Week Four

An even lazier day, apart from a single trip into Heerlen for a look around (not much of interest - a crumbly church, around which a lot of construction work is taking place, and lots of shops). Bizarrely, as well as most things being closed on a Sunday around here, the same seems to apply on Monday mornings as well - for some shops, that extends to all of Monday. Heerlen's very much a modern, functional town rather than a scenic/tourist stop. I get the next few films developed, despite the fact that film development is frighteningly expensive here - a one-hour service, 36 prints, 10x15cm comes in at about £13! Mind you - films are 50% cheaper. I avoid spending huge amounts of cash by just getting index cards printed for each film instead.
Incidentally, they don´t seem to have Bob the Builder here at all: the closest we got was Plop the Elf, whom I doubt is the same character.
Then back to sister's to check through the photos, and think about what to do tomorrow, and think (harder) about what to take and leave in my rucksack when I move on. Richard makes tea, which in my book makes him a bit of a star - comes with dishwasher, and cooks: scary stuff, 'cos it makes the rest of the men on the planet look bad.
Heerlen gets 2/10, on account of having nothing to do but quite good shops.

Up at 6.15, and onto the 07.18 to Maastricht for a three-train shuffle to Luxembourg. As far as the rail network´s concerned, Heerlen´s on a bit of a branchline, so you have to make multiple stops to get anywhere (except Aachen and certain other places in the Netherlands): this one return-trip will fill an entire page of my interrail booklet. Liège (Belgium - country #8) is still quite a grubby but lovable place - there´s a lot of construction work going on at the station, which seems to have entailed knocking down at least a part of the cosy red light district.
The journey to Luxembourg climbs into the Ardennes, through southern Belgium - fairly low hills, but very steep in places, they form a sort of crinkly maze of brief valleys and gorges. As we go south, the language gradually migrates from French to German (all the signs in the train are in French, German, Dutch and Italian - odd mix). Also the treescape shifts from all deciduous to 40% conifers. After an eternity of stopping at little one-horse towns, suddenly there are built- up bits again - roads, buses, churches, housing estates and so on. As the land gets flat and broad, I prepare for Luxembourg the city, but no: hills and crags re-appear and then suddenly we´re going over high bridges and dark tunnels, and then have arrived.

To say Luxembourg is built on hills would be misleading (ie. a lie) - it seems to be built on a small, fairly flat plateau, but that plateau is dissected by three deep and dramatic gorges (the town is at the confluence of two small rivers). The centre district (called "Centre") is built on the spur between where the Alzette bends, and the tributary Pétrusse. Yes - despite the recently increasing influence of German, Luxembourg town is predominantly French-speaking.

Into town on foot (the centre of Luxembourg is quite small), the first stop is the distinctly odd cathedral: I couldn´t pin it down to a specific style or period. It was as if the architect had heard all about cathedrals, but had never actually seen one (it didn´t even seem to have flaming buttresses). Also, probably because of the space limitation, it directly abutts several other buildings (most notably the National Library), which gives it a strangely truncated look from most angles. Inside, I find out a lot about the strong Mary cult in Luxembourg, and also about the historically strong Jesuit presence. Another odd thing about the cathedral is its chime - most decent-sized cathedrals have appropriately solemn and sonorous bells: this one has dinky chimes, which play a little tune, and sound much like a street-organ. Just opposite the cathedral is a war memorial, with some good views down into one of the gorges. Cutting in led me through some shops to the Place d´Armes - a nice open square (well, square-ish): much of the Centre district is pedestrianised. Also much of the Centre district is quite windy - the generally overcast look and occasional spot of rain don´t help.

• the Luxembourg Franc (LUF) which everything is priced in is in fact the Belgian Franc, which makes me glad I didn´t go into a bank and ask to change (eg.) Belgian Francs into Luxembourg Francs. I later discover that there are separate Luxembourg coins, which are no use in Belgium, even though the Belgian ones are good in Luxembourg. The sooner these people get over to Euros the better.
• A pack of cigarettes is about £1.50 (about £2.00 in the Netherlands).
• about every second shop is actually a bank - yes, Luxembourg is something of a banking centre. The European Investment Bank seems to be based here. There´s even a branch of Lloyds TSB.

