11 days later. Spain has been awesome every place I’ve gone to. I don’t recall if I mentioned it in this thread, but in another recent thread I talked about looking for a place to move outside the US, and this trip in addition to a just being a great vacation was also a scouting trip for Spain and Portugal, and Spain has definitely passed the vibe check. About a week ago I decided that I’m leaning towards moving here (or Portugal) and, if not, at the very least coming back for another trip, so it wasn’t so essential that I saw the great historical sites and rather that I should sample the various sorts of places one might live, both regionally and in terms of big city, medium town, small town, etc. So, for example, I was going to see the Alhombra in Grenada, but I’ve spent a lot of time already on this trip wandering around, and that will probably have to wait for a follow up trip. That applies to a lot of the areas inland of the coast in Andalusia that I originally intended to visit.
Shockingly to me, I’ve only rented a car for 2 days so far. I had planned to have one for most of the trip. But the transit is so good here that it’s a hassle to have a car in the cities themselves, and the between-cities transport is good enough that while there are definitely advantages to renting a car, it’s not necessary. That said, I’ll probably rent a car for most of the rest of my trip so I can visit more small towns along the coast and since Portugal is less urbanized I’m guessing there will be fewer transport options.
Observations about driving here: pedestrians in crosswalks have behavior that would be considered suicidal in the US. At major intersections, of course, the crosswalk pedestrian lights are synchronized with the traffic lights, but there are plenty of uncontrolled crosswalks along every street in cities. And the pedestrians just walk out into them fearlessly. They often don’t even look to see if a car is coming. They are completely confident that cars will stop for them.
In the US, we have similar right of way laws in a lot / most / all? places that would allow people to do this, but people never would, you’d be hit by a car within a couple of days. Whether our drivers are stupider or it’s just a difference in driving culture, apparently drivers in Spain are always ready for people to jump out into the street. When I was driving, there was a woman who just briskly walked into a crosswalk from behind a van parked on the side of the street, so there was no way for me to see her and no way for her to see me, and she didn’t even look my way. Just darted quickly out onto the street without a care in the world. I didn’t come close to hitting her because I was driving slowly, cautiously, and alert, but that sort of thing regularly gets pedestrians killed in Las Vegas where I live. But, hey, kudos to them – it must mean drivers here are better, more aware than drivers in the US, and the priority on pedestrians, though nominally the same in both countries, is completely different in practice.
They also drive what would be considered bizarrely slowly on the highways. The speed limits are reasonable - 80, 100, or 120 kph depending on what’s along that stretch of road. But the behavior is very different – people in the left lane go the speed limit, and people in any other lane go 20 kph below the speed limit. Consistently. Sometimes even 30-40 kph below the speed limit. On US highways, that behavior would indicate someone is 104 years old and terrified of driving or really high. But it’s the norm here. Granted, I’ve only rented a car for the costa del sol – it may be a regional behavior, I haven’t exactly done a thorough survey with 5 or 6 hours of driving under my belt.
More in a bit.