Changing trains in Paris on the way from Madrid to London

I went to sleep somewhere in Spain and woke up around 7am in France.

I went to the buffet car soon after only to find that my group, always early starters, were there in force and all the tables were taken. That meant waiting about quarter of an hour for somebody to finish. The continental breakfast was worth it though and it set me up nicely for a day of travel.

The route into Paris was not especially pretty and the train windows were not good for photography; this picture proves both points.

We arrived at Gare d`Austerlitz around 9am. It was not the prettiest of stations though the roof did its best to brighten things up.

The coach got us to Gare du Nord in good time for the 11am train. Sadly the blight of the heavy contingency kicked-in and we had been booked on one over two hours later.

We were so early that we were not allowed to check in for an hour and had to amuse ourselves for that time while also keeping a close eye on all our bags.

It was not that long after breakfast but I went to a cafe across the road for a coffee anyway. There I had a bit of luck in that not only was the cafe very nice but they had wi-fi so I could catch up on the news etc.

I also had a little walk around and took a few photographs of the station. The glass and metal of the canopy was, as always, my favourite part. The frontage was not bad either, despite having the name of the station engraved on it more often than seemed necessary.

After killing time in the local cafes, we regrouped and were eventually allowed to check-in and to more through to the departure lounge. Being the first in meant that we could bag the most comfortable seats which was useful as were were going to be there for a little while and the lounge got packed in that time.

Finally we were allowed on to our train and to begin the final leg of our journey the tenth taken by train that holiday.

We had also taken seventeen coach journeys and while some of these were to/from stations and hotels I think there were more than necessary. When I travel across Europe I do it all by public transport and do not even use taxis very often.

Everything from Paris was simple and familiar. I still hate the long walk at St Pancras from the international station to the underground but, that apart, it was an easy journey and I was back home by late afternoon.

It had been a great holiday and there were some solid highlights at each place we stopped. It was just a shame that some of the scheduling and planning meant that we did not spend as much time sightseeing or on trains as we could have done.

Making the most of Madrid

Granada was the last proper stopover on our Great Rail Journeys' Marrakech Express and our way home started with an early train to Madrid.

As with most of the trip, a ridiculous amount of time was allowed for contingency, even though we could probably have walked to the station, and we arrived there about an hour before the train left and that meant a lot of standing around in a featureless waiting room. I could have got myself a coffee to help pass the time but I had only just finished breakfast in the hotel so there was no point.

We got to Madrid at lunchtime and were taken straight for lunch. Various questions from the group made our guide confess that we would be taken straight from the restaurant to the next station so that the lunch would be the only time that we would get in Madrid. The timetable had suggested that we might get a few hours to actually see something of the city but that was not in the plan apparently.

The vegetarian option for lunch was largely absent and rather than wait for something special to be prepared I bailed out to grab a quick view of Madrid.

Just a couple of steps away from our restaurant I discovered Plaza Mayor.

It is quite a large square, Wikipedia tells me it is 94m by 129m, and there is nothing the centre, apart from one small statue and lots of tourists.

The most colourful building was the Casa de la Panadería. This was a municipal building housing, amongst other things, a Tourist Information office where I was able to get a map.

The paintings on the front of the building were fairly new, they were only twenty years old,  and the depicted scenes from Madrid's history and from mythology. It looked like an excuse to paint lots of pictures of naked women to me. Whatever the reason, the paintings had the required impact on the square which, this apart, lacked distinctive features.

I only had quarter of an hour or so before I had to rejoin the rest of the group so I did not linger in the square for very long. There were several ways in and out so I headed diagonally across the centre of the square and out the other side.

There I discovered more old and picturesque buildings and a lovely little covered market. There was not much clue inside as to its original purpose which had been swept aside to provide lunches for the local office workers. I suspect that the new use gave the building much the same lively buzz as its previous one.

I wandered around the streets a little but the time constraints (and a slight fear of getting lost) stopped me from straying too far from the restaurant and I found myself back in the square.

