si mueres sin ver la alhambra, no has vivido.

This past weekend I went to Granada with Mallory, Daniella, Brian, and Amir. I loved Granada. It was a lot smaller of a city than Sevilla is (which made it feel a lot less city-ish) but it still has a lot of Moorish influence and a very Spanish feel to it. Granada was very hippie-ish and bohemian so maybe that was why I was drawn to it as well. We left Friday morning like early in the AM. We were all up at 5am actually, it was so early. Daniella and I met Mallory at Prado (which is our bus stop to go to school) because it’s closer to Santa Justa (the train station). We walk to Prado everyday so we didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. But what I think we didn’t realize was that it’s like a 30minute walk to Prado but it takes longer when you have luggage aka I had my rolling bag/airline carryon on the cobble stone streets = that sucks. Then we thought the walk from Prado to Santa Justa would take ten minutes, ya, it definitely took another 30. Whatever, walking is good for you. The boys just took at taxi from Los Remedios, and for the entire walk there I was wishing I went with them. Anyways, it was an adventure in the early AM of Friday morning. But we got there on time for our 7am train and I slept most of the way there which was good.

We arrived in Granada around 10am and walked to our hostel by 11ish. It was crazy finding our hostel too because we didn’t have a map of Granada and we were just asking people where to go then eventually we were like we should get a map. Then we diverted our location to the tourist office (which was equally hard to find). It was lots and lots of walking. But we finally walked up to Albaicin and we found our hostel. It was super cute and very like unhostel like, it was like this lady’s downstairs of her house and she didn’t even know we were coming because she didn’t have internet. CRAZY. It looked more like a house than a hostel, which was cool. Oh, and this whole time Amir was like deathly ill and needed to go to the doctor. So he went to the doctor to get medicine and what not but Brian, Mallory, Daniella, and I went to go see the Alhambra.

The Alhambra is a military based planted in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Influenced by Spain’s Moorish architecture it really reminded me of the Real Alcazar in Sevilla. It was so gorgeous. There were gardens, water pools, courtyards, castle walls, and we had amazing views of the city from the windows in the Alhambra. It was huge we walked around for four hours! There is this Spanish saying, “Si mueres sin ver la Alhambra, no has vivido,” meaning If you die without seeing the Alhambra, you have not lived. So obviously I’ve lived since I’ve seen the Alhambra and all its beauty.

I took lots of pictures too and my CF card didn’t crash either so that’s good. I was really really worried about it the whole time. But when I got home, the first thing I did was load my pictures.

Two more things that Granada is famous for: free tapas & schwarmas. We embraced while in Granada. Well, tapas are only ‘gratis’ (free) when you buy drinks aka wine, beer, café, tea something of the sort, all the restaurants bring you ‘un regalo’ – a gift (as Manoli explained to me before I left) of free tapas. Tapas are savory-like appetizers, southern Spain and Andalucia, which is the region I live in is famous for wonderful tapas. Another thing that we loved was the schwarmas (you can also call them kebabs). Brian loved the schwarmas. They are like pita sandwiches with meat from this rotisserie thing – I don’t really understand it, but you put lettuce and such, with falafel, and then salsa stuff in it. It’s good with just vegetables and falafel, that’s what I ate. It is supposed to be a Mediterranean food thing.

Saturday, we went up to the Sierra Nevadas. We took a bus for 10 euro. Ahaha it was great, getting there we almost missed the bus. The last bus to go up to the mountains for the day left from the station at 10am but we didn’t leave our hostel until 9:15 (because Mallory and I wanted breakfast from this Panaderia and it took long). So we were like running into Plaza Nueva to catch a bus to the bus station. Anyways, the entire time Amir and Brian were like we’re not going to make it, we’re not getting on this bus. And I was just you wait and see, we’ll make it. So we run into the bus station and there’s like this HUGE line to buy bus tickets, even at the automatic ticket machine too. It sucked. So we look at the screen and it says the bus going up to the mountains is bus 10, so we run down to the bus port to see if we can get on without tickets and just pay the bus driver or something, right? He was not friendly. We had to wait and see if everyone who bought a regular ticket got on the bus before he could give us our seats/tickets that were overpriced bc we didn’t buy them upstairs at the counter (they were like two euros over.. but still, he jipped us.) He let like 10 more people on and Brian, Amir, Mallory, and I were among those 10 which was exiting. Daniella stayed in the city for the day because she was feeling sick and didn’t want to go up to the mountains. But I was like ha. we made it on the bus.

Going up to the Sierra Nevadas was fun. It was neat to see a Spanish mountain town. We were planning on sledding but when we got up there we didn’t really feel like it so we had lunch in a café then we played in the snow for a few hours and took the bus home at 4.

Daniella, Mallory, and Brian went out to a few tapas bars later but Amir and I just stayed in because I was starting to get sick and he was already dying. We left on Sunday afternoon and Mallory and I laughed the whole way home on the train at this 20ish yr old guy with a Twighlight book (his was in English) and Mallory had hers in Spanish. We didn’t even say anything to each other and we tried to explain to Amir without saying anything because obviously this guy spoke Spanish and English. But Amir didn’t get it. Mallory and I just thought t was really funny and we were sitting across the aisle from each other, so we just laughed. We got back to Sevilla around 7ish. All in all it was a really good weekend. It was a lot of fun.

I’m still sick, it’s actually gotten worse. I ran out of Tylenol cold and so I’m taking some foreign medicine that’s pretty sketch and my mom is worried about, but what can you do right? I might go to the doctor if it doesn’t get better by Friday because I am going to Cadiz for Carnavale celebrations this weekend. And it’s going to be colder there than it is here, so it will probably exacerbate whatever cold/flu/virus thing that I have. Sad story, but it will be fine. It will get better soon… hopefully. It’s been a really quick week because I’ve been trying to catch up on things in Sevilla this week, we’ve been trying to get wireless internet but it’s still not working, and oh, I wrote my first paper for my civ&culture class too. I’m really excited for Saturday in Cadiz and it will be tons of fun so I need to be better already!

Pictures: 1 & 2 - In the Sierra Nevadas, 3 - getting free tapas in Granada on Friday night, 4 & 5 - views from the Alhambra