Mark had passed a little café on his way to the laundromat so we thought we’d give it a go for breakfast. I saw a lady with toast, and I mean real toast, so I raced back to the motel to grab my jar of vegemite. We ordered, we’re getting pretty good at tea and coffee now, and I asked for tostada pane (toasted bread), which seemed logical to me. The tea and coffee was good, I ended up with a toasted bread roll, but that’s ok, the vegemite still tasted good.
Next in our big adventure was going off to pick up the car we have leased for the rest of our trip. It’s a Peugeot and its brand new, so we are wearing it in for them, and then they sell it as a second hand car – seems like a good deal to me. So we find where we are meant to go (well, the taxi driver did at least) and we get our car. And then we both freaked out about the whole ‘steering wheel on the left hand side, driving on the wrong side of the road’ thing. It’s all well and good to talk about how you will handle it, but then when you go to get into the car, it’s just freaky. Freaky for both driver and passenger, but I am sure it was more freaky for Mark, being the driver of the day. Driver of the week if I have my way actually.
So here we go, out into Madrid. We were kind of glad that it was out around the airport and in an industrial estate because the first few right hand turns, and roundabouts, were deserted. Freaky, it’s the only way to describe it. The gutter is also very, very close to the passenger side…but that’s all part of the adventure right? *rolls eyes*. So we drive, and scream, and get confused, and drive some more, but we didn’t go down the wrong side once, we just got very bloody close to the gutter! “Drifting” has become the word of the day. So we drive some more, and take this turn and that turn because the satnav tells us to – and then we realize we are going everywhere except the freeway. Some more fiddling with the satnav (an Aussie female who says Spanish street names with a very ocker accent) and then we were on a dirt road! So, an hour later, we find out we are coming back around into Madrid again and we discover that the shortest route is not necessarily the fastest route in Europe. More fiddling with the satnav, and woo hoo, here comes the motorway. We found a petrol station and filled up, and then the satnav wanted us to get off the motorway again, we agreed, and then realized we should just turn the silly thing off and buy a road map. Found another petrol station, grabbed a road map, got directions for which town to head towards and off we went (again). (The gutter is still bloody close to the passenger side I might add).
We found the right motorway, and all the signs said we were heading in the right direction, so we settled in for the drive to Granada. We got hungry and saw a restaurant on the side of the motorway and decided to pull in. We were seriously in the middle of nowhere, but this restaurant and bar were fully packed out! We had a fabulous lunch (cheap as chips) and so we understood why it was so popular then. Oh, and we had this melon… it looked like honeydew, but it was sweeter than the best rockmelon (cantaloupe) ever. It’s in season at the moment and so we eat it whenever we see it now. I have asked what type of melon it is, but, well, it’s just ‘melon’. It was a double whammy lunch, great food and a phone call to Australia to boot (had to ring April to finalise some fun stuff). So, good food, middle of nowhere, we’re the only ones speaking any English, and I am on the phone to Australia. Life can be good.
We made it to Granada, close gutters and all, and then discovered new forms of European driving. Skinny streets that are surely only meant for bicycles! But no, they were meant for cars, and we are in a little one, and so we are supposed to know exactly how wide the car is as there is really only an inch or two past the mirrors on either side. We ended up going back to the satnav to find the specific streets we needed and it was sending us on a wild goose chase for the hotel. It wanted us to turn left up a street we couldn’t turn left up, and after the third go around, we realized it wanted us to go up this tiny laneway, which we kept missing as, well really, the word tiny is giving it too much credit. It was as wide as the car, which is not very wide at all. I thought it was a laneway for pedestrians, not cars! So, up this laneway (hallway) we went, then had to turn right, then left, and all of these lanes were just minuscule! Then it sent us left onto a street, which we turned onto, and then stopped at the traffic lights (we both start to breathe again at red lights, one because we saw them, and two because we’ve actually made it there). All of the people crossing at the lights were looking at us, and I mean, a lot of people. We realized we had come up a street that (seemingly) only taxis and motorcycles were allowed to go up. Oh well – all part of the experience??? We made it into the hotel carpark, I can’t quite describe what a feat this was, as it was all just manic – satnav screaming at us (I swear it turns it’s volume up all by itself), people pointing at as because we are going the wrong way, tiny streets – oh my! We think we have it nabbed though, as Steve pointed out how the car registration plates work; they state which country and then region the car is from blah blah, and of course, ours says that we are French. So we figure everyone just thinks we are French and doing a French thing of doing things our own way. It’s worked so far at least.
After all the stress and trauma of driving, we have ended up in a lovely motel which is right in the middle of all the good bits of Granada. So it’s just a little walk to one of the many tapas bar strips. So we decided to visit a couple in the one night. Prawns on rocksalt (yes Frenchi, I have my rocksalt!) with some great sangria in the first place, and then fried sardines and calamari in the next. We saw some people drinking some strange red aperitif, so we decided to honour the little old man from Madrid with the yellow drink and we had a red one in his honour. Needless to say, we slept well.
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