Spain 1999 - Day 8

Off to Granada today. We got to the bus station and boarded the bus. It left at 9 am and gets there three and a half hours later. Hope Emma’s going to be OK.

Still, its air-conditioned and comfortable with Radio Malaga playing UK and American hits as we cruise along the Spanish motorways. Hotel California comes on and I just know the DJ will talk over the best two minutes of the record and, yes, here he comes waffling away just as the two minute end guitar solo gets underway, bastard. It seems every day I have to add another name to my list of people who piss me off.

We arrived at the central bus station in Granada at 12.45 pm. Throughout the journey Emma wasn’t feeling that wonderful but at least she wasn’t actually sick. When we got off the bus all she wanted to do was sit down again. She didn’t want to walk or do anything so we went across the road from the bus station to a bar for something to eat and drink in the hope that it might do the trick and make her feel better. It did and we started to think about making our way to the hotel. We had the address but really only knew that it was somewhere very close to the Alhambra. While finishing our meal we decided to ask the barman if he could tell us where we were now on a map in relation to the Alhambra. I tried to communicate in broken Spanish when he suddenly interrupted me and said, “It’s OK, I speak some English.”

He didn’t stop me until I’d got in a right old muddle though, just so he could have a good laugh at my expense probably. He continued in perfect English, “If you go across the road and get the No 6 bus, ask the driver for El Alhambra, he will, if he’s nice, tell you when you get there. The bus stops in the city and you will have to walk from there to El Alhambra, its about half a mile away. The bus will only cost three to four hundred pesetas and will be much better than getting a taxi.”

“Thanks”, we said. I was still miffed at being left to struggle with my Spanish while all the time he could speak English. “I bet that’s the only bit of English he knows,” I said to Pauline, “I bet he can’t say anything else.”

The bus driver was nice. He told us when to get off and pointed in the general direction we had to walk. The barman was right, it was about half a mile away. What he didn’t tell us was that we had to walk most of the way up a one in three incline in the boiling heat of the midday sun with me carrying a heavy overnight bag for the three of us while tourist mini-buses cruised past us as I stumbled, swore and sweated my way up the steep mountain road to where we assumed our hotel was.

“It’s not bloody up here,” I kept saying to Pauline.

“Yes it will be,” she kept saying back.

“The air’s getting thinner”, I said taking my T-shirt off and ringing the sweat out, “Where did you put the oxygen pack and the salt tablets?”

‘Look, there’s the hotel,” said Emma as we rounded a bend. The sign in the distance said ‘ OTEL ASHINGTO ‘. Yes, that’s the Hotel Washington all right, I thought, “You two go on ahead and check us in, l’ll catch up. Just make sure my ropes are tight and leave me with enough crampons to get me to the top.”

Emma and Pauline were in the hotel foyer checking in when I came crashing through the double doors. T-shirt tied round my forehead, shorts wet with sweat and hanging down at the back below buttock level. Re-bounding against the furniture I made my way up to where they were standing, finally dropping to my knees and crawling the final few feet leaving a snail’s trail of sweat behind me on the carpet.

“Sanctuary”, I croaked, knowing that now everything was going to be all right. Our problems were over.

The receptionist said something to Pauline I didn’t quite catch. ‘What did she say?” I asked.

“She said we’re on the fifteenth floor and the lifts are broke.”

The doctor said I’d be OK, there’d just been some sort of explosion in my head that’s all.

Spain 1999 - Day 9

The Alhambra is the old walled city and within the walls are the remains of two palaces and some really beautiful gardens. The number of visitors this place gets is phenomenal and the only way to cope with the numbers is to restrict the number of tickets sold.

Tickets go on sale everyday at 9 am and continue to be sold until that day’s allocation runs out. When you buy your ticket you also have a time slot allocated to you and you have to present yourself at the entrance to the main palace within that time period. If you miss it, you’ve lost your chance of seeing the palaces for that day and all you can do is view the grounds and gardens. You also have no choice in the time slot allocated to you, it could be anytime throughout the day. So bearing all this in mind, Pauline decided she would get to the ticket office by 9 am to make sure we could get in. It was only a short walk from the hotel but it meant yet another early morning after a very long day.

