One of the best things about being based in Europe is that lot of interesting places are close by and with the advent of deep discount airlines they can be reached for a reasonable price. Following a rather slow February and with spring (at least theoretically) not far away we decided to start taking advantage of being where we are.

In the first week of March, I was able to break from the usual routine because I was asked to help another group by looking at some thin sections that have been sitting in a dusty room at the Reading University for the past 20 years. Reading is about 30 minutes by train from London and because people do not get to work until about 9 in the morning I did not have to vary my daily schedule too much. I got up at the same time as always, but instead of walking east I headed north, cutting through the still dark Hyde Park and arriving at the Paddington Station in about half an hour. I was traveling against the current (that is the bulk of travelers are heading towards London in the morning) and so I always had a seat with room to spare. By catching the express we had only one stop and so overall an easy commute except for the price. Return trip came to over 20 pounds, which is a lot of money if you consider that some people pay it every day so that they can find cheaper housing outside of London. Luckily, this time I did not have to pay for this myself.

In Reading I took a taxi the first day, but soon found out I could walk to the university in about half an hour and this nicely completed my daily exercise.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) Reading is a pleasant town which used to be an important stopping point on a pilgrimage to one of the holy shrines in Spain when England was still catholic. That came to an abrupt end with Henry VIII. The city is built in an area where the only rock is the soft and crumbly Cretaceous chalk. It is too soft to be used for construction. The locals came up with an interesting solution. They used flint, which is a very hard rock consisting of silica and occurs in layers in the chalk as fist and head size concretions.

Today there is a famous university and the city is taking advantage of its proximity to London to set itself up as a high tech center. Oracle has a large campus along the railroad tracks and there are other high tech employers. I spend most of the day sitting at a microscope looking at thin sections. There was a time when I did this kind of work every day for several years and so this was a bit of a flash-back. (Thin sections are thin slivers of rock, cut so thin that they become completely transparent. You can then look at them and find out an amazing amount of information from a very small sample.)

After a week this pleasant diversion came to an end and it was back to the office. We have been planning to do more traveling outside of London when it gets warmer and so the following Sunday we decided to go on a little trip. Our destination was Canterbury and we definitely wanted to see it before the arrival of the summer tourist hordes. The weather forecast was favorable and we were all set for a simple little trip. As it turned out the morning was overcast and cool but we knew weather can and usually does change during the day and so we headed out anyway. We took the tube to the Victoria Station and the master plan was to buy coffee and pastry at the station and eat on the train, saving time by not having breakfast. I checked the train schedule on the web and was under the impression that trains leave every 15 minutes. Well, maybe they do, but by the time we got there the train which was just leaving was the last one for the next two hours. We had to run to catch it and consequently had no time to buy breakfast. Canterbury is slightly over an hour away and that did not seem too unbearable. Unfortunately, it turned out that the railroad is fond of doing all kinds of track improvement work on the weekend. About half the way to our destination the driver announced that the train was going no further and that there were busses waiting for us outside. The system worked quite well but it added nearly another hour to our trip. We arrived very hungry.

Canterbury is a lovely medieval town and since it still gets lots of pilgrims (the tourist kind these days) getting a decent breakfast was no problem. The cathedral is very large and quite impressive. As we expected the weather changed – but for the worst! It turned really cold and started to drizzle. This gave us even more incentive to take our time and maximize our time inside the cathedral. Pictures are at this points a much better medium than descriptions. I was struck by one thing, however. Graffiti carved into the pillars of the cathedral. This example of recent vandalism was in particular interesting because the cathedral is surrounded by extensive ruins of a monastery – result of older vandalism dating back to Henry VIII.

Since spring temperatures appeared to be nowhere in sight, we finished the month with a quick dash to Spain. We wanted to see Andalusia and an evening of search on the web showed that the best bet would be to fly with Ryan Air (a discount airline) to Jerez and take the train to Seville, rather than taking a conventional carrier, which would make us fly through Madrid and in addition to a nearly twice the cost would consume most of the day. The only catch was that the plane was leaving from Stanstead at 7 in the morning. We were supposed to be at the ticket counter two hours ahead of time – 5 a.m. There is a train from Liverpool station but public transport does not start moving until about 6 a.m. –too late for us. So we ended up booking a taxi for 2:45 a.m. to take us to the Victoria Coach station where we took a bus which one and a half hour later deposited us at the Stanstead airport. The good thing was that we arrived in Spain well before lunch.

The other advantage of choosing this particular route was that my uncle and aunt spend part of the year near Cadiz – only a stone’s throw from the Jerez airport. We have not seen them in over 5 years and this was a good opportunity to catch up on lot of things. Their flat is right on the beach and it was a treat to go to sleep listening to the surf. My uncle is an authority on Spanish wine and so it turned out to be a mind expanding experience as well. We visited one of the bodegas and I would summarize the sherry secret as “geology and climate are everything”. I also learned that there is a lot more to sherry than the overly sweet stuff the Brits seem to be so fond of. We also enjoyed the exotic cherimoya fruit, which I have never been able to find ripe in Texas, let alone U.K.

