SPAIN travel advice

it's not "not hard" - how's that? people are on holiday with their kids. it's pretty fucking hard.

and of course, it's not hard to not have your phone stolen from your ear while you're talking to someone (me)

Sometimes when people talk about going to a tapas bar I think they are saying topless bar and I have to mull it over why they would suggest it.

Taps Aff Bar.

well played, Yerac :)

in buenos aires multiple locals came up to me to warn me about theft, what to do and not do, where to go and not. it was thoughtful...i guess? kept me on edge the whole time though

They were all probably trying to rob you.

I was sitting outside a café in Paris and a guy warned me about dodgy looking character who'd just sat behind me and the guy scarpered. Not that he'd have got anything other than my £1 reading glasses.

Taps Aff Bar.

Excellent LOLz there which only people from the West of Scotland would understand.

... Paris, last month, that is.

Barcelona is basically now just an almost disney-level tourist destination with a major sideline in robbery/theft/ pickpocketing/scams.

i know you qualified it but come on.

I haven't been to Andalucia in 20 years but I'm planning a trip there this spring, thinking Sevilla->Granada->Córdoba. a one week trip. I've been to the first two, Sevilla in fact several times, but never Córdoba. I've been to Morocco too and think the architecture in the south of Spain is yet more beautiful (I think the Moors valued it more than Morocco even). I remember being a bit let down by the Alhambra after having spent all day in the Alcázar of Sevilla, but tbh I was "backpacking through Europe" at the time & was getting burnt out.

Just more personal opinion to add to the pile, but I've not had any problems in Barcelona the couple of times I've visited, and didn't feel it anything like as sketchy as is often portrayed. I'd be as cautious with my valuables in almost any big, popular city as I would be there.

Córdoba definitely worth a visit. Mezquita is incredible and one of a kind, a mysterious mashup of mosque and cathedral. Alcazar gardens are beautiful, though Alcazar itself a little underwhelming. The old whitewashed section of the city is wonderful to walk through with interesting moorish and Jewish sites. Modern city has a bit of grit but is a real place not a tourist trap. Good tapas, drink Montilla Moriles sherry. Fried shrimp, ajoblanco.

Seville and Cádiz are both fantastic. worth visiting Vejer and the beach and roman ruins at Tarifa if you get down to Cádiz.

Never had a problem in Barcelona though it’s undoubtedly busier than it used to be.

tbh I dont think i've been to Barcelona in the August/July in over 10 years and i'm sure it can be a lot more crazy those times.

I’ve been to barcelona 5+ times and only lost my passport to pickpockets once so make of that what you will

I was there in July last year. I hadn't been in several years (maybe 5-6?). Some parts were definitely throbbing, like the beach and around Las Ramblas. But most other parts were totally normal.

I've only been to Barcelona once, and had a fine time, but I find the focus it gets from tourists annoying and I've spent much more time elsewhere in Spain for that reason. Probably people feel that way about Paris too though...

I like this piece about tourism and Barcelona a lot. https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2018/the-battle-for-the-boqueria/

Nobody remembers who was the first to sell smoothies at the Boqueria. Or if they do remember, nobody seems eager to take credit for it.

The idea, undoubtedly, came from a very simple realization: Tourists don’t buy vegetables. They don’t buy fish or pork chops, snails or mushrooms. They sure as shit don’t buy monkfish or mollusks, chicken or chickpeas or chicory. They need something they can hold in their hands, consume in the moment before they move on to the Sagrada Familia or the sands of Barceloneta. Sure, savvy travelers know that a market is the perfect place to build a picnic of local products, and an ideal spot to find gifts for friends and family, but most visitors aren’t thinking beyond their next bite. For them, smoothies gave them a simple way to connect to the Boqueria.

Today, much of the Boqueria runs on liquefied fruit—an ever-growing army of plastic cups that paint the market a psychedelic swirl of orange and green, pink and purple. At Sprimfruit, near the market’s main entrance, they sell so many smoothies that they run them through giant plastic tubes like some marginally-healthier version of the Wonka factory. Some have bet the entire farm on pulverized produce; others have tried to keep selling fresh apples and bananas and strawberries alongside their fluid counterparts, but with diminishing returns. I’ve watched over the years as the fruit itself is subsumed by its byproduct.

More than replace much of the market’s supply of fresh fruit, the smoothies set off a chain reaction across the market. Vendors, already suffering from a lack of local clientele, looked for ways to transform their raw staples into processed profit. At first it happened in small doses: charcuterie stands sold skewers of jamón and chorizo, a few fish stalls offered oysters ready to be shucked and slurped. But the economics are such now that if you don’t have something to offer the tourist, your days in the Boqueria are probably numbered.

Fizzles OTM - Cadiz definitely worth a visit, Seville is one of my favourite places in the world.

Visits to Andalucía were always a total delight but have become even more pleasurable since I developed a taste for sherry.

My wife's family are Catalans that have been in the city for generations so i have a pretty deep appreciation for the town and territory. They are very understanding of the importance of tourism and even though they live in the center of the city it's not too hard to avoid the more insane places .

sorry for being bolshy about Barcelona etc. I dunno what's going on with me. Barcelona is a nice place to visit. Put that on TripAdvisor.

sorry if i came across wide yesterday, jed

No problem Jim! I do know what's wrong with me, tbh, in spite of what I just said. It's alcoholism...

happens to the best of us!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

alhambra is good

YASSSS

All I can say is that we spent one night in Merida on our way back from Portugal and it was a total delight. Merida has it all: A Roman aqueduct and stone walking bridge, multiple archeological sites, a Roman amphitheater, a coliseum, army barracks, a pre-Roman fort with an unforgettable subterranean well, and a fancy hotel that's a converted Moorish palace, with a rooftop pool right on the utterly charming main square. Where you can sit at your choice of cafes and watch the storks perched on the peaks of the town hall and the cathedral, nests silhouetted against the sky.

The hotel had a small fenced courtyard off the plaza, so I took my wine and my book and read late into the night. It probably doesn't need more than 2 days to see the sights but I could have stayed at that hotel forever.

don’t half ply you with food in granada

had a nice conversation with a taxi driver in french today tho so that was a highlight 👍🏻

Ronda is killing me, my god. Hard to get your head around the fact that it actually really exists.

You should get a load of Setenil de las Bodegas!

Wowee! It's only 15 minutes away by bus...