Taking another exit took me to some grander buildings, a church and some statues; all the things that I expect to find in a old town. The more that I saw the more that I regretted that I had so little time to see more.

The scant consolation was that on my previous trip to Madrid, when working for IBM, I saw even less as the late working meant that I was confined to the IBM office, my hotel and taxis between the two.

I rejoined my group who were gathered outside waiting for the coach to pick them up. I did my good deed for the day and told them about the square and they all went to take a very quick look while our guide tried to keep up all together.

It was a reasonable trek across Madrid between the two stations but the traffic was not unreasonable and we needed none of the contingency that had been allowed for this leg of the journey. So we arrived at the station a good two hours before our train was due to depart.

I though that was very bad planning. If I had not gone off on my explore we would have spent the middle of the day in Madrid and only seen the restaurant and the stations.

We did have access to a lounge at the station where we had free drinks but I would much rather have been out walking the streets. The lounge had no wi-fi so I had to go and stand in the main concourse where I managed to find some and could update my podcasts and do some essential tweeting.

We left Madrid on a sleeper train to Paris.

I had gone for a medium level room as that level of privacy and comfort had been sufficient on previous journeys. There was an upgrade available but I was not desperate to have a shower in the morning.

I sat and read comics on my iPad for a while before going to the bar for a quiet drink. That was not that quiet as some other people from the group were there and I got involved in a few conversations.

When I got back to the compartment the chairs had gone and the beds had appeared. I took the hint and climbed up to the upper bunk where I eased myself to sleep with some podcasts.

As a day of travel we achieved what we had to achieve, we had left Granada and were on the train to Paris, but the overall impression was of missed opportunities to see something of Madrid. I am grateful that I at least managed to see something, even if it was little more than just one square. Perhaps Madrid will be third time lucky for me.

Gorgeous Granada

La Alhambra filled my morning with Moorish delights leaving just the afternoon and early evening to find out what the rest of Granada had to offer.

My explorations usually start with asking for a city map from the hotel and the one of Granada was a good one as it highlighted the main sights and also suggested some routes to follow. I was in no position to object so I picked a route that covered the old part of town.

I started with a light lunch in a very pretty square, and one I would return to later for my supper. Next to that was the first major building, the cathedral sitting in its own little square but the sun was kinder to it when I came back later so I've chosen a picture from then and that appears below.

There were a few pretty small squares, old buildings and statues to brighten my step before heading up to the older part of the town.

The first part of the walk took me along a river that did little to fill the gorge it had created in better days.

The main road just about took traffic and I was rather surprised when a bus went past. The smaller roads leading up the hill on the left were best left to pedestrians.

I took one of the paths suggested and fought my way up the hill. It was a warm afternoon and that exertion suggested a beer (and cake) so I rested in the first cafe that I found. This had the extra advantage of views across the valley to La Alhambra.

The map showed me the route to take but only told part of the story. There was no suggestion of the gradients and these proved to be quite steep at times. The map also suggested that all the roads were equal when most could not accommodate any sort of vehicles and in the extreme cases they were steep steps.

Having climbed all the way to the top there was no option than to climb down again and, avoiding the way that I came, I headed further west and further from the hotel.

I may just have got lost in the maze of roads that aren't really roads but I'll claim that I was only using the map as a guide and I took the routes that looked the more interesting.

I did manage to get to the old city walls. This was a surprisingly grubby part of the city, very unlike the other side of the hill, and it almost felt abandoned. There were few other people and most of those were fellow tourists looking at maps puzzlingly.

One of the treats of climbing around the old town was coming across views on the newer city below. That also saved me a bit of walking as I could see one of the old arches to the town hiding among the similarly coloured roof tops.

The walls were worth finding.

Descending back to the centre of the city was a descent back into the sunlight. That lifted the mood and the buildings, while still old, became warmer and more welcoming.

