![]() | Field Notes (Continued) |
Tom Schweich |
![]() Topics in this Article: 1800s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990 1991 1992 1993 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2008 Tour de Swertia albomarginata Mono Lake, August 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Contents Literature Cited |
When I first read the field notes of Annie Alexander and Louise Kellogg, I was fascinated by the descriptions they wrote about the places they went and the plants and animals they found there. By publishing my field notes on the Internet I hope to follow a little bit in their tradition. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 1999
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| My 1999 Trip to Spain
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| Sunday, February 7th
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My plane took off about on time, 755 AM, from San Francisco. We took off and immediately were above the clouds, and didn’t see the ground again until we landed in New York. After a two hour stop, I got back onto the same plane, in the same seat and left for Madrid
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| Lunes, 8 de Febrero
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Arrived Madrid about 7:00 AM, 30 minutes ahead of schedule. I was sleepier from San Francisco to New York than I was from New York to Madrid. Had some trouble getting the telephones to work. Finally I bought a 1000 pts phone card that I used to gain access to AT&T.
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The temperature was 37°F at the airport, which felt crisp and cool. The bus came in a few minutes and cost 385 pts. each. The driver could make change. I took the bus to Madrid where it stopped under the Plaza de Colon. There was a taxi stand with taxis waiting at the bus stop below Plaza de Colon. I took a taxi to Estacion Atocha. Bought tickets for Toledo and were sipping good orange juice, eating a croissant and café con leche by 9:30 AM. Estacion Atocha has a tropical garden with a small cafeteria.
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I tried the ATM, just to make sure it worked. Had a small problem over commas vs. decimal points, but eventually figured out how to liberate 20,000 pts from the ATM from my checking account in the US.
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The train from Madrid to Toledo is the Cerancias, a kind of regional train, which is electrified and runs on regular track. The last half of the distance to Toledo it operates over single track, with automatic block signals.
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Locations: Toledo.
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The hotel is the Hostal del Cardenal. I arrived in Toledo about 1145. Shared a cab ride with a German couple. The parador asked for my passport, which I gave to them. This was one thing I was unprepared for. Every hotel asked for my passports. Most of them used the passport to fill out a form, and returned it immediately. Only the parador in Toledo kept my passport overnight.
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After a shower, had lunch: roast chicken, French fries and a green salad. Then I walked around the city for a couple of hours. Lots of narrow streets. I often had to step into a doorway to let cars pass. I walked through the cathedral which did not appear to be large in the exterior but was quite large on the inside. Built 13th – 15th century, I saw 3 pipe organs. The cathedral was really dark inside, and quite dusty. Toledo is built on a hill which is surrounded on three sides by the Rio Tajo. I tried to get a good view of the river but failed. Never did find a good spot to see the river from above. On the way back to the hotel, I bought some honey-roast peanuts in case I got hungry later.
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| Martes, 9 de Febrero
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After 14 hours of sleep, I had breakfast, then headed out about 1000 AM. Slept all night but sounds carried in the hostal, and we heard television and much flushing. It was quiet after 1:00 AM and people started to stir again about 6:30 AM.
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Locations: Toledo.
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This day I walked around the northeast side of Toledo, until I came to the synagogue. Visited that, it has an overlay of Christianity. Saw some CDs of sephardic music but did not buy, then headed for the Casa y Museo de El Greco. On the way I saw the street San Juan de Dios has lots of shops that I walked around.
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At the Iglesia de Santa Tome I saw the famous El Greco of somebody’s interment. It was a cool painting with lots of interesting lights. After that, I found our way to Museo-Casa El Greco, where we saw the “Plano de Toledo” and lots of his other paintings. His paintings of the apostles all look alike. They all have narrow faces and crook noses.
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Visited Museo Sefardi, which was right near the El Greco museum. Here I found the all-important Aseos (bathrooms). The primary part of the interior of the museum is a former synagogue. From there I walked up the hill past the Cathedral to El Alcazar. In the Alcazar, I saw much evidence of man’s inhumanity to man, including the dungeon where the king kept his queen. It was starting to rain lightly.
