Cadiz, Andalucía, Spain

                 Last time I left off about my backpacking trip through out Europe I was in Sevilla, Spain.  While in Sevilla I was staying at my friends apartment, which I used as a home base so I could travel to different cities in Andalucia (the southern region of Spain).  My days there would consist of: waking up really early in the morning, my friend would take to the train station, I would take a train to one of the cities she had told me I had to go see, find the tourism both, plan out what I wanted to see, walk around for the majority of the day, then head back home (Sevilla), and walk around some more until my friend could pick me up so I could go to bed, and do the whole thing over again the next day.  

                The first city on the list was Cadiz, a city right on the Mediterranean.  The newer part of Cadiz reminded me of Miami and I wasn't really interested in so I spent most of my day in the older part.  The older part of Cadiz is really small with tiny winding brick streets, that I walked around on while getting lost on purpose.  The whole time I was there I felt like I was on a set of a movie or in Disney world.
                One of the main attractions are the beach and a old fort (Castillo de Santa Catalina) that is located right next to each other, so I worked my way there to check them out.  The front was nice but it was very similar to the ones I had see before all throughout the Caribbean in the Americas (probably because the Spanish were the ones who build those too) so it really didn't interest me.  But what was cool about the fort was that they used it as a gallery space, which they had beautiful works in, that I got to look at.

                 
                I was really excited about this trip to Europe because I really wanted to see Roman ruins, sculpture, and art; later I would get sick of them because there's that stuff every where you go and it lose its wow factor. Except for Roman, the scale there is just amazing.        

                   After a long day in Cadiz, I got back to Sevilla, and had to wait a bit to meet up with my friend.  So that gave me some time to capture some more images.

     
        I had always heard about all the Vespas in Europe and they where always showing up on the  TV show "American Pickers".  Before leaving the states I told my self I wanted to get nice shot of one while I was on this trip.  So when I seen the great light on this Vespas I knew this was the shot.
 

A night in Barcelona

              I had a flight from Lisbon to Barcelona and had no idea where I was going to stay and where I was going. So while I was still in Lisbon I made sure I took some time to start emailing and facebooking with friends in Spain.
   
             My friend Josep, that I met in my backpacking trip with La Ruta Inka, was living in Barcelona for law school and said I could crash at his place.  But it was only for that one night since he had a flight at 7am the next day.  I told him that was fine and when I got there I would figure out where I would go next.
   
             After a delayed air plain ride, not knowing what trains to take, and having to beg people to use their cell phones to call Josep, I finally meet up with him.  First thing we did was go to his piso (appartment to Spaniards)  to drop off my bag and then go get some tapas and some of his favorite local beer.  While eating I called another of our friends from La Ruta Inka, Chus, and talked to her about heading down to Sevilla to go visit her.  She was pumped and told me to head down in train the next day.
   
            There were two things I wanted to make sure I got to see before we did anything else, since I wasn´t sure when and how long I was going to be in Barcelona for my next time around.  Those two things were, La Sagrada Familia and Casa Batlló by the architect Antoni Gaudi.  Gaudi was influenced by forms in nature; insects, animals, and plants so his building were really strange since they looked like no other buildings.
   
            I got to have a quick look at what I wanted to see and then after dropping off my camera we went out for the rest of the night, with the plans that would just pull an all nighter and pick up our bags in the morning and head the airport and train terminal. Josep took me to the walk in the amazing streets of Barri Gòtic, which is the oldest part of the city and it feels like you're in a knight walking through a middle evil/gothic city.
     
           Walked up and down the narrow cobbled streets for a while and then Josep asked me if I wanted to go try some Absinthe and told him "it's my first time in Europe why wouldn't I want to try some absinthe".  So we went into a little bar, that looked more like a luxurious theater then a bar.  We sat down at a table we ordered a round of Absinthe and the waitress brought back two glasses one forth of the way fill with a dark green liquid, two spoons, a little envelope with cubes of sugar, and with a water bottle with a whole on the top.   The way you're supoused to drink Absinthe is by placing the spoon with a sugar cube cross the top of the glass with the Absinthe in it and then slowly let water drip on the sugar cube so it melts and dips into the of Absinthe, then after all that you can drink it.
   
          After our drink we went walking on La Rambla, which is a main pedestrian street that leads toward the harbor.  Once we go to the water, we sat down to talk, reminisce about our backpacking trip in Central America, and have canned beers that we bought from guys that would walk by and sell them out of plastic bags full of ice for a euro a piece.  A few hours went by and it was time to go get our bags and I had to head to the next destination on my trip, Sevilla.