DAY 11: Somewhere in the middle of 10,000 ft -> Hong Kong

At ~17:00 HKT, I finally arrived at Hong Kong International Airport in one piece. Went through the customs ok... when my foot was finally set upon my house I knew my trip was over, and I had finally made it -- my first solo backpacking trip! Now all I need is to get some rest! .......................

WAIT! I have still got to go to Louis' farewell party right now at Causeway Bay... they were already having fun now! As for "some rest", I would have the whole weekend to catch up............. right now it is party's time!

~~Hasta la vista!

My foot prints: who cares anymore?

Stay: my warm bed

That's it, folks! For more photos, please check out http://www.fotop.net/vipro

P.S. A brief description of my trophies:

1. Top left: 4 footballs from FC Barcelona, one with Ronaldinho's not-so-handsome face;
2. The hexagon box (Dona jimena de Espana) is a special treat for my colleagues: very sweet spanish chocolates, followed by 1KG of Ducd'O choclates bought in Heathrow airport;
3. The two packets in front of that box are seeds of tomatoes and pumpkins, bought in Las Ramblas;
4. On the right of them are Spanish fans, made of wood and cloth, and not plastic and paper;
5. In front of the pink fan is a Gaudi's mosaic tea set and 3 cermaic tiles next to it that spells 'V','S','C'.
6. Direcly in front of the white fans are twistable/bendable pencils of various colors bought at Parc Guell's souvenir shop. Also bought there ws a foldable calendar of Gaudi's works.
7. The two mini-mugs are purchased from Montserrat. Also bought there was a black virgin mary's bookmark. (Next to the calendar).
8. The two pins next to the bookmark were bought at Parc Guell (the lizard) and Segovia (the Alcazar).
9.The beer shot glasses at the front told of the past trophies that Barca has won.
10. At the bottom left we have the keychains of Real Madrid players, with a handscarf right behind them. Zidane's figure is right in the middle.

DAY 10: Granda -> Barcelona -> London Heathrow -> Somewhere in the sky

Today is a waste of my time..... and I really had plenty to waste!

I woke up early in the morning (really early) and went to the "secret" bus stop I managed to locate last night and waited for the airport bus. As I had many connecting flights today I couldn't afford to miss the first one. The airport bus was late and was slow and took lots of detour before reaching the airport. (typical for all airport buses)

If you were lucky enough to read my whinings throughout you would have remembered due to the pilot strike of Air Iberia, I had to purchase a separate ticket from Vueling for my flight from Granada back to Barcelona.

Checking in with Vueling was a breeze and then I noticed that many Iberia passengers did not aware of the cancelled flight and was stuck there. I went to speak to a Cantonese speaking family (who happened to be Americans) and helped them out by suggesting them to buy the Vueling tickets first and claimed back later in Barcelona. So at the end they got on the same plane as I did. (I bought mine at EUR 169 a few days ago, and now they were paying EUR 260+ each)

Breakfast was again bought and taken during the flight. For EUR 4.5 I got a "set breakfast"- a sandwich and a cup of tea. The plane was on schedule and left at around 09:40 and arrived in Barcelona at around 11:00ish.

Now my next flight was supposed to be at 16:40 (from Barcelona to London) so I had plenty of time. I thought maybe I could even left my luggage at the airport and quickly popped out to Barcelona to visit Montjuic.

But before that, I had to straighten oute my business with Air Iberia, once and for all... i.e. CLAIM for a refund!

So I immediately went to the Air Iberia ticket counter and queued up for the refund. The American Chinese family (the daddy) was directly in front of me in the queue. After experiencing (again) the expected effiency of the Spanish staff, the daddy finally got served and he managed to get a refund. To him he didn't lose out because the original ticket he paid for in Iberia was equally expensive to the amount he paid for Vueling. So he was quite happy and left.

Now it was my turn. So I asked for a refund. The refund was no problem and I got EUR60 back for my original cancelled flight. Next when I told them I had to buy another ticket (and paid an extra EUR 100) because of that strike so as not to miss the connecting flight, the manager came and said to me that was my own problem and she refused to do any refund or even politely apologized.

After about 15 minutes of arguing to no vain, I finally asked her for her name and she said to me, 'If my name could solve your problem, then here it is' and wrote down her name. I left in disgust and had never come across a sales manager being so rude at all and she had no intention to apologize even if her company was at fault! As Mr. Andy Lau always says, '���ɤ����ݬJ�A�ȺA���I�o��?'

So I decided to take this matter further and went to the customers relationships office. The staff on duty was more friendly but said he could not help me but gave me an email address for me to send the compliant.

Still furious but could do nothing, I decided to check in the baggage at Iberia check-in desk. (Becoz it was a code share flight, Iberia was operating for BA on this flight from Barcelona to London heathrow)

The staff there told me she couldn' find the flight. Even more furious I went to the BA ticket office and the lady told me the original flight operated by Air Iberia at 16:40 was cancelled too, that's why the Iberia staff couldn't find it! Absolutely amazed by how the Iberia staff couldn't get anything right (at least she could have told me it was cancelled and not missing), the BA lady offered me another flight operated by BA themselves@18:30.

Having checked-in everything it was already near 14:00 and it had absolutely destroyed any plans to get out of the airport, so plan B was executed instead -- "Last minute souvenir shopping"

and so the rest of time at the Barcelona airport was spent in lunch (I had real tortilla again this time!) and souvenir shoppings, including getting a LOEWE coins bag for my colleague!

Even plan B couldn't last me the whole day until my flight at 18:30, and �q���k won't save me from the boredom neither, as 1) I have just finished that. 2) I am not on a train anymore... maybe �����k? 3) The battery just could not last that long......damn!

So the rest of the day was spent sitting, walking around the airport until I finally boarded the plane at around 18:00. Barcelona airport has a "special" feature that the domestic and international terminals are all mixed up. So if you took the wrong escalators for domestic departures, you could bypass the customs and immigrations.... not really a bright idea, but when I realized there were no passport controls it was already too late and I had to board the plane! Just hoped that in future I could still get into Spain and would not be treated as an illegal stay-over.

Arrived at London in ~20:00 and my next flight back to Hong Kong was 22:15, so basically the time was also spent in the duty free shops. The twin-pack Moet et Chandon was really cheap there but I didn't think I could sneak past the customs (actualy I think I could if it is HK customs!) with 2 bottles so I decided to leave them.

The flight back to Hong Kong was no thrill. The whole flight was packed with high school students going home. It reminded me of the good old days during the summer break when we were all excited to go back to Hong Kong after a boring academic year in UK. But nowadays one thing was different: A lot of the parents also went back with their children. I actually talked to an "Auntie" during the long flight and she went and lived in England just for the sake of staying with and watching her sons while the father still worked in HK. Such a pair of lucky kids with a great mom.

My foot prints: Granada airport, Barcelona Airport, Heathrow Airport terminal one and their aircrafts.

Stay: BA27, 30D

PS The first chinese food I tried after the trip was the cup noodles on my flight back to HKG......Ahhhhh~ Yummy! If only the pot noodles is made in HK and not made in China...

DAY 9: Sevilla -> Granada

Because of this statement, I deliberately cut down my stay in Sevilla, spent an extra 3 hours to rush to Granada's Alhambra........ having seen the place, now I can rest peacefully! ^O^ Besides Alhambra, Granada was also the place to mark the fall of the Moors in Spain when King Boabdill surrendered the keys of the last Moorish kingdom to the Catholics Monarchs, King Fernando and Queen Isabel in 1492.

Since my train to Granada was not until noon time I had the whole morning in Sevilla. Having said that, I found the morning was not that useful at all in Spain. I tried to find the souvenir shops but they were not yet opened at 9 o'clock. I then try to check out the breakfast but all those open-air restaurants that filled the entire Santa Cruz area during the night vanished entirely. The problem was further complicated by my belief that I wished to find a nice place to sit down for a proper breakfast since I did not have any proper breakfast for the last 10 days.

At the end I found one right-by-the-street and it even had an english menu. For EUR 6 I got 2 x fried eggs, bacons, OJ and a cup of tea. Really not bad except that I ordered Earl Grey but got an english breakfast tea instead... Lesson learnt: Never ordered anything complicated if the waitress could not speak good English.

Got back to the Cathedral again to shoot a couple more photos of the exterior and it was a good thing of waking up early... the entire square was nearly empty of people!

The souvenir shops finally opened and I did some shopping for those flamenco fans that were popular in Spain. Afterwards I had to go back to the cathedral again because I realized I set the ISO settings to high ISO just now so I basically have to re-shoot. But now the tourists had also come out and the perfect scenery was no more.

After checked-out from the hotel I headed towards the Seville Santa Justa rail station (the one I came from). As the bus stop would be almost as far from the hotel so I decided to walk my way up there.

So that was my stay in Sevilla here, it was a pity for me not to have time to check out Plaza de Espana as my brother said the Star Wars Episode I was filmed here (The Palace in Planet Naboo) I was really eager to go to see the place but it was a miracle to fit so many things already yesterday. (At the end my brother told me it was not that much worth it, after seeing it himself~)

Got on the 11:50 train (R-598, EUR 20.05) to Granada. It turned out that the train actually stopped in San Bernardo station in Seville, which was very near to my hotel, so why did I have to walk all the way to the main station?

In fact the reason why the train took 3 hours 10 minutes was really because of so many stops... Compared with the previous 2 AVE's, this one did not have a cafeteria cart but at least it had a toilet (unlike the 2-hour train to Segovia that did not have) maybe the only complaint was that the seats were facing backwards!

My 3 hours were spent in a combination of more �q���k and my EUR 1.5 Danish Pastry lunch bought from Sevilla station previously. As usual, no pretty �F´�p�j was on the train... -_-

I was actually surprised that the Granada train station was a lot smaller than the Sevilla station. It was just a bit bigger than Segovia's! What's worse, there was no tourist information office there...... I had to walk out to the main street for bus stops. However with the level of details of the LP map I had (the only one i had) and the conflicting mesh of bus lines printed on the bus stop, I finally decided to walk to the hotel, simply because I had an appointment with Alhambra at 16:30 (already booked before my departure in HK) and there was no room of waiting or getting on the wrong bus.

When I finally found Abadia hotel it was quite a shock to me initially as it was situated in a very old, quiet and shabby area.. no wonder why their website never showed the surroundings! Luckily, the inside was very much like what the photos showed and it was actually quite promising. The center was a large patio/garden and all the rooms were built around and on top. It was very different from the previous hotel in Sevilla, which had a tone of white throughout and gave a medditerrean feel while this one gave an Arabic feel. The room inside was spacious and it was also the first hotel that gave me a fridge! Not to mention the Jacuzzi it had too! (Acutally I paid EUR10 more to upgrade for this Jacuzzi)

It was close to 16:00 so I really did not have too much time to laze around. So I asked the receptionist (who spoke really good english) for a better map (only slightly better) and headed off to Alhambra.

The directions to Alhambra was simple but the most difficult part was the approach. Seeing that there was no way for me to climb a mountain within 20 minutes I at last managed to get myself a No. 30 bus that took me straight up to the hill top, where the Alhambra ticket office was. (It was indeed a wise decision as the hill was quite steep and no way I could climb up there within 20 minutes time!)

This amazing race had not finished! It turned out that I had to be at the entrance of the Nazaries Palace (Palacio Nazaries) by the latest of 17:00 or otherwise the ticket (EUR 10.88) would be void. I thought that would be easy, I had 30 minutes to reach there.....

Alhambra (red castle in Arabic) was a fortress-palace built on a hill-top and covered an area of ~ 142,000 sq. m. It consisted of 4 main areas:

Alcazaba, Palacio Nazaries, Palacio de Carlos V & GeneralLife.

So I went to Palacio Nazaries first. I thought I had 30 minutes so I took it easy and relaxingly strolled along the gardens, taking photos, etc on the way. It turned out Alhambra was really really big and I just barely got there on time at the entrance before 17:00.