I come out at the Ducal Palace, adjacent to the Parliament Building: there´s a red carpet on the ground linking the two, which two ladies are (very slowly) hoovering. After a while an armed guard turns up, and then the eponymous Duc emerges from the Ducal Palace and walks the short distance to the parliament. If the symbolism´s the same as at home, then I suppose this was the state opening of parliament. Either that, or the toilets are broken in the Ducal Palace.

From the Palace I go downhill to the very tip of the spur, the oldest part of Luxembourg, and have a look around the Bok Casemates, a series of pretty heavy-duty defences designed by a chap called Bok. Again - good views: Luxembourg, like Tallinn, is certainly one of the most photogenic places I´ve yet been (having said that, of course, all my Luxembourg photos will probably come out crap).

All the way through Luxembourg there are plaques and notices and monuments - all sorts of people are doing things to make the little Duchy feel good about itself. It´s a UNESCO World Heritage site (for natural beauty and fortifications, which I´ll grant, and for playing a major role in European history, which I won´t). It´s also been European City of Culture (then again, so´s Glasgow), and the European Court of Justice is here (which is just mental considering the other major institutions are in Strasbourg and Brussels, and that justice is supposed to be accessible - the 2.5 hour train-ride from Liège shows just how accessible it is). It´s as if the entire world has decided to help Luxembourg with its tourist industry: I suspect a few well-placed and substantial bribes have helped, considering all the banking interests here. On that basis, it´s only a question of time before they get to hold the Olympic games.

Anyway, I make my way down to the ground level (to a district called "Grund") and amble along the banks of the Pétrusse - again, good views in all directions, but mostly up from here. Noteworthy sites were the old Water Gate at the Wenceslas Wall, the really beat Quirinus´ chapel (rather spartan, but pretty much carved into the rock face) and the Neumünster church and associated . . . well, Abbey I suppose, which is right down at the water´s edge.
I also keep coming across the path of a little tourist road-train: it´s like a miniature railway engine, but it´s on wheels and just drives around the streets pulling three little carriages behind it.

Finally I arrive back at the station in perfect time (there´s a thing) to catch the train back. It´s totally packed (I sit with a group of Eastern Europeans talking Slavic), but most of the passengers seem to be commuters since they get out at the first few comparatively local stops. In the almost empty carriage I´m joined by an extremely attractive girl (who presumably thought she might have forgotten her lighter and decided to sit next to the obvious smoker), so that makes the trip back to Liège go a lot quicker. After that, a couple of connections take me right back the way I´d come.
Overall, Luxembourg is pretty okay - it´s got some really nice-looking neighbourhoods - so it gets 4/10.

My second day-trip out of Heerlen is to Bruxelles, again via Maastricht and Liège: so you would think it should have been fairly straightforward. Naturally, of course, there was a one-hour lightning strike by Belgian railworkers so a.) I spent an extra hour in Maastricht, and b.) all the Belgian train schedules for the rest of the day were a bit topsy-turvy. I sit with a Canadian girl from north of Edmonton, over a coffee and a pastry, while we wait (she has a Thalys connection in Liège to get her to Paris).
I finally get to Brussels, despite starting fairly early, at about 13.00 which doesn´t leave me much time. I hit tourist information straight away for my free map, and then go for a quick wander around the shopping centre. This is my first French-style city of the trip (I haven´t been into Liège, just the station) and, on a sunny day, it´s refreshing to be in the chaotic jungle of infinite restaurants and cafés, all tumbling out across the pavements. The streets in the mainly-pedestrianised centre are fairly narrow, which adds to the deliberately claustrophobic feel.

Outside the shopping areas, though, Belgium (much like Stockholm) has spent the last couple of hundred of years trying to be a major European capital, and now that it´s actually got to the the effective capital of all of Europe, it´s just gone mental. There are vast, triumphal buildings everywhere you turn - buildings which, in any other country of Belgium´s size, would suffice as parliament buildings and palaces and so on, are here just hotels and shops and offices. In the centre there´s a rather good square ("Grande Place" or "Grote Market" - everything in Brussels is in both), with stylish buildings on all sides: the square is actually too small to be able to get photos of most of them. Just along the road, and up a slight hill, is the Cathedral which is large, and white, and more neoclassical than anything else - sort of Gothic but with mostly clean lines. At the back of the Cathedral is a large park (with unpaved paths - why do they do that in Belgium? - and lots of trees): at one end is the royal palace (or one of the royal palaces, since as far as I can tell there are two in Brussels) and at the other the parliament building. The trees pretty much obscure the longer distance views of both, but they´re both quite large (though the palace cheats by having lateral outbuildings connected by colonnaded corridors).

