Córdoba, Granada, and the beach of crime....

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A few students from Benedictine´s Italy program did a spring break in Spain so we they visited us for a day. They raved about our orange trees, gardens, and fantastic aroma of the city! One of them, Chelsea Quick is a great friend of mine and fellow Biology major at BC. We kicked back at La Carboneria (a bar with great sangria and local flamenco dancing), and we discussed how glad we were to not be in any science lab this semester!

The next morning we met up at 6 in the morning and accompanied them to their airport departure, where we were picking up a rental car for a weekend trip to see more cities in the Andalusia region. Divided by 5 people we decided it would be the cheaper option, plus we wouldn´t have to follow a public transportation schedule.

We only had two people who could drive stick, Anneli, and our Belgian friend Laurie. Anneli maneuvered her way through the European highways and tiny streets very skillfully! Parking was very difficult to find, and the narrow and steep ramps of the parking garages were probably our biggest nightmare.

CóRDOBA
Córdoba was filled with quaint parks, beautiful plazas and gardens filled with so many different colors of roses and flowers. The city is known for its colorful patios with rows of potted flowers hanging on the whitewashed walls. We headed to La Mesquita, now a Catholic cathedral, but once the second largest mosque in the world. Originally built as a Christian Visogothic church in 600 AD, it was converted to a mosque in 784 with many additions and renovations through the centuries. The most striking thing about it are the hundreds of striped red and white archways on each set of two pillars. It was definitely huge inside , and with a mixture of mosque and cathedral, it really captured how Spain looks on a larger scale, with both its Christian and Moorish influences.

GRANADA
We got into Granada very tired and hungry, and walked for at least an hour after we parked the car, looking for our hostel with a very ineffective map. We ended up eating dinner at midnight (which is only 2 hours later than our usual dinner time in Spain). Craving spicy food dinner was at a Mexican Cantina, I hadn´t had a fajita in awhile...
The next morning we headed to the Alhambra, famous by Washington Irving´s ¨Tales of the Alhambra¨. We got to visit the room in which he wrote the book, as he had the chance to actually live there! Our audioguide was the voice of Mr. Irving, and it gave many of his actual descriptions. There are three main sections, the military towers with a great view, the palaces(including the palace of Carlos V , the holy roman emperor of the 1500´s . ) built with Islamic influence, and the huge gardens, known as the Generalife that were the prettiest gardens I have seen in Spain (And I have seen a lot of pretty gardens). I spent my walk through these cursing at my camera because my batteries were dying, so then I quit living through the lens for awhile. Covering over 140,000 square meters the Alhambra was an astounding sight.

There is a ¨mirador¨or place to see a panoramic view of the Alhambra, which Bill Clinton actually went to once and described as the most beautiful view in Spain. ( He took a break from a summit meeting in Madrid to return to the view he had seen in college.) To get to this view we walked through the Albaicin neighborhood, an old Moorish neighorhood, very much like a whitewashed labyrinth, where I purchased 10 different tea bags including the flavors, Sueños de la Alhambra, Colores de Andalucia, and Túrica pasion. Afterwords we ate at a Lebanese restaurant and had hummus, pita, stuffed vine leaves, and couscous. That night we went out for Granada´s famous combined prices of tapas and drinks. Our stomachs just couldn´t handle only tapas for dinner so we secretly went off and ate texmex again afterwards.

The Cathedral in Granada holds the tombs of the Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel, but we didn´t have time to tour it. We headed to Málaga, very eager for beach time. Instead of going into Málaga we drove 10 minutes further to Torremolinos, which was recommended to us. We had a quality afternoon, full of strolling and relaxing, (minimum swimming because the water was freezing). Then we ate at an oceanside restaurant and I nibbled on some grilled fish. I split some fried calamari with our Belgian friend and we were disappointed that it was not very distinguishable from my french fries. ( All these food details are very important to my travel blogging.)

A TURN OF EVENTS
We walked back to the car around 8, ready to drive back to Sevilla. We got a little closer... and grew more and more concerned that we could not see our car. Another car was parking in our space! At first I though we had been towed, but after looking around for some type of no parking indication, we noticed broken glass all over the sidewalk next to where the front passenger door had been. Our car had been stolen!! The man parking his car walked us to the police station. After an hour they took two of us to go ¨identify¨ our car, which had been impounded. All of our backpacks were taken, with a couple things like towels and shoes still in the seats. My friend Anneli had her passport, cash, digital camera, and credit cards all stolen. The passport of the Belgian girl was thrown aside on the seat, apparently the european union passport wasn´t important to them. We had to stay an extra night in Torresmolinos, and the police drove us to a hostel. The police officer taking Laurie and I showed off his lights and sirens on the way. We took a group picture afterwards with the two nicest ones! The next morning we put a towel over the glass on the floor of the car, and a towel up in the window, and drove to the Málaga airport to drop the car off . Not only did they charge us for all the damages, but we were charged extra for not refueling before we brought it back. Apparently they would have preferred us driving around more with the glass. They were going to charge us for bringing the car back a day late but thats the only thing we were able to talk them out of.

We purchased a trip to Morocco a long time ago for this upcoming weekend. Without a passport Anneli was going to have some problems, so we went straight to the US Consulate in Fuengirola, a 30 minute metro from Málaga. There she took a couple passport photos but was told she could not do anything without the notary who conveniently wasn´t in that day. We went back to Málaga, and took a train back to Sevilla. It was definitely chilly and half of us were still wearing swimsuits under our beach clothes. We were carrying around the remains of our personal effects in plastic bags... We got a few looks as we walked through the center of town.

¨I just want to put up a big sign that says, we´ve been robbed that´s why we look like this! Dont judge us!¨ - Anneli Gadamus March 31

On Tuesday we went to the US consulate in Sevilla, which told us the messenger service would take too long for the passport to get back in time. Anneli was given the option of going to Madrid and back the next day to get it, but with no bank account to access and a stressful list of things to do she canceled her trip to Morocco to get 75% of her money back.

SEVILLA IS STILL GOOD TO US
On Tuesday night Lourdes from the family downstairs and her cousin came upstairs to teach us how to dance Sevillana. Pretty much we need more flexible wrists and ankles because you could hear a joint orchestra from the Americans. We have much work to do before feria, the festival starting next week!

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