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AUGUST 2000 - PART2

Two nights later we took an overnight train for Lagos which was our primary destination. I'd heard a lot about Lagos. Best beaches in Europe, pubs and clubs everywhere, place full of British, Americans, Aussies and Kiwis. In a guide book I read that all the people try to pick up a girl/boy before sunset and then the walls start shaking ;.) Anyway, after our arrival there were people waiting for tourists and offered us a room. We accepted and first we went to sleep again as we were really tired. 

At around 11 we went to the seaside. Those beaches were cool. We obviously had to build a sand castle to keep us busy and then just lying on the beach and swimming. I have to say that we got burnt a bit as the sun was very strong. My advantage is that even though I get red I'll turn brown in a couple of days. Something like 5 hours later we came back to our room, slept again (you know we had a big sleep deficit) and then went to the village centre. After leaving a bar we got beaten up by some Portuguese who wanted to fight. We didn't want to fight back so we received just few punches, kicks and then ran away. What scared us was that they didn't want any money - they only wanted to fight. We changed our minds after this and left Lagos a bit earlier than we'd thought. OK, now Granada! 

But leaving Lagos wasn't that easy. Everything was alright until we reached San Antonio. Then there's no way further. The only possibility was to take a ferry to Spain and then by bus to Huelva. Obviously, everything took very long and we needed to wait everywhere. Although we thought we'd reach Granada that evening we were lucky we got to Sevilla. As we spent nearly whole day travelling just about 100 km's or so we expected the bus from Huelva to Sevilla to take much longer than an hour because we were sure we wouldn't find a good accommodation in Sevilla anyway that time so we just wanted to arrive as late as possible. 

At about 10 p.m. we were at Sevilla train station. First question was: "When does the train go to Granada? In the morning? Fuck! Do you think we could sleep in the station? We have to ask the guards? Alright." We found a guy who spoke English (finally). He told us that it was no problem as long as we'd stay behind a corner where there were no cameras. 

The station closed around midnight and we were almost sleeping when those guards came again and told us to leave the station and sleep outside. Even though those guys told us a couple of hours before that we could stay they sent us outside. At 5 they woke us up again as the station opened and they didn't want us to sleep infront of the doors. Anyway, in the morning we said hello to Lorenzo who left for Morroco and joined Mariella and Valentina, the Italian girls we stayed in Lisbon with, who we accidently met at the station in Sevilla. In Granada we found an accommodation (again there was a person who came to us) and the first day we spent just mucking about, sleeping and visiting pubs.

The following day we finally went to see those places like La Alhambra,Sacromonte, and all those places. Well, we didn't actually see much of Sacromonte as we didn't want to pay such a high price to enter Alhambra and later we got to know that the tickets were sold out by 11 a.m.! We just walked through and looked forward to Sacromonte. 

The same day I left the Czech Republic I read in the newspapers about Granada and I was amazed by Sacromonte. There are caves in the hill and Gipsies live there. They don't complain and actually like it! We saw there was a TV aerial outside. They are said to show the tourists what it looks like inside. We weren't that lucky and took just some pictures from outside. You could see some differences there as well. Some cave entrances were covered just by a table cloth, some had a regular door. This probably made the biggest impression on me from whole Spain.

I checked my email in Granada and found a message from a friend of mine who studied with me in England. He is Swiss and wrote because he wanted us to pop in his house the following weekend. He will be there just with his girlfriend Caroline who is my schoolmate from England as well. Therefore, we left Granada (actually, I think 2 days were enough to see the most important things) and moved over night to Valencia. As it was the end of August and all the tourist were leaving Spain we didn't want to get stuck there and wanted to move as fast as we could. We didn't stay in Valencia for the night and few hours later headed to Barcelona. We needed to get to Luzern by Friday so we didn't stay in Barcelona and I regret I didn't see it.

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