Apart from the centre, Brussels´ two main districts of interest are to the east, where all the European stuff is, and to the north-west, where the Atomium, the Heysel Stadium and Mini Europe are. I head east to check out where all the EU tax has been going and gosh - I know we´ve given billions, but I´m surprised it was enough. Best not to send any serious eurosceptics here - it´ll confirm their beliefs for decades. Eurocracy gone mad, there´s vast buildings (and I mean vast) full of support staff - clerks, advisers, translators and so on: and not just buildings, but the kind of buildings which would put national parliaments to shame. The actual parliament building itself is a huge, round glass thing with a roof like the old Crystal Palace. All the signs are in about 12 languages, and will presumably need replaced every time a new country joins. Okay, it´s a pretty good symbol of power and ambition, in that 19th century way that countries thought, but you can´t see the damn thing from anywhere. Because they´ve dumped it in an existing city, they haven´t been able to do the landscaping of (say) Washington or Brasilia. It´s downhill from a park, and there was at least one house who´s back door can´t have been more than 50 yards from the thing.

Ah well, while I´m in the area I visit the Jubelpark (all the parks are being dug up at the moment - possibly they rearrange them every year). It´s fairly pleasant, but has two more Belgian Triumpal buildings at the end (I´m beginning to think of it as an architectural style) - one´s a museum of art and history(?) and the other is a military history museum - they´re joined by an arch (of course). I´m seriously almost out of time by this point, so I decide to skip the little pissing statue, and catch the metro up to the Atomium instead. Interestingly, although you hear a lot of Dutch, English, German and so on in Brussels, in the metro you only hear French.

The Atomium is Brussel´s most obvious attempt to be Paris, creating a landmark to match the Tour d´Eiffel (they have posters comparing the two) - because, let´s be honest, what famous buildings do you assocaites with the Brussels skyline? (Actually, presumably the European parliament will do that in time, if they find somewhere you can see it from). The Atomium´s quite big (100m+) without being massive. Each of the spheres has three floors and has about as much square footage as a large house. The whole thing only works because of Schindler, and their escalators and lift. I suspect, but have no way of knowing, that when it was built each of the spheres was open to the public, and each of the spokes contained an escalator. That´s pretty much the way Ian Watson describes it (to be honest, before reading his book I had no idea you could go inside, or that the spokes were large enough for escalators). All in all, it´s pretty neat although a bit 1950s - built in 1958, they still have one of the original escalators (also Schindler), now non-operational. These days you can only go in three of the spheres.

After the Atomium, I quickly checked out the neighbouring attractions in the Bruparck - the Kinepolis (a multiplex cinema), Oceade (a water funpark), the funfair, "The Village" (a collection of bars and second-rate eateries, with inflated prices) and Mini Europe, the fairly well-known collection of miniature replicas of famous European buildings. Most of the biggies were there, but I didn´t spot anything from Scotland - they have an oilrig, which presumably doubles for Norway.

Then back by metro to the central station where my train out is late - that, coupled with the fact that I missed my connection at Liège due to killing too much time (largely eating waffles, a local speciality - they even have chocolate-coated waffles, called "Suzy Jumbo", in the vending machines) meant that I didn´t get back to Heerlen until 22.40.

Right - time to leave the north-west corner for the south. I planned a route last night Heerlen-Maastricht-Liège-Namur-Paris-Toulouse-Latour de Carol-Barcelona-Malaga, which should see me wake up on Saturday morning in the south of Spain (assuming that I can get overnight places on the Paris-Toulouse and Barcelona-Malaga legs, and that I manage to make all my connections). Also, some clever timing means I don´t need to leave Heerlen until 14.00, which gives me enough time to (again) re-pack my rucksack: it´s definitely heavier again now.
First to Maastricht, where I spend most of my last loose Guilders on a packet of biscuits and a bottle of water: then via Liège to Namur, a new town for me. I didn´t see anything of it at all except the station (which is huge and busy, but in pieces - as with Liège, they seem to be completely rebuilding it), but the town seemed to smell of dirty water. I spend most of my last loose Belgian francs on a large bag of Maltesers. Then onto the SNCF Paris train, where I have a carriage to myself (SNCF, by the way, also have double-decker trains - it seems to be the way to go). I finish my maltesers before the train even starts.