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Lunch at the Restaurante Maravilla, nice, friendly, good food and very close to Plaza Zocodover. After lunch I did the Museo de Santa Cruz. Saw another El Greco, the light in this painting was obvious from a long way away. Saw a bust of Christ and Virgin Mary from the 17th century that was very impressive. The eyes seemed to glisten, and the teeth and tongue were very lifelike. Talked to the docent at Museo Santa Crus. The docent told me that these particular pieces were from the 17th century and quite unique in their lifelike-ness. He wanted to know if I had gone to the Prado and El Escorial. When I left the Museo Santa Cruz, it was raining harder now, as I wandered through the streets, trying to find a shorter way back to the hostel.
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At the hotel, they gave me back my passport, don’t know how they decide when to keep and when to return a passport.
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I noticed the electrical wires in bundles on the sides of buildings. Also noticed that the downspouts come down the buildings and then are inset into the wall until ground level. This is to avoid damage from cars.
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| Miercoles, 10 de Febrero 1999
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South of Madrid the soil is red. The hills have the look of Juniper woodland, but the trees appear to be pines. Limestone hills have oaks.
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After breakfast I walked again up to Plaza de Zocodover. I bought marzipan and we bought stamps. Ten stamps for 1150 pts. At the hotel, they called a hotel in Cordoba and make reservations for me. Then I checked out and took a taxi to the Toledo train station.
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Took the 12:30 Cercanias to Madrid. The Cercanias is really not designed for people with a lot of luggage, like us. The overhead bins will hold your backpack, but we had to take an extra seat for out suitcases.
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In Madrid I bought AVE tickets for Madrid to Cordoba, and then Cordoba to Sevilla. It looks like I bought round trip tickets for 7100 pts, about $50, round trip.
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Locations:
Cordoba.
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The AVE took 1:40 hr. For most of the trip the train crosses a plain and ascended very gently through rolling hills. Slowed down briefly at Puertollano, which appears to have a power plant at a coal deposit. From a pass near there the AVE descends the mountains into Cordoba. Almost as soon as the valley floor is reached, the train pulls into Cordoba. The countryside is rural and agricultural. Lower forested slopes reminded me of the oak woodlands just east of Red Bluff. A little higher (or steeper) reminded me more of the chaparral between Jamestown and Georgetown, e.g., Priest Grade.
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Took a taxi from the station to the hotel; think the driver took us for a bit of a ride, through the narrow streets, got lost on my first walk; went the wrong way but figured it out eventually. The streets are very narrow here in the former Jewish ghetto.
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Locations:
Cordoba.
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Locations:
Cordoba.
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At restaurante Tio Pepe, I had a very nice shrimp, garlic and lettuce salad. The roast suckling pig almost made me barf at first, because it wasn’t very tasty and was a bit chewy. During the dinner the waiter asked where I was from. Then when he brought our dessert the dessert chef had written “San Francisco” in the sauce. In our room were all tourists. Each of us got something cute like that with our desert. I guess it was a sort of “tourist trap” thing. But it wasn’t overdone, and the food at the restaurant was pretty good.
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I thought I are the only person in the Hotel Albucasis that night. But in the morning it turned out that there was one other couple in the hotel.
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| Jueves, 11 de Febrero
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This morning I got up and had a light breakfast, then walked around the juderia de Cordoba. Need to learn dejar, to leave, as in “queremos a dejar las maletas,” “desalojar” which must mean something line to check out. and abonar to leave or give up. It’s not abandon since the Spanish verb for that is abandonar. I got these words from reading the check-in receipt we got at the Hostal del Cardenal in Toledo.
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I also need a lens cap for camera, so I need to ask, “Estoy buscando para una tapa para la lente de la camera.” And perhaps, “Hay una tienda fotografia cercano de aqui?”