Palacio Nazaries was the gem of Alhambra and consisted of wonderful Islamic architecture, designs and masterpieces inside. There were lots of wonderful patios (courtyards) and Salas (halls) inside. (Oh! there were lots of orange trees with big ripen oranges hanging on the tree, and they looked quite tempting at that time!) Access to the complex was strictly limited and that was the reason why I had to book the ticket in advance during high seasons.

After my visit in Palacio Nazaries, I went to Alcazaba which was actually a citadel. However, not much was left beside a few towers and the largest one was Torre de la Vela which was climb-able. On the top you could see a breath-taking view of Alhambra, and Sacromonte (caves carved on a hill in which the gypsies lived)

I passed by the outside of Palacio de Carlos V but never knew I could go inside and my last destination was Generalife, which was on the other side of Alhambra.

Generalife (means Architect's Garden) was like a summer garden for the Moorish kings and their families. Lots of exotic plants were planted and decorated nicely. The architect(s) really knew how to balance the elements of water and plants in their design. Besides beauty, tranquility was the message it was trying to convey! (Ironcially, not far from Generalife was a place where the workers were setting up a stage and seats for a summer concert to be held two nights later, some sort of Granada Music Festival.)

After I came back down to the Granada city (gosh, the road was really steep... feel lucky again I didn't have to walk up!) I immediately went to visit the other two sites I wanted to see in Granada, Capilla Real and the Arabic Market (yes, Arabic Market in Europe)

Capilla Real (Royal Chapel) was the place where Queen Isabel and King Fernado were buried (and also their daughter and son-in-law) But when I reached there it was after 19:00 and the place was closed. The Arabic Market (just around the corner) was closed too but from the look of it I didn't think I missed anything as it was just a series of shops like any so-called "markets" in Australia. No Arabic style whatsoever!

It was too late for visiting anything else so I settled my dinner back at my old friend Fresc Co, Yep, it was the buffet restaurant I tried in Madrid, which also happened to be a nation-wide chain store. Again, nothing thrilling but it was time to soup up fibres and vitamins! (EUR 9.7)

As I had to reach the airport early in the next morning, I deliberately took a walk and checked out the very finely-concealed airport bus-stop right in front of a large garden. (Jardines del Triunfo)

The rest of the night (actually not much was left) was spent trying out the Jacuzzi bath and watching �q���k at the same time... if I only had a glass of champagne too...

My foot prints: Seville Cathedral & Giralda, Alcazar of Seville, Estacion Santa Justa Sevilla, Alhambra (Palacio Nazaries, Alcazaba, Palacio de Carlos V (passed-by), Generalife, Capilla Real (closed), Arabic Markets (closed)

Stay: Abadia Hotel (EUR 45, single room with Jacuzzi)

DAY 8: Cordoba -> Sevilla

Being in Sevilla was like being in the Mediterranean again.... white houses, "passionate" locals, crazy and wild tourists were everywhere! ....Maybe the only thing missing was the Mediterranean Sea itself!

For the first time in my trip I did not have to suffer from those supermarket leftovers as breakfast. I was checking out at the counter when I suddenly realized that the EUR 22 per night actually included a continental breakfast! Not too much to expect except some bread & butter and tea but it was better than nothing.... and I got to use the restaurant exclusively as no one was around at that time... not even a waiter...Orz

After realizing the bus route I came yesterday was a one-way only route, I had to make a decision whether to take the same bus and sat in there for half an hour for me to get back to the train station or just walked half an hour to the train station myself. As I was too "full" with my breakfast, (only had one slice of bread actually) I decided to do some exercises and walked to the station.

The 10:00 train I took to Sevilla was actually an AVE as well and surprisingly no one was at the ticket office at that time which meant that I didn't really have to buy the tickets in advance. So after 45 minutes (so quick that I couldn't even finish one episode of �q���k) I arrived at the capital of Andalucia --- Sevilla.

Unlike in Cordoba, this time the hotel was situated near the heart of the main attractions but there was no direct bus to it. Still, the bus routes were a lot straight forward than in Cordoba or Segovia. Two circular routes, one ran clockwise and the other counter-clockwise.

The bus itself had a TV announcing the next stop and actually showed a map of the next bus stop and the nearby streets! Wow! This was the most advanced bus I had ever been aboard... HK KMB buses should learn from this and don't always show boring roadshows all the times! There was really no way you could get lost, or miss a stop with this modern state-of-the-art technology!

Well I was wrong again! Near my stop at the University there were some roadworks and the bus had to take a detour... obviously the database was not up-to-date and so basically because of the detour I had no idea where the bus was going.... at the end I just got off at one stop and had to walk all the way back to the University stop (and what's more frustrating was I later found out that the bus actually came back to stop at this stop eventually!)

Barrio de Santa Cruz, the area which my hotel was located, was yet another maze. To meet my definition of a maze, it must be:

1. Not all the streets have names;

2. The street names did not appear on my map.

3. Many streets led to dead-ends, ie. even if you got the direction right, you thought you could come out on the other side and no, you were stuck in a dead-end.

4. The streets were not straight, ie. the compass was "really" useful...

Finally, I found my hotel after hitting many deadends and taking many U-turns. Un Patio en Santa Cruz Hotel was a beautifully decorated hotel. The hotel was about 4 storey high. As the name suggested, the main reception area was like a very small patio/courtyard itself, with the ceiling as high as the height of the hotel, with the rooms built around it on each floor. All the walls were painted white, decorated with pieces of paintings and flower pots. The roof was accessible for sun-bathing but the surrounding did not look nice.

I got my single room on the ground floor next to the reception. The room was small but the interior decoration was very artistic and modernized. It would be a nice room for an afternoon nap but I really did not have the luxury.

Although I had more time in Sevilla than in Cordoba, but I really had a lot more to cover than in Cordoba. I left the hotel at around noon time but I had to go and check these out all these within the same day: Bull Ring, Cathedral, Alcazar, the flamenco show and finally, an Arab bath to conclude for the day.

The first thing I did was to get the tickets for the flamenco show. According to the guy in the tourist office at the station, I went first to the cheap one he recommended. At only EUR10 a show, it was not surprising that it was sold out by the time I went there. So I went to Los Gallos next (because it was also nearby) and got myself a ticket for EUR27 (such a big difference!) for the 20:00 show.

The Seville's Bull Ring was my next stop. After passing through numerous roadworks and haled a few litres of dust and CaCO3 I finally found Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza, one of the oldest bull ring in Spain. Visits could only be done via guided tours. So while waiting for the next tour, I quickly had lunch for the day: a Kit-Kat from the vending machine. The guided tour only costed EUR 4, but considering the spanish accent of the tour guide and the quality of the Span-glish, I thought 4 euros was a rip-off! The guide tried her best in speaking English but I thought I might understand more if she spoke in Spanish..... -_-"

The ring itself was impressive but it was a shame(?) that there was no bull-fighting on that day, so basically it was just like entering a football stadium imagining all the actions happening down there. The musuem next door was more impressive and had a display of all the tools and costumes used in the bull-fighting history. There were also a display of Bulls heads hung on top of the walls. All of them save one were bulls fought and killed in the ring. The only exception was a cow's head, which was the mother of an "exceptional brave" bull that killed one of the famous matadors/bullfighters during the fight. That bull was put to death later, together with his mom whom they thought should not live to give birth to such "evil" bulls again... Sad thinking!

On the way back to the cathedral I took a stroll along the riverside of the river Rio Guadalquivir that was quite pretty but had a lack of boats and people along the riverside. Maybe no one could be bothered to take cruises under such a melting hot weather.

Seville's Cathedral is one of the biggest in the world, just came after St.Peter's in Vatican City and St. Paul's in London. The most worthy display inside was the Capilla Mayor, which has the biggest and richest altarpiece in the world; with over 1000 carved biblical figures and took almost 80 years to finish. Another interesting sight inside the cathedral was the tomb of Christopher Columbus (but scientific dating tests suggested that the remains inside was dead much later than Columbus himself) The tomb/coffin was bore by 4 sepulchure-bearers that represented the 4 kingdoms of Spain at that time.

Next to the cathedral was the bell tower "The Giralda". When it was built it was the tallest tower in the world at 97.5m in height. It was originally a mosque's minaret. One interesting thing was that the tower had no stairs but instead had ramps wide enough for people to ride the horses and climbed all the way up to the top. At the top, besides the bells, was a magnificant view of Seville!

When I came out of the tower, it was already about 5 o'clock. So I quickly rused to the Alcazar that was just next to the Cathedral.

The Alcazar of Seville was very different from the Alcazar of Segovia. The latter one was like an medieval castle with pointed wizard hats-like torrents. This one was more like a muslim palace with beautiful gardens and patios throughout. It was a really nice place to stroll around but I was too pressed for time that I had to rush through the whole process.

So I managed to "finish" all the sights I planned for "within schedule" and I now had to get back for shower, dinner and go to watch Flamenco.

Dinner was in a rush because I had to be at the place for Flamenco at 19:30 and I only arrived the restaurant at 19:00. The waiter was very kind to prepare the meal for me "In Express" (At that time the restaurant was just barely opened and there was only one other table.. and those people were just drinking their happy hour.) So for EUR 8.5 I got a 5 tapas course (one was a dessert) with bread. A glass of 1/2 Litre Sangria costed and extra EUR 3 (which tasted far better than the tapas themselves) One of the dishes was actually a curry chicken, could u believe it?

Finally made it at Los Gallos at 19:30 and surprise, no one was there. So I managed to get myself a good seat at the front.... and I got another Sangria (one free drink included) When I took my camera out, the usher actually impolitely told me that only one or two photos were allowed.... but he never told off the other Japanese lady who also had the camera brought out. Was it because my camera was too professional? >_<

Speaking of Japanese, there were suprisingly many Japanese audience that night in the show.. maybe Los Gallos was highly recommended in their guide book?

Well the flamenco show itself was very interesting at the beginning but it fell short, partly because:

1) The female performances were too old and ugly. The most handsome/pretty performer was a guy!

2) The dance was amazing at the beginning but there were not enough variations to keep me awake. Only at the end were some duo or trio performances. But most of the time it was just a solo performer on the stage.

3) The music was provided by 1 or 2 guitarists and hand clappings... the rhythm was a good way to put you to sleep.

All in all, it was worth watching as Andalucia was the home of Flamenco, if I didn't watch it here where else should I watch it?

By the time I got back to the hotel it was already around 11pm. My original plan was to go for an Arab bath. However, I double-checked the brochure and found out that I had missed the last time slot of the day. Reservation was needed in advance! So instead I devoted the rest of the night out there hunting for some drinking water. (It took me a long time before I could find a store that sold water)

DAY 7: Madrid -> Cordoba

Mondays are usually treated as the worst day of the week. I thought this only applied to people who have to work, sadly the spell worked on me too even when I was just travelling...

Having finished off the rest of the Danish pastries for the 3rd consecutive day, I had come to realize the fact that even stuff as good as Danish pastries could also taste so awful too... (especially where there was no fridge and oven for the pastries)

I only had to check out the hotel at noon so I could buy some time in the morning to do some real tour of the city (and also some shopping!)

Shang told me there was a Real Madrid Shop in Sol and I could try my luck there for some Zidane's souvenirs. So I started my journey there but the lazy Spanish had not yet opened the shop at 21:00. So I decided to do some sightseeing around the city.

The sightseeing was brief... I walked along from Sevilla metro station to Banco de Espana metro station where Plaza de Cibelles was. There sat the landmark of Madrid... A statue of a lady sitting on the carriage being drawn by 2 lions... in the middle of a fountain.... so that the lady could wet herself all the time, how wonderful!

The lady turned out to be Cybele, a goddess of caverns and mountains, walls and fortresses, etc.. The two lions were actually a couple called Atalanta and Hippomenes, who were turned into lions by her after having sex in one of her temples.

Enough about Mythology, I moved on to a archway called Puerta de Alcala, which liked all other monuments, was erected basically to show off. (Actually it was supposed to improve the looks of eastern Madrid and took 9 years to build.)

Finally I arrived at Camper. Yes, the shop that was famous for "bowling" shoes. In the stores, for the first time in my trip I met tons of Chinese... most of them were gals shopping happily and crazily. One even bothered to stack all her bounties (about 6-7 shoe boxes) on the counter and took a photo of them (with her, of course) ... only to be yelled at by the store manager!