I get into Paris (Nord) at 21.35 or thereabouts, and then have the maze that is the Paris métro: since I was last here, it´s got even worse - or at least the maps have. I remember that most of my last major trip in Western Europe seemed to be spent changing from one Paris station to another: worse than London, and London´s pretty bad. Also, since I was last here they´ve introduced double-decker trains on the métro, or at least on the major (RER) lines: a lot of them are a bit battered and graffitied, so I guess they´ve had them for a long time. For those who don´t know, the regular lines are marked "M" and numbered (1 to about 15); the major/district lines (which have fewer stops and go much further out) are marked RER and are lettered. A couple of RER stops (one change) gets me to Gare d´Austerlitz. They´re checking tickets at the entrance to the platform, and they´ve got a lot of posters and announcements about unattended baggage - I guess security´s a bit tighter in these times.
I board there and then, which was probably a good thing since 75% of the seats (2 carriages out of 10 are seats) have reservations, and competition is getting pretty fierce for the others. I manage to get a double to myself (well, one for me and one for my rucksack), largely by looking dangerous, I suspect. For some reason, we´re five minutes later leaving Paris, but then we´re off at last to the southern part of the northern hemisphere.

I wake up at 6-something as the train pulls into Toulouse, and then freshen up (their station showers are fairly second-rate) and put my rucksack in a locker (the lockers are manned, and anything you store there has to be x-rayed first). Then it´s Toulouse, sprawling metropolis (yes, it is); one of the main centres of the European aerospace industry apparently (there´s some pretty excellent hi-tech stuff on some of the postcards, but they´re all too far out of the city for me to get to); capital of Languedoc (except that it doesn´t seem to be in the actual départment of Languedoc); closest city to the Cathar Heresy, the Albigensian Crusade (Albi is only a train-ride away), and the Huguenots. The old city is part-French, part-Spanish, part-Provençal in its look and feel (though all the little details are definitely French - for example the way they set the suspension on their cars so the front rides high). Walls Ice Cream (or their local branding) is still very much in evidence here - the US may have conquered (or created) the world burger market, but the UK is winning when it comes to ice lollies.
Unfortunately, by design, the main Cathar sites are virtually inaccessible (though I can get to Albi and Montauban), so they have to get left off today´s plan.

Instead straight out of the station, over the canal, to Saint Sernin´s Basilica, and excellent romanesque/southern European building. They started it in 1075 - Saint Saturnin was killed here in 250AD (yes - my first real old place). There was a flea market in evidence in the streets around the basilica, which is presumably a regular feature. Next, down to the central square (Place du Capitole) which is dominiated, not unreasonably, by the capitol building - a huge but rather dull box-creation. In the centre of the square (on the ground) is a large Languedoc Cross, with the signs of the zodiac marked out on it: who said heresy was dead? Round the back is the 1525 Donjon - a medieval cube with a belfry on top - which is now the tourist information office. Looking around inside, I browse through leaflets of all the things I´m not going to be able to do or see:

• River/canal cruises - the river is the Garonne, and the canal is the Canal du Midi.
• The Airbus factory (hey).
• Albi (Toulouse-Lautrec was born there).
• Montauban, where Ingres was born (yep, surprised me).
• The Space City themepark, which has full-scale replicas of an Ariane 5, the Mir space station, and a host of other neat stuff.
• They have the little road train tours here as well, same as Luxembourg.
• Montségur, which I would have liked to have seen, but it´s a full day-trip on its own.
• Carcassonne, the famous fortress/town, which looks even better in the photos they´ve got here.

