Cordoba

My first night in Cordoba was spent in a Medieval guest house ran by a softly spoken German woman called Carola. I had to cut my walk that day slightly short as I had to arrive at the guest house in the morning as Carola had a wedding in Cadiz in the afternoon. I walked through a lush park, down the main highstreet which opened into a huge plaza and then right through various streets until I came to the small ally which the guesthouse backed onto. After trying various bells, I found the right one and Carola came and opened the gate, with the languid stride of someone walking through an allotment. 'Tonight you are going to be sleeping in a Medieval house' she explained as she led me through into a beautifully lit patio with great potted plants and covered areas with seating. We climbed a flight of narrow, steep wooden stairs to a small bedroom with a low ceiling, and, low and behold, a kettle! My first in kettle in Spain, the possibilities seemed endless. 

Carola reappeared later in sandals and definitely bra less under her matching orange tshirt and 3/4 lengths get up. She smiled bashfully and towel dried her short greying hair as I left, map in hand, with a whole afternoon ahead of me for sightseeing. 

I walked around the town for hours, submerging into the torrent of tourists and then escaping into a juice bar where I had an amazing salad with oregano and feta cheese. The owner was a woman with dark haired arms and two little girls who scrambled around her feet with a dog. Her partner sat outside with a cigarette, his teeth as dark as her arms, which on an English man would have looked awful but they were rather flattering on him. 

When I returned to the house I met Denise, a middle-aged Californian work away with thick silvery tresses which she could wind and coil to her hearts content. It was her last week in Cordoba before she travelled north to see some more of Spain and then she was planning on going to Ecuador for three months. She was very petite, with a heart shaped face now I think of it, and she carried around a jar of water with slices of lemons in. After talking for some time we went to get a slice of potatoe omelette together and then went to the cinema for 95 cents and watched Much Ado About Nothing. We crossed the Roman bridge over the river to get a better look at Cordoba lit up at night and came across an amatuer flamenco show which was being held in protest against the local community centre being shut down. It turned out that Denise, as I had suspected, was an all out hippie chick; married at 17 and went to live in a commune in India with her two babbies and husband when she was twenty one. Since then however, she hadn't really had the chance to travel much, and so with no job and the kids all grown with families of their own, she had decided to return to the land of her Spanish ancestors.

The next day I rose early in order to get into the Mezquita for free. It was absolutely beautiful, the golds and the blues were like a relief from the Cordoban heat and everything was silent, finally. Apart from my stomach. Hemingway said one can only truly appreciate art on an empty stomach but then if I smoked and drank as much as he did I don't think I'd feel like eating either. And so, reluctantly, my hunger frog marched me out of the Mezquita and I had tomatoe on toast served by a woman who looked at me like I was some tight fisted barnacle for wanting tap water not coffee. I returned to Carola's sanctuary, which I was having to leave for some accommodation which I had booked but had had received no information about from its host. The afternoon was passing by and I was slightly worried because all of the hostals were full as it was the festival of the patios in Cordoba. Denise and I went back to the house she shared with the other work away for a brainstorm and one of her ecaudorian chocolate ice creams. The house smelt of stone and faintly spicy, with high ceilings and a riddling layout of rooms at different levels. There was also a proper fly infestation problem; they were everywhere, sitting on the walls and waiting, not the really disgusting kind that go for poo but the sort that magically appear if you've left your uneaten take away out for a couple of days. The girls had stuck up long strips of dangling tape to combat the problem but these seemed to catch Denise more successfully than the flys. We decided that I could sleep on the sofa in the flat, which didn't look so bad after pounding out its lumps and brushing off the flys. I was thirty euros down from paying for a room which  I wasn't going to stay in but I didn't really mind. With all my worries put to bed (aha) I returned to the juice bar for another salad, sandwich and juice meal deal and Denise went to welcome some guests.