Finally I arrived at Camper. Yes, the shop that was famous for "bowling" shoes. In the stores, for the first time in my trip I met tons of Chinese... most of them were gals shopping happily and crazily. One even bothered to stack all her bounties (about 6 to 7 shoe boxes) on the counter and took a photo of them (with her, of course) ... only to be yelled at by the store manager!

As the price was not too attractive (most shoes were over HKD1000 anyway) and I was unable to accustomed to my fellow �P�M's behaviours, I left the shop like a whirlwind.... and decided to try my luck again back in the Real Madrid shop at Sol.

The store was finally opened! It was a lot smaller than the one over in the stadium... guess what? I saw a group of Hong Kong people for the first and the only time in my entire trip.... it seems that they joined a tour and this was their free-time shopping. Two girls were busy IDD-ing their relatives at home asking for help as the T-shirts for all the famous Real Madrid stars were all sold out. (Of course the two girls wouldn't recognize any names but Beckham..) Other uncles were also happily scooping T-shirts and other souvenirs from the shelf, like as if it was a supermarket sale.

I finally found what I wanted, a key chain of #5 Zidane. (If I knew he had headbutted last night, I would have bought more of his stuff!!) and went for queueing. The same two girls were in front of me busy doing the tax reclaim.

They were almost finished when suddenly the uncles and aunties tried to "push-in" by giving all of their dozens of "victory trophies" to the two gals in front. Gosh! No one was behind me in the queue at that time and they just couldn't wait for one person! How typical~

As I really had to go back for the hotel for check-out before noon, I "politely" asked them to "let" me go first and I finally managed to reclaim my original queue position.

After checked-out, I headed straight to Atocha train station again. With my yesterday's reconnaissance I had no problem in locating the AVE ticketing office. But what I saw in front of me was totally shocking! What was an empty hall last night was now full of crowds, queues and chaos... locals, foreigners, baggages and security guards were everywhere. Those queues were so "deviated" (from straight lines) that I could not see which counter they originated from.

Above each counter there was an electronic signboard stating which type of tickets it would serve. Sadly I didn't understand any of it (it would be too costly to guess otherwise!) so I struggled my way to the information kiosk right in the middle of the crowds.

Having battled through waves and waves of people, I finally found my oasis.. oh! I need to get a ticket before I could consult the oracle! Luckily the queue was short and I was served very soon... The oracle said through her crystal ball in perfect English that out of the 20+ operating counters in the hall, only 3 counters would sell today's tickets, and the others were all reserved for "Advance tickets"... and guess what, ALL the people there queueing were actually queueing for those 3 queues!!

Having bid goodbye to the oracle at the kiosk, who could already foretell my future: "I would miss the next train inevitably" (The time was 12:30 and the next train was at 13:00); I immediately tried to queue up. It was not a question of finding the shortest queue. (even a Mathematician would not be easy to calculate considering the curves, the spirals, the no. of last minute push-ins and the split-ends) The difficulty was to find the end of any queue!

Finally I was "comfortably " settled in a line then the next problem arised. The queue did not move..... roughly it took the ticket officer at the counter 10 minutes to serve one passenger. Time was ticking...

At 12:50, a counter at the far end opened up and the display said '13:00 Seville'... Everyone on that side immediately rushed to that counter. I was on the other side and I thought by the time I struggled myself through the crowd, the counter would have closed, and I couldn't resume my position in my current queue... (That was the problem of traveling alone) So I waited in the original position patiently....

13:00 train was gone! I waited and waited and finally I began to see the counter (ie head of the queue), but then I also started to feel how loooooong each passenger took. I was thinking maybe I would miss the 14:00 train as well.

Suddenly the counter next to the one I was queueing opened up and this time it was for all the passengers going for the 14:00 train to Sevilla. Without a second thought I immediately kissed this queue good-bye and rushed to the newly opened counter. It took me less than 3 minutes to get a single AVE ticket from Madrid to Cordoba! (EUR 52.10, economy)

While waiting at the queue, besides chatting up with Mr. America at the back, (who taught me how to read the sign with his Mexican Spanish) I came to the following conclusion:

There were two fundamental problems of this ticketing system:

1) There were over 20+ counters and only 3 counters were serving 95% of the people. So most of the time the 17+ counters were just idle. What's more ironic, the 3 counters were selling today's trains tickets which were more urgent than tomorrow or any advance tickets!

2) These 3 counters must be queued. (single server, single queue system) All the other counters could get a ticket and wait for the number to be called. (ie multiple server, multiple queues system)

Any primary school student could pinpoint the problem and could provide a solution straightaway. I was sometimes really amazed on what the Spanish were thinking!

As time was running out, I immediately proceeded to the departure area. The security control there was just like that in an airport. You had to pass through a metal detector, and the baggage must be x-rayed. Finally I was on board the fastest train in Spain, the AVE!

AVE, Alta Velocidad Espanola, is the Spanish fastest train that can go up to 300km/h. As I haven't been to the French's TGV or the Japanese Shinkansen before, I deliberately paid the premium to try this out. The train was very quiet and smooth, but not as fast as I thought. I got a "table" seat, i.e. two people were facing another two people, with a table in between. It was a bit cramped so you could actually play footsie with the person opposite you if you really wanted. Each passenger was given a pair of headphones so they could stare at the small TV at the top of the ceiling (like what the planes had back int he 80's- ONE TV for all!) [The movie was Bourne Identity, in Spanish, of course] There were no train attendants walking around so if you wanted anything, you had to walk around the carriages yourself.

Perhaps the only advantage in a train compared to a plane was the luxury to eat while standing. T284here was a buffet carriage for you to order your food and drinks and you could stand there for your entire meal if you really did not want to sit with the others.

As I haven't been to a train with a separate buffet carriage before, I could not wait to try out the food there... Oh! nothing of great interest... just microwaved sandwiches, drinks and alcohol... so I boldly ordered a Bocatta from the blackboard. The bartender then spoke in Spanish (supposed to be question in which I could not answer), seeing that I did not reply, she quickly served someone else.. (The ordering process was just like in a pub where there was no queue and you just found a free spot on the counter in front of her, sticked out your finger (not the middle one) and grabbed her attention)

Seeing that I was speechless, a gentleman next to me helped me by translating that she was asking me what I would like the bocatta to come with. (ham, egg, cheese, etc) and I chose tortilla (egg)

This tortilla bocatta actually told me that the main ingredient in tortilla was supposed to be eggs; and not potatoes as we were forced to believe from the tortilla we bought from the supermarket in Barcelona for the first meal... and this tortilla bocatta actually tasted a lot better!

This buffet carriage or cafeteria did not have any seats, so basically you either went back to your seat or stood there eating. There was also a public phone for you to use if you were really bored in the journey.

Since I couldn't get a window seat (and the train was really full) so I decided to put my attention to somewhere else (and the Spanish Bourne Identity really wasn't too appealing... So I took out my PMP (personal media player) ........what else is more suitable than watching �q���k on a �q��? Too bad there was no Miss Hermes in this train!

The AVE arrived at Cordoba at 15:42. Having learnt from the painful lesson in Madrid, I immediately went to the ticket office and bought the ticket for tomorrow and on the day after. Although now all the schedules were now fixed, but at least I didn't have to worry about queueing for any more tickets for the rest of my journey!

There was no tourist information at the Cordoba station, so there were no directions given (and no maps) and what's worse, this time my hotel was not so conveniently located. So I went to the bus stop and hopped on Bus No. 5 (EUR 0.95) that looked slightly promising. During the bus journey, a Spanish lady was very nice and actually told me where to get off and got off with me(!) and actually told me where to walk after that. (I doubt she got off the bus just for me so I think that was a mere coincidence... but people down south were a lot friendly than the people in the large cities.)

By the time I arrived the hotel it was 17:00 and I was really tired. As I had to leave in the next morning (10:00 train!), I only had about 5 hours (before dark) to check out the sights in Cordoba, which meant I had a lot to do!

The hotel room was small but the toilet was big and the decoration was better than the first two I had been. It was also the cheapest @EUR 22 per night for a single room. However the cheap price came at a cost: it was very far from the main sights... it took me about 10 minutes to reach the river bank.

On my way down I visited the supposed-to-be a very romantic Roman bridge "Puente Romano"... but it was under rennovation and the whole bridge was covered up!

So one sight down, a few more to go! (so I thought naively) I then went to the tourist information near Mezquita and I realized that Alcazar and all other Jewish Synagogues were not open on mondays! Luckily, the main dish of Cordoba - the Mezquita was still open until 19:00. So I quickly hurried along inside. (EUR 8)

Mezquita was a Mosque that was converted to a Christian Church. The other famous hybrid I had been was Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, which was original a church converted into a mosque.

Mezquita was like a landmark in Cordoba and usually the main reason to visit Cordoba was to see this church. It was famous for the stripped arches and pillars (which are made of jasper, onyx, marble and granite, salvaged from the original Roman temple on the same site) throughout the building. Together with the dimly-lit atmosphere and the emptyness, it gave me a bit of an eerie feeling. Not many traces of a mosque was left behind in this church except the mihrab.

There was an orange tree courtyard (Patio de los Naranjos) outside and for the first time (I think) I saw oranges grown on trees. I also saw a group of beautiful Japanese girls touring the place, just as sharp and lovely as the oranges... too bad I forgot my Japanese except "konnachiwa" and "yamete"! Damn!

One good thing of staying inside Mezquita was the really cool temperature inside. When I came out, the sun was doing his job again and I felt like the air-conditioner had suddenly stopped working. As all the other buildings were closed today I had no choice but to do some streets roaming.

I roamed past the Jewish Quarter (La Juderia). It was an area characterised by the settlement of many tiny 2 to 3-storey white houses with narrow alleys. They like to grow a lot of flowers on the balconies so it would be quite pleasant to walk (if you didn't get lost). I especially looked for the famous flower street (Calleje de las flores).. it was supposed to be a street where numerous flower pots were hung on both sides of the exterior walls of the houses, making you feel like you were walking amongst a forest of flowers........... Well, I had the map with me, I had a working compass. After walking back and forth many times I still couldn't find such a street.

Finally, I peeped into an opening (that I had passed through so many times) and there I found the street sign... a "street" was certainly not the right word! It was just an opening (about 10m) into a courtyard. There were a few flower pots hung on the outside wall on both sides of the opening. I must admit that the photographer who originally took the famous photo that got me attracted did a really, really good job!

Still, the Jewish quarter was not without its merits. There were a lot of restaurants with very nicely decorated patios (courtyards) and the prices were cheaper than in the big cities. I thought I would first go back to the hotel first, and came back later for the 3-course dinner.

On the way back to the hotel I finally found an internet cafe (that was still opened)... I quickly went in and checked my email for the first time in my entire trip! Viola, Air Iberia, the supposed to be the biggest airline in Spain, partner of the OneWorld alliance......... told me that due to the pilot strike my flight from Granada to Barcelona on the 13th was postponed to 16:00 on the same day.

As I also had a connecting flight from Barcelona to London on the same day at around 16:40 I didn't think taking that postponed flight at 16:00 could make the connection somehow. At that time the Iberia office was closed and if I went to their office in Sevilla tomorrow I would have wasted half a day. So at the end I made the painful decision of buying another ticket on a different airline (Vueling)....

We all know that the earlier you book the ticket the cheaper it is. So the price I paid for that ticket at Vueling was EUR 100 more than my ticket at Iberia, even after the refund!!

I just managed to book the ticket before the internet cafe shopkeeper chucked me out (they closed at 21:00) but my mood was so foul that I did not want to go back to the Jewish quarter for a nice meal. So instead I took a 3-course meal at a local restaurant nearby, which was surprisingly good!

Cafe la Glora was like a traditional english pub, with one side serving drinks, and the other side with tables and seats. For 10 euro, I got the appetizer (egg & bacon in garlic and olive oil), main course (oxtail), dessert (chocolate pudding) & a glass of Sherry. Both Sherry (Jerez) and Oxtail (Rabo de Toro) were the speciality in Southern Spain and they tasted good. Sherry was sweeter than normal red wine. [For those who read comics, "Sherry" reminds me of the character in Detective Conan]

So that really made my day and all the worst things came up on one day:

1) Queued for two hours for a train ticket. Because of that I had the shortest time ever in a city. Arrived at 17:00 and left at 09:00 next morning.