The descent inevitably took me back to the cathedral and this time the low sun was full on the prettiest side of it and this time it was worth photographing.

The square next to the cathedral was a good place to stop and make the most of the last of the sun. The square was pretty enough and was buzzing, in a nice way, with tourists.

There were steps along one side of the square and these made good seats to watch the little flamenco display aimed to tease money from tourists. It worked. I stayed there a fair while to watch the two dancers, guitarist and singer go through several of their pieces. I happily paid my dues at the end but my attempts to congratulate one of the dancers fell flat at the language barrier. I thought that everybody in Europe spoke English!

And that was about it for the day.

I went back to Plaza Bib-Rambla to eat, an idea that most of Granada seemed to have.

The square was full of restaurants so it was easy to find a different one from where I had lunch but not so easy to find one that had half-decent options for vegetarians and a free table.

Other people on our tour had the same problem and we ended up with the four vegetarians in the group sharing a table. Having spent most of the holiday (understandably) trying to avoid some of the other people it was good to spend the final evening with some like-minded people. Apart from the one young woman there with her mother, this other couple were the next youngest after us. And they were retired.


We were only in Granada for a day and I was amazed by how much I had seen in that time and how pretty it all was. On most occasions seeing La Alhambra would have been enough to make a successful day and this day also had me clambering over the city's other hill.

It's the one place that I went to on the tour that I am seriously thinking of going back to.

La Alhambra was every bit as good as I expected

The reason that we stopped in Granada on our way back home from Morocco was to visit La Alhambra, and that proved to be a good plan.

The weather was kind but the traffic less so as we took the coach on the short ride up to the top of the hill. There we were split into two groups each with our own guide; apparently La Alhambra limits the size of groups and ours at 37 was too large.

La Alhambra was both a palace and a fortress so it commands an imposing site above the city and within the sturdy walls there are some very beautiful buildings. It is those beautiful buildings that I have concentrated on in selecting photographs for this post but that is not to deny the imposing grandeur of the defencive buildings.

My other excuse for concentrating on the palatial buildings is that in the three hours that we spent there we did not have time to visit the main parts of the fortress. There may well be treasures there that I would have included had I seen them.

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Like many palaces, La Alhambra had been added to many times since building started in the 11th century (that's a thousand years ago!) through to the last main updates in the 16th century, by which time Spain was a Christian country.

The overall effect is something like Las Vegas with its collection of diverse and extravagant hotels except that here the individual buildings are more modest in scale and more interesting in execution.

The tour took us from one amazing building to another and each was a surprise, especially as they were usually fairly simple on the outside and it was only once I got inside that I could see how fantastic they were.

I like surprises.

A lot of the pictures that I have chosen feature courtyards with water and that is because I love courtyards and water as much as the Moors did.

The rooms off the courtyards were suitably palatial and decorative. The style throughout was Moorish and so very much the same as that we had seen across Morocco. I have shared lots of photographs of walls, doors, ceilings and arches from there so rather than show similar pictures from La Alhambra I have concentrated on the fantastic buildings that make La Alhambra different.

I have included one picture of the decorations just to prove that there are some. Actually there are lots and it is a beautiful place as well as a grand one.

I did not go to La Alhambra for the views but it is on a hill (remember, it was a fort) so its overlooks Granada and as I like looking down on buildings I have included one of the several pictures that I took from the fortress walls.

The map in the top picture gives an idea of the layout of La Alhambra and the two points that I want to make are that the buildings are spread throughout a large site and there is a lot of greenery.

There was a reasonable amount of walking involved as we moved from one grand building to the next and we often had to queue a little while to enter them. La Alhambra manages the flow of people within the site, not just in to it, and we had to show our entrance tickets several times as we moved around. The simple objective was to stop any of the buildings from becoming overcrowded and it worked.

La Alhambra is Spain's most popular tourist attraction and tickets were sold out on the day that we went but, despite operating at capacity, it was still comfortable to get around and we were able to see everything clearly.