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I left my suitcase at the hotel in Cordoba, so we need to learn to ask, “Nos gustamos a desalojar y dejarse los maletas aqui mientras andamos alreddedor la vicinidad.”
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In Cordoba, I found several shopping areas. Bought some washcloths because, so far, the hotels don’t seem to have them. There were many more stores in Cordoba than we saw in Toledo. Asked in a store for a lens cap, but they didn’t have one. By the time I left Cordoba, I felt I had seen it well.
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I went back to Hotel Albucasis and got my luggage and asked them to call a taxi. There was a workman in the lobby digging up tiles for some reason. He had an electric hammer and was putting the broken tiles into plastic shopping bags. Took the taxi to the train where I waited for about 1½ hours. Had some small mix-up about the seats as there was another person who had the same seat assignment as I did. No one checked our tickets except on the platform at Cordoba.
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Locations:
Sevilla.
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In Sevilla took a taxi to our hotel, the Hotel Simon. Downstairs there is a sitting room and a restaurant. It is only used for breakfast. Upstairs there must be 10-15 rooms.
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My daughter came from school almost as soon as I checked in. I chatted with her for a while and then went to dinner at Restaurante San Martin. I had spaghetti in meat sauce.
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Rachel went to dance class and then came back to the hotel. She demonstrated the Sevillana, which she is learning. After talking some more, we made phone calls and then went to dinner. Rachel had paella. I had a “salad” of shrimp, avocado, pineapple and walnut with some sort of mustard(?) dressing. Kind of a strange mixture, but it was really very good.
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| Viernes, 12 de Febrero
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Locations:
Sevilla.
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Rachel was pretty tired as she was recovering from a virus, so we got coffee, tea and bollas. Then we walked the Sierpes, one of several narrow streets in the shopping area.
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Had a fine lunch at Casa Robles. The house salad was endive, escarole, shrimp, salmon and a little caviar with a 1000 Island dressing. I think this was probably the only salad lettuce salad for which there was a dressing other than vinegar and oil. Then I had grilled lamb chops, small but very tasty.
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Locations:
Rio Guadalquivir.
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Went back to the hotel and rested, then went to meet Rachel's Señora. Had coffee and cookies and Rachel translated until her voice gave out. Then dropped off Rachel’s present at our hotel and walked the Sierpes again, ending up at El Corte Ingles, a large department store chain in Spain. They had a bit of Marklin track but no trains. They didn’t seem to manage their stock very agressively.
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Had dinner at Restaurant Las Escobas. It was right next to Casa Robles, on a corner near the Cathedral and right at the edge of Barrio de Santa Cruz. The Gazpacho was pureed and very good. I think this is the place that I had the really good gazpacho. The rest of the “Home Cooking” meal was 3 chicken drumsticks, french fries, and a little lettuce salad, and that’s pretty much it.
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| Sabado, 13 de Febrero
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Rachel came over and we took a taxi to the Hertz place. We got a diesel Seat Cordoba. Since our hotel had no parking, we drove to a parking place and Rachel went back to her apartment to rest a bit. Then I practiced driving a bit. Made a loop through Calle Zaragoza, through the Plaza Nueva, right on Calle Garcia de Venusia, past the hotel and then back to our parking place. Calle Zaragoza is one of those very narrow streets with little or no sidewalks. Walked to the hotel, exchanged stuff, and then walked to the Cathedral.
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| Domingo, 14 de Febrero
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On Sunday, I drove to Italica, and then to Monasterio, but I didn’t do the monastery.
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Met Rachel in the morning. She really didn’t feel well and needed to rest for the day, so she went back to her apartment while I tried to see something that day. I set out for Italica, a Roman ruins just north of Sevilla. Somehow I was headed south on the freeway when I should have been going north. It took a while to get this straightened out. Meanwhile, at 100 km/h on the freeway I were now headed east around the south side of Seville. Since this was working, I decided to continue on the freeway loop around Seville. Not more than 20 minutes later I was headed north from Seville to Italica.