2) Almost everything was closed in Cordoba today and for those that didn't have an opening time, they were under renovation.

3) I lost 100 Euro just like that! Should had used it in gambling, at least there was a chance it would pay back!

My foot prints: Plaza de Cibelles, Puerta de Alcala, Sol, Estacion de Atocha (Train Station), Puente Romano, Mezquita, La Juderia, Plaza Tendillas

Stay: Gracia San Martin Hotel Cordoba, (EUR 29, single room with breakfast)

DAY 6: Segovia & Madrid

"In a kingdom far, far away in Segovia, high above the mountains there stood a castle called Alcazar. Legends said that the sleeping beauty was kept waiting there for all her life. Prince Vince, armed with his trustworthy weapon the Nikonion Dee-LXX and his Royal Steed aka the "very fast" Spanish Regional Train, travelled far and wide from the Madrid City to Segovia. On his way he went pass the "Gate with Many Holes", battled the intense and scourging heat of hell and almost got tricked by the "cursed map of forever get lost" given by the enemies-in-disguise. Luckily on his way he was aided by Sir Shang the holy knight of the Chinese Empire. Together they joined forces and battled their way through and towards the legendary Alcazar........ only to find out that the Sleeping Beauty has emmigrated to Walt DisneyLand a long long time ago!"

Day 2 in Madrid, still eating the Danish pastries, no OJ as it could not survive the heat of Madrid without something called a fridge (should have bought those that have tons of preservatives, right?)

Today was Sunday, and there was a massive flea market in Madrid (only opened on sundays), so before going to Segovia I quickly made a detour to the market.

El Rastro was described as the biggest and best market in Madrid. It spanned multiple streets from the top of the hill and all the way down, often referred to have a "thriving mass of vendors, buyers and pickpockets"....

What I found was.... a lack of all!(because I was EARLY! @9am) Not many merchants, not many buyers, and couldn't even spot any pickpockets (not that they were easy to spot) ... however, I saw plenty of local police, chatting up to those vendors who were just setting up the store... many policemen were surrounding one owner... not sure what they said to him. (could that be the famous statement: "any spare change"?)

It was really a flea market selling old stuff, clothes to the locals instead of tourist-oriented... the only interesting stall was the selling of all those army uniforms and helmets. I really wanted to ask them why they were selling German uniforms... but resisted just in case they would gave me a free demonstration of their army knifes free-of-charge!

Since there was nothing much of an interest, I continued doing my photo-hunt of taking photos of different street signs. In the old part of Madrid, almost all the streets signs were drawn up as beautiful icons each showing the meaning of the street name. So if you were bored like me, you could do the "collection" along the way... it was more fun than the treasure hunt.

Since I could not access the Internet last night or the night before, I could not look up the timetable for the trains to Segovia. Luckily, Vicky told me before... "Don't worry, I remember the train departs every 2 hours, 09:00, 11:00, 13:00, etc"... With such assurance, I arrived at the train station at around 10:00, thinking there should be enough time to get the tickets, etc. for the 11:00 train.

Well, it turned out that indeed there was plenty of time... Vicky was right about the 2 hours interval, but the starting point was wrong. The train departed every 10:00, 12:00, 14:00... the moral of the story? Vince, don't be a lazy bugger and do your own homework!

As there was plenty of time left, I could do a bit of exploration of the station. Estacion de Atocha was one of the two main train stations in Madrid connecting between the nearby suburbs with Cercanias (regional trains) and also serving as the terminus for inter-city trains including the high-speed AVE to Sevlla. It turned out that Atocha was more famous because of the Madrid Bombing in 11 March 2004 where 191 people died and 1700+ wounded. It was one of the worst terrorist attacks in the Western World since 9-11. "Fortunately", at that time I was too busy in finding the right ticket booth than to remember that.

With all these different types of trains leaving for destinations all over Spain, it was not surprising that the station had at least 3 sets of ticket counters and 2+ information centres scattered throughout. Now, the people at the ticket booths could not speak English whereas the information centres were full of tourists who could only speak English. So at the end I decided to try my luck and just said "Segovia" over one of the ticket counters (a bit like when you only need to say a single word "Money" when you try to rob the bank) and so got myself the tickets to Segovia. (EUR 9.9, same day return)

The next step was to find out which platform the train would arrive. (Remember that I forfeited the chance of waitng for an hour to get to the information counter) There was a gigantic electronic signboard describing all the trains leaving and arriving and.... Surprise! There was not a trace of the word "Segovia" on it! Up till now I had never thought that boarding a train in the Western World would be that much of a pain. It was the 2nd time I regretted of not taking a bus instead... (The 1st time was when I arrived at 10:00 to find out I had to wait for a 12:00 train; which I could use an extra hour in the flea market instead if I knew the "correct" schedule beforehand)

Having consulted the horoscope and applyed my detective skills and logic reasoning with lateral thinking and some scenario-based problem-solving techniques I finally worked out that the magic number was platform #1. Without a second thought, I hurriedly swipe the ticket and went through the gate....

It was 11:00 and I already had walked back-and-forth between the platform and the waiting room for a zillion times. Life was boring while waiting for a train, and even worse when there were no shops inside the platform and nothing inside the waiting room besdes the TV showing the next train's info. The only thing "exciting" in that hour was the encounter in the WC.

******* Warning! Not for the Light-Hearted *******

There was actually a toilet in the departure area but it was so concealed that it really took me a while to find it. (The waiting room and the ticket gates were on top, with escalators descending down to the platform below. Now in between the waiting room level and the platform there was a mid-level and it turned out that at the far end were another set of "exit-only" ticket gates with the WC next to them. This area was so dimly lit you couldn't see from afar. Since there was nothing better to do, I went inside the toilet. Luckily a train just arrived and an old man went along with me.

Inside the toilets were two men occupying the first two urinals at the time I went in. So I went in and took the third one. During the process I noticed the man next to me was giving eye signals to the man on the first urinal, who obviously was looking left-and-right and was not the slightest bit in doing his "business" there. With my basic instinct I quickly pulled out of the toilet as soon as I could. (Even for an un-alert person like me I could still sense the danger at that moment!) As I said I was lucky because there was an old man who went in with me at the same time; maybe that was the reason I was saved. Thank God!

As mentioned before, this station was so busy with so many trains coming and going every minute and yet the station designers still couldn't think of building more platforms and tracks. As a result, a single platform was shared amongst many trains. If you boarded the train 2 minutes early or later, you could be going somewhere else! So you really had to watch the signboard and also checked the front of the train. You only had about 2 minutes to decide to board or not!

2 hours of train journey. Got myself a window seat, sat opposite to a little girl who liked to kick me whenever she felt like it. (or got excited or bored) My neighbour was her elder sister, not pretty and even if she was I wouldn't dare to chat up to her as their dad (looked like a Spanish Mafia guy) was right opposite to her. So the entire journey I was "cornered" by this family and my only interest was staring at the occasional black bulls grazing upon the grass in the green fields outside.

It was so easy to make money in Madrid! A lady street performer dressed in some medieval costume boarded the train with us in Atocha and during the brief ride, she played an act (?) of a play (I think!) for about 3 minutes and then amongst the applause she came up to everybody and started collecting money from us. (More efficient than the ticket conductor in collecting tickets!) A lot of the tourists actually paid for that! She left in the next stop and could repeat the same thing again on a returning train ..... Hmmm....Maybe on my way back I could do a few rounds of Shao-Lin Kung Fu and earned my trip back! ^_^ Well, if my Chinese Kung-fu could not impress, maybe singing this would:

�֪L�\�ҿ�... �n�n��. �֪L�\���l... �Y�n�C. �ګY�K�Y�\... �L���K�Y�\. �A�Y����L... �ګY����L

Lunch was eaten on train. It was a grand feast of a cold sandwich and a bottle of water (both obtained from the Atocha station's vending machines. EUR 2.1)

Once arrived in Segovia train station, I immediately looked for bus no. 2 as described by LP. Guess what? NO bus no. 2 in the bus stop. What's worse, just like in Toledo's bus port, there was no tourist information counter there in the train station and therefore no map or any information could be found.

With great difficulty (remember no one could speak English), I finally found a bus route that had a stop in Acueducto. (All other names in all other bus routes could not be recognized) I finally arrived at Acueducto at 14:30 (After 30 minutes of waiting for the bus for a journey of 5 minutes.... reason: today was Sunday!)

Acueducto (Roman Aqueduct) was one of the most recognizable symbol of Segovia. Built in the 1st century AD. Now it was 728m long and made up of 163 arches. At the highest point (ie where the Plaza de Azoguejo was) it was 28m high.

The Acueducto marked the entrance to the old Segovia. The whole area was set high on a rocky spur and surrounded by the two rivers. The shape was often compared to a ship, with Alcazar on its sharp end as the prow, the pinnacles of the Cathedral as the masts and the Acueducto trailing behind like the rudder.

The tourist office was conveniently situated in Plaza de Azoguejo and it was a proper office with a 3D model display showing the entire area of Segovia. As it was nearly 15:00, I quickly got a map and immediately set off towards my primary objective - the Alcazar. It was in this office that I regretted again of not taking the bus. (The person at the counter told me that the bus station was very near to old Segovia than the train station, and the the buses departed every half an hour and the journey only took 1 hour........ Too bad I had already got my return train ticket!)

Unlike Toledo, the streets inside Segovia was more straight forward and you only needed to follow the street in one direction.

After passing Plaza de San Martin (where a statue of Juan Bravo was... supposed to be a local hero) and Plaza Mayor (there is one in every city!) I found myself at the doorsteps of the Cathedral of Segovia.

The Cathedral was the last Gothic Cathedral in Spain and took almost 200 years to complete (talking about the effectiveness of the Spanards) and it was one of the three must-see sites in Segovia. It was also the Cathedral where Queen Isabella was crowned. Having said that, I found myself to be fully "saturated" of cathedrals for the past few days, and decided to skip it at the moment. So I continued until I reached the end of the road....the park where Alcazar was situated.

Alcazar de Segovia was famous for two things:

1. Marriage location of Ferndinard II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469. This duo (consider a merger in ruling a kingdom, not very often you hear of that!) was responsible for the reunification of Spain and the drive out of the last Moorish King Boabdil in Granada in 1492, thus finished the "Reconquista".

2. The exterior of the castle (Alcazar) gave Walt Disney the vision of his Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. (so rumors said)

In front of Alcazar I finally met another traveller since Barcelona! Yes, finding and meeting friends in Spain were not as easy as I initially thought. To qualify:

1) They must not be couples as they would be too busy with themselves. Same applied to a pack of people.
2) They must not be European as I could not tell if they were locals or foreigners who could speak English.
3) They must be able to communicate! I could only speak English and Cantonese fluently. So ppl from China, Taiwan and Japanese were out. That left only ppl from HK..... and sorry mate! they only hanged around in shops in the big cities!

Conclusion: Single Asian travellers who could speak English or Cantonese and were more interested in sight-seeing than shopping.... What were the chances for that?

Well, Shang was a mechanical engineer from Mainland China who could speak English very well. He has been seconded to Madrid to study the wind-powered electric plants in Spain. So he was a single, Asian who could communicate........... the only drawback was that it was a he!

Although Shang was not a pretty girl as I had hoped, having someone to talk to and share travel stories was great... it was just like I had been dumb for a few days and suddenly I could speak again! He told me many interesting things in Madrid, and also in his research in the differences between the Chinese and the Spanish girls!

Since he was a nice friend, so together we toured inside Alcazar. As a castle, Alcazar of Segovia was a lot smaller than those castles in England but at least it still looked like an European castle (compared to the Alcazar in Sevilla that was more like a Sultan's Palace) There was an impressive display of some Spanish medieval arms and weapons. Again, the main problem of touring any museum in Spain was that all the descriptions were in Spanish... which gave us a perfect excuse to shorten the touring time.