More importantly, none of these pictures is polluted by people, with the possible exception of The Court of the Lions (the one with all the columns) where there were always people in the centre of the courtyard admiring the lions.

At least this was Spain in October so people were sensibly dressed; what really annoys me is the people who go to places like Kew Gardens wearing bright red or yellow kagools!

In concentrating on the buildings I have underplayed both the decoration and the gardens. There are some hints to what the gardens looked like from the greenery around some of the water features but the sole purpose of the plants in the gardens was not to decorate buildings, they were also allowed to flourish in their own rights. I have lots of photos of pretty flower gardens but I left them out partially because of space restrictions and partially because they are not unique to La Alhambra.

This is just a summary of my highlights of La Alhambra selected from the 80 photos I posted on Facebook which, in turn, is just a selection of the 200 or so that I took in the three hours that I spent there. And I did not cover all of the site in that time and covered some of it faster than I would have liked.

I hope that I have done enough to show why La Alhambra is so popular and so talked about. It really is very special.

I could have stayed on at La Alhambra after our tour had finished, there was still enough time left on my ticket to go to the fortress, and that was tempting. More tempting though was the thought of exploring Granada so that is what I did.

From Fez to Granada by rail replacement service

This was the day that everything went wrong.

The point of going on a Great Rail Journey holiday is to go by rail but the organisers screwed up and scheduled our return trip for a national holiday (Eid-al-Adha) when most/all trains were cancelled. This meant a lot of scurrying around to find a replacement coach to get us to Tangier.

Not only was the ride to Tangier uncomfortable it also meant that we were stuck on main roads with nothing much to look at.

The only "highlights" of the long ride were the two comfort stops at service stations where I was able to get coffee and chocolate. I was also able to stretch my legs a little (something that is easy to do on a train) and walk around their little gardens.

It also transpired that our boat had been cancelled and we were moved to a later one, not that we were told that until long after the decision was made. This gave us even more time to kill so we went through some suburbs of Tangier approaching the post from east. This was interesting but I would much rather have done the journey by train as planned and expected.

We left Tangier the way that we arrived there though that was not without incident either.

Having toured through the outskirts of Tangier on our way to the port we were then rushed on to the boat and only just got on in time and had to trust that our bags were there too (one cart load was mislaid between coach and boat).

The boat trip was the best part of the day but it only lasted half an hour.

I managed to secure a seat and to relax with a coffee and a beer and also to make a few trips to the observation/smoking deck to take pictures of water.

I did not notice the shape of this cloud at the time as I was more interested in disappearing shoreline. If you take enough photos then you are going to get some lucky ones like this.

Back in Spain we had another coach, this time from Tarifa to Granada, a journey of around four hours.

The one plus is that I got on the coach quickly and was able to claim one of the seats upstairs at the front. That gave me the best view on the ride, the problem was that there was nothing to look at except motorway for most of the time.

A large number of hills were covered with wind turbines and there were several different designs. I picked this picture because of the pylon structure which I had not seen before,  the supports are normally solid white pillars.

We did also get a brief glimpse of Gibraltar but it was not that interesting when seen at distance through glass when moving.

As with the Africa leg, the one point of interest was the rest stop at a service station.

I did not buy anything but I did enjoy the views of the town below making the most of the last of the day's sun.

The last leg of the journey took us through bull fighting territory and several towns marked this with large statues on prominent hills. These all looked the same to me and may well have been identical.

It was gone 7pm when we finally arrived at Granada, some 12 hours after we first boarded a coach in Fez. Even then the mishaps were not over as our coach was not allowed to stop outside of the hotel and we had to wait quite a while for a space to become available in the parking area at the end of the road.

All ambition had been drained from me by then and for my evening meal I went to a pizza restaurant next to the hotel for, er, a pizza and a beer.

It had not been a good day but we had all made it to Granada safely and in good enough condition to get back on with the exploration the next day.

