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Published: February 14th 2009
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To start off our epic two week adventure, Dani and I began by visiting our two best friends Anne and Erin who are currently studying in Granada, Spain. Our first travel day began with metro strike in Paris at 5 a.m., a one hour bus to the "cheap" airport, a 30 minute flight delay, a 5 hour layover in Barcelona, a 45 minute bus from the Granada airport into the city, and finally we met Anne and Erin at the bus stop in Granada! It felt so good to see them after five months, needless to say, we had lots to catch up on! We went to our hostel, right in the center at Plaza Nueva, and by far the best hostel we have stayed in so far. Anne and Erin are in a homestay in Granada, so we just used the hostel as our central location 😊 The hostel had a terrace up on the roof, which was perfect for the one day of sunshine we got!
We arrived on Erin's birthday so we went out for drinks and tapas (Granada is known for their free tapas) which include brie and honey baguettes, tortilla espanola, and meatballs to name a
few! Each time you order a new drink you get a fresh round of tapas. We continued the night at a few bars and eventually went up to a nightclub up in the Sacromonte area, which has an incredible view of the Alhambra at night. I now know what it means to close down a bar after that night, we were finally curled up in our beds at 6 a.m., 26 hours after waking up in Paris the previous morning. As A and E put it, "it's cultural".
The Spanish culture was so fun to experience. One would be hard pressed to find a store that opened before 10 a.m., which gave you about a 4 hour window before the siesta started at 2 p.m. till around 5 p.m. At night dinner isn't until about 10 p.m. and then you leave to go out at night around midnight. I'm known as the early bird in our group, so sometimes I was left out of the loop as far as how late we would be staying out 😊
On our first full day in Granada we woke up to a beautiful day with sunshine! We sat outside in the sunshine at
a café and then walked through the beautiful streets to Mirador de San Nicolas to a clear view of the snow covered Sierras and the Alhambra. We brought a tasty picnic of bread, brie, apples, turkey and little pastries. There were artists, cheese vendors, and hippies playing guitar. It felt like everyone was crawling out of hibernation a little bit (either that or the gypsy caves).
At our hostel that night they had a 5 euro paella and sangria feed, cooked in the largest pan I had ever seen! In the morning we did a rainy walking tour through the different neighborhoods and learned a lot about the history of Granada. There is an interesting mix of Muslim, Gypsy, and Catholic cultures. Granada was the last city to fall to the Catholic reign of Isabel and Ferdinand and in the architecture, with the Alhambra especially, there remains traces of the older Granada. This is how my friend Erin described part of the tour in her blog... "When he was describing the Sultans that lived in the Alhambra (our tour guide), he very eloquently put it: Anything can happen when the Sultan’s crunk. So true. In order to emphasize how Catholic
Isabel and Ferdinand were he told us that if you took all the past popes and wrapped them into a little pope bundle, they still wouldn’t be as Catholic as Isabel and Ferdinand. I think that should give us all an idea of how much Catholicism is ingrained in the Spanish tradition." (thanks Er)
That night we went into a cave bar that only seats about 20 people and saw a flamenco show. Our flamenco player took to our friend Dani (a french speaker) and kept serenading her thinking that maybe she picked up the spanish language in the last five minutes since he had last attempted to woo her. We ended up staying for about three hours, two pitchers of sangria, and had the entire flamenco show dedicated to her!
Sunday was the day we had tickets to explore the Alhambra. We had been looking up at it on the hill for the last few days and it was such a treat to go explore the inside. There are beautiful gardens, fountains, and several buildings that make up the entire hillside. The detailed artwork, high ceilings, and position to the sunlight made the palace so special. Not even the
Catholics wanted to change much. I hope the pictures give an idea of just how incredible it is!
Overall, Granada was probably my favorite trip so far. Maybe it was because we had our own personal tour guides or maybe it was the free tapas or maybe the day of sunshine, regardless, Granada was a special place with beautiful scenery and friendly people. The culture was calm and it felt great to be a part of it for our four days.
Thanks for all of your comments, it's soo nice to hear from you all!
I love you,
Kaitlin
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Suzanne Dupree
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Since I went to school in Spain, I loved this entry - especially the pope bundle. Salud, amor y peseteas y tiempo para gastarlos, an appropriate toast for Valentines Day. Love, Aunt Suz