After the visit I went to the souvenir shop and found that I had lost sight of him when I came out. Since I realized he couldn't have been kidnapped, (even though he was quite handsome but definitely did not look rich) so I left Alcazar and made my way back to the Acueducto.

On the way back I passed by a witch museum. At the entrance was a picture of a woman, which I was not sure if it was the picture of a witch or a person that was bewitched... either way the look was definitely no way near to Emma Watson's (aka Hermione Granger of Harry Potter), so I decided to keep the entrance fee in my wallet and moved on.

Now that I had a map of Segovia and my digital compass, (ie my Casio watch) I decided to walk my way back to the train station. (At that time I had about 1 hour to spare before the next train at 18:50) 'That should be plenty of time, I thought to myself'

I was too naive... the map was simplied and the compass was not accurate enough. One wrong choice in a star-shaped junction and I went the wrong way. The road I took was a long winding road with no street sign and no junction so I did not realize I took the wrong road until after 10 minutes later when the road finally crossed another. As I was going downhill previously it was pretty tough to climb back all the way up. So I had to make a detour to return to the correct route. For the very last time today, I regretted of taking the train to Segovia!

After guessing (the map was simplified!) and running and asking I finally made it back to the train station with 10 minutes to spare before the next train. There I saw Shang standing there on the platform.

It turned out that while I was in the souvenir shop in Alcazar he went to the tower upstairs. (through another entrance right next to the exit) He waited for me up there for 10 minutes and told me the view there was fantastic and it was so good that I should now skip this train and go back there to have a look!

What? Walk another 30 minutes back up and 30 minutes back down (if not lost) and wait another two hours for the next train?...... NO WAY! I really had enough in this "Lost in Segovia" experience!

So I took this 18:50 train with Shang back to Madrid. It turned out that Shang didn't do too well this morning neither.... he boarded the 10:00 train two minutes earlier and realized he got on the wrong train. (He was lucky it was a circle line that he returned to Atocha later, if not he would have wasted the whole day in another city) Finally he managed to catch the 12:00 train to Segovia (ie the same train as mine)

Shang got off in Chamartin station (another equally big train stationin Madrid at the north) and I returned to Atocha. Since my train to Cordoba also departed from this station I decided to go and check out at the information counter.

The lady there could speak good English and gave me an offer of 3 different types of trains that could take me to Cordoba. Although expensive, I opted for AVE. She told me if I wanted to go and get the tickets I could walk across to the ticket office next door to buy them. As I needed to specify the exact train I wanted (ie with the departure time), I decided to leave and buy the ticket tomorrow to give me more flexibility. (I found out that this decision actually costed me tremendously tomorrow!)

Dinner was finally taken in a restaurant in Sol, near the Real Madrid Shop (I originally wanted to go to a cheap 3 course meal restaurant recommended by LP... after wasting 30 minutes, I found that either the editor was drunk while eating at that time or the inflation rate in Spain successfully exceeded China's... the price was nowhere cheap!)

So this restaurant served the same types of Paella as seen in Barcelona, Madrid and Toledo (from OK Paella) and this time I chose the Paella Mixta instead. (EUR 12.25 including a glass of coke) Honestly it was better than the black Arroz Negro before.... but just marginally better. After this I decided I am not ok with OK Paella anymore.

I went back to the hotel just in time to watch the penalty kick shootout between France and Italy (Worldcup Final) and was really surprised that Zidane was nowhere to be seen during the penalty kicks...Well, France lost... I was actually surprised that the French really could not shoot PKs....

My foot prints: Estacion de Atocha (Train Station), Acueducto, Plaza de Azoguejo, Plaza de San Martin, Plaza Mayor, Cathedral de Segovia, Alcazar de Segovia, Gran Vie (to find the not-so-cheap restaurant), Sol

Stay: Lisboa Hostal Madrid (EUR 39, single room)

P.S. Only when I came back did I realize that Zidane got sent out after his famous head-butt in the Final.

DAY 5: Toledo & Madrid

A Day of ancient history and back to Medieval Times!!

The sleep was ok even with the endless chanting from the old elevator outside the room. Breakfast was a lot richer than the French Bread this time! Overnight supermarket danish pastries and croissants with OJ~ Wow! Just couldn't be better!

First stop was the bus station at Mendez Alvaro. Compared to the train service, the bus company did a very good job. There were buses departing for Toledo every half an hour. No queues at the ticket offices (with clear signs in English on which booths to go to too), no need to wait for the next bus, seats were pre-assigned (though I did not aware of that until someone spoke some Spanish to me in an unfriendly manner) and there was no traffic congestion. In an hour's time we arrived at Toledo's bus station.

Once at the Toledo's bus station, you thought you were just in an ordinary European town... peaceful and quiet with style....... but not the stuff I was looking for! The old city Toldedo was nowhere to be seen. According to LP, there should be a bus no. 5 that would take me to the old city. The only clue I saw was a sign by the escalator, saying "Bus No. 5" (with an up arrow). So naturally I went up the escalator to the ticketing hall, thinking the No. 5 bus would be outside the bus station.

Having combed the surrounding 1km radius of the Toledo bus station on the ground level, I still couldn't find any no. 5 bus stop. The clue just stopped there! So I backtracked (reluctantly) to my first and only clue (ie the sign downstairs) and at last I realized that the "up arrow" actually meant going forward... Near the end of the dimly lit tunnel underground I finally found the legendary no.5 bus stop!

It turned out that I was not the only one (misread/confused) as I met an Indian girl while waiting for the bus, who also had a hard time finding the bus stop. During the short bus journey I realized that she was more of a professional than I was as she didn't even bother to plan her trip. I remembered when we got off in Plaza Zocodover inside Toledo, she (sorry forgot her name) said, "Ah, this looks like a nice place, I think I would stay here for a while!" -- "Sleep where you like, leave when you like"...... the idea sounded so cool to me~ I'd wish I could do the same too!

Well she was the first person I really had a conversation with since I last talked to Vicky et al. (Well those conversations that ultimately led to monetary exchange did not count~~ aka shopping, ordering for food) But sadly the chemistry did not go well and the rendezvous only lasted as short as the journey from Toldedo bus station to Plaza Zocodover. Having wiped my eyes with a piece of Tempo (yes i brought these HK tissues along), I regained myself and continued my journey forth.

The old city of Toledo is self-contained within its city wall on a hill. It was declared as a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1986 and was the former captial of the Spanish Empire and is also a place of co-existence of Christain, Jewish and Moorish cultures. As the bus entered the old city you could really feel you went back in time to the Medieval Ages. All the buildings were still kept in the Medieval styles. Most of the streets were actually alleys that had the width of a car.

As Lonely Planet's map was like an ancient manuscript, (in fact this was not the first time!) I immediately went to the tourist office to get a not-so-ancient but an equally abstract map of Toledo. The office was actually a corner of a souvenir shop in the Plaza Zocodover.

Also in the plaza I saw the McDonalds and a kebab shop. Since Toldedo should have traces of the Moorish culture, I settled my lunch for the kebab. (EUR 3) Well, it seems that when the Moors left this place, they surely took away the secret of making good kebabs with them too.......=_=

While I was eating the "even-worse-than-a-british-kebab" kebab, I saw people trying out the Segways in front of a Segway rental stores. Since the alleyways were so narrow that cars would not be a convenient mean of transportation; the townsfolks here thought of introducing a tour of Toledo by Segways! I thought this was a really cool idea until I found out that the tour was led by a Spanish-speaking tour guide....

Alternatively you could just pay 5 Euros and could enjoy a 10 minute session of "testdriving" the Segway in front of this rental shop. (Yes, you were restricted to the plaza only; no, you can't do a 0-60km/h speed test! sorry mate!)

My first stop was a photo with a statue of Cervantes (Author of Don Quixote de la Mancha), then to Museo de Santa Cruz which the Renaissance architectural style was more interesting than the contents it exhibited. According to LP the museum was supposed to show arts and paintings but I olnly found myself some pre-historic left behinds of the early Spanish settlements (e.g. a pair of mammoth tusks) [I hope I didn't go to the wrong place?!]

After that I went uphill to the highest point of the city, where the Alcazar was cited. This was the squarest Alcazar I had seen in Spain. (i.e. boring with no style!) Franco turned it into a military museum after rebuilding it when it was destroyed during the republican siege. Now it was closed for renovation to allow them to move the army museum from Madrid to here.

Even though the military museum was not yet opened, I could still see signs of arms and armoury everywhere in Toledo -- within the souvenir shops!... Toledo was renowned for the excellence of its swords, shields and armours. Those fine steels were finely crafted and were very impressive and I almost had the urge to strap one to my back and brought it home.(If only they had the Darth Vader's light sabre.....) actually the swordmakers were really up-to-date, they even had the sword that was bore by Aargon (the one from The Lord of the Ring), with all the Elven runes crafted on the blade.

Another type of souvenirs found in an abundance inside Toledo was ceramic tablets/tiles. Each tablet had a painting of either an alphabet, a number or a drawing with nicely decorations. So you could easily buy the whole lot to play scrabble with them in the hotel if you were bored. (Each tile was 1 Euro each, so if you would like to compose a love poem from them, it would surely costed you a fortune, and not to mention how you were going to carry them back all in one piece instead of turning them into more pieces!)

The Cathedral de Toledo looked good from the outside (The bell tower "the belfry" was the tallest in the city!) so I paid EUR 6 to go in. Besides that, I had no memory of what was inside the Cathedral (Come on, I had been to so many cathedrals in the whole trip!) Oh yes, another thing I remembered was I saw a Segway Tour in action and those kids just zoomed past the front of the Cathedral while I was getting a ticket. After all the climbing and panting in the city for the whole afternoon, that was the first time I regretted of not renting a Segway earlier.

After the cathedral it was merely an exercise of orienteering (ie got lost in the maze of alleys while trying to go to a destination). During the exercise, I was "chased" by a car from behind because the alley was so tight that there was no room for me to stop by and let the car squeeze past. (I swore that the car driver was lost too but just couldn't find a place to U-turn or 3-point turn!)

I also came across a marzipan outlet (which turned out to be operated by nuns). It was rumored to be so secret that you rang the doorbell and handed in the money and a hand would give out the goodies.. no faces were shown, no eye contacts were made during the whole process. (and no questions asked!)

There was an El Greco's trail that you could follow to see his works and his past but I only had time to drop by Iglesia de Santo Tome, where his masterpiece, "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz" was housed. Though not much of a fan of him, I paid 2 euro and went inside. There was nothing but just the painting. To be honest the painting was very impressive and the texture of the material (e.g. silk) was very well re-created using the oil painting technique. According to the tour guide, he and Cervantes disguised as part of the crowds in the picture.

It was nearly 16:00 and I started the journey back to the bus station. From the "map" it seemed the station was very near and it was downhill so I decided to walk along the outer city walls... However, the Spanish heat was never to be underestimated. With a lack of water (no shops around the outer city walls), brilliant sunshine and with WC nowhere to be seen (I only saw a public toilet before lunch in Plaza Zocodover in the entire city!), I finally gave up (almost collapsed) at the entrance gate and "hitch-hiked" a bus back to the bus station. (yes, "hitch-hiked" because there was no bus stop there... but still got to pay! EUR 0.4)

To my surprise, the bus station that was originally nowhere to be seen turned up within 2 minutes of the bus ride..... Well, at least I finally made it to the bus station.

Although I have purchased the "return ticket" before in Madrid, I had to hand-in that "return ticket" (actually it just looked like a sales slip from a supermarket purchase) and the staff would issue a brand-new ticket (and in fact reserved the place for the bus)..... I almost didn't do this step and was going to board the bus straightaway.... Phew! that was lucky! If that bus was full I had to wait for another bus.

The reason for the rush was because of ....... Santiago Bernabeu!

If you didn't know what Santiago Bernabeu is, then maybe the names like Figo, Raul, Carlos, Beckham, Ronaldo and Zidane would ring the bell....Yes! Real Madrid... Santiago Bernabeu is the name of their stadium and also home of their football club.

