Ah, Granada, That´s the Life

I´m not quite sure that I´m ready for this blog entry. This blog entry is going to be one to blow other blog entries out of the water. I need to capture a piece of Granada, and I don´t know if I have the strength right now to do that. To capture Granada. I´m feeling that lots of repetition is going to be needed in the following text. Because writing things one time doesn´t get the point across. For example, when I say Granada was amazing, I can´t just say it was amazing. I have to say that Granada was amazing amazing amazing amazing amazing. And that still doesn´t even begin to describe the extent of it´s amazingness. I suppose words like amazingness will need to be made up also to fully get the point across.

Where do I begin? I will begin with the worst of the trip - por supuesto (of course) - the bus ride. Oh, holy ten consecutive hours in a bus. That is never a good idea, by any standard, but it´s what you do when you are a poor student who is spending far too much money on weekend trips and just cannot afford to take a bus to the nearest airport, fly to a city close to Granada, and catch another bus to Granada. You can only afford to sit on a bus next to stinky people, give yourself permanent (ok, ok, only temporary) neck pains, and pray continuously that you will receive more than three hours of sleep. Which, por supuesto, you don´t. You can, however, tune in to several movies that would not normally catch Danielle´s attention in English, let alone in Spanish. Star Wars Episode 2 (where Yoda sounds like a fleghmy (hmm don´t know if that´s spelled right) old man dying of too much cigarette smoke and a far-too-heavy spanish accent). National Security. Sahara. Surviving Christmas. So yea, you stick to iPod, unsuccessful efforts of falling into a deep sleep, and looking out the window longing to arrive.

Well, we made it. In fact, we arrived in Granada when the weather had reached a very satisfiable 75 degree mark. Oh, how I had wished that I was wearing a t-shirt under the two layers of sweaters and winter jacket I was wearing from Pamplona. We trudged across foreign lands with our suitcases, wondering how we were ever going to find our reserva (the place we reserved, not quite sure if i can classify it as a hotel yet). We finally stopped in a bakery where they told us we only had a ten-minute walk and gave us directions. Yay!

As we came closer to our reserva, we were in awe. The route to the reserva was straight through the charming, narrow brick-paths of the central part of Granada. As we walked along the Darro River, we had the perfect view of the Alhambra, a castle that I will get to a bit later. Everything about that journey would have been ideal, had I not had to lug my ridiculous rolling suitcase (without a large strap to pick it up and carry it) up the huge hill to our reserva. But nevertheless, it was thrilling.

We couldn´t find our address - things were pretty complicated up there on the hill - so we walked into a building to ask these two ladies for help. The almost laughed us out of the room and we soon discovered that it was an all-male residence in which we had just entered... for adolescent boys. No wonder all those boys outside the fence were looking at us so funny. We joked after that we probably seemed like a group of three prostitutes coming in for a visit... oh, the embarrassments you get so used to while living your life in a foreign country.

We soon found our real place. It was called ¨Residencia de Invitados Carmen de la Victoria.¨ My spanish dad found it online, and I thought we were only allowed to stay there because we were students studying abroad. However, we discovered that it was a very exclusive place. Probably only open to us because it was winter, non-tourism season, we really lucked out. For 85 euro/person/2 nights, we slept, ate all our meals, and had the view of a lifetime. This is going to be hard to explain.

Ok. Our hotel overlooked all of Granada. All the mountains, all the town, and the huge Alhambra. It was surrounded by these romantic, slightly-overgrown gardens. Arches of bushes, curving twigs, trees covered with flowers, ground covered with pebbles in the patterns of flowers and vines. At night, it was lit up with stained-glass lamps. And through the garden was the view of all the city. It is completely indescribable. We felt like we had fallen into some kind of fairy tale. The rooms were pretty standard - clean, bathroom, all the things we are not accustomed to after staying in that fleabag hostel in Barcelona. The rooms were like a sauna. And were we going to complain after practically being frozen out of our Barcelona hostel? heck no!



The meals however, wow, the meals. Delicious, three course meals, with fancy tables, wine, the whole shebang (shebang? is that even a word?). Yuuuuum. I gained about 10 pounds and will be working that off this week. On our second day there we noticed a series of framed pictures on the wall. About 30 pictures, including THE Paul Simon (and countless other famous people who i wish I recognized). We checked it over with the waiters - yes, they all stayed there. WE STAYED IN THE SAME RESIDENCE AS PAUL SIMON. I felt like royalty. How did these three, ridiculously goofy (come on, all americans in spain are goofy) students get to stay here? We were surrounded by all these really intelligent professors who were staying there for some seminar about animals. And we were just these silly girls, living in the lap of luxury.

