Advertisement
Published: April 8th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Alhambra
Over looking part of the palace and the city of Granada Viernes 3 de april- We left Alicante at 7:00 am in order to beat traffic. After a 5 hour ride in the bus to Granada, we were dropped off at the Alhambra, a Muslim palace complex that was built over 800 years ago. I say complex because it was added to over the years before being abandoned and ransacked for 200 years until Washington Erving bought it in the 1800’s. Even with many of the pieces of the beautiful tile gone and all the vibrant colors faded or gone, but it was still impressive. After the Alhambra, we checked into our hotel, which was quite beautiful. Seeing that it was about 3pm, we were hungry and searched for a restaurant. We were supposed to be back at the hotel at 5pm for a walking tour of the city, but the group that I went with decided to skip that because the restaurant was on Spanish time and took 3 hrs to serve us our meal. Although a 3 hr lunch sounds ridiculous, it was a great time where we just relaxed and talked. Following lunch, we wondered the city and found a river, parks, the Cathedral, fountains, murals and an ice
Alhambra
Throne room. The kind would have sat in the middle one. Chritopher Columbus was in this room asking the King for the charter to discover the New World, meaning I stood where C.C. had stood 500 years earlier. cream shop. However, our meanderings got us a ways from your hotel, so we had to take a taxi back in order to back it back by 8pm. At this time, the bus took us to the edge of town to some old Gypsies caves that had been painted and now used for Flamenco shows. No words can really describe the passion and art that is in Flamenco. I highly recommend going to a show if you can. Towards the end of the show, one of the gypsies had me do some Flamenco, which was really fun even though I had no idea what I was doing. After getting a Kebab for supper, we called it a night.
Sabado 4 de april- We had to be checked out of the hotel by 10am so we spent the morning and early afternoon walking around the city exploring. We spent about an hour in a playground acting like 5 year olds before walking along the river to a food fair. We then returned to the hotel and laid around the pool for an hour and a half until the bus came to take us back to Alicante. This is a really
Alhambra
A coutyard in the palace short description of the city, but hopefully the pictures will help.
This week has been crazy. Sunday I wanted to get a lot of work done on the two 4,000 word papers I have due after break, but didn’t get much done. I did end up going downtown to watch some of the Palm Sunday processions. These were quite unique with people carrying huge statues, look at the pics. Parts of these processions were people dressed in capes, and hoods that looked like the KKK. I know that they have no connection and the KKK stole the attire from processions like these, but I was actually freaked out by seeing this part of the procession. I think that this feeling is really interesting because to the people of Spain it is very religious attire, but for me, it is a very racist way to dress.
This week I only have three days of classes, but they are three really long days because I have two Spanish exams. Also, I have been staying at the university and working at home on my two papers. If the academic work wasn’t enough to fill my time, I’ve been doing the last
minute things for my travels during Spring Break. I’ve never traveled for 2.5 weeks straight, so there is so much to get ready. Seeing that it is about 30 hours until I leave and haven’t packed yet, I still have a lot to go. Just to make sure my credit cards would work took over an hour on the phone. To make thing even more interesting, I’m starting to get sick again with a runny nose and being stuffed up. But this all sounds like I’m complaining, when in actuality I’m so excited that I have troubles falling asleep at night. I’m looking at it as I’m taking a long vacation from Spain which really is an extremely long vacation from my life. So I really have no complaints, I’m about to embark on the best 2.5 weeks of my life so far. (I really hate when people say that what I’m doing now will be the best time of my life, I like to think that what I’m doing know is the best thing that I’ve done so far in my life, not the best time of my entire life). I don’t know when or where I will for
Alhambra
Part of the group in the Alhambra sure have internet access again, so I hope you all have a great Easter. I would love to celebrate it with either my real or host family, but will be on the Camino, meaning that I will be celebrating it with friends on the third largest Christian Pilgrimage, can’t ask for much more than that.
Love and miss you all,
Quinn
Advertisement
Tot: 0.148s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0973s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Lisa
non-member comment
Granada
By far Granada seems the place I most want to see for myself from your blog/pictures! Happy Easter!