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Locations:
Italica.
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Tonight we went to see “You’ve Got Mail.” This was in English with Spanish subtitles. After the movie we had Mexican food. I got a flauta, which was a corn tortilla wrapped around chicken and lettuce, drizzled with cheese and broiled.
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| Martes, 16 de Febrero
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Yesterday was the day I got sick. After breakfast I went to the Sevilla train station (Estacion Santa Justa) to buy tickets to Madrid and Santiago de Compostela. I confused the lady by nodding when she said “caja” rather than “credito.” It cost us 9000 pts “caja” for our Sevilla-Madrid tickets. Then I bought the Madrid-Santiago tickets, and managed to answer the “caja o credito” question correctly this time. Then when I asked for the Santiago-Madrid tickets she got all upset because we had just bought those tickets for the 22nd and why did I now want to buy them for the 24th. Finally she understood that these were the return ticket and we got it all straightened out. After the ticket-buying episode, I had to sit on the bench and rest for a few minutes. Although perhaps I was already beginning to feel sick from the food. I also found a Hertz station at the Estacion Santa Justa. This will be much more convenient for me when I return the car.
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On the road, about an hour out of Seville, I began to feel very nauseated. Finally stopped, got fuel and a Diet Coke, but continued to be quite nauseated. Otherwise I don’t remember much about this day. There was one highway grade I could see in the distance. The north side of the grade on the highway between Antequera and Malaga was very short and steep, and it was quite a long run down the canyons to Malaga. I found the botanical garden, there was a sign on the highway. Unfortunately, this was a Monday and the garden was closed.
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I pressed on, thinking I might stop in Malaga, or someplace close. Driving down little streets as I worked my way through Malaga. It’s a big city and very resort-y, but otherwise not too attractive to me.
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Locations: Nerja.
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Went on to Nerja. Thought I would go to the tourist office, get a list of hotels and find one. Made the city loop twice, saw a sign pointing to the Tourist Office, but never saw the office itself, gave up and headed out of town. Up at the highway, I spotted a hotel. It was an ugly tourist affair, but we needed to stop. The “H” sign for Hotel had four stars so I stayed there. I had 2 bites of a mocha bar for combined lunch and dinner. Mostly I wanted to sleep.
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Locations:
Tabernas.
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In the morning I had a light breakfast and headed east towards Almeria. When I got there, I didn’t feel like stopping so I headed north to Tabernes, the desert of Spain. I found the tower that had the “Hollywood” sign, but the sign itself is gone. There were a couple of movie sets that could be visited, where the “spaghetti westerns” are filmed.
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Locations: Tabernas.
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I drove into Tabernas, where I bought some lunch supplies, yoghurt and some crackers, then set off on the highway for Granada.
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Locations:
Tabernas.
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Drove straight to Granada, then around and around. Tried to follow the signs to the tourist office, but couldn’t find it in the little streets of downtown Granada. Headed toward the Alhambra. I abandoned my car in a parking lot below the Alhambra and walked up the hill to find a hotel.
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| Miercoles, 17 de Febrero
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The Hotel Guadalupe was a lucky find. After I checked in, I rested and got dinner. The dining room doesn’t open until 8, so we went up the hill to the next hotel, the Hotel Alixandes. Their dining room opened at 7:30 PM. It was a buffet with some sort of food that approximated everyone’s tastes.
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At the Hotel Alixandes, the tourists were Asian, Japanese I expect. I keep expecting the Asian people to speak English, probably because I work and play volleyball with a lot of Asian people, so it was quite a shock to learn that there are Asian people – from Asia! – who don’t speak a lot of English. On the other hand, this afternoon there were two young Asian men for whom I waited while they took their pictures. Then they said “Thank you” without a discernable accent so I suspect that were Asian-American or had spent quite a bit of time in an English-speaking country.
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In the Alhambra, the Gardens of the Nazarid Kings are the best part. Your visit is timed. Our entrance time was from 10:00 – 10:30. You can stay as long as you like but you must enter between these times. The fountains and plaster decorations were very beautiful.