In Cordoba my spending spiraled out of control slightly. I'm not really sure why, I am susceptible to 'treating' myself for no particular reason other than I managed to wake up and get dressed all by myself. Well done. As I ate my lunch I started to receive really strange messages with strings of numbers from Roberto, the guy who was supposed to be renting out his room to me. Eventually he called me and instructed me, rather aggressively, to meet him in this square I'd never heard of. I kept asking him to write me the address which he wouldn't do and he was generally treating me like I was an inconvenience rather than a guest. After an hour or so he decided to meet me where I was, so I collected my bag at Carola's and returned to the juice bar where I met Roberto, in all his agro glory. I think a combination of Napoleon syndrome and early onset balding had contributed to his countenance, and as he marched me to the flat in the midday heat I also discovered that he was a complete cowboy and racist. With this in mind, my expectations for my accomodation was fairly low. He also told me I would be sharing the flat with a couple who were leaving the next day and perhaps I could have a beer with them. He made to leave almost as soon as we entered the place and as he said goodbye he took off the sporty sunglasses he had been donning the entire time. Nature had not been particularly kind to Roberto, his eyebrows were a different color to what little head hair he had left, and he would almost have had my sympathies if he hadn't texted me ten minutes after leaving asking me to leave the money in the flat for him. 

I went to the supermarket to buy my food for walking on Monday and took it back to the flat. The potential beer with the couple didn't seem likely; they hardly said hello and spoke only in whispers to one another apart from when the guy was in the shower when he would sing really passionately. Entirely odd. I left the flat and went to the cinema again and watched a film set in ww2 England which was for the most part pretty slow until the end when the family relocated to somewhere on the Thames because their house had been bombed out. It reminded me of home and summer and scones whilst watching Wimbledon and as the credits rolled I was a nostalgic wreck. I went to see Denise and we went out for ice cream and walked around the town until we found a concert hall where a pop group were playing, so we sat outside with everyone else who couldn't get tickets and listened. 

The next day I left the flat early and went for breakfast at the local. I decided I wanted to go and see the synagogue but ended up queuing for the Alcazar by mistake. It was beautiful inside though, so so many plants and fountains and lots of the lemons on the ground which I picked up to make lemonade with later. I went to meet Denise and took her to the juice bar for lunch where I talked to the guy about his music and watched a double wedding party drive by. We went back to Denise's afterwards and planned her trip to the North of Spain, which she would start the next weekend. I felt like a bit of an oracle and insisted that she went to Segovia and tried to some of the Camino. After a long siesta we decided to celebrate my last night with desert at a restaurant owned by this guy Denise really fancied but, as it turns out, was going out with her Spanish tutor. Me and Denise talked just as much as we ate and I probed her on her alternative lifestyle and tried to process and digest everything at the same time. The desert in the wine glass was amazing, caramel and cinnamon heaven sent wonder and afterwards we walked it off to the community centre and then back towards the Mezquita. 

Back home everyone seems to talk about the future and dream about how they want to live their life but here I'm meeting people who are actually just doing it. University still seems like this safe option even though I know I really want to go, sometimes I can't stand the thought of it and other times I think I just want to do degrees for a decade and then be a dusty old proffessor. I'm starting to realize that everything, in some way, is a bubble. A nine till five job, university, family, school, friends etc I understood for sure, but I know now that to think traveling is an escape from the bubble is wrong. Traveling is a bubble, a really nice Lenor one, where you get to be at your most free moving and passionate and have deep conversations with relative strangers because your this high ball of emotions and experiences. I know now the difference between inspiration and enlightenment, and I think a lot of people travel to become 'enlightened' when in fact, travel alone can only inspire. It's when you go back to reality, the bubble you call home, with all it's mundanity, I think thats where you'll find enlightenment. I don't fully understand the concept of enlightenment yet, I'm just very certain that it's different from inspiration. I also realize that this whole argument is rather tenuously linked by a general cynicism and, as yet, is without conclusion.

