Hello from the south of Spain!

It’s been a while since my last post, but, not to worry, my neglect most definitely does not come from lack of adventures.  Since my last entry in Porto we visited two cities in Portugal and are now in our third of three destinations in the south of Spain – Málaga.  We just arrived here a couple of hours ago so there isn’t too much to report thus far, but it seems like a lovely seaside city where we will probably do a fair amount of relaxing before starting our journey towards Italy in a couple of days.

Lisbon was the second city that we visited on our whirlwind tour of Portugal.  With it came the best accomodation we have stayed in so far, and some of the most amazing pastries I have ever tasted.  I said in my last post that our Porto hostel was the best so far, but Rossio Hostel in Lisbon went far above and beyond that (and was a lot warmer, too!).  The free breakfast in the morning consisted of either scrambled eggs and toast or crepes prepared by a wonderfully kind woman whose slight lack of mastery of the English language made her all the more endearing.  The kitchen and common room were great, and we enjoyed meeting some Canadians who put our cooking skills to shame.  As for the pastries, we had read about them in our Lonely Planet book (otherwise known as the bible these days) and decided to go seek them out at a cafe in Belém that supposedly had the most tasty ones.  They are called pasteis de nata (which translates roughly into cream pastries… I think… although my skills in Portuguese are sorely lacking).  They are incredible.  As soon as we ate our first bite of that first warm pastry with cinnamon and sugar on top, a love affair began that lasted all through the rest of our time in Portugal.  After we ate that first one we got two more each “for later”, but later ended up being about five minutes and 50 steps later when we couldn’t bear the temptation any more.  They don’t seem to have them in Spain, but I still catch Zevi wistfully peering into store windows of patisserias, hoping to catch sight of those little round pastries… sigh… I’m getting a little carried away.  

On to our next destination – Tavira, in the south of Portugal.  Tavira was a lovely relaxing break from our backpacking lifestyle.  Zevi had secretly booked a hotel for us to stay in for 3 nights, and we spent some lovely sunny afternoons lying by the pool and relaxing.  We were in Tavira for my birthday, so Zevi funded my very first massage (which, let me tell you, will not be my last massage.  It was more glorious than I ever could have imagined.) and we splurged on a nice restaurant that amounted to almost an entire days worth of euros in our normally ultra-tight budget.  I have never been so excited about having a bathroom to myself as I was when I arrived in our hotel suite in Tavira; it’s funny the little things that you realize that you take for granted when you share rooms with two to six strangers for three weeks.  We were suprised at how much we did miss the hostel lifestyle though, and especially the ability to cook for ourselves, so it was nice to hit the road again and get back into the backpacking swing of things.

Seville was our next destination, and from the second that we set foot in that city it captivated me.  I’m not exactly sure what it was that drew me to it, but Seville is a city where I could have stayed for much longer.  When we stepped off the train in search of our hostel we were met with the breathtaking site of the overwhemingly beautiful cathedral surrounded by fountains and orange trees heavy with fruit.  The whole cathedral area is lit up at night, giving the area an almost-otherworldly glow that never gets hard on the eyes.  Its old Jewish quarter is a mess of skinny streets and alleyways that wound and twisted enough to trip up even Zevi and his infalliable sense of direction.  Seville also struck me as a city that is full of life, with hoardes of partiers flowing out from bodegas and tapas bars even on a Sunday night.  Speaking of tapas, we have found none better than the ones we sampled in Seville, including my personal favorite –  deep fried camembert cheese doused in raspberry jam.  Perfect for all of you out there trying to watch your cholesterol… but then again, most delicious things are.  As you can gather from my glowing descriptions I became quite enamoured with Seville, and I was surprisingly sad to move on, much moreso than I had been from any other city.  I definitely plan to return some day.

Our trip is halfway over, and I can hardly believe it!  The time has flown by, although, looking back, we have seen and done a lot.  We are very excited to move on to Italy in a couple of days, and to actually get a chance to stay with some native Italians!  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to update this more often when I’m there, because I feel like I left so much out!

Hope all is well wherever you are.

Love Heather