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Touring the gardens leaves you back at the main gate, and you have to walk back down to the Alcazaba, which is the military fort section of the Alhambra. I think it is a plot to rush you through the Alcazaba, force you through the Gardens and then on to the Generalife. Anyway, I did the gardens, then the Alcazaba, then the Renaissance Palace of Carlos V.
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The Palace had columns of conglomerate. Most of them were in good shape but a few had been repaired. The balcony rails were also conglomerate and had decomposed in several places. You could also see where the marble steps had been repaired by dove-tailing in a small piece or marble. I had a buffet lunch at the only place to eat inside the Alhambra. It was passable, and I didn’t get sick. Then I walked up to the Generalife.
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The Escalada de Agua was a nice touch, but a little more creativity could have done more with the water. Such as directing the water slightly to one side so as to make a swirl or varying the angle of descent to invoke a “hydraulic jump” then a fall. Although perhaps this may be hard to do on a small scale.
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Here the gardens were also very attractive. There was a stage and theater backed by the gardens. The gardens had lush cypress hedges that were trimmed like castle walls. The cypress hedges dampened much of the noise and could give a quiet but airy shade in the summer.
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On the way out of the Alhambra, I came upon an ambulance crew working on a man who died. He was laying on the dirt with a Cruz Rojo crew around him, and the Assistencia Urgencias who came later. Things weren’t going well. He wasn’t getting aerated because his chest wasn’t rising, and the crew wasn’t very intense about doing compressions. Even their endotracheal tube wasn’t set up properly for insertion. Not like the “Emergency 911” we used to watch and try to emulate in our emergency services at home.
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| Jueves, 18 de Febrero
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My hotel was pretty much empty when I went to bed, but I soon found out why. The young tour group showed up about midnight last night, and proceeded to keep us awake for about an hour and a half. At one point, they rattled the door handle to our room. After the 3rd time I shouted, “Hey! Knock it off!,” which merely set off more giggling in the hallway. In the end I called the hotel desk and said, “Favor de llamar a la direction del grupo y preguntar para silencio.” The night desk said, “Recuerde,” but that had little effect either. They finally settled down and we got to sleep around 200 AM.
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Got up and had breakfast. They are re-doing the dining room at the Hotel Guadalupe so the smell of paint was quite strong. There was another American family in the dining room and they, or rather the mother, was having such a hard time. They didn’t want to sit at the assigned table, and it took a long time for them to understand that the other tables were set up for “el grupo.” Then she didn’t like the looks of the food, and then something else. She was having a really hard time. I hope their day got better.
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Anyway I checked out and loaded the luggage into the car. The automatic cash machine wanted 3600 pts. It took a 2000 pts bill and then refused to take any more bills. Perhaps its capacity is one bill and any number of coins. Fortunately, we had 3 500 pts coins. Those and a 100 pts coin made the 3600 pts I needed to get my car out of hock.
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As I drove down the hill from the Alhambra, I noticed the Autovia that leads across the south side of Granada. This would have been the best way to approach the Alhambra, rather than through the center of town. On the Autovia (freeway), I went north for a while, and finally west on A-92, the Sevilla – Almeria, por Granada highway.
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The drive to Sevilla was uneventful. The sky was quite hazy. Stopped for a few pictures at Loja. On the outskirts of Sevilla I selected the wrong lane and ended up reversing our direction. Fortunately I immediately came upon a matching structure at which I reversed my direction again. The next time I was smarter about which lane to select.
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Left Granada at 10:15 AM and pulled into the parking lot at 13:25, 3 hours, 10 minutes from Granada to Sevilla.
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Met Senora and Antonio and Juan-Carlos, Lauren and Rachel for tapas. I had Pollo Frito, Patata Ali-Oli, and Tortilla Española. The Patata Ali-Oli was basically potato salad, but spiced with lots of garlic, very good.
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