Since I have been to Barca's Camp Nou, there was no reason why I shouldn't check out their nemesis'. So I "finished" the Toledo trip early and quickly rushed to the stadium.

Getting there was a lot easier than getting to Camp Nou from the metro, as the stadium was quite next to the metro exit. As it was approaching the closing time, I quickly went to the stadium shop to mind my own business. Because there were lots of football stars in Real Madrid, there were no lack of personalized souvenirs... man you could see people queueing up for getting their T-shirts printed/ironed. The templates for the popular stars (like No. 5, No. 23, etc) were sold out and the lady had to "line" up the letters individually to make the name on the T-shirt.

For me I settled for T-shirt key-chains (with the names of the stars on them) But only one Black Ronaldo and one Black Beckham was left, and no traces of Zidane whatsoever. (Zidane had the good-bye match in this stadium just before he left for the world cup about a month ago) There were plenty of Raul and Carlos....... no sign of Owen neither because he left too early~~

After the shopping I managed to squeeze myself in for the self-guided stadium tour just before it closed. For EUR 9 , I got to see the players changing room, coach's seats and the restaurant. Although the size of the stadium was smaller, the tour was better as you got access to places that you wouldn't allow in Camp Nou. (At least I got close to the goal posts here)

The gem of the tour was really the museum at the end of the tour. All those tropies and medals shined in the "Hall of Mirror" and many of them had the player's name on it. The finale was a showcase of the current players' boots and their autographes.

I noticed two things: There was no prayers room so they didn't need last minute prayers. There were no full-size figure-boards (like Ronaldinho's in Camp Nou) for you to take photos with and no bogus trophy for you to hold and take photos too.... A slight disappointment here~

Dinner was eaten in a buffet restaurant (Fresc Co). I initially thought that I could try all the local Spanish Specialities for just 9.7 euro.... Well, it turned out that the only special stuff was Gazpacho (spanish soup? cold and sour, not sure if it had tomato in it) and the rest were just pasta and salads..... On a positive side, I could eat lots of veggies and fruits on that night.

When I went back to the hotel I decided to go to the internet cafe nearby to check out the train schedule for tomorrow... but too bad that it was closing when I reached there (It was only 21:55 at that time!)

At night I saw the live TV broadcast from Valencia that the Pope had come to visit Spain... What a coincidence! but why couldn't he come to Madrid? Why didn't I go to Valencia? So close, yet so far~

Germany beat Portugal 3-1! Yeah, you bastard! (I do not support Germany, but I just plainly hate Portugal)

My foot prints: Mendez Alvaro (Bus Station), Plaza Zocodover, Museo de Santa Cruz, Alcazar, Toledo Cathedral, Iglesia de Santo Tome, Santiago Bernabeu, Goya

Stay: Lisboa Hostal Madrid (EUR 39, single room)

DAY 4: Barcelona -> Madrid

Having finally finished my French Bread (yes the same 2-footer for 3 consecutive breakfasts) I think it was time for me to pack up and kiss goodbye to this hostal. As the checkout time was 11:00, I decided to leave my huge rucksack at the reception early so that I could come back later to pick it up before I hit for the flight at 15:00. Well, well, well.... the receptionist said the baggage wouldn't be safe there and kindly rented me a full-size locker for 2 euros... how professional could their service be?!

I have only got a couple of hours left in Barcelona before leaving for the airport. So I chose to place my bet on Basilica de Santa Maria del Pi, which LP (Lonely Planet) stated that it has the world's largest rose window. But half-an-hour later, I ended up in the old town (Barri Gotic) inside Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar, whose rose windows were definitely not the world's largest.

The rest of the final hours in Barcelona was spent in Museu Picasso (only for the toilet part) and in the fresh food market "Mercat de Sant Josep".

Mercat de Sant Josep was near Las Ramblas and was a dry and wet food market selling stuff like dry jambon (ham hung on the top of the stall), fresh fruits, neatly laid out seafood, very sweet candied fruits etc. The fruit stores at the front made the market looked very colourful and I couldn't resist for a pack of "fresh" fruits myself for 1 euro.

After this "exciting" detour of the day, I returned back to the hotel to pick up my stuff for the airport. This time I was "cleverer" and took the airport bus in Placa de Catalunya. Though more straight forward this time (you just couldn't get to the wrong airport in an airport shuttle!), the time taken for the journey was awefully long, and was equally crowded too!

Vueling was a budget airline in Spain. The trip from Barcelona to Madrid was quite cheap compared to travelling by train (if you booked early enough) For my first booking, it only costed EUR 20 for the fare (EUR 36.58 inclusive) and you got the privileges to be served by the not-so-polite and not-so-pretty either flight attendants; or strip-searched by the airport security guards... All these you just wouldn't get to enjoy if you took the train or the national coach.

The check-in was smooth once you got to the right queue. (Vicky warned me before of joining the wrong queue!) Like all other budget airlines, boarding was an outdoor activity and was done on foot and involved in climbing the stairs. I also observed that budget airlines had the tendency to have bright sharp colours for their uniforms.... after seeing bright sharp orange for the Easyjet before, this time the Vueling designers had came out with something more shocking: neon-yellow jacket borrowed straight from the road-cleaner/worker at night. (You know, they wore those in case the car drivers didn't see them)... I just hoped these were not designed to let pilots of other planes to know of our plane's presence....

Lunch was served with a donation. (At that time it was around 15:30) With a donation of EUR 4.50, you only got a COLD sandwidth and coke. Well, it was so delicious that I almost had to ask to see the chef. Also, earphones for in-flight movie also required a donation too; which I couldn't be bothered as the movie couldn't even finish before the flight landed anyway. (and not to mention the fact that would I donate for more chances to hear more Spanish dialogues?)

Arrived Madrid at around 16:15. As it was a national flight, no customs would be bothered to hassle you. This time I took airport shuttle again (yes, ever since the first mess with the airport train in Barcelona, I had learnt not to complicate something that was already too complicated)

After changing a couple of metro lines I finaly arrived Hostal Lisboa near Sevilla area. The hotel room was a shock. Well it was spacious but the walls, the carpet gave me a feeling that I was back to the time in the movie "Somewhere in Time", not to mention my room was next to the forever-working elevator. So my only window view was the elevator shaft and my morning call came from the cables and pulleys inside.

According to the golden rule of survival laid down by Vicky, the first thing when I arrived in a new place was to find the supermarket. Voila, there was a grocery right next to the hotel, how convenient!

To my surprise, the shopkeeper was a Chinese immigrant. She couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak Mandarin nor Spanish... so there was not much to talk about except the exchange of goods and money. (She was quite excited to see some Chinese customers around... gosh, she must be bored in the store!) It rhymes!

I then made my way to Plaza de Santa Ana. It was around 17:30 and the sun was still high on the sky. There were lots of open-air restaurants there but all the tables were not set up. Waiters were just lazily pulling out the chairs. Kids were playing football when suddenly one of them kicked the ball to a waiter. Instead of scolding the kids the waiter quickly grabbed the ball and showed off how good his kick was! (yes, just like one of the nike worldcup advertisements)... he played for a while (before the manager came out) and resumed with his chairs. [He actually was quite good controlling the ball]

Someone then approached and asked me for a quick survey... but it was brief: (I: Interviewer, V: Me)

I) How long have you been here in Madrid?
V) Just arrived

I) Where do u come from?
V) Hong Kong

I) Thanks very much for your time! Have a nice day!

Oh! Either they had not heard of what "Hong Kong" was or whether they were panicking since "Hong Kong" was not a model answer... but certainly their target audience did not include Hong Kong people....... which was quite sad as this meant not many tourists came from Hong Kong, well at least not enough to catch their tourism board's attention.

Finally arrived at Puerta del Sol without further interruptions. Sol is the centre of Madrid, and they said all the roads network in Madrid radiate from Sol. To me, Sol was just like another Times Square/Picadilly Circus to me, and the famous boutiques and cafes were more imteresting than any of the landmarks here. (Having said that there was an interesting statue of a bronze Spanish Poohbear trying to climb the strawberry tree (obviously for honey, what else?! ^_^)... they said it was a symbol of Madrid)

Amongst all the shops here I finally found what I wanted - a supermarket. (Remember Vicky's rule #1?)Actually El Corte Ingles was like a nation-wide Spanish Marks and Spencer and it sold all sorts of goodies from raincoats, leather shoes to strawberry jam.

Having loaded up 5 Lt of water, a dozen of danish pastries and croissants, a box of seedless grapes and a bottle of OJ, I was prepared to move on to my next destination....... which sadly was to return to the hotel because of the bulkiness and heaviness of the goodies.

So when I was back at Sol again, it was already 21:00 and I really had to hunt for dinner... Hunting for dinner was not easy in Madrid as many restaurants were not tourists-oriented. i.e. no English Menu! I finally wandered into Plaza Mayor where there were tons of open-air restaurants... almost all English menus offered similar things. After seeing a japanese guy sat down at a restaurant after looking at the menu for a long time, I also followed suit and sat down at the same restaurant too..........

...............Argggggggggggggghhhhhh...............

I had the most expensive meal ever in my entire trip! (EUR 20.20 for 2 entree-sized sauteeed mushroom & Tagliatelle Carbonara and 1 half litre bottle of spring water!)

Having said that, dining openly at Plaza Mayor had a different atmosphere than dining in Las Ramblas. In Las Ramblas, you just saw people passing by. In this Plaza people actually came and gathered in this one big square. Some just sat and rested here, some listened to the "concert".. and there were also street performers and hawkers here too.. I even saw a Chinese trying to promote the foot massage service! You would not feel like dining alone! (though it really hurted my wallet *weep*)

No world cup today!

My foot prints: Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar, Museu Picasso, Mercat de Sant Josep, Placa de Catalunya, Barcelona Airport, Madrid Airport, Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor

Stay: Lisboa Hostal Madrid (EUR 39, single room)

DAY 3: Barcelona and Montserrat (Near Barcelona)

Pilgrimage: A journey to a sacred place. To the local Catholics, Montserrat is a sacred place to them; to the Barcelonian football fans, what is more sacred than the Camp Nou?

As Vicky and Kit decided to hit for the beach today, I decided to do some hiking and went to Montserrat myself. On the way to the train station in Placa D' Espanya I came across a local trade fair called BBB (Bread & Butter Barcelona)... well, as I didn't have time and the ticket to get in, so I wonder whether they would be trading marmalade and margarine as well as bread & butter!

There are two means to get to Montserrat:
1) By train and cable car
2) By train and rack railway (ie those trains that are suitable for climbing steep mountains)

Now this would be an excellent oppotunity to compare the Spanish Cable Car System to our "proudly presents" Ngong Ping 360 (���W360), so there was no reason why I didn't take the cable car instead.

After "repetitive trials" (ie 2) of the Montserrat Aeri (cable car), though it was much much older, at least the service was smooth, on-time and did not stop even when the wind blowed. :P To be honest, this cable car journey was one of the steepest climbs I have ever had! well... at least compared to Ocean Park's. (Actually the vertical climb near the end of the journey reminded me of a scene in James Bond's For Your Eyes Only where the basket (and the people inside) was lift up to the monastery high above a vertical cliff)

Montserrat is famous for 3 things:
1) Black Virgin Mary
2) A monastery built on top of serrated mountains
3) The professional-grade boys choir Escolania, who would sing at 13:00 everyday.

Well it seemed that the choirboys were on once-a-year school holidays in July and they were replaced by a not-so-professional British choir which I also missed because the performance time was changed to 12:00 in July.

Another disappointment was the monastery looked too touristy. I didn't see any black hooded Benedictine monks walking around or chanting prayers, but instead waves and waves of tourists of various nations and school kids. (Sorry no one from Hong Kong bothered to come up.. I only saw some Japanese girls)

Ignoring the disappointments, Montserrat and the monastery still gave me a sense of sacredness and tranquility. At least the air was a lot cooler on the mountain than the boiling hot humid atmosphere down in Barcelona.

