Diary of a Wanderer

We had arrived in Sevilla. The place everyone had told us to avoid in Semana Santa. We were staying in what turned out to be the most beautiful room in an apartment we found on AirBnB.  Upon leaving the coach station we were already seeing lots of nazarenos, dressed in their cone shaped hoods, getting ready for the processions. The middle of all the streets were covered in wax from the processions of the night before and it wasn't long before groups started to gather in preparation for their upcoming 12 hour procession. The city simply didn't sleep for the 5 days we were there. Whilst tourists continued to explore during the mornings and early afternoons, the locals later emerged in the late afternoons, smartly dressed with men in suits and ties despite the 40°C temperatures. It was impossible not to notice the familial atmosphere, with families gathering outside cervecerias socialising and watching their children whilst cousins and brothers and sisters played together in the ...

After a five hour bus drive we arrived in Granada eager to find our hostel and head out exploring. Hit by a wall of heat we knew we had definitely arrived in the South and were definitely not going to need our jumpers, let alone our coats! We headed off in search of our room, only to be led into the suburbs- defined here exactly the same as the Spanish 'suburbios'- with tower blocks of flats looming above us, the place had a rather gypsy feel to it, topped off with a horse tied up in the middle of a grassy verge made up more of sand and broken glass than it was grass. We started to wonder whether Granada was really what it was all cracked up to be. According to Google Maps the hostel was just around the corner leading us to a school surrounded by high walls resembling that which should stand guard around a castle. A refresh of Google Maps, another 2.5km walk, some intense map reading and a desperate call to the hostel owner and we found our room, albeit 2 hours later than expe...