This post is going to be extremely
long…but worth the read!!
Last week classes went pretty smoothly.
Monday I participated in my first siesta. It was pretty awesome, I’m not going
to lie. After classes on Monday, we bought our bus tickets for Granada! It was
probably the most exciting part of the whole day!
I hadn't really been feeling that great,
and my throat was really red and swollen so I decided on Tuesday to go to the
clinic on campus with my adviser so he could check out my throat. The doctors
here are really different. They don’t ask you any questions, and they don’t
really care as much about you as I feel the doctors do in America. The guy
didn’t do any tests, just looked at my throat and prescribed me some cold pill
or something which was weird, because I didn’t have a cold.
I
decided not to get the prescription filled, because he said it was probably
just a viral infection and usually those go away with just time and ibuprofen.
So I woke up on Wednesday, took some Tylenol and got ready for classes. But
then, I had the craziest allergic reaction of my life, and my host mom had to
take me to the doctor and I got a shot.
I am officially allergic to acetaminophen,
which is what Tylenol is made of. So I guess that’s good to know. It was really
embarrassing, and I didn’t go to any of my classes on Wednesday because my eye
was the size of a golf ball and the shot made me super tired.
Thursday after class I went to Luceros with
Amanda to get a few groceries for the trip. I went home after that and packed,
and then went back to Amanda’s host mom’s apartment to wait for our bus,
because she lives closer to the bus station and the bus left at 3:20 am. We
wanted to do a trip like that because we could sleep on the bus the whole way
there, and it ended up working out really well for us.
When we woke up it was Friday and we were
officially in Granada! The
first thing we did was find the bus that would take us near our hostel. It was
really easy to find, and luckily Ali was on top of her game with the exact
location to our hostel from the bus stop. We found it around 9 am, and they let
us leave all of our baggage there so we could walk around without it until our
room was ready.
The first thing we did was go get
some coffee at a cute little outdoor café. The sun was shining and it was such
a beautiful day. After that, we decided to go to the Alhambra to print off our
tickets for the morning. From there we walked around some more and we found
this path with all of these gypsy shops and cheap souvenirs. This city was
extremely beautiful and very different from Alicante.
In Granada the people seemed a lot
friendlier, and almost every restaurant had English speaking employees. There
was a lot more English around because it was more of a tourist place, but we
still tried to speak Spanish as much as possible with the locals. The path we
went on was supposed to be this giant rectangle with some awesome views to take
pictures and shop and stuff, but when we got to the top of the mountain it was
really confusing because all of the streets are jumbled together and none of
them have street names. So we got a bit turned around, but eventually we found
our way and were able to make it back.
By the time we finished that walk,
we were pretty sure our room would be ready so we headed back to the hostel.
The room was as simple as it could get, but that is the perks of staying at a
cheap hostel instead of a hotel! There were 2 sets of bunk beds and 4 lockers
in our room.
We all (except Ali) took a quick nap
because we were still exhausted, and then ventured out for some of Granada’s
night life. We had to be at the Alhambra early Saturday morning, so we didn’t
want to stay out too late. We didn’t do much research on the best tapas bars
around, so we didn’t really find anything exciting Friday night, and it was
pretty uneventful.
Tapas, the things I have mentioned
several times before, originated in Granada. So Granada has some of the best
tapas in all of Spain. At 95% of the restaurants in Granada, you order a drink
and you get a free tapa with your drink. So that was pretty cool! We
went to bed relatively early Saturday night, around midnight, and we had to be
up at 7:3o on Saturday!
Saturday, aka the best day. Waking
up Saturday morning sucked a lot. We were all super tired, but really excited
at the same time. We took the long uphill walk to the entrance of the Alhambra,
and started our tour! For those of you who don’t know what the Alhambra is, it
started out as a fortress and then was rebuilt into a palace by a Moorish king,
which was then later converted into a royal palace in 1333. It is one of
Europe’s most visited destinations, and it shows the country’s best Islamic
architecture. It is absolutely beautiful, and it is located in the mountains so
the views are spectacular.
