The Honeymoon Continues: Southern Spain Edition

Part I: Getting There, During Semana Santa, is Nearly 5/8 of the Fun

Almería is far. Seven or eight hours far. And no train runs from here to there in any sort of straight line. In fact, we even found one on the schedule that took 23 hours to make the trip. After that, we headed back to Avis. There, we overheard a very tall blond man – the Avis attendant – speaking perfect, unaccented English to the customer in front of us. Obviously German. The Germans are the most impressive language-learners we have ever encountered, we thought. A German man lives across the hall from us, speaks very good English, and in two years here has learned both Spanish and Catalan. Interesting facts all, but not relevant: this guy was from Tenafly. We were upgraded to a bigger Opel.

After about a seven hour drive, which included some wasted hours searching for a lunch place recommended in the guidebook, we rolled into Almería. The outskirts of the town, off the highway, included some dicey slums which featured houses without any doors, just curtains. But we picked our way to the center and were a block from our hotel when a policewoman stopped us by sliding a metal barricade into the road. The streets had been blocked off in Valencia, too, but we snuck by them by showing the cops our hotel reservation. When we tried that here, the policewoman shrugged her shoulders and said, “There’s a parade.” Undeterred, we drove off to find another route to the hotel. We found more police, with more barricades. We showed off the hotel reservation again. Again: “There’s a parade.” “How long will it last?” “Don’t know. Ten, twenty minutes?”

We kept driving. We asked more policemen. Eventually one thought of a way to get to the hotel without negotiating the parade route. We had already been driving on streets narrow enough to make going around corners an experience that required a bit of Semana Santa faith, but now we were really in the old city. Our map collection consisted of a Michelin highway map, a hotel reservation map that included street names written in a size completely out of proportion to the map itself so that it was impossible to tell which gray line each name referred to, and a map given to us by a cop. This map had the opposite problem: the street names were so small that they were impossible to read.

We guessed and drove and found ourselves directly behind the parade. It consisted of a large float, carried by at least twenty people walking underneath it, with life-sized figures of the Crucifixion. This was accompanied by other floats with what looked like kings and queens on them, and marching bands. And marching to the band music were people in robes – some white, some blue, some red or green – with matching pointy hoods. I’m guessing that Spain’s Semana Santa marchers had the costumes first, but if I had a uniform that got adopted, even by accident, by the Klan, I’d cut my losses and find a new one.

Finally, the marchers dispersed and we were able to follow signs to our hotel. We checked in and were given exactly the last thing we wanted: a tiny map, directing us to the parking garage. Leah, who was ready to get out from the behind the wheel after the two-hour sojourn within Almería’s city limits, turned and looked me in the eyes, then said, “Please, please get us there.”

We passed something that said “parking,” on the correct street, but there was something about it that was a teeny bit different than the name on the card. Maybe it said “parking garaje” and the card only said, “parking.” Maybe the words were in a different order. It’s all the same: we passed it and I immediately decided that 1) that was, in fact, our garage, and 2) a quick left would get us back there. Then a right. And then we were looking at the grill of a police car. Little kids and old women were laughing at us and waving their hands in the international signal for, “You absolutely cannot drive here.”

I said, “You should probably back out.” The moments that followed, in which Leah backed a relatively large car out of a dead end in the middle of a crowd of paradegoers, were not the most romantic of our honeymoon. Even eating the sneaker-flavored andouille in St-Remy was better. Leah did not answer me with words, which was probably good, and she performed the backing-out admirably. On our second time around, I found the parking garage. The honeymoon was saved.

Part II tomorrow