¡Viva España!

Europe » Spain » Andalusia
February 25th 2008

Published: February 26th 2008

Edit Blog Post

Euro Chica

Trip to Granada

Emily and I on a bus from Madrid to Granada.

¡Hola a todos!

I hope that you are doing well. In this entry, I'm going to tell you more about my recent trip to Spain where my vacation started, so buckle up!

On Friday, February 8th, my roommate Emily and I caught an early train from Avignon to Marseille, and then from Marseille we flew to Madrid. This was my first time flying with a cheap European airline, called Ryanair, and I must say, it was quite an experience. First of all, they don't have computers (at least they don't in Marseille), but instead, they have a list with everyone's name on it, so when we checked in, they just strached our name off the list. Moreover, they gave us these handwritten boarding passes, and there were no assigned seats, so we could just sit anywhere we wanted to. Also, the security was a joke! They say "no liquids," but Emily brought in a battle of water and some cosmetics which weren't in a little plastic bag, and they did not care at all. I didn't complain, however, because my ticket cost only 22 euros (with taxes included)! :-)

Then, once we got to Madrid, we had no

Granada

View of Granada from the Alhambra.

idea how to get down to Granada, where our tour actually was going to start. Since in France we take the train everywhere we go, we figured that the train would be a good option, but when the guy told us the following: the next train wasn't leaving in 3 hours; 1 ticket would cost 62 euros; and it would take 5 hours to get there... so we decided to pass on that, and take a bus instead. The bus was leaving within the next hour, it cost only 15 euros, and it got there in about 5.5 hours - much better deal! We finally arrived to Granada around 9:30 pm, and after we got settled in our hotel, we just pretty much crashed, without even eating dinner.

My cousin, Aleksandra (Sasha), joined us in Granada, so we met up with her the next day at 8 am, at the famous palace Alhambra (built by Arab rulers in Iberia back in the 11th century). We were told to be there at that hour because Alhambra is one of the most important monuments in Spain, even in Europe, and is crowded with people every day. It was very tough to

Granada

Alhambra

get up in the morning since we hadn't slept much the night before because of the noise in the hotel and in the street... I'm telling you, Spanish people just never sleep! lol. Oh, but the Alhambra was definietly worth waking up for! It was as gorgeous as I imagined it would be when I was reading about it in my textbooks. To be honest, I was very anxious to see this place because I took an amazing Spanish class back at UVA, called Islamic Iberia, in which we studied the Spanish history under the Arab occupation. As crazy as it sounds, I made a decision to travel hundreds of miles to see this place because of the class I took in college! Anyways, we spent a couple of hours touring the Alhambra, and I took a bunch of pictures, as I was totally overwhelmed with the great architecture and all of the beautiful gardens. In the meantime, however, I somehow lost my ticket, so I wasn't able to go into some parts of the Alhambra, because guards were standing in front of every gate and scanning tickets. I tried to use Emily's ticket after she had finished the tour,

Granada

Alhambra

but they wouldn't let me in because it had already been scanned. :-(

After many tries of finding my ticket, we finally decided to leave and walk around the city until dinnertime. Couple of hours later, as were heading towards our hotel to get ready for dinner, Emily sees a friend from elementary school who is studying in Granada. It was totally random, and all of us were pretty much shocked. Then, however, it got even more strange as I saw a guy who went to UVA with me, just a few blocks down the same street where we met Emily's friend! Moreover, that guy was in my Islamic Iberia class, and he pretty much said the same thing about the class, and how it had influenced him to come and spend a semester in Granada. What a coincidence, huh?! That evening, as well as pretty much every other meal we ate in Granada, consisted of tapas. In many bars/restaurants they had a special where if you order a drink, you get a free tapa, and all the other tapas after that would be very cheap so you can get stuffed for like 5 euros in total. Tapas, however,

Granada

Alhambra

aren't the healthiest choice, but we had to be cheap. For those of you who don't know what tapas are, they are just small sandwiches (sausage, ham/cheese, etc. on a piece of bread) or small pieces of tortilla (Spanish omellette - eggs and potatoes).

On our last full day in Granada, Sasha and I took a walking tour of the city. The day was beautiful (perfect for walking!), and the tour was very informative, as the tour guide gave specific details on history of every place we went to. The tour was in Spanish and in English, and I tried to be good by listening to it in Spanish. :-) After the tour, we went out for coffee, and sat outside for quite a while, enjoying the beautiful sunny weather of 20-something celsius degrees. In the late afternoon, I went into the Capilla Real where Catholic Kings are buried (Fernando and Isabel who reconquered Iberia from the Arabs), which was really neat to see. Then, however, Emily and I went for a walk in the Albaycin, which is an old part of town, located on a hill, where Arabs and Jews used to live. All of the little houses,

Granada

Alhambra

streets, and shops in that neighborhood looked so pretty! Looking at them took me back into time. Then, since we were just kinda wandering the streets there, we decided to visit Mirador St. Nicolas, which has the most beautiful view of Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada mountains. On the way back from the Mirador we got lost, as we didn't have a detailed map of Albaycin, and those streets sure are tiny. We wanted to ask for help, but all the people we kept running into were tourists who also were trying to get out of the neighborhood, and had some trouble themselves. Finally, we ran into one couple who helped us find our way into a plaza where we were meeting Sasha for dinner.

