¡¡Granada y Sevilla!!

Buenos dias!
This post is almost a week late, but better late than never right? It´s funny how even though I feel like I have a lot of free time, it´s easy to fill it up pretty quickly.

Anyway, last week at this time, we were running up to the Alhambra because we didn´t want to miss our alloted visiting time! It´s kind of complicated because we bought a ticket for 10 am, but we had to be within the Alhambra, in front of the main palace at 10 am. We made it on time and even though it was a little chilly in the morning, it was cool to see the huge fortress in the early light. The Alhambra is pretty huge! I guess at one point there were thousands of people living there! Even though it´s big, it seems like it must have been pretty cramped because we saw this little neighborhood and the ¨houses¨were basically two rooms the size of my mom´s bathroom and then a third room the size of our front closet. Even if you´ve never really taken a close look at the closets in my house, you can imagine.
But of course there was beautiful art everywhere on the walls, the ceilings, and the gardens outside. There was so much detail in all the script and geometric shapes and patterns.

Another part I liked about Granada was the Albaicin, the old Moorish neighborhood that our hostel was in. There were a lot of little streets and back alleys to maneuver, which made getting there a little difficult, but there was a cool little hang out on the roof that looked over the city. It was inevitable, we all had Aladdin songs stuck in our heads the entire trip! In Granada, when you order a drink, they always bring you a tapa (some little appetizer thing) so we took advantage of that in the evening and met up with some other friends from Oviedo. They brought tortilla espanola (a kind of potato-egg dish, yum!), sandwiches, potato chips, bread, and a stew-like thing. Between the three tapas bars, I think we only spent about 6 Euro! Not bad.
Then that night Josiah and I walked up to the Mirador (¨look out point¨) to see the Alhambra at night. It was really neat to see it all lit up next to the whole city.
Before leaving for Sevilla the next day we took a walking tour of Granada and it was really interesting. Our tour guide told us a lot about the history, the people, and the caves. The have a lot of caves in Granada and people actually live in them! Our tour guide was writing something about caves, so he lived in one for awhile. While he had kind of a rough time and ended up with fleas, he said that many of them are really nice and have water and are solar powered.

Once we got to Sevilla, we found our hostel and then went looking for this place called La Carboneria that has free flamenco shows. It was amazing! I loved it. There was a guitar player, a singer/clapper, and a dancer. It was passionate, emotional, and exciting and impossible to not be drawn in. I've heard that the singer usually sings about something personal, and it was cool to see how they all interacted together to convey that.

The next day we went to this old palace where Columbus got permission to travel and planned his trip to "India." We also went to the Cathedral, which is the third largest cathedral in the world. It actually used to be a mosque, but they put a cross on top, added some Christian art, and voila! Cathedral! We climbed to the top of the tower and got to see a cool view of the city too. That afternoon we took a walking tour, and since Josiah answered a question right about the city's symbol, he got a free hot chocolate from our tour guide. It was interesting to talk to the tour guides about their time traveling and in Sevilla, the gypsy situation in Spain, and the best places to go in Sevilla. We ended up going to a tapas bar and I tried this traditional Sevillan gazpacho-like thing that I think was blended bread, tomato, olive oil, and something else...Not sure but it was tasty!

The next day we walked around, went to some art fairs, fed the Spanish ducks, and then headed home! The bus ride back was nice because we got to spread out and sleep more. Then we got back to Oviedo at 7:30 in the morning and were in class at 9:00! I had to take a long siesta that afternoon.

Anyway, it was a great first trip and I can't wait to take a couple more! Sorry, again about this being so late. My internet access has been really unreliable. Internet access was so much easier in the US, that's one thing I will not take for granted ever again!

Love you all!