The statue of Black Virgin was placed behind the altar of the Basilica. (Free admission) Pilgrims had to line up outside the Basilica just to wait to go and see the statue, and to touch the wooden orb that Mary held. (The orb was the only part of the statue that was exposed to public. The rest of the statue was enclosed in a glass container) Legends said whoever touched the orb would get the blessing from Our Mother....... and of course I touched it too.

Lunch was taken in a cafeteria in the Montserrat where you "ordered" (in my case "pointed") your food at the counter and paid on the exit (just like a university canteen) In my case I had the very salty Butifarra (sausage) and Creme de Catalana (like the French Creme Brulee). It turned out the potatoes were the best! (EUR 9.1)

There was an option to take the rack railway further up to the top of the mountain to do some hiking but I decided to rush off to another pilgrimage: Camp Nou.

If you are a soccer fan and if you watch Spanish League you would certainly know what FC Barcelona is. (Barca as the local would call it) The headquarter of this football club is in the stadium Camp Nou.

You must really have a true heart to go on a pilgrimage as the road was never easy. After getting off from the nearest metro station, I had to walk around 10 minutes to reach the stadium, then discovered that the entrance was on the other side of this massive stadium, so I had to walk for another 5-10 minutes before reaching the main entrance..... mind you, you must be a real fan to walk all that far under 38+ C degrees just to visit a football stadium.

Under the influence of Captain Tsubasa (���y�p�N), the Camp Nou was not quite what it seemed to be. (and the author had researched! *sigh*) In order to have a real look of a true stadium, I parted 11 Euros for a self-guided tour around the stadium. Inside you had the priviledge of taking photos with Ronaldinho (full-size cardboard figure -_-" ....... I'd rather prefer japanese blow-up maiden dolls if u ask me), visited the chapel (I must say it must be for the players' last-minute prayers) and the museum. The highlight of the musuem was a chance to take a photo while holding the UEFA champions league 2006 trophy cup replica!

As it turned out that I looked more like a worker of a housemoving company than a football team captain holding the championship's trophy, I decided to save my 10 Euros for the photo. My last mission of the trip was the "crazy" shopping of Barca stuff in the official store... but having stuffed myself with those souvenirs, it turned out that the "official" hawker store right outside the entrance of the stadium was also selling exactly the same stuff (with the same holographic sticker) with much cheaper prices!

Agreed to meet Vicky and her friends for dinner at 21:00 so I quickly rushed back to hotel for a shower. It was also the first time I experienced the "quickness" of the Barcelona metro. First, the entire line 3 (green line) was shut down (ie no entry was allowed through the ticket gates), then re-opened after a short while (luckily I did not go away); then waited for 10 minutes before a train came; then stopped at each station in between, with the waiting time in a station's platform greater than the travelling time between each station.

Becoz of that, I could just barely make it on time at the meeting place when I realized all the others arrived much later! (so why the rush?) Dinner was eaten at a local pub-like restaurant (La Esquinica) and it was a tapas night. Alex ordered many dishes of tapas of different varieties and I only remembered I ate a lot of pig's blood and organs... another interesting thing was that you could only pay to the waiter who served you but not to the other waiters... they actually rejected (?) you when you asked for the bill. (EUR 53.35 for 5 ppl)

Having said good-bye to them (All four of them would be heading off to Pamplona for the bull-running festival on the next day) I headed back to the hotel at 23:00. Travelling at night was actually not as bad as ppl said. I believe there were pickpockets everywhere, but I hadn't seen any robberies, physical assaults or bag snatching in Barcelona yet! Thank God!

No world cup today!

My foot prints: Placa d' Espanya, Montserrat, Camp Nou

Stay: Opera Hostal, Barcelona (EUR 43, single room)

P.S. Oh btw, BBB was really a trade show for contemporary top genre fashion!

DAY 2: Gaudi's works, Barcelona

Having eaten a very "delicious" breakfast inside the hotel room, I started my first day in Barcelona (Oh btw, the "delicious breakfast" was a piece of a very long French Bread, together with a litre of OJ that had so much preservatives that it didn't go bad for 3 days without a fridge. The bread was so long or rather, so delicious that it served as my breakfast for 3 days!), the meeting time with Vicky and Kit were not until 11:00 so I decided to go to see the Barri Gotic Area first.

Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter) is the old town of Barcelona and as the name implies, there are many old Gothic buildings there. The first stop was Barcelona Cathedral. It was my first Cathedral visit since Paris' Notre Dame in 1993 (yes, I have been to many churches and chapels since then, but the sheer size and atmosphere of a cathedral was just not quite the same!) Anyway the outside of the cathedral was really disappointing because the front was covered up with scaffolding as it was under renovation(?). The interior, to my surprise, was quite impressive. Highlights included the sarcophagus of Saint Eulalia lying in the crypt below the altar, which you could have a quick "peep" if you put in a euro to turn on the light. (or you can peep while other generous souls put in the Euro for the lights)

Well, time passed by and soon I had to rush back to Las Ramblas to meet the duo. It turned out that they had to move their beds again for no obvious reason, so they had to stay in the hostal for the whole morning for the arrangement.

Today we dedicated ourselves to Gaudi. First we headed off to Casa Batllo where there was a dragon (the dragon from St. George's and the dragon) lying on the roof top and windows that resembled human skulls. The creepy feeling did not put us off from entering the building but it turned out it was the EUR 16.80 entrance fee that kept us from it.

So we decided to try our luck next with Casa Mila, famous for the wavy exterior and the exotic chimneys(?) and fortunately(?) the entrance fee was only EUR 8. It was originally an apartment (casa means house) that had turned into some kind of museum describing Gaudi's works and how his ideas came... well at least one thing was true, Gaudi didn't like straight lines in his architectural works.. that's why almost all his works were all curvy and wavy. (hmmm.... maybe he could ask somebody to lend him a ruler at that time?)

We were supposed to meet Vicky's friend (Wendy or Sandy I forgot, sorry! [It was Doris actually, I confirmed with Vicky at last!] and her spanish boyfriend Alex) at La Sagrada Familia but as usual we were half an hour late while indulging ourselves in Casa Mila. Another reason of being late was because on the way to Sagrada we were arguing whether the "wire mesh" on top of Fundacio Tapies was really a piece of sculpture or just some barbed wire fence.

La Sagrada Familia (ie the church of the holy family) (EUR 8) is also known as the unfinished church because it still is in progress and won't be finished for at least another 50 years. It was this building that Gaudi dedicated his last years and his entire wealth into it. There were 3 facades (two were complete?) and each side has sculptures that tells of different events of the life of Jesus. E.g. The Nativity Facade told of the birth of Jesus and the the Passion Facade told of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

The very tall "ice-cream cones" (spires/towers) of the building were open to public and you could either go up by an escalator (EUR 2) or by climbing the stairs (Free).... So the five "energetic" youths decided to wait 30 minutes to queue up for the stairs and spent another 45 minutes climbing the spires. There was really nothing to see at the top except a good panoramic view of Barcelona and the Agbar Torre (Agbar Tower) , that resembles an organ of a male.(Coincidentally, this tower was the headquarter of a water company, no wonder they chose this shape while designing their headquarter)

Lunch was around 14:30 and Alex took us to a local restaurant nearby. A 3 course meal+drink only costed EUR 8.5. The menu was in Spanish and even though Alex did his best to explain what the choices were, we were still confused (maybe the art of Spanish Cuisine could not be easily described in words) so at the end we all had a good laugh of what the dish turned out to be. Nevertheless the food was true local! (i.e. had a non-touristic flavour!)

After the meal (well for local Spanish, lunch is around 14:30, dinner around 22:00 as the sun did not set until then), Alex and Wendy had to head off because of his dad's birthday party, so the rest of us continued our Gaudi's tour with Parc Guell.

Parc Guell (close resemblance to but wrongly pronounced as �t), was a park with architectural elements made by Gaudi. Btw the name Guell came from Count Eusebi Guell who constantly sponsored Gaudi for his works. The park was in Barcelona city but nowhere near any of the metro stations. We already had a tip-off by Alex to enter from the back (there were long and steep escalators that took us through the steep hill) but still, with weather as hot as 38+ C, we were totally toasted and roasted while visiting the park (With this weather, it was not surprising to find wild cacti in the park... thought we were in the wild wild west for a minute)

The highlight of the park I should say was the mosaic lizard at the front (also somehow became the mascot of Gaudi's work) and the curvy mosaic serpentine bench in the main square. (One of the longest benches in the world) Every visitor who went there ended up sitting in there. (maybe also because they were all tired out from the climbing and the heat)

It's dinner time again and it seems that the duo were still "addicted" to Spanish Supermarket's food but I thought I should try something else. So I chose the open-air restaurant along the Las Ramblas and decided to try out the famous Spanish paella... I chose the black Arroz Negro (EUR 15) (which was not a wise choice actually... no wonder I have never seen it outside Spain before)

It turned out the restaurant that I visited belonged to a chinese restaurant across the street, and the paella was from a company called OK paella (franchised across Spain)... well so much for visiting a local restaurant and eating local Spanish food!

One of the advantages of sitting out in the open for meals was that there should be an abundance of Spanish girls walking around you while you ate.. sadly speaking it seemed that they too preferred to sit down for dinner elsewhere at that time. Only the tourists and the street performers still roamed the street at that time!

So with nothing much to see and disappointed with my Sino-Espanol paella, I decided to go back to the hotel for some World Cup. There was no TV in the hotel rooms in my hotel and everyone had to stick to a small TV in the common room (reminded me of the good old days in the university halls) and I was just in time to watch France beat Portugal. Yes!(Well I was an England's fan.... for those who couldn't remember, Portugal sent England back home!)

France beat Portugal 1-0!

My foot prints: Barcelona Cathedral, Casa Batllo, Casa Mila, Sagrada Familia, Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau, Parc Guell

Stay: Opera Hostal, Barcelona (EUR 43, single room)

PS. This morning I received a long distance phonecall from my cleaner that there was a leakage in my salt water pipe in the toilet at home, and water was flooding everywhere... Luckily she had asked someone to fix it... still it was an aweful timing for this to happen (never happened before while I was in HK), this really spoiled my trip!

DAY 1: London Heathrow airport -> Barcelona

It turned out that the BA staff did not lie (I would write a complaint letter if he did~~) and gave me an EMERGENCY EXIT aisle seat on the wing! Wow I thought, an emergency exit aisle for a long haul flight: it means plenty of leg room to stretch for the 10+ hours flight... �����! At that moment I thought BA is the greatest airline of the world, until.....

It seems that the plane I was on (Boeing 747-400) was a little different from what I have expected. The emergency exit seats on the wings actually had a stupid partition right in front! That means the leg room ahead was even worse than the normal seats (For normal seats, you can tug your legs under the seats in front) and so for the whole flight I had to put my left foot out on the aisle to get the leg room, and at the same time (unintentionally) try to trip over the not-so-pretty BA flight attendants as they passed by; or being run over by trolleys or stamped upon by passengers trying to go to the toilet...

There was no Miss beautiful and available girl/lady/female sat by my side during the flight to UK so I basically dozed off during the entire flight.

Arrived in UK at ~06:35 local time and I had to wait for the connecting flight to Barcelona leaving from London Heathrow (same terminal) at 09:25. There was nothing thrilling in terminal 1 except that there were many passengers there (who got there earlier than i did) "sunbathing" inside the terminal on those "comfort/stretching" chairs with a panoramic view of the airport and the aircrafts outside. The sun was good "outside"...I must say it was very comfortable to lie down but the cost of a nice nap would be either 1) missing the connecting flight or 2) losing all the belongings.... (not something you would want right at the beginning of the journey)

Touched down at Barcelona at 12:25. Passed the immigration with no hassle (at least no such interrogation like where are u from, what are you doing here, are you going to spy on us, or are you going to earn our money, create unemployment and decrease our GDP etc...)

Armed myself with a comprehensive but incomprehensible barcelona map (courtesy of the tourist office in the airport), I decided to head out to the city by train. You couldn't go wrong with a train, I thought. Well, not so true...

1. The train station was quite far from the airport, and there was no information kiosk and only one non-English speaking staff was selling tickets inside the kiosk;
2. There was a mini sign showing the routes of various trains;
3.Then there was a billboard showing the incoming train's destination that was so "conveniently" not found on any of the routes on the sign board, and of course not on the pathetic guide map I had, nor on the LP (Lonely Planet) nor the Eye Witness (another of my guidebook) map.

