What are those funny coloured lights for?

First thing to say is that I've travelled a fair amount in Spain and everywhere I've been the driving has always been of a high standard with almost all drivers obeying the law, which makes it all the more strange the driving style of Zaragoza.

It could be that in the last 12 months the driving standards of the entire nation have plummeted (Though I think we would all have noticed the appointment of Señor Clarkson to the role of Spanish traffic minister), it could just be something unique to Spain’s 5th City (in which case the good citizens of Sheffield, Frankfurt and Nice [Source: Wikipedia] may feel free to copy)

Of course I'm not ruling out that in a city of 700,000 people I just kept coming across the same small handful of idiot drivers, or there’s something about a bus – either public or tour – that brings out the worst in Zaragoza's drivers.

The most noticeable difference is that the pretty coloured lights at every junction, and crossing, around the city appear to have their own unique meanings, and are therefore mostly installed for their aesthetic rather than practical qualities

Green – Blast your horn wildly at anyone not travelling at the speed you want to be doing.  This is particularly important in the nanoseconds immediately after it has changed to green.

Amber – Prepare to ignore what the vehicle in front is doing, probably best to check your wing mirrors just to make sure.

Red – Accelerate, the longer the light has been on red the faster you should accelerate as this will ensure your safe passage through the junction.

What’s remarkable is that it does appear to work as there were far fewer cars with dints and scratches on them in and around Zaragoza than you’d normally see in London, Berlin or Stockholm.

So perhaps, as they appear to now have some time on his hands, it is time to replace the department of transport with the presenting team from Top Gear.

That’ll explain the prices

When I booked this trip I had originally intended on staying in Cadiz rather than Jerez. Partly because I hadn’t looked at how frequent the buses from the airport were (that partly put me off, but I could have changed onto a train in Jerez) and partly because I thought there would probably be plenty of accommodation in Cadiz.

When it came to booking a hotel room I found it was incredibly expensive, heading close to £100 per night for even a one star hotel.

By the time I finally found a hotel with reasonable rates it was the Ibis out the back of Jerez, which appeared to make some sense, as that was the airport I was flying to.

I have, though, now found out the reason for the lack of accommodation.

It’s not that Cadiz is short on hotels; it’s just that it is very short on rooms if you try and book into hotels during the annual Carnival.

If I’d actually looked at a calendar before booking the trip I might have realised (though to be fair, it would normally be in February, it’s only because Easter is so late this year that Carnival is taking place in March)

I’ve obviously started to get a little slapdash with my planning recently, in the past I would have spent weeks planning looking up key dates and comparing lots of days before booking, now I just pick a week and get booked up.

Perhaps it’s time I went back to a bit better planning.

The rain in Spain falls mostly on Jerez de la Frontera

OK, once was odd, but twice is really rather strange.

Yesterday the weather in Jerez was pretty poor, in fact it was dire, with the rain ranging from heavy mist through drizzle to downpour every 20 minutes or so. By the time you went anywhere you were soaked, and the sandy soil in the Alcazar was closer to quicksand than paving material quality.

However, by the time I got to Cadiz in the early afternoon it looked as though it had never rained, the skies were clear blue and the weather was warm.

Perhaps is hadn’t rained out here?

Well today the same thing happened again, weather in Jerez very wet, weather 20 miles away in Cadiz gloriously sunny.

Make is slick, make it profitable

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve experienced two very different approaches to what is effectively the same thing

A sales pitch from a booze company.

In Porto the Port wine lodges run regular tours, In Jerez the Sherry Bodegas do exactly the same thing.

In Porto the tours are a 30 minute wander through the cellars with a brief explanation on the making of port and the difference between a Ruby, White, Tawny, Vintage and LBV, followed by a couple of samples

In Jerez the tours are about 90 minutes long, include wandering around lots of storage areas, a film presentation and then a couple of samples.

In Porto the tours are free, in Jerez the basic tour is almost €10, and if you add in extra Sherry sampling and Tapas at the end it goes up to almost €20.

The numbers on the tours were pretty similar, which would suggest that either the Bodegas owners of Jerez are running a very profitable monopoly, or the Port wine lodge owners of Porto are seriously missing out on a trick.

Of course, the major difference is the Porto tours are definitely a very quick tour round as the visitors are basically after the booze. In Jerez the tour is very much part of the attraction.

Which proves a point, if you make it that little bit slicker, you can charge through the nose for it.

Build them big, use them as a gym

I’d forgotten quite how humongously big Barajas airport in Madrid actually is.

When I landed from the UK yesterday I arrived in at the Satellite terminal, which is enormous, as it handles all the non-Schengen international flights, so it’s the really big planes.

But the Satellite terminal is, if anything, smaller that the main terminal building, which only does domestic and Schengen zone flights.

As I had time to spare before my flight down to Jerez (I’d left my usual two hours, forgetting that it was a domestic flight and that airports outside of the UK can actually handle passengers flows) I decided to have a wander around the terminal building.

After about 30 minutes walking I had managed to walk down from the centre to one end and back and decided that perhaps I wouldn’t go exploring any more.