She was up and out before Emma and I realised she’d gone and we were under strict instructions to be ready when she returned. We were all so tired due to a bastard dog keeping us awake for over two hours or so in the early hours of the morning by barking continuously from somewhere next door to the hotel.

Christ, if it kept all of us awake why didn’t we see people walking around the hotel this morning looking like zombies? We didn’t. Are they all deaf?

Pauline came back with our tickets at about 8 45 am and said, “Quick, get ready, our time slot is for 9.15, we’ll have to look round the palaces and then come back for breakfast, after breakfast we can go back anytime and look around the gardens.”

So we did. So that was nice.

We finished the sightseeing, checked out of the hotel and made our way back to the central bus station. Because Emma is such a bad car/coach traveller we decided to get a ninety minute bus ride back to Malaga and from there get a train to Fuengirola (30 mins). Not only would it cut down the journey time it would reduce Emma’s time on the bus. We arrived at Malaga, Emma was fine and found the train station. Easy, no problems. Then, it started to get difficult. How do we get a train ticket? There were six ticket counters all right but there seemed to be crowds of people standing away from them, just waiting. We couldn’t understand why people weren’t just walking up to the counter and buying a ticket. Then we realised that you had to go up to a machine, take out a ticket with a number on and wait your turn. Just like waiting at the supermarket deli counter.

Pauline took a ticket. It was number 539. We looked at the overhead display, the current number being processed was 505 and our train left in 25 minutes. That’s a lot of numbers to get through in 25 minutes I thought but how long does it take to buy a train ticket? Not long does it?

Judging by the crowds building up around the ticket counters and the time some people were taking to get served I was beginning to worry that we might miss our train after all. We stood around with everyone else and watched and waited. Ten minutes went past, fifteen minutes went past and the overhead ticket display had only clicked on to 5 16!

What the hell are they doing? Each person who reaches the ticket counter is taking bloody ages to buy a ticket. How difficult is it? A ticket to Barcelona please. Certainly, that will be 5,000 pesetas please. Next. Two minutes at the most. But they’re standing there, jabbering away for eternity. Look, the ticket display’s still only on 525 and we’ve been hanging around for thirty minutes, our train has gone and the crowds are getting bigger.

We only want a local train ticket even though this station is a major main line terminus and at a guess most of the passengers are travelling the length and breadth of Spain. Perhaps there’s somewhere else you have to go to buy a Iocal train ticket, perhaps these counters are just for non-local journeys. We had no way of telling so Pauline went up to one of the counters just as one Spaniard had walked away and before the next one could commandeer it. “Do we buy a ticket to Fuengirola here or do we have to go somewhere else to buy it?” she said with an irate

Spaniard behind her thinking that she had pushed in front of him to buy a ticket. The ticket clerk just gestured towards the crowds of people waiting to be served so we started to hang around again.

The display clicked onto 529, 531, 532, each click taking at least five minutes before the next one. Each customer is taking forever and a day to process. I can’t believe how slow it all is.

And then it’s our turn, click it’s 530. Pauline rushes to the counter and says, ‘Fuengirola, tres por favor.”

The man says, “No, you go downstairs to other platform and get ticket for Fuengirola.”

“But that man said we had to wait and queue here with everybody else,” said Pauline getting really angry.

“No, down there,” the man said.

“But we’ve been waiting around here for over forty minutes and already missed one train,” said Pauline almost crying with anger.

“No, down there,” the man said again.

We gathered our belongings and went down some stairs. There we saw another ticket office and another series of platforms. This was the place where the local trains departed from. It was deserted. The ticket hail was completely empty. We walked straight through, bought our tickets immediately and stood on the platform.

“I hope that first man in the ticket office falls under a train,” said Pauline, “how dare he be so off-hand and unhelpful, he knew we wanted tickets to Fuengirola and he could see us waiting around all that time after I spoke to him. Why did he do it?” she said almost in tears.

“Don’t worry,’ I said, “his name’s gone to the top of my list.”