First of these, through the shopping district, is the old Augustinian monastery - now a museum, which has an excellent octagonal bell-tower and a cloistered quad. Then I head down to the river to the Pont Neuf (which I think should be the new bridge, but my French translates it as the ninth bridge). As with Paris, the arches of the bridges are where the homeless have their boxes - oddly, there are also piles of discarded clothing littering the area (some neatly folded). Then, the Notre Dame de la Dalbade (I haven´t mentioned that all the churches are impressive inside), past the Beaux Arts (there´s a class outside trying to paint the Hôtel Dieu St-Jacques, across the River Garonne) and the Notre Dame de la Daurade.
UP from the old harbour and market area, I pass a cluster of schools named after (and possibly founded by) Fermat (he of the theorem, one assumes), and come out at the Jacobin monastery. The Jacobins (Dominicans) were founded here in 1215 specifically to combat the Cathars - presumably before they resorted to calling a crusade). Walking around the main church and the cloister, you can still imagine the high-level politics which must have taken place within these walls.
Slicing across the shopping area again, I come out at the St-Etienne Cathedral - a very odd looking cathedral, kind of lop-sided and in no specific style. There´s apparently a paper industry in Toulouse as well, because there´s some kind of rally going at the cathedral, and paper is their theme (and their decorations - it´ll take ages to clean that lot up). Waiting for them to bugger off on their march (so I can get a photo of the cathedral without them), I nip into a newsagent and am magically back in Silk Cut (or Sahkoot, as the shopkeeper corrects my pronunciation).
Finally, after 4 hours (Toulouse gets 3/10), I make my way back along the (rather sludgy) canal and past one the the concert halls, to the station. My train into the Pyrenées is 10 minutes late.

The train takes a few hours but is well worth it, a hundred times better than either of the usual border crossings at the east and west coasts. Gradually we move from the flat flood-plain of the Garonne, through the gradually rising hoothills, and then the Pyrenées proper - at last, I´m in the midi of the Pyrenées (ha). The hills aren´t that high, but they´re very steep and comprise a criss-cross of gorges, much like the Ardennes. This has been a frontier region sinc ethe Romans were kicked out, and there are castles and watchtowers in every valley and on every decent-sized crag. The castle at Foix is particularly imposing and commands huge vistas (she´s got huge tracts of land, as it were). The hills themselves are covered in a mix of trees and scrub, punctuated by (white) sheer rock faces in layers. So it varies between looking like the Ardennes, and a kind of vertical Provence. There are settlements clinging to (and often hacked out of) the sides of the gorges, so the population density here is actually quite high. I don´t know what supports all these people - there isn´t that much money in goat-herding. Actually, there are signs of intensive mining activity, and some mysterious pipelines, and also evidence of tourism.

At Ax-les-Thermes, almost as close to Andorra as you can get without actually going there, we transfer to a bus (they´ve working on the rail line). The bus trip is even more winding thatn the train, and includes a 4-mile tunnel before we emerge at La Tour de Carol - no idea what the derivation of that name is, but it sounds very Song of Roland and historic (there is a tour, but from the train it doesn´t look the 1200 years old it would have to be). At La Tour, where we wait an hour for the connecting (Spanish) train, I see my first lizard of this trip - just basking on one of the white station walls: yes, I´m further south now. Also at La Tour, there´s a narrow-gauge line that runs to Perpignan and is serviced by a little yellow train - it´s all getting very Chris de Burgh.

And then onto my first Spanish train of this trip - it smells of urine, has ver loud (and very second-rate) piped music on a loop, leaves late (even though this is where the service starts), and is the first train I´ve been on which is so bumpy that I can´t update my journal. So, some things haven´t changed.
I´m the only person in the carriage, but only for one stop: as soon as we´re over the border, the train fills and I get the opportunity to experience how Spaniards (like Finns) shout at each other rather than conversing. It´s quite overwhelming in a trainfull. The descent is excellent scenery, though we have to change train again (no idea why), and finally into Barcelona. I´m surprised because we´re roughly on time.
The next leg depends on me getting a place on the Trenhotel service south, which isn´t a problem and the supplement/reservation only costs 500pts. It´s an okay train, with sleeping wagons and reclining (after a fashion) seats - it seems that Spain has caught up with where northern Europe was 15 years ago. The toilets are even inspected, and possibly cleaned, four times a day. As was to be expected, though, the train is fairly packed - one chaps turns up with 11 bags (RENFE obviously haven´t thought to put a limit on), there are two caged animals/pets in the carriage, and a noisy picnic starts as soon as we´re under way. Within an hour, the floor of the carriage is covered with broken crisps, bits of biscuits, the packaging/wrapping of a hundred different foodstuffs. RENFE has obviously not provided enough bins in this carriage: perhaps they didn´t see the point.

