Advertisement
Published: June 24th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Buenos Dias!
I realize that it's been a while since my last post so time to make an update. I just came back yesterday from a 5 day trip with Silvia to Andalusia and we had suuuuuch a great time! First, I met her in Granada at the hostel. This involved me taking the train from Madrid which lasts about 4.5 hours. Renfe, the Spainsh train company, is becoming my frenemy (friend-enemy) the website is incredibly lame and has a lot of dead ends. There are many many forums dedicated to helping people purchase train tickets off of thier website, so at least I'm not the only one!
I bought a Eurail pass that lets me have 4 trips within 2 months for the equivalent of 200 USD, so i used one trip on Madrid to Granada. Renfe also requires that you make a reservation for the train, even if you have a passs, which takes extra time at the station and costs about 5-10 euros more for the "free" pass...lame!
Needless to say, I arrived in Granada and hopped into a cab. The guy didn't speak English (made me happy!) so I whipped out my notebook and
asked him him to take me to the address of the hostel in spanish. He understood my spanish, but didnt know where the street was, so we took the long way while he scrambled through the street maps he had in his cab to find where we were going. I asked him if he knew and he said yes, and then he picked up the book with the maps in it appx 10 more times, so i get the feeling that was a little white lie!
Anyway, Silvia had been at the Hostel for a while because her flight got in earlier in the morning from Barcelona. I arrived right at prime siesta time, so the hostel manager told me that she had already checked in and was relaxing in the room. When i entered the 8 person room, there were three people taking naps with thier faces covered! One was a guy, so that was easy to rule out, but the other two were brunette girls and either couldve been Silvia. Surprisingly no one moved when I rolled in with my suitcase and keys. So i put my stuff away and thought about what I should do. I
know very well how necessary naps can be so I didnt want to wake her up, but then I thought about what I would want if I were sleeping and waiting for someone to arrive...so, in the end, i waited 30 minutes and checked my email and then woke her up.
The first time we met in person was immidiatley after her nap and she was still really nice, even half asleep 😊.
Granada was so beautiful, we visited the winding streets and La Alhambra, the royal palace and gardens that are on top of the city. The moorish architecture made me feel like I had stepped onto the set of Disney's Aladdin---and those of you who know my Jasmine obsession as a child can imagine how giddy I was!
On a significatly shorter cab ride back to the train station from our Granada hostel, Silvia and I bought our tickets for the ride to our next stop...Sevilla.
We spent two days in the city and were tired but really happy with all that we saw! (photo albums)
We went to a flamenco show, and I went inside the Cathedral (biggest gothic cathedral in europe)
and climbed La Giralda (huge tower that survived an earthquake because it was built on roman foundationi ----according to our Italian tour guide...) to see the beautiful view of the city
there is no sign saying the distance to the top, but I was up for the challenge....35 flights later I really hoped the view was spectacular because I wasnt expecting that long of a commute! It was definitely worth it, unfortunately my camera had no batteries so you'll just need to see it for yourself!
This week is playing catch-up with work and things around the apartment, I'll be finishing the bulletin for AFA and working on the blog. I have plans to meet up with an Au-Pair from the US who I'll be traveling with this month, so that should be nice to have a fellow American!
This weekend I'm heading to Valladolid to visit a friend I met through AIESEC and am really excited for the fun we'll have! She is really nice and we hung out on the AIESEC transition party weekend so it will be fun to let her show me around her current city.
That's all for now! More to
come later this week.
Here are the photos of Granada
and Sevilla
Besos!
C
Advertisement
Tot: 0.175s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0669s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb