Winter Trip Day 2 - Sevilla

Hola!

Day two gonna be more exciting and tiring at the same time because we had to do a lot of walking. Especially around the Seville (English) or Sevilla (pronounced Seviyya in Spanish) city. Sevilla is the capital city of Andalucia. It is ranked as the fourth largest city in Spain.

Early in the morning, at 7 am we had our breakfast downstairs at the hotel cafeteria. I had a couple slices of toast, a bowl an cereal, fruit juice and a cup of cappuccino. Then, we checked out at 8 am heading to the city centre. Bye bye Holiday Inn! You were so comfy and amazing..)

According to our tour guide, we would be having a slight change in the itinerary. We were going to visit Plaza Espana first. Plaza Espana was historic. It is a semi circle building with great designs. There is one big fountain at the centre of the front compound and there a few bridges crossing the small waterway. Actually, we could hire a boat to tour the place but we had no enough time. I preferred walking on my own to capture photos around the monumental building. What was so interesting about Plaza Espana is that it was used as the filming location for Star Wars II - Attack of the Clones. So, I'm going to download this movie to watch the scene later when I'm back in Glasgow. We were given 45 minutes to spent our time here. Plus, there were a few stalls of souvenir shop where we bought a few fridge magnets as mementos. The magnets were sold at €3 each and 2 for €5. Most of us bought two obviously. =)

Scenes from Star Wars:

We had lunch at Restaurante Petra located at a very narrow street. It's quite common that the street are narrow in Spain. Most buildings were build very close to each other. Since the restaurant was full because we arrived a bit late due to shop hopping, we sat at the table outside the restaurant. We ordered Chicken Shwarma at €4.50. It was the fastest meal to be served compared to rice dishes. I wrote my postcards while waiting for the kebab to be served. The restaurant staffs were so kind, the provide us space for us to pray. As soon as we finished eating and praying, we asked permission from En. Fuad to walk around the city on our own because others still haven't finished eating. So we didn't want to waste time waiting for them. 

We hopped from one souvenir shops to another. We could observe a few price differences between them. I bought more postcards, magnets, miniature, decorative plate and snow globes. I think I spent more than €30 buying souvenirs here. Plus, I bought a sheet of stamps for my postcards. Luckily there was one shop selling the stamps because so far, I didn't see any post office nearby. By the way, the weather was still cold today at around 16-18 degree C.

We met the others at Cathedral of Seville and Giralda Tower. Giralda Tower used to be a minaret but was converted to bell tower for the cathedral when the Christian took over Sevilla hundreds years ago. We didn't enter this place, just took photos with the medieval architectures. 

Next to the cathedral, there is Real Alcazar. The entrance fee for adult is €7.50, but for students it was just for €2. That's a huge difference so we entered it even though it's quite late already. Real Alcazar like other building that we would visit later are all former Islamic building. It served as the royal palace. The government still maintains the Islamic architecture by preserving the carving and the building itself. On the way out, there is a souvenir shop that we didn't missed to enter. I bought a few postcards, a set of coasters, and a badge. We were the last group that leave the building. En Fuad and Haikal already waited for us outside.

We walked in a fast pace to Plaza De Toros which is located near the riverside. It is a bull fight arena but we had no time to enter it because of time constrain. I really wanted to see the arena though. The tour guide said that the bull fight gonna be forbidden next year because it's too barbaric. To see the bull fight match, the ticket might cost around €100. That's so .......

Along the riverside, we walked towards Torre de Oro (Gold Tower). The tower is located just beside the Guadalquivir river and used to function as a watchtower in the past in order to control access into Sevilla. After taking our group photos here, we headed to Restaurante Halal to buy take-away dinner. I bought Donner Kebab (€3.50) and a can of drink.

After two hours of journey by coach, we finally arrived at Cordoba. Tonight, we would be staying at Eurostars Las Adelfas, Cordoba. Plus, I saw something at the hotel entrance. It's a mailbox! So that night, Wanji and I wrote our postcards and put stamps on them so that we could post it tomorrow morning after breakfast. =)

The hotel was very comfortable and quite cold. The marble floor made the night even colder. I couldn't place my feet on the floor for too long because it was very very cold. One of the things that I like about this hotel was that it provides free wifi. But not too free because after an hour, I couldn't access it anymore. Cis! Cis! Luckily I managed to check in my Foursquare and update my blog through mobile. =)

What I bought as souvenirs today.

- fridge magnets €2.00 - 3.00 each

- key chains €2.50 each

- Giralda Tower miniature €4.00

- deco plate €2.50

- postcards €0.20-0.50 each

- snow globes €2.5

- coasters €4.00 (pack of 6)

Alhamdulillah, second day had passed. It was fun and enjoying buying a lot of souvenirs for myself and for my friends as well. We managed to visit a lot of places today, compared to yesterday and learned more about Islamic history. Tomorrow we were gonna visit Cordoba Mosque and Madinat az-Zahra. Need to restore our energy for tomorrow's agenda.

Adios~

Winter Trip Day 1 - Gibraltar

Finally, after waiting for more than 2 hours for the photos to finish transferring from SD card to my hard disk, I got the chance to start writing about my recent trip to Andalucia, Spain (Espana in Spanish). I took A LOT of photos and videos during my trio this time. They almost used up all the 16GB space in the card! 

For the first time in UK, we did not travel by our own. Instead we joined a travel tour organised by Perantau Holidays. Plus, travelling on our own with 8 others in a group might not be a good idea. That's quite a big number. I still can accept if less than 5 person travel together as it would be more convenient.

This 4 days/3 nights tour package fee was  £299 plus  £20 for participants who came from Glasgow. It includes return flight tickets, accommodation, transport, entrance fees to Cordoba Mezquita and Alhambra and 3-day breakfast.

Our flight (Easyjet) from Glasgow to Malaga took less than 3 hours. As soon as we touched down, we waited at the arrival area and saw our tour leader En. Fuad waiting for us at there. We were the last group as the other participants from other parts of UK were already waiting for us in the bus. According to En. Fuad, the total number of participants for this tour is 59 pax. Apart from Glasgow, other participants came from Sheffield, Essex and Bristol. Besides En. Fuad, there were two others Perantau Holidays staffs; Atiq and Haikal. Atiq was the one who talk and gave a lot of information about the places that we were going to visit while Haikal was more to an usher-er. By the way, the time difference between UK and Spain is one hour (Spain is one hour earlier than UK).

Our main agenda for the first day was Gibraltar tour. It took two hours from Malaga to Gibraltar via Marbella. I really hoped the bus would stop at Marbella because if that so, we could dropped by Hard Rock Cafe Marbella to buy some t-shirts. =(

Gibraltar used to be a part of Spain but remained as one of UK territory till today. They even used Pound Sterling as their currency and they have their own coins and notes. Gibraltar airport is listed in the Top 5 of the most dangerous airport in the world because the airport track and traffic road cross each other. Seremmmmm~

We had to walked through immigration check point before entering Gibraltar. The weather was cold today but I guess Glasgow is even colder. We waited for the public bus at the bus stop. The bus is free since today is Sunday. The tour bus was not allowed to enter Gibraltar so we had to take public bus to roam around the city. Our first destination was Upper Rock (Rock of Gibraltar). It is a significant landmark in Gibraltar and is a must visit attraction not to be missed out. We ride the cable car (£7.50/pax for group price) up to the Upper Rock. The temperature at 412 metre high was even colder with occasional breeze. Not to be missed, there were a lot of monkeys up there. Don't forget to hide all of your food or they will grab it from you. Other tourists were very busy evading the monkeys. Lari sana, lari sini...

We spent few minutes enjoying the panoramic view created by Allah. Subhanallah, the scenery is very pretty and stunning. Up at the observation area, we could see 3 countries; Gibraltar, Spain and Morocco. Morocco is just 15 km away from Gibraltar. That's quite near. If you wanna use the binocular, it costs £1/€1. Rasa nak lepak kat situ lama2, but the time constrain made us do everything very quickly. Look how time is so jealous with us!

As usual, after taking a lot of photos of the beautiful scenery we attacked the souvenir shop. They sell the usual type of souvenirs including fridge magnets, key chains, postcards, t-shirts and many others. I bought a few postcards and tie pins for my keepsake. 

Our next stop was Europa Point. We took the public bus to reach here. Here lies Ibrahim al-Ibrahim mosque (King Fahad bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud mosque) and a white-red Europa Point Lighthouse. We performed our prayer here before continuing taking more photos at the seaside and lighthouse (and the big Europa Point signboard as well). There's an incident occurred here that really consumed much of our time until we had to cancel our plan to Gibraltar town to buy souvenirs. Tsk.. tsk.. tsk.. 

We reached back the immigration point at dusk. Once we boarded our tour bus, En. Fuad came with the food that we ordered from him at Europa Point. We continued our journey to Algeciras to check in there. It took approximately one hour. Our accommodation for tonight was Holiday Inn Express Algeciras. Atiq and Haikal distributed the food at the hotel lobby. I had Lamb Kebab (£3.20) as my dinner.

Then, off to bed.

Only managed to buy a few postcards and tie pins. Tak sempat beli fridge magnets.. Sedih kan? Cuk cuk cuk...

Alhamdulillah, the first day was okay even though it wasn't as smooth as planned. However, it did teach us about patience. Sabar itu separuh daripada iman..