Lots of history in Meknes and Volubilis

Having covered Fez in a day we were then taken to the nearby city of Meknes and to the Roman ruins at Volubilis.

I had a quick leg stretch before getting on the coach and took this picture of our hotel. The fountain in the roundabout had a twin at the other end of the boulevard that ran off to the right where the palm trees are.

It was a nice enough hotel in a nice enough setting, but it was not close to the old town and I like being close to, or in, the old town when I travel.

Our first, brief, stop was at the impressive Agdal reservoir built by Sultan Moulay Ismail in the early 18th century. This is about a third of it. It was built to serve his palace and, in particular, his large army and their horses.

The reservoir was next to the Royal Palace that was damaged by the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and was then abandoned.

The parts that we could see were the remains of the corn stores and stables. As with the reservoir outside, the scale and sense of history impressed.

The geometric shapes also made a big impression on me, from the large domes to the rows of arches. These were a big hit with the whole group and I have several photos with people walking in to shot at the wrong time (for me). I also had to wait my turn to stand in the best places where the most arches stood.

Inside the only light was artificial. Some of the store rooms had none and I took speculative photos with the flash just to see what was in there.

Outside the morning sun was bright and cast crisp shadows to compliment the shapes conjured from stone.

Having seen what Sultan Moulay Ismail built we then went to see where he was buried.

The work on the mausoleum started in his own lifetime, he died in 1727, and is arranged like a palace with grand rooms arranged around courtyards.

The tomb itself is in a dark room and tourists are not allowed to get close to it. From the doorway there is not much to see so the two photographs that I have chosen are from other parts of the mausoleum.

The first picture is a little pretentious, a weakness that I confess to, and while the floor is decorative it is the contrast with the plain yellow wall and the simplicity of the door that I like.

The picture below is more typical of the mausoleum and gives a fair idea of its grandeur.

Our final stop in our quick visit to Meknes was to the Bab Mansour Gate next to the mausoleum. This was also started during the life of Sultan Moulay Ismail and was completed five years after his death.

The marble columns were taken from the Roman settlement at Volubilis, which we would see later in the day.

The gate was grand but we were there at the wrong time of the day as the sun was right behind it. That is why I took close-ups but even then the effect of the very bright sky was to make the wall look dark.

The gate was on the edge of the old town and it would have been nice to have had some time to walk around, half an hour would have done. The castellated wall alone was worth a closer look but the tour was running to a pretty fixed schedule and we were whisked away to have lunch.

Our restaurant was on the hills overlooking Volubilis and we had good views of the site which was about 1km away.

Lunch was pleasant enough but, not for the first time that trip, I felt that we were spending too much time over eating when there were more interesting things that we could be doing. We had all gone to Morocco to see Morocco, not to have three course lunches.

The schedule for the day was odd for another reason. The original plan was to see Volubilis in the morning and Meknes in the afternoon but that got switched on the day by our local guide. That meant that we were in Volubilis at the hottest part of the day and, as you can see, there is next to no shade there.

We had a good guide to the site and over an hour he showed us many things that we could have missed, such as mosaics in buildings away from the centre of the site, and told us much of the history of the site.

A lot of the history is still lost. The site was also abandoned after the Lisbon earthquake and it was not until the French occupation that excavation started and so far about half the site has been uncovered.

There are few substantial bits standing, essentially just those that you can see here, yet me still managed to take an hour to see it all. I might have liked a little longer there unguided but we were not given that option.

As Roman remains go, Volubilis is a poor relative to sites like Carthage but from Fez/Meknes it was a brief detour and so it would have been perverse not to go.

After Volubilis we took the more scenic route back to Fez and were left alone for the rest of the day. For a lot of us that meant going to the reasonable looking cafe just up the road. There were lots of cafes around, as there were everywhere in Morocco, but most were very much for locals and did not have any women in them.

The few niggles that I have mentioned aside, this was a pleasant day steeped in history and beauty.