I said my farewells to Denise after a few beers and returned to the flat where I found a note from Roberto asking for his money. I didn't sleep a wink that night, imagining him coming to the flat with a couple of bailiffs for my money belt. I missed Denise terribly and fled Cordoba with €30 on my head.

Andalucia

From Valdepenas I walked through a huge National Park to get to the town of Santa Elena. I left quite late after having a coffee with David so I was walking in the midday heat. Never again. It was so hard, the sun made everything white until I'd go under a bridge or rock and be momentarily blinded in this powerful blue haze. There was some sort of motorcycle rally nearby so there were loads of grease monkeys on the road but it was so beautiful; a really different green to Galicia and with the exposed rock...... I arrived in Santa Elena, had a coke and then went to the only hotel they had which was a sort of hunting lodge, with stags etc. and this sharp young guy manning reception who looked really odd there. I ate tostadas with tinned pate (it tastes better if you don't look at or try and imagine where it's come from) and watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in bed and was merry. 

Walking to La Carolina was even better, you could describe it as a glen maybe, but I walked and walked through all these trees deep in the valley and it was quite cold. I passed these three guys who were mid cycling up a hill but with great gusto they got off their bikes because they wanted to have a photo with me. Afterwards I felt very happy and listened to Mumford&sons and contemplated making an emotional compilation video of my trip when I'd finished in Almunecar. It would include slide shows, shout outs and the last 1500m of walking I would film myself weeping with joy and pride. I was still stuck on the right music to accompany such a work of narcissism when I realises I'd overshot 

La Carolina by a few kilometers and had to walk back. Then pensiones I found was opened by a woman who was young but hagered looking, with a yellowing complexion and dark eyes, she could have been a corpse bride but she was still in her Mickey Mouse pyjamas. I was shown into my room where every piece of furniture in both the bathroom and bedroom have burn marks on them and my bed sheets were like slices of Swiss cheese, from cigarette shaped holes. I slept and watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty again to cheer myself up and then went out to get food. When I returned I knocked on the woman's door to ask if there was wifi but an old guy answered, and he leaned in heavily as I spoke with eyes like a fat greedy croc. I went to pay in order to get my passport back and was horrified to find it was €25 when I'd seen online that it was €15. The old man said he could give it to me for €15 before lunging at me, which I narrowly managed to avoid. I went back to my room feeling queasy and spent 20 minutes trying to work out how to open my door, there was absolutely no way I was going to ask for help.

Linares was a funny sort of place. There were loads of roller skaters and people dressed smartly and it was kind of what I imagined LA might be like. 5km outside of the city I was wilting in the heat when I guy offered me a lift. He was young and short with a neck tattoo and I made sure I got my valuables out my rucksack before putting it in the boot of his car. When I arrived in the town I beelined towards the nearest cafe where I ate tomatoe on toast and chocolate crepes and felt like a king. Then I found my pensiones which was really nice with a little terrace and I had a bath and forgot it was Sunday so ended up eating a packet of Doritos for dinner and watched enviously as Bear Grills munched his way through a wriggling fresh water Salmon from Alaska. 

From Linares I walked to Bailen and then Andujar where I had to stay in a pretty pricey hotel because the two pensiones I thought I could have stayed in had shut up shop. In the blistering heat all I really wanted was a Maccy D's banana milkshake, and so I walked for twenty minutes like a madman to the outskirts of town. When I got there I had to settle for a strawberry and nana frappe which was disappointing and I watched all the young adolescence sitting outside in their funny, awkward wolf packs which were fraught with sexual tension. Life might get a bit tough sometimes but I am so glad I am not that age anymore; that weird goofy ugly stage, where nobody says what they mean and you just need a drop of alcohol to descend into a weeping heap because nobody understands you. 