Dinner was the most interesting part of the day, I think. Since it was our last night in Granada, we decided to go to a nicer restaurant which we spotted during our tour of Albaycin, and treat ourselves to a paella. I kept telling them that we shouldn't get paella, because Andalucia is not really known for it as much as Valencia is, but ok, we ordered it anyway. We agreed that the meat

Granada

Alhabmra

paella would be the most appropriate one, as they had seafood, and a mixed one (meat and seafood), and Emily doesn't like seafood. We also ordered a pitcher of excellent sangria and were sipping on that until we got our paella. So, that's when it got really funny, maybe even a little sad... the waiter brought us a mixed paella instead of the meat one, and it had all of those little sea monsters (that we call seafood) sticking out of the pot with eyeballs staring straight at us...haha. Sasha and I didn't care as much, but Emily wanted to vomit, so she ended up eating bread and salad, that poor girl! I didn't wanna argue with the waiter, even though I was supposed to, because it would have taken again long time to bring us another paella, and we were already starving. After the dinner, we went back to the Mirador St. Nicolas to look at the Alhambra all lit up at night, which, again, looked amazing!

The next day around noon we packed up and moved to Sevilla. In Sevilla, Emily stayed with her friend from college, and Sasha and I stayed together in a hotel. I

Granada

Sasha and I at the Alhambra

feel like our stay in Sevilla was much calmer, as there weren't any big monuments where we had to spend an entire day and come early in order to see it. I mean, Sevilla has some great stuff, like the Cathedral and Alcazar (which we didn't get to see because it was closed when we had time to see it), but it doesn't take much time to see those. The most frustrating thing was that every signle monument would close right after lunch time, and it wouldn't reopen until late afternoon, when we were pretty much exhausted and ready to go take a nap at the hotel/get ready for dinner.

Sevilla had some great weather as well, as I was able to walk around without my coat. So on our first day in Sevilla (and pretty much evey other day we were there), we walked a lot in the area around the Cathedral, where the historic center is, and also by the river Guadalquivir. Surprisingly enough, however, in the area next to the Cathedral, we spotted 3 Starbuckses! I, of course, had to go in a couple of times during our stay there to get my caramel machiato. :-)

Granada

Alhambra

On one of the days I also went into the Cathedral, which is supposedly one of the biggest and most important Catholic cathedrals in the world. Its architecture is truly impressive, inside and out. There was a Colmubus' tomb inside, which as surrounded by tourists and their flashy cameras (not mine this time, though!) :P. Then, I climbed up the tower and was able to see pretty much a view of the entire city from up there... it was breathtaking!

One night we went to see a falmenco show, which I longed to see in Sevilla, since Sevilla is famous for that music. Emily reserved us tickets ahead, since this particular show is very popular and the seating is limited. In the show there were 2 guys playing instruments, one of them was singing as well, and a third guy was dancing. It was the most beautiful dancing I've ever seen! The guy was so passionate about it as well, and he had this extremely intense expression on his face. Then, they brought in another older guy who sang in Arabic, so it was a mix between Arab and Andalusi music.... incredible!

So on Wednesday, our last day

Granada

Wandering the streets of Granada

in Spain, we went on a daytrip to a nearby town called Cordoba, which used to be the capital of the caliphate, the richest city in the western world, and a city where 3 cultures (Christian, Jewish, and Arabic) mix together. I was also very excited to visit Cordoba, as I've studied a lot about it. The bus from Sevilla to Cordoba took about 2 hours, so we didn't get too much time to spend there, just a couple of hours. The first thing we visited in Cordoba after stopping by to a nearest cafe to have some breakfast/coffee, was the Mezquita/Cathedral. This famous building used to be a mosque during the Arab occupation, and then when Christians moved into the city, they built a cathedral in it, but didn't destroy it, so now you can see typical Arab architecture and a Catholic altar, occupying the same space... it, truly, is amazing! After the visit to the Mezquita/Cathedral, we walked around the old Jewish neighborhood, went into the ancient synagogue, and took many pictures in front of the statues of great Arab thinkers and poets, such as Maimonides and Ibn Zaydun. I was pretty much freaking out when I saw

Granada

Me in the old part of town, called Albaycin!

a statue dedicated to the poet Ibn Zaydun and his great love, princess Walladah (also another poet), because I did a class report on her.

After a full day of walking, and another 2 hour bus ride back to Sevilla, we arrived exhausted, and crashed early yet again, right after eating dinner. The next day we got up very early, so that we could check out of the hotel, get to the bus stop, and catch the bus for the airport on time (meaning 2 hours before 9:30 am, when our flight for ITALY was going depart).

And the adventure continues in Italy....

xoxo

~Darija

Additional photos below

Photos: 24, Displayed: 24