At this point my gate was announced, at the far end of the terminal that I hadn’t yet walked to!

By the time I got to the gate I must have walked the best part of two kilometres and was wishing I’d been lazy and used the travelators.

Still, it must be good for you all that walking.

Spotting the loophole

The Catholic church is very good at creating loopholes (they need to at times, papal infallibility creates some issues when the pope issues an edict that directly contradicts something a previous pope has said!)

But it also appears that a pretty Catholic country’s population is also not adverse to the loophole.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting and abstinence before the start of Lent, and definitely no eating meat.

And of course, a very large number of Spaniards were keeping to this to the letter (if not the spirit of the law).

In Madrid they always eat late, and by the time I finally gave in to my grumbling stomach at 10pm I thought I wouldn’t have too much problem finding a restaurant that was open and serving.

I eventually found a couple of Plaza Mayor, with a handful of tourists in them.

I thought that even in Madrid they would have started dinner by now, and then I saw the sign. Tonight the kitchen will be open until 2am.

Sneaky, you can’t eat meat and you have to fast through Ash Wednesday. However, 00:01 is Thursday, and you can now eat as much meat as you like without feeling guilty about breaking your Ash Wednesday fasting.

So, us small band of tourists sat in the restaurant having our dinners at the (for anyone other than Spanish) incredibly late hour of 10pm, whilst the Spaniards wouldn’t be eating for another two hours.

I have to wonder, if I had been here on Tuesday evening would they have been eating early to get their dinner in before Ash Wednesday started?

Dutch Love

I can’t help but notice that the Germans have suddenly discovered a deep and undying love of everything Dutch.

A lot of the houses are flying Dutch flags next to their German ones.

Orange appears to be the colour of choice.

I can’t work out if it’s a sudden desire to be friendly with their neighbours, or more a reaction to being knocked out of the World Cup by the Netherlands opponents in the final, Spain.

An average is just that

The average rainfall in Malaga in March is just 62mm (just over 2 inches). This compares favourably with a number of other places such as Bergen in Norway which has 109mm.

However, what you never get from these figures is that you can achieve that monthly average in one sitting.

Today I was given a demonstration of this with a quite spectacular downpour in the early afternoon.

Call it an inbuilt British sense of impending rain, I had taken the decision to stop for some late lunch rather than go directly to the Picasso museum and within a few seconds of sitting down in the dry the skies absolutely opened.

It is a horribly schadenfreude thing to do, but it is quite fun to sit in the dry and watch everyone one else suddenly have to dash for cover.

Of course, it took nearly 40 minutes for the downpour to abate, which meant I just had to have a largish lunch, with some tapas, and a beer, and some coffee, and think about desert...

It helps to remembers yesterdays dinner

Last night I had a very nice meal in a little restaurant off of the main shopping street. Along with a particularly pleasant white Rioja and a very nice mint consommé I had the “Black Paella”. Black Paella is made using squid (or in this case Cuttlefish) ink to turn the rice black, in with the rice is diced seafood.

But, crude as this may sound, everything that you put into the system, usually within 24 hours, makes its way back out again, and when you have forgotten what you had for dinner the previous evening the outcome looks as thought you are seriously ill. It took me a worrying few minutes to work out that there wasn’t something horrifically wrong with me, just the Paella making a re-appearance.

When Spanish Stereotypes let you down

It is a widely held belief that the Spanish eat late. The guide books all go on about being able to get a meal until gone midnight, that the kitchen never closes, and that only the tourists are eating at 8pm.

So far, in both Seville last year, and Granada this year, I have either managed to find a slight hole in this theory.

Last night I left it quite late to go out for dinner, aiming to eat about 9, only to discover that several of the restaurants had already packed up for the evening, and a couple of others were about to close.

Yes, when I was in Madrid a couple of years ago you could get a meal at gone midnight, but here is Andalucía in March that appears not to work.

Not to cast aspersions on the fine writes of the guide books, but could it be possible that some of the research was done in Madrid, without actually venturing out of the Capital.

But nobody would do that surely...

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7346101.stm

Spain, where we can all enjoy the EU bandwagon

There are a lot of people who have a very negative view towards the European Union (mostly they are called Brits), but there are a lot of advantages of being a member. The unfettered travel between member stated (unless you are British or Irish who haven’t joined the Schengen agreement and therefore still need their passports to get into the continent), the relatively strong currency (unless you are a Brit), the maximum 48 hour week (unless you are a Brit), the sense of a continent in Harmony (unless you are a Brit and read the Daily Mail).

One of the biggest advantages, at least when in Spain, is the amount of culture you can get for free.

Sure the really big sights like the Alhambra charge, but lots of the other museums and historical attractions don’t.

Walking around the city today I’ve been into two museums, the remains of a Moorish bath house, and a couple of churches. Total spend, just over a euro for one of the Churches.

Most municipal museums are free if you can produce evidence of your membership of the EU, that small burgundy document saves you cash. Whilst this may not off set all the ills of the EU, even the most die-hard Daily Mail reader would agree that saving money is, at least, a partial advantage of membership