Walking to Cordova I lost my path; it literally just stopped, when it had been running alongside the main road quite happily for some time. Between me and the main road was a high fence and on my right the ground sloped sleepily down into an olive grove. Holding onto the fence for support, I traversed precariously along this uneven ground as I knew the path started again in 1500m or so from my mapping app. The gradient went from the sublime to the ridiculous however, and I realized I would need to try and scramble down and walk amongst the olive trees (olive groves are actually really annoying to walk in as the trees aren't grown in lines and the ground is always ploughed awkwardly under foot). At this point however, gravity took holed and I went tumbling down the slope and landed on what looked like it might have been a bonfire. I grabbed at the air to try and get up but my rucksack was holding me down and my chest strap was up round my neck and making my head turn purple. How the mightily fall. I might have contemplated further how my predicament was much like that of the Trex, king of the Jurassic period, impeded by stubby arms, but I looked up and saw the path I wanted and then looked at my arm which was full of thorns and then at my leg which was a bloody, Spartan mess. I think the fall did me good actually, I felt a bit more alive and it also made me feel like I deserved double cream Oreos. And so with the promise of those calorific sandwiches of death at the end of all this suffering, I sped towards my last stop before Cordova and felt hardy.

Viva la Valdepenas

I met Maria's boyfriend David at three in the afternoon outside the train station; 'I'll be the girl with the big rucksack' I said, thinking that it would be busy. There was no one else there which David kindly chose to ignore, agreeing with me that it was a very big rucksack. The Valdepenas flat that David and Maria shared was such a pad, it had a rooftop terrace and nice big rooms and their happy menagerie of animals (cat, cat, dog) clearly knew they had landed, all having previously been strays. David showed me to my room, which had Royal Tenenbauns, Manhattan and Breakfast at Tiffany's posters on the wall. And so, like cat, cat and dog, I was more than content with my new abode for the next few days.

David and I enjoyed Moroccan tea and some lunch and looked through his film collection. Maria and David had met at university in Cordoba when they were both studying Vetinary but a few years ago David quit his job and went to film school. Since then he'd made an award winning short film called two tomatoes about ecological and genetically modified food which was very famous in Spain. 

Maria returned from the doctors for a large bowl of lettuce, which she was eating to combat the toxins she'd inhaled from being sprayed by pesticides in the street. Maria wore her hair short, with little dragon fly hair clips which pinned her curls away from her face and she instantly offered me a pair of owl slippers to put on, a custom which a lot of my Couch Surfing hosts practiced and made me feel it home. After having a siesta, Maria invited me to go for a 6 mile run with her and her friends which I politely declined with 'I've been doing quite a bit of walking'. It wasn't until later that I realized that Maria hadn't read about my mode of transport on my CS request, which we both found pretty funny.

The next day David drove me round Valdepenas on the back of his vintage Vespa which I found exciting to a dawkish level. I didn't think we'd make it up out of the underground car park but the ped managed the magnificent feat and we came out almost flying. David seemed almost as excited as I was and told me how he'd fallen for them in Rome because 'if you don't ride a Vespa in Rome, you will never ride a Vespa'. Valdepenas didn't have many long straights, so we went careering around corners until we arrived at a bar where we met David's English teacher and a friend for a drink. We ate this really yummy sheeps cheese with honey and almond and tostadas, definitely a demi god dish. My Spanish found its fluency after a few glasses of wine and the Vespa felt like it had wings. We returned to the flat in time to have lunch with Maria and then we all had a siesta before Maria and I walked into town to buy vegetables. Maria had founded a group a few years earlier which employed two women from a village on the outskirts of Valdepenas to grow organic vegetables for them. The membership had grown exponentially since then, and they met each week in the community centre, where they could also buy homemade bread and other products. Everyone there was incredibally friendly and passionate about organic food, and afterwards we all went out for tapas and a drink and watched Atletico Madrid vs Chelsea. David and Maria suggested I stay another night which I was grateful for, seeing as it was midnight and there wasn't any sign of us going home.

