Back from Madrid Again

Alicante, not a bad first dip of the Summer

Spring has sprung, the grass has ris'...

All through the winter it was like a big old dust bowl. I had no idea all those poppies and daisies and thistles were biding their time in the soil, just waiting for spring to come around. They make me so happy, summer makes me so happy, like there's nothing to worry about.

Alhambra

Elianor and I spent a gloomy afternoon at the Alhambra in Granada a few weeks back. The 700 or so year old palace was designed to make use of natural light, and so I think we saw it in a particularly matte state, but I loved it. The colours varied in tone from tile to tile, each shade perfect in its own form. The mathematical symmetry dreamed up and executed by the imperfect minds and hands of humans made me feel something good.

Midday Sun

Poppy

Beyond the City Limits

Granada. We stayed in this place that was actually the last stop on the edge of the old town. It was the grossest place I've ever stayed in and that pretty much includes the ex-squat anarchist cat vomit den I once lived in in Brunswick. I think the krusty punk ferals who lived in that squat had higher living standards than the dude running this hostel. But anyway, it was actually really excellently situated. It was cool to look out from this cactus shanty town complete with wild dogs and abandoned cave-dwellings, to the Alhambra, one of the most beautiful places I've seen in Spain. In this top photo you can see the old city wall, and we are on the wrong side of it.

Snowy Mountains

 I returned to Albacete from Granada on an outrageously beautiful day, which was bittersweet because we'd just spent our three days in Granada trying not to drown or get blown away by the wind and the rain. The Sierra Nevada which rises up just outside of Granada had vanished into the mist. But then on the first leg of my bus trip home, to Murcia, I got to get a load of it, and the tumultuous Spring clouds too.