We spent about 3-4 hours touring the
entire Alhambra. We walked around every part of it, and took hundreds and
hundreds of pictures. I am so happy we took the morning tour, because as the
day went on more and more people were coming and it was starting to get pretty
busy.
Once we left the Alhambra, we did
some gifts shop shopping and then we decided to get something to eat. We went
to an outdoor café type thing and got some bocadillos, which are basically hot
sandwiches. Ali decided to be brave and try the caracoles, which are snails.
She was a champ and ate them all, and there must have been at least 30 of the
nasty things. I decided to try a tiny bite of one of them, and it was seriously
disgusting. Never again. Ever. We were all super tired from all of the walking,
so we headed back to the hostel for a siesta.
While the 3 of us napped, Ali did a
bunch of research about the best tapas bars and restaurants to go to so we
would have a better sense of where to go that night. We got dressed and headed
out around 10. It is so weird and slightly annoying that people here don’t go
out until at least 12. I mean, not to sound like an old lady, but I am tired by
12 haha.
Sunday was a lame day. We woke up
around 10, packed up all of our stuff, and then checked out of the hostel. They
wouldn’t let us keep our bags there without paying extra, so we had to carry
them around until our bus which left at 3:30pm.
We walked around a little, got some
coffee and donuts at a cute place called Loops and Donuts, and then decided to
check out the cathedral. The cathedral in Granada is very old and very famous,
as it has the caskets of some of the royal family. Sorry, my level of history
on these types of things is quite bad. But I do know that one of the caskets
contained the body of Isabel I, who was
the queen of Castile and Leon. And I believe her husband Fernidad’s casket is
also there with her.
The inside of the cathedral was
absolutely beautiful. Unlike anything I had ever seen. There were signs
everywhere that said no pictures or videos, but I managed to sneak a few. It
was worth the risk of getting kicked out, I swear. We spent about an hour checking
everything out, and it was so hard to imagine being alive during that time and
seeing all of that stuff in its prime days….crazy!
After we finished at the cathedral
we decided to head to the bus station because we were tired of walking around
with our giant backpacks. We had some awesome kabobs at a restaurant near the
bus station, and then boarded our bus back home to Alicante! The 5 hours went
by really slowly, but I got home around 9:30, did my homework quickly that was
due at 12, and then slept like a baby.
Granada was insanely beautiful.
There were mountains every direction, and even some with snow on top. It was
really strange seeing snow and being hot at the same time. Sorry to rub it in
to all of my Michigan people, but I got sun burned this weekend, and it never
felt so good! There are a lot of things I noticed about Granada that I want to
talk about here.
First, THE
BEGGARS. The most annoying part of the city was the beggars
EVERYWHERE. You couldn’t even eat inside of a restaurant without them coming up
to you asking for change, or trying to sell you their stuff. It was
really frustrating because it’s awkward to say no because they just stare at
you and give you this look like you’re the worst person in the world for not
helping them.
There were
some pretty cool “acts” that deserved our money. For example, while we were
eating at outdoor restaurants people would start dancing and singing and
playing music. Those people actually worked to earn some spare change, ya know?
Anyway, I didn’t like that aspect of Granada.
Another
thing I disliked was the cars. The cars were FLYING down these tiny streets
that weren’t big enough for people and cars to be walking down, and I
constantly felt like I was going to get run over by a car and die. So that was
an unpleasant experience.
One more
thing that’s really strange/annoying/gross is the bathrooms here. This isn’t
just in Granada, it’s in Alicante as well. The bathrooms are really just dirty
and gross! We were joking around because we don’t think we have ever been in a
bathroom that had all of the essentials: toilet seat, paper towel, toilet
paper, and soap. No, I’m not kidding. 50% of the bathrooms didn’t have toilet
seats. It just blows my mind.