Thursday was a workers day so Maria did not have to go to work and we made a spinach empanadilla together for the picnic that evening. Meanwhile David trundled around the house in basket ball shorts, a Captain America tshirt and slippers with a feather duster in hand; 'everything you have heard about the fiery Latin lover Hannah has been a misconception. This is the reality.' He said, with a flourish of the duster. Maria and I went to a town nearby in the afternoon which was very beautiful and famous for its theatre festival. The heat was intense and we clung to the shadows and went for a drink in a beautiful hotel with a Moorish patio.

It turned out the picnic site was a working farm which Maria and David's friend worked for, which was being set up as a place to host inner city children for weekends so that they could learn how to grow their own food. It was absolutely beautiful, set in a vast plane and backed by a small peaked hill which made it feel open yet homely. Most of the organic veg crew from the night before were there for the picnic and we all looked around the various patches and green house dome which the workers had designed and built. There was a massive happy Alsatian, hammocks and this beautiful house with a blue boarder and quilts and wind chimes. I was in absoloute awe of everything, and what was even more amazing was that there was this German girl Josephine who was there doing WWOOFing. For anyone who doesn't know, WWOOFing is where you go and volunteer on organic farms for bed and board and is a great way to travel without spending much money. It was something I was really interested in organizing to do out here in Spain but my time frame didn't allow it. Josephine had been a dance student and fell in love with Spain when she did the French Camino some time ago, returning to the country after dropping out of dance school and WWOOFing her way around. There was also an Italian guy who was volunteering on the farm and they each had their own little cabin for their bedroom.  After walking and talking for a while, the sun was setting and we set up a long table outside for a banquet. I don't think I will ever forget that evening; every single person around that table was glowing with their own special gift of joy which they gave without inhibition. The way I feel, oddly enough, could be compared to the character of Colin in Love Actually; 'I'm Colin the Sex God, I'm just on the wrong continent'. My name is Hannah and most of my life people have told me I am strange (this is not a sob story dw) but I'm not. I'm really normal, I've just been living in the wrong country. And so the night of the Gypsy Kings drew to a close and the next day I would head for Andalucia.

Don Quijote

I left Toledo for Mora, a small town famous for its olive oil and windmills. I soon discovered 'la ruta de Don Quijote', a well sign posted way which for some reason I thought had something to do with the cheese of the region, even though there were only vines growing around me. It turns out Don Quijote was the protagonist of a famous 17th century Spanish novel called The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of La Mancha. The young nobel becomes so obsessed with chivalric novels that he decides to revive the practice of chivalry with the aid of an earthly squire. So not cheese.

The route managed to weave its way in between the high hills which banked up on either side of me and had little Chutty Chutty Bang Bang windmills perched neatly on top of them. I passed through a village where a man looked at me aghast for wearing a tshirt. 'Its so cold!'. It was 18 degrees.

I was welcomed into my pensiones briskly; 'you're doing the camino' 'haha well, no, actually I'm following the route...' 'These are your keys, your rooms on the right, there's no breakfast'. So not everyone finds me particularly interesting. 

It was around this time that I'd discovered the joys of double cream Oreos. So, holed up in a scabby room with the sound of bar brawls on the floor beneath me, I'd hide under the covers and munch my way through a whole packet. I'm writing this now because so that I don't disappoint everyone with my 'summer bod' bikini shots come Cadiz. That double cream is sitting pretty comfy on my hips. No Regrets.

In Consuegra I had dinner with my family over Skype which was cute. In Villarta de San Juan I stayed in a truckers stop where the owner looked like some sort of Germanic human butcher and I had to fill up on petrol station food because it was Sunday and all the shops were closed. In a town 10km away from Mamzanaras, a family invited me to a three course meal, complete with tiramisu, and then dropped me off at my hostel. Don Quijote would be proud.