At 5.30 in the morning, RENFE wakes us up: passengers to Cordoba are apparently continuing by bus. I´d been wondering how they were going to split us up, since there were passengers to all sorts of places in my carriage - some of them in mutually exclusive directions. The bus, naturally, was too small for the number of passengers so about twenty of us were left standing outside the station in Hicksville, or the Spanish equivalent (Villa dos Hick?) as our bus pulled away into the night. Not to worry, a little RENFE minibus was pressed into service, as was some old guy to drive it.
Unfortunately, and of course, half an hour later the tachometer expired and our driver, not wanting to risk being stopped by the police, pulled into a desolate petrol station on the outskirts of a sleeping village (Pedro Abad, with a mosque) and phoned for assistance. Another half-hour passed before a second RENFE man turned up and replaced/reset the tachometer. A local guy onboard, and his Czech wife, had just returned from an extended stay in the Czech Republic - he had been hearing that Spanish railways were now good and infinitely better. As he commented, this was exactly the way things had been before he left. Ah well - for me even this (presumably exceptional) little adventure was still much better than my previous experiences in the 80s.

The bus actually dropped us at the RENFE station in Cordoba at 8.45, about 2 hours later than the published arrival time. The station is new, and square, and has a tourist information office (opens at 10.00) but naturally no visible map of the city. I phone the Youth Hostel, but they are virtually full (it´s Saturday night) and won´t know if they have any spaces until about midday, so I dump my rucksack in a locker at the station and head in the direction which I think should lead to the city centre. After ten minutes I´m beginning to wonder, but then there´s a sign to the Mezquita Catedral which I follow and suddenly find myself facing a large and old fortified building, and beyond it a river. Signs direct me to the main tourist information office (closed) which is directly opposite the Mezquita Catedral (also closed, but the courtyard is open). The Mezquita Catedral is a converted mosque (mezquita), and all the contours and doors and arches are very Islamic, as is the open courtyard with trees.
Just in from the Mezquita Catedral is the old town, a complex maze of narrow winding streets and alleys. At about 10.00 it opens and omces alive, and all the small doors and windows witin a couple of blocks of the Catedral suddenly turn into tourist trap shops, infinite amounts of souvenirs, film, ice-cream and so on. They all protrude into the alleys, creating a narrow passage for the rapidly increasing number of tourists who funnel through. One of the first lessons I learn is that three lefts don´t make a square - instead of ending up back at the Catedral, I end up at the synagogue. By the time I´ve maneouvred my way back to where I started, Tourist Information is open and I get my (clearly totally necessary) streetmap.

The oldest remains in Cordoba are Roman (the city was the Roman capital of southern Spain): it started in a rough rectangle away from the river Guadalquivir, with nice straight roads and a bridge over the river (again, I think this is the highest navigable point). Remarkably the bridge is not only still intact, but it carries road traffic - good old Romans. On the farside of the bridge is a Norman-looking castlet, now a cultural museum. Also stretching across the river, just upstream from the bridge, is a string of three Arab watermills, built on islets where the shallow river becomes marshy. The Arabs were the next major occupants (presumably after a gap of Visigoths or Vandals or whoever): they more than doubled the size of Cordoba, extending it eastwards and consequently extending the city wall. They were also responsible for the seemingly random street pattern, as well as the Mezquita and presumably a lot of other architectural details throughout the city. Finally the Christian Spaniards took Andalucia and left the city pretty much as it was with the exception of adding the Alcazar palace for the royalty, and gardens to match (all of which of course, the city walls were extended in include).
All of this is quite large, so in Arab times it must have seemed huge.

I confirm that I have a place at the Youth Hostel, and discover that I´ve lost my Youth Hostel card, which could be a problem when I get to the countries where you must have a card, rather than those which just give a discount. The hostel here comes in at a quite hefty 2600 pesetas, but it is very central and apparently breakfast is included in the price. The room sleeps three and has its own toilet and shower, which I figure is actually working out quite good value for the money. One of the other two places is already taken, by a young guy from Cameroon who is currently based in Brussels, called Matthew. He´s just in from Barcelona by bus, and is freshening up before starting on Cordoba. The best way to see Cordoba, obviously, is on foot (despite the widely-available horsedrawn carriages) and crossing the river briefly affords some excellent views of the Mezquita Catedral - or at least, the best I´m liable to get (too big), and then I head up the hill away from the river to the more modern parts of the city, stopping intermittently at the occasional church, museum, café or whatever. Like the rest of Spain, everything pretty much closes down at about 13.30 to 16.00 (with the curious exception of hairdressers), so that´s often the best time to grab something to eat and meander.
I must have acclimatised fairly quickly, since I notice it´s getting cooler later in the afternnon, when the temperature drops to 24 degrees.