Conclusion: You had no clue where this train would take you to the place you wanted...

"Luckily", everyone was just as clueless as I was so at the end we all decided to take the chance... So we hopped on the first train and there were plenty of EMPTY seats.. I thought at last I could relax a little! (I was not used to the weight of the backpack yet!)

And.......the problem came real soon.... the train stopped at the first stop and everyone else (except those clueless backpackers and tourists) hopped off the train. My mind was "15/16" whether to get off or stay put until finally some kind soul came and told us (in English!) to get off and change train if we were to reach the city by the end of the day.

Finally another train came (a double decker) and took us to the city. Never underestimate the capacity of a double decker train! Even with capacity twice as large as a normal train we still couldn't find any seats and I had to sit on the stairs for the whole hour... so much for my first train experience in Spain.

The morale of the story: if the train was going to the city during the day, there was no reason why there were so many empty seats and so few passengers... ie WRONG train!

Finally reached Catalunya station and changed the metro to Liceu station where my hotel was.
Checked-in at the hostal Opera. hmmm.. a nice and conveniently located hotel except that my air-con was broken. It actually took me a long time to convince them (in English and also in body language - no, not sticking fingers!) the air-con was broken and not that I could not turn on an air-con! [Luckily, they fixed it when I came back at night! and I really needed that!]

It turned out the hotel was very near to Las Ramblas and the street had many street performers standing there waiting for your incoming cash flows... the one near my hotel was the Grim Reaper... and I used him as the landmark for locating my hotel for the rest of the stay. Nearby there was another performer... must be a fan of Man Utd... the Red Devil.

Having SMS-ed Vicky and Kit (a HK couple I met on the web), I finally "made" contact with them in the tourist information office in Plaza (pronunced Pla-tha) de Catalunya at 17:00. It seemed that they really had a good time in Spain. (Originally I was supposed to meet them at Madrid a week ago, now they had almost finished their trip) I was "kindly greeted" with a complaint on how badly the hotel I "recommended" for Madrid was... (Luckily I changed my Madrid hotel booking before I came over during the re-booking... so I didn't have to go there, he he! Btw the hotel was called Jamyc Hostal Madrid, don't go there!)

Anyway it was also their first day in Barcelona, they arrived in the morning and took the airport bus instead of the train (wise choice!) but they spent tons of time sorting out their sleeping arrangement in their hostal in Barri Gotic area. So we toured together the Las Ramblas area, went right down to the Colon of Christopher Columbus (on the way down we saw a few naked men walking .. by naked I mean fully naked... well why can't they be naked pretty women instead??)

Dinner was settled with style on that night! My first meal in Spain was buying Frozen Spaghetti Carbonara, Frozen Tortilla and some other pasta from the local super market, microwaved and dined in their hostal common room WITHOUT aircon at over 30C....... man that was a real experience as the rate of sweating was greater than the rate of liquid in-take during the meal.

A good thing about dining in that youth hostal was you got the chance to meet interesting ppl. The person I met there was actually a solo comedian-to-be who came all the way from Belgium to Barcelona to pursue his dream. He worked in the hostal to get free accommodation while he was preparing for his first show... too bad we couldn't stay long enough to watch his first virgin show.

At around 10pm I have reached my melting point and said good-bye to the nice couple and walked all the way back from Barri Gotic area to Las Ramblas area... I have heard stories about how bad the crime rate was in Barcelona before but I could not feel anything while I walked back... possibly because everyone (including the bag snatchers) were still indulging in the World Cup at that time..

My original plan to watch the world cup from a local pub was er... shattered as the pubs were so full of people that the crowd actually spilled out on the street and could merely take a peek at the small TV the pub had... still the spirit was good if you didn't mind joining the standing crowd (make sure you stood on the right side!)...... however, my mind was willing but my flesh was weak... jet lag got me on that night pretty quick!

Italy beat Germany 2-0!

My foot prints: Liceu, Las Ramblas, Palau Guell (closed for renovations), Placa Reial, Monument a Colom (Colombus's Monument), Port Vell, Gothic Point Hostal

Stay: Opera Hostal, Barcelona (EUR 43, single room)

DAY 0: Hong Kong International Airport -> London Heathrow Airport

After a long tiring Monday, it is finally time for me to start my trip. Armed with a 70L Vaude backpack and a Lowepro Orion Trekker II, I started heading off to the HK Intl airport.

The check-in was the worst I have ever had in my entire life. British Airways actually refused to give me an aisle seat even though I got there 3 hours early. The reason: every single aisle seat in a Boeing 747 has been reserved during the ticket reservation. (As a matter of fact I did an on-line check-in the night before (earliest time I was able to on-line check-in for my flight!) and the stupid system pre-assigned a window seat which I couldn't change, so either way I didn't have a choice to choose my seat unless I specified it right at the moment when I purchased my ticket! --- But then my agent said my ticket class did not allow me to reserve a seat at booking time (I talked to my agent after my trip)

So after talking to the manager on duty, the manager's manager and virtually any BA staff who had the interest to listen to me, I was finally verbally guaranteed an aisle seat when I arrived at the boarding gate. He said, 'I will meet you at the gate.' (Well we shall see about that!)

So passing immigration was like a breeze (at least the e-channel was working fine and saved me from the embarrassment of getting trapped inside) I decided to check out the free airport lounge offered by Citibank Platinum Card (It was so easy to apply one nowadays!)... oh well it was a Friday night and the Plaza Premium Lounge was more crowded than the departure boarding lounge... the free shower was forever occupied (since there was only one cubicle) and the food was... well, it made me really look forward to the Spanish Cuisine... to be fair it has Magnum and ������ offered so at least that couldn't go wrong..... but this lounge was really worse than all the lounges I have ever been to...... I'd suppose it is a very "generous" lounge...... and access to it is very easy if you have the right credit cards..

While I was having my ������ in the lounge, the CNN brought me "good" news: Train got de-railed in Valencia (One of Spain's largest cities) with reason not yet known. Damn! Just right when I am about to go to Spain......Couldn't be any better or "thrilling"! Just hope it wasn't another terrorist attack.....

Stay: on a British Airways jet, 39H (no, this was not the cup size of the lady sitting next to me)

Without Q's gadgets, even James Bond can't survive a single episode. I am no exception... unfortunately I do not have Q's stuff, but luckily I have something else...

Gadget #1: Nikon D70 with AFS 18-200mm ED-VR and Tokina ATX 12-24mm F4. This trustworthy camera equipment allowed me to take very wide shots and the the VR function gave me the extra support I needed to shoot inside the cathedrals and museums without a tripod!

Gadget #2: Archos Gmini 500. It is a PMP (portable media player) that gave me the entertainment I needed during the boring travelling times.... watching �q���k in a train is no longer a dream! I also used it to learn Spanish on the go! Besides keeping me fun, it also served as my photo bank when my memory cards were full.

Gadget #3: My personal Miss Moneypenny.. she helped me with schedules, travel plans, alarms, maps and translators... can't survive without her!

Gadget #4: Casio G-SHOCK Sea-pathfinder. Its primary function was the digital compass that gave me directions while consulting the not-so-readable maps. It was also my secondary alarm and the most "useful" function was the ability to tell me when the full moon is in case I run into Spanish werewolves. .

Gadget #5: My guidebooks. Who needs a tour guide when I have got these? The chinese ones are published by Taiwanese from Mooks. They have got big pictures and only concentrated on the best spots. The DK eye-witness was a very comprehensive reference and one could also use it for bashing muggers because of its sheer weight! And the real credits go to the "Lonely Planet Spain" (not shown in photo), which was most useful as it guided me how to go from one place to another... but also because of it (and its not-so-up-to-date information), I got misled in many circumstances

Gadget #6: My protective gear. The bandana served as my cap, my scarf, my hood, my headband, my napkin, my hankerchief and my terrorist mask in case I need to rob the bank... and the orange ball was actually a condensed windbreaker (which was there in case I got cold.. which turned out to be REALLY not necessary!

Gadget #7: My gadgets. Hooks, penknife, personal alarm (that managed to dry up all the battery before I arrive in Span because of the not-so-safe safety pin) and my drinking bottle!

Gadget #8: My Eyewear. This Oakley Juliet made me look cool during the trip, especially in this hot weather. As my eyes cannot be seen behind the gold coloured lens, it is also excellent for "bird"-watching. Sadly, the pre-requisite of wearing the contact lens first made it entirely redundant during the whole trip~

Gadget #9: Lowepro Orion Trekker II is specially designed for carrying a SLR camera. It is one of the smallest and lightest available and the design allowed you to take out the camera quickly without the need to put it on the floor before opening it up. The lafuma black pouch (worn outside) was used to carry loose changes and petty cash while the money belt (worn inside) was used to carry all the big $$$, credit cards and passport.

After a long delay and some grim family matters I finally managed to set "sail" on my voyage to Spain. It is actually a challenge to me... it would be my first solo trip backpacking to a country where English won't get you too far... perhaps people would ask me: 'Why Spain?' If you know me well you probably know that I have been murmuring about going to Egypt for the last century and still have not been there yet... There had always been deterrents keeping me to this place. First the 9-11, then terrorists attack, then broke up with my gf, then more terrorists attack, then my partner is finally tied up by his newly wedded wife, then more attacks, then more crashes: plane crashes, coaches got turned-over, trains got derailed or hit head-on, ships were sunk... you name any transportation and the Egyptians all managed to do something that can hit the news headlines!

But life must move on and annual leaves must be spent on, so I must pick another place before I finished rotting at home ... after my (used-to-travel-with) partner has found his new life-long partner *applause*, I need to finding a "good" substitute, which was not easy. At the end I decided to travel solo this time... This would also be a trial to see if I can 'do it myself' before I take on Egypt next time!

After all these BS, still, why Spain? To be honest, I picked it because it is in Europe and I haven't been to. Also at that time it was the old Germany World Cup thing so it is a good idea to sneak as far away as possible... Spain, in fact is a country that has been overlooked... Historically it is very interesting, it had different Bosses before... besides the usual Romans gang, it was also occupied by the not so well-known Moors (Muslims) before for a while. As a result, you can see many Muslims cultures and influences in a European country. Perhaps because of the long-term occupation by others before, the Spanish also liked to send people abroad to bully others. Traces of Christopher Columbus was found everywhere and so as references to the Spanish Armada. The Spanish Inquisition was also very famous in the history book so was Mr. Franco's governance and the civil war.

Culturally it has produced many great artists and their left behinds... Picasso, Miro, El Greco, Dali and of course Gaudi's works can be found in Spain. Today many street performers flock to Barcelona in the hope that their talents can be discovered... Besides these people, Spain also had masters who couldn't draw: Cervantes, whose famous Don Quixote de la Mancha also received nation-wide attention in Spain. His characters (the tall and the short) can be seen everywhere in Spain (actually, mostly in souvenir shops)

Besides the arts, literatures and histories (ie the boring stuff) Spain is packed with action-thrilled events... it has many unique festivals (e.g. the experience of a lifetime of being chased by the bulls (and possibly some rear-mounting afterwards ) and the chucking of tomatoes at each other so you are lucky you should have enough that you won't have to go to big M and asked for ketchups anymore... )

Since these unusual festivals only happen once a year, I would probably take a look into other regular events like: the much criticized bull-fighting and the flamenco dances. (to which i interpret as "dances performed by ladies with beautiful legs but not so beautiful faces")

While I was in UK I missed out the chances to visit the Man Utd FC, Liverpool FC, etc (who would go to Liverpool and Manchester just for them?), maybe I would pay a visit to the famous Football Club in Barcelona and Madrid (at least they are conveniently located)

Food-wise, I have decided to leave the cup noodles behind (in fact it was a wise choice as my hotels did not have hot water!) and would rather try out the good, the bad and the ugly Spanish paellas and tapas.

So it really seems there is a lot to be done and seen in Spain and I don't think I will be bored.... let's see if this 10-day trip can really make me thrill!