Toledo

Toledo didn't do much for me actually. It was so far removed from the rest of what I'd seen of Spain in its untainted splendor. I think I would have liked it more if they hadn't had so much traffic running through the city, it felt busier and louder than Madrid, like a berated child on its high perch. 

On my first day I crossed the river out of the city and walked around it for panoramic views. It was so beautiful and I spent all morning perched on a viewing rock, watching Toledo. Then I went to a reconstruction of El Greco's house which I really enjoyed; particularly reading about theories of why he painted the way he did, including his poor eye sight, obsession with the supernatural and use of mentally unstable modals. In the late afternoon I met Sonsolas, Carlos' friend, who was going to be hosting me for two nights. She was sweet and natural, and we went to a bar for a drink and some tapas before she showed me around the sights I really needed to see. She told me about the ridiculous parking situation in Toledo, where the council had turned a load of carparks into 'green areas' and only offered parking tickets for up to two hours. Meaning that for a full days work, Sonsolas had to walk back and forth to her car at least three times to top up her stay. I was feeling pretty exhausted but Sonsolas was on a role, despite having been at work all day, so by the time we got to her flat in one of the suburbs of Toledo it was pretty late. We had salad with beet root in and an artichoke omelette with cheese and I could feel my body saying thank you for finally eating food that wasn't brown or jamon based. Sonsolas had to work the next day and I was going to give Toledo a second chance and see the Cathedral. 

The next morning Sonsolas woke me at quarter to eight and I rolled out of bed and made breakfast at a leisurely pace. I asked Sonsolas at eight thirty wether she should have left for work already and she said yes, she was waiting for me. Mortified by this communication break down and feeling like greasy lemon, I left the house two minutes later, wearing pretty much what I had slept in. As I walked to Toledo it started to pour with rain which was actually quite nice and after accidently walking overshooting my turning, I eventually found the library to shelter in. Sonsolas had shown me around it the day before and there was a really beautiful corridor with portraits in and seats where you could go and read. I wondered around and around looking for this corridor but I couldn't find it so I ended up sitting in the children's library, which was fine until a school party arrived all dressed as mini El Greco's and I realized it was probably my que to leave. I went to the Cathedral and tried to follow the audio guide but I ended up listening to numbers 1, 2, 5, 12 and 15 because I am utterly incapable. I didn't like the Cathedral, it was spectacular and don't get me wrong, I can really appreciate religious art, but all the decor was this highly elaborate representation of heaven and it made me feel like our earthly existence was sort of futile. Like we couldn't wait for the credits to start rolling.

I did however love the synagogue, and in all the historical cities I've been to so far on my trip I'm always really drawn to the Jewish quarter. The synagogue was everything the cathedral wasn't; understated and peaceful, and it didn't require an audio guide which was a relief. The history of the Jews in Spain (like in so many other countries) made for somber reading, times of peace and harmony could be turned on its head in a second by a paranoid king. It's made me think a lot about how much we fear the success of minority groups in our society and how it always ends up manifesting itself in violence. The Jews seemed to have this amazing capacity for making a life out of nothing where ever they went, however persecuted they had been, like resilient honey bees. So yeah, I think Jewish history is the best thing since sliced bread.

With limited funds and the essential sights ticked off, I walked around the city until Sonsolas had finished work and we went to a couple of bars, one with a sort of Moorish inner patio and the other in a bookshop. Then we went to the supermarket because it turned out I hadn't bought salad dressing but some sort of meat condiment, and the giant 2in1 shampoo impulse buy wasn't going to fit in my rucksack. By the time we were having dinner it was late and I was walking to Mora the next day. Sonsolas had found me a pensiones to stay in for fifteen euros and I felt so excited to start walking again. Roy Campbell's consolation for living in Toledo was the red wine and El Greco's, and I would have to say mine were pretty similar, but I couldn't last a week on that. My farewell to Sonsolas was more flurried then Laurie's and Roy's, and I didn't look back after crossing the gorge of the Tagus. Cadiz was calling.