Ok, so that´s the residence. On to more important things.

Our first day, Friday, we took some time to look around the city. We saw the famous cathedral, all the other important buildings and churches in town, and started gift shopping. By the time we were settled in the residence, it was pretty late, so we had a few hours to do all this before dinner-time. Then dinner, then much-anticipated sleep in a comfortable bed!

The next morning, we awoke at the crack of dawn. Ok, we woke up at 8. But it seemed pretty early. We had a tour scheduled at 9 at the Alhambra. We took the ever-famous ¨Alhambra Bus¨ (only famous because we saw them EVERYWHERE and the streets were so narrow, they came close to running me over several times) to the Alhambra. It took us all over the the top of the hill of the town, and it was an experience in itself. I was just in awe of the town - it´s beauty, how it stayed so quaint through all these years and all these tourists, the view, the wonder of how something like this could even exist in life. I had an epiphany at that point - I must someday bring my family back to Granada, when I have kids old enough to appreciate it. It is like nothing I have ever seen in my life. How am I, a 19-year-old, so fortunate to be seeing Granada? I am almost alone in this country across the world, exploring ancient cities, and seeing these incredible things! How is it even possible? Is this real? And why am I so fortunate? How did I just plan a trip to Granada and do it? Just like that! Just a few days before I went! I just went! I didn´t have expectations too high, just the claims of my host family that I needed to see it. And boy were they right. I think it changed my life, although I can´t seem to elaborate on how.

A little bit of background from Wikipedia about the Alhambra:

The Alhambra (Arabic: الحمراء = Al Ħamrā'; literally "the red") is an ancient palace and fortress complex of the Moorish monarchs of Granada, in southern Spain (known as Al-Andalus when the fortress was constructed), occupying a hilly terrace on the south-eastern border of the city of Granada. It was the residence of the Muslim kings of Granada and their court, but is currently a museum exhibiting exquisite Islamic architecture.

I guess that makes it sound relatively dull, but it was anything but. It has a section of these palaces covered in this ornate muslim decorations, incredibly detailed ceramics and tile-work, just fantastic fountains and ornamentation. We then saw part of Generalife, the garden section that was added on much later, but was a refuge for the royalty. Unfortunately, it had started raining toward the beginning of our tour, so parts of the Generalife were closed off. We got a pretty yucky day to tour, but it was so beautiful that it didn´t matter. Lastly, we saw the oldest part of the Alhambra, the Alcazaba. It was the fortress part of the castle, the section that you could see from our hotel. The main purpose was for defense, and there were these mazes that were used for military purposes and a huge trench so people could not get into the castle. Pretty cool. We took more pictures than you would think to be humanely possible, and it would take about 6,324 hours to add them all to the blog, so you will all have to wait til we are in person or rely on the excellence of quick facebook uploads if you are in the college population-part of my blog-readers. I traveled with Kristen and Kate, a girl who should forever be known as master photographer. Kristen and I were practically at a photo shoot the whole trip, and this might have explained the fact that we spent 5 hours at the Alhambra.





We then got lunch at the hotel... yum... and did more shopping til dropping. The shops were small and unique closer to our hotel, and then we found some bigger, more mainstream stores closer to where we got off the bus station upon arrival. We checked out a few other buildings, plazas, etc, and headed home for dinner. Not before frequenting yet another bakery, something that´s commonplace for us in Spain. It is always to my disappointment that I can´t just find a simple brownie or soft cookie - I am always stuck with some pastry or ornate cake with too much cream and not enough substance. But I will continue my search.

Dinner was incredible, a typical Granadian meal for us - bread, soup, meatballs with fries, and yogurt (strangely, instead of the normal piece of fruit for dessert) with water and wine. After that we were too exhausted once again, and went to sleep in anticipation of the long bus ride which we had to catch at 8 in the morning.

We did see something a bit strange before falling asleep. The only picture on the wall in the hotel room was of one specific room in the Alhambra - the one where an entire family was assassinated. The fountain in the floor is said to have bloodstains. A leeeeettle bit creepy if you ask me.

Anyhow, we slept well, didn´t get assassinated, caught our bus the next morning, and made our voyage home safely.

Thanks to my staying in on Thursday night before embarking on my trip, I´m ahead in school, feel like I have some free time for once.

One month until I come home. Crazy how time flies. Crazy. I am feeling both horrible and incredibly excited about coming home. We will see how this changes within the month.