I take a walk around some of the old city walls, which are being restored. Actually "restored" is something of a euphemism - they seem to be taking whatever´s remaining and completely rebuilding it, which I think is pretty suspect. Further in, there are a couple of good open plazas with cafés around them, and I find a couple of internet places, which´ll be useful later. Cordoba so far is pretty good - with the mix of architectures, the winding streets, the old fortifications, and the general ambience. I pop back to the youth hostel to ask if they can extend me (as it were) for another couple of nights - even if I get based in Cordoba, it´s quite a useful gateway between lots of other places in the south. No problem, apparently, but I´ll have to confirm tomorrow morning due to the intricacies of their booking system.

Next, since it´s open again after its afternoon nap, into the Mezquita Catedral: very strange. It´s basically a large, open mosque - all arches and open spaces - but it isn´t, because some nutter´s built a southern gothic cathedral slap-bang in the middle of it. I mean, seriously, they´ve cleared out a huge cross-shaped section right in the middle of the mosque and built a cathedral in there complete with apses, chapels, flying buttresses, the works. And it´s all one single building: there are places inside where you look left and it´s a mosque; you look right and it´s a cathedral. It was particularly dark inside (so I don´t know if any of my long-exposure photos will come out) but I guess that´s what keeps the postcard business going.

I check out some of the (partially restored) Roman columns and then go and collect my rucksack from the station: I make it back to the hostel with no wrong turns - goddamn, I´m getting the hang of this place. Matthew is handing about waiting for our third roommate, Alessandro (?spelling) from Argentina, in order to go get something to eat/drink/smoke. We sit in the little plaza outside the youth hostel and drink a few beers and philosophise while we wait (after all, Cordoba was the birthplace of both Seneca and Maimonides, who´re both on my 200 best-brain-blokes list - though not towards the top).
Alessandro turns up - he was detained by meeting someone - and we hit the centre of Cordoba conversing in an odd mix of English, French and Spanish: hey, it´s enough to get us more beer and food. Eventually, at about 01.00, we end up in a nightclub which is kind of empty (about 40 people), except for the kind of desperate souls who end up in Finger´s in Edinburgh (ie. me, from time to time). When it becomes obvious that the situation´s not going to get better any time soon, I decide to split - I´ve got things to do tomorrow. Again without a wrong turn, I get back to the youth hostel and crash out at about 03.00.

I get up at about 08.00 and have a long (but I feel deserved) shower and wash my hair. Matthew and Alessandro have returned at some point during the night, and are unconscious. I do breakfast, more snackfast - ie. not a buffet, so I´m fairly disappointed: after that, they´re still not awake so I confirm my booking for the next couple of days and then head back out into Cordoba.

I missed the Alcazar yesterday (royal palace), on account of its Spanish opening hours and impossibly long queues when it was open. Today, though, I´m early and it´s Sunday so when I get there there´s only about 20-30 of use in the whole palace. It´s basically a quad with large gardens: only two sides of the building are open, and you can´t get into the tower (despite some inviting signs). From the looks of it, they´re "restoring" the other two sides. Inside, they have some spectacular Roman mosaics, which are worth paying the entrance fee alone: they also have a magnificent Roman sarcophagus with amazing carvings. And then there are the gardens, where I hang out for a while and see my first drangonfly of the trip, and then as the temperature starts fo climb I set off back into the city.

Sitting in the plaza outside the Alcazar, who should I meet but my friend from the train and his Czech wife. They´re just hanging out in the sun, so together we wander through other parts of Cordoba and he provides interesting background information:

• Despite its apparent affluence and sophistication, Cordoba has the highest illiteracy rates in Spain.
• "Restoration" by rebuilding is quite extensive - there is a full Roman mausoleum in one of the parks: when he left the city there were only foundations. We joke that the 7 or 8 Roman columns will eventually be transformed into a full Roman temple.
• Granada is apparently a bigger version of Cordoba.

