, Spain. The city had a very distinct charm and some absolutely incredible views of mountains and valleys.
I was already impressed with Toledo as soon as I stepped off the train - look at how how pretty the train station is!
Catedral de Santa María de Toledo
Inside Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes
At this point, I took a very, veeeery roundabout hike (I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was just looking at the maps app on my phone) to try to find the Mirador del Valle, a lookout spot where you can see the whole city of Toledo in all its glory. It was a very hot, sweaty hike, but I finally made it, and the views were totally worth it.
I also found another mini-mountain next to the lookout spot where I could get an even better vantage point of the city, so of course, I climbed it.
If you’ve reached this point in the post, you can smile as wide as I am in that last pic... you’re done! The never-ending blog post is finished. If you actually read all this, you deserve some award.
Although I was sad that my journey finally had to come to an end, upon my return to Valencia was greeted by my wonderful host mom, who stayed up until midnight to make sure I was well-received with a hot home-cooked meal (she’s the best).
This trip was very eye-opening for me in a lot of ways. It was an exercise in maturity to live independently for two weeks, not to mention the absolutely incredible opportunity to see so much of Spain in so little time. Even so, there are many more places I would have liked to visit. I’m already starting my list for round two. Spain, you haven’t seen the last of me!
