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Published: February 4th 2008
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Granada
View over the city. Granada. Yes, the small Spanish town of Granada was my first overseas trip of the New Year. It was quite exciting just for the fact that it was an 'unplanned weekend away’. Leah I were talking about it one Saturday night as something we would like to do at some stage. 12 hours later it was booked and in less than two weeks, we would be flying off there!
But first things first, since New Years, it has been an extremely busy time. We have seen Stew, and then Steve finish their European jaunts and head back to the best summer NZ has ever had! Where is the justice I ask? And of course, Hannah, being back there for a family re-union, has been rubbing it in with her talk of jetskiing, swimming at the beach, and 30+ degree temperatures! Back in London though, I have seen another show with Leah. Recommended by Steph, we saw Rent, and despite a slightly different storyline to the original I enjoyed it, and really enjoyed the rockier music.
January also saw me take Leah, Alaina, Kirsty and Ben up to Elland Road for their first taste of Leeds football, and in the
Cathedral in Granada
View from up high in the Alhambra. case of the girls, football in general! It was almost a full house of 30,000 screaming Leeds fans, but despite the vocal support, Leeds did not play all that well and lost 1-0. My first live Leeds loss! What was even more disappointing was that they couldn’t experience what it’s like when Leeds score a goal and everyone just goes mad. Oh well, next time. When we got back to London, Leah and I headed to Alaina’s place and after a few hours of drinks and chatting, the Granada trip idea was born.
Over the two weeks before the trip, I managed to see my first show at the O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome), and I was impressed! It’s huge! I saw Linkin Park play live and they were pretty good and even did two encores and finished with my favourite song. I’m back there in 3 weeks for Smashing Pumpkins with Clay, so I’m really looking forward to that! Plus the English have no idea how to mosh, so we will have a great time. 😊 Also i've been very busy with Hapkido, getting ready for my first UK grading.
And now onto Granada. We scheduled the
Leah on the Costa del Sol
The beach where I had my long awaited swim. trip to absolutely exhaust ourselves (plus it was cheaper) so we left Leah’s place at 4am on the Saturday and made it to the airport with what we thought was heaps of time. We headed through security with 20 minutes before it said the ‘Gate Closed’ on our passes. What we didn’t account for was huge queues at that time of the morning! After being in the queue for around 40 minutes, we ran through the airport, jumped through closing doors to get onto a shuttle train, and made it to the gate, and onto the plane with 3 minutes to spare before the plane was supposed to take off! What a start to the holiday! As it turned out, 3 minutes turned out to be a bit of a theme.
After an uneventful flight, we landed in Malaga and set about exploring the town in glorious 18-20 degree heat. It was a really quaint little town and we even found ourselves some gelato before I had a personal highlight. One of the things I have missed most about NZ has been the beaches, and more specifically, swimming in the sea. So I was determined whatever the temperature I
Another huge cathedral
In Malaga. We were undecided about going in, but were very impressed when we did! was going in. So we headed down to the coastline and I jumped in. Safe to say, it definitely wasn’t warm, but it was definitely worth it!
After a mission back to the bus station (which we made by 3 minutes), we found that the bus was full and we were forced to catch the one an hour later (funnily enough, after reading the wrong board, making that one with 3 minutes to spare as well). And we were on our way on the 2 ½ hour trip to Granada. We arrived and found our hostel before we did a quick recce of the area and had some dinner before heading to bed exhausted.
We were up early Sunday morning for the main reason of our trip, the Alhambra. We had a bit of trouble trying to find one word to describe it, but from my point of view, it is a fortress. With a palace, ruins of a mini city, gardens and military fortifications inside. It was divided into 4 sections and after breezing through the first 3, we came to the definite highlight, the palace. It used to be the palace of the Moorish Sultans back
Alhambra Gardens
They certainly loved their water features as well. in medieval times, and like alot of people around then, they had no TV. So they spent their time decorating the interior, and didn't they do one hell of a job! As you can see from the photos, the size, pattern and intricate designs were just amazing. I am a bit of a fan of the Muslim architecture and this is definitely the best indoor work I have seen. When you got up really close, you could see it was all hand-done and must have taken a tremendous amount of time and work. Simply stunning.
From there, I was forced to buy Leah a banana split due to a lost bet and we wandered the rest of the town before we caught the bus out to the airport (again made it by 3 minutes). After a few minor delays, we were off and back to a ‘fresh’ London 4 degrees! I think we both ended up getting home about 2.30am so work the next day was not our most productive. Overall, we both loved Granada, and ( I hate comparing cities, but just this once) it was a bit Romeish in that almost every corner you turned, there would
Leah in the Arc de Treeumph
Hahaha! I crack me up. I've been spending way too much time around Clay. be some very cool building or square with a fountain.
So, now it’s back to reality and work, where I have already booked my next holiday, off to Ireland and Northern Ireland over St Patricks Day and Easter, so it should be a blast. But first of all, bring on the Waitangi Day Pub Crawl coming up next Saturday. It will be fantastic mayhem and chaos!
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