Up to the station, where I´m charged 1500 pesetas for the supplement and reservation on the AVE (high speed intercity) to Sevilla. Mind you, the service is pretty good: a fast clean train, with complementary sweets and complementary headphones to listen to the various radio channels (including the soundtrack to the film that´s playing on the monitors). And the toilets not only flush, but flush blue water - presumably blue for sanitary reasons, rather than simply to match the blue-white AVE colours. Funny thing about AVE trains: most people´s high speed trains are very angled at the front, to give a stream-lined modern look: the AVE engines are kind of blocky and chunky in comparison.
We arrive on time in Sevilla: stepping out of the air-conditioned AVE is just like flying somewhere south: there´s that first breath of hot air, and then the heat and humidity hit you like a wall - my first day with temperatures in the 30s. It´s another large, modern station (I have a feeling they´ve rebuilt all the stations while they were putting in the AVE lines) but again with no map of Sevilla inside. And tourist information is closed (which is fair because it´s a Sunday and most places are closed, except hairdressers). I´m running low on money, but the currency exchange place in the station wants to charge me 18.5% comission (the 06.00 - 23.00 place in Cordoba wanted to charge me 45%!!), so I take more cash out instead. It´s just as well, since the only map of Sevilla I can find is in a bookshop and costs 450 pesetas: good for finding out what to see, though, especially in a fairly large city like Sevilla.

The station´s to the north of the city, which helps decide what I can see (ie. not everything), so I decide to skip the western part of the centre (the old town walls, an old gateway, the odd park, a few churches and the modern bridge). Sevilla is built on the bank of the Guadalquivir, so I don´t understand the song at all: unless "Old Seville" is a different place. My route takes me past some pieces of Roman aqueduct (partially "restored"): as in Italy, they´re just standing about in the middle of the road (one piece quite literally, since the road in question is a dual carriageway). Then on to the large administrative complex that is the Plaza de España - an impressive, modern pseudo-palace (it´ll need two photos to get it in) with a big water feature in the courtyard where families seem to go boating, at least on Sundays. Another popular mode of travel in the sun is horse-drawn open carriages (there are lots in Cordoba as well): the ones by the Plaza de España are all driven by very attractive young Spanish guys - long hair, aquiline features, deep brown eyes under hooded brows - you know the type . . . this is presumably a marketing technique: the carriages here certainly seem busier than in Cordoba.

Next down to the Guadalquivir and the famous tower (Torre del Oro) on the shore - what can I say: it´s just a tower. Further along the river was the bull ring, but there was nothing on which would have fitted my time-table so I pushed up into the centre, where the major notable buildings are clustered virtually beside each other. The catedral (large and impressive and expensive), the Bishop´s Palace (dull box), the Indies Archive (the building was boring, but I didn´t get to see inside - might have been good) and the royal Alcazar (walled enclosure, still lived in, with excellent walls around it and extensive walled gardens). That pretty much uses up my time in Sevilla and I head back to the station past the Ayuntamiento (not worth the detour), and a strong of nondescript churches.

Overall, Sevilla was quite dull - it´s the administrative centre of southern Spain and is much larger than Cordoba. As such, it´s has almost none of the Arabic/Islamic influences that Cordoba has: it´s just a big, fairly unremarkable Spanish city with very little that´s different or unique. I gave it 3/10, which is a sort of nondescript rating. Cordoba, incidentally, after a day and a half is on 6/10.

I catch a train back to Cordoba at about 19.00 - an Andalucia Expres, to avoid the AVE supplement: it´s an okay train which leaves roughly on time from the right platform. In fact, it´s the kind of train that (fifteen years ago) RENFE were charging a supplement for: now I guess they´re claiming it´s standard. Fairly packed, the train takes over twice as long as the AVE to do the trip.
I dump my day-stuff at the youth hostel (where there is evidence that I have two new room-mates), and head out to grab something to eat: I find a pretty good place just in from the Mezquita Catedral, which is probably overpriced (Spain is actually turning out quite expensive so far). The most interesting item on their translated menu was "Stewed Blood with Onions", which I decided to pass on. Then back to the hostel where I meet Christophe from Paris, and Andrew from Glasgow & London. They´re both spending a couple of weeks in Andalucia, Christophe as a fixed holiday and Andrew as part of a larger trip around Spain between jobs. More significantly, Andrew´s just back from hospital, having needed stitches after being mugged outside the Youth Hostel earlier this evening.
Gosh, the joys of international travel.