Next day we took a little “vapor” ferry across the bay into Cadiz. It made a very favorable impression on us. When we arrived, at about 10 a.m., the streets were empty. By the time we were leaving in the mid afternoon the streets and parks were full of people in a full party mode. The city was filed with the sweet smell of orange trees in full bloom. One peculiar thing about orange trees – you commonly see ripe oranges, green oranges and blooms on the same tree. We then went to Port Sherry, little bit north of Cadiz, to what must be one of the strangest real estate developments around. The complex consists of nicely designed small houses and condos which are occupied and in good shape, but side by side are partially finished buildings in all stages of construction. Apparently this is the way it has been for over 10 years. Somebody is loosing money – or maybe this is an investment opportunity.

The following day we headed to Seville. It is only about an hour from Puerto Santa Maria and cost only about 5 euros – much cheaper than trains in the U.K., and sadly, much better. Since Seville was our first stop I thought it would be better to make a hotel reservation ahead of time. Making a reservation on the web has its obvious advantages but also some problems – you do not know what you are buying until you show up. I did not look for the cheapest place, I was aiming a little bit below average. The photo looked fine and at 50 euros a night it seemed reasonable. It turned out a little different from what I was expecting – Kumiko described it quite succinctly: a fugitive hotel. It was basic room with a rather pathetic looking bathroom and woefully underperforming shower. But the biggest surprise came later. The room faced onto a narrow street, too narrow for cars, only pedestrians. But they kept going by and talking and talking until the early hours of the morning. And then, surprisingly, at around 6 o’clock it started all over again. We later found that the narrow street was a shortcut from the main bus stop – hence the heavy pedestrian traffic. But that still does not explain people being up until 1 or 2 in the morning and then being up again at 6. I am convinced now that Spaniards operate in two shifts – the early risers and those that go to bed late. Maybe they switch every two weeks.

We arrived early enough to get a good look at the city the first day. Walked along the Guadalquivir river to the golden tower, saw the university in a building complex which used to be the Royal Tobacco Factory, wandered through the old Jewish town and then spent a long time in the cathedral which is huge and contains the tomb of Christopher Columbus. We were also planning to see the fortress-palace but since it was Monday it was closed. We missed the entrance and ended up walking around almost two times. I left with the impression that is was not very large and probably was not worth seeing. Luckily the next day we saw some postcards which convinced us that it should not be missed. It turned out to be much bigger on the inside than on the outside and spectacular – both the palace and the adjoining gardens. I liked the tile work in particlar. See how many mistakes you can find on the right side of the picture. A dislexic medieval tile setter? Learning disabilites in early Medieval Spain! This could be a Ph.D. thesis topic for someone in special ed.

We spent the rest of the day seeing another church and just wandering through the streets. Like most medieval cities it is difficult to keep a sense of direction but the historical center is also mercifully small. The net result was that we must have walked through most streets at least twice. The one and a half day confirmed my old experience – 1-2 days is usually enough to get a sense of a city. Spending few more days would not be very useful, if one wanted to learn more, several months would be needed.

On Wednesday we headed to Granada. This was a longer trip and took us from the flat lands of Seville to a more mountainous and prettier terrain. We did not have a hotel reserved and hoped to find something without too many problems. We took one swing through an area we felt held some promise but did not see anything we liked. Since we were carrying our bags we decided to split up: Kumiko was going to wait in a sidewalk café with the bags and I was going to try my luck again. I was able to find a much nicer place than we had in Seville. Pretty room in a 16th century renovated building. Extra 30 euros bought us another star and a lot more comfort. Once we settled in the room we realized we still had enough time left in the day to go up to Alhambra. Alhambra sits on a hill above the town and is visible from all points. However, it must be one of the most poorly marked historical sites I have ever seen. The palace itself is easy to find but entrance is well hidden. We spend over half an hour looking for it and had to ask several times. But it was worth it. As remarkable as we expected. The only problem were people – too many of them. I hate to think what the place must look like during the main tourist season.

Since we saw Alhambra the first day, we had all of Thursday to look at the rest of the city. We wondered around the narrow crooked streets, up and down, taking pictures, visiting churches, museums and the cathedral. In the evening we decided to go and see a flamenco show. We decided against the usual tourist trap in the gypsy caves and instead headed to a “pena” (folk music club) recommended by the local tourist office. It was in a small side alley and without an address we would have never found it just by wandering about. There is apparently a performance every Thursday and so we were in luck. The event was started by a pudgy older man who upfront said that he had a speech only 50 pages long so we did not need to worry. I thought it was a pretty good way to start a short introduction but I also noticed that nobody in the audience laughed. They knew this guy. I did not count the pages but he talked for over half an hour. It was a good talk full of quotations from learned publication by the Royal Academy, but I could not get rid of the impression that he was a school principal who 30 years ago used to give hour long speeches to commemorate Franco’s birthdays. He eventually finished and the performance started. It had no dancers, only a guitarist and a singer and so one could concentrate one this specific element of the genre. Quite memorable. On Friday we headed back to Puerto and spent another night with my uncle. The next day we visited Sanlucar, had a lunch near the mouth of Guadalquivir which used to be the main route of Spanish galleons loaded with American gold sailing up to Seville. Our flight was supposed to leave at 7:30 in the evening but because they got everybody on the plane before that we left 30 minutes early and arrived at Stanstead one hour ahead of schedule. We were welcomed by strong wind and substantially lower temperatures. Luckily we arrived early enough to take the train back to town, it was twice as fast as the bus. We spent the last week recuperating from our travels and savoring ripe cherymoyas with which my uncle thoughtfully provided us.