Granada (Probably the Fairest of them All)

This I have a problem with in Spain—that Spanish streets are not labeled in the way I am accustomed to. Streets are often unlabeled, and when they are, it’s on the side of a building, so you have to go around the corner sometimes to find what the street is. I have almost never been able to get to the hostel right the first time. Such was the case with Granada.

I did, however, get to the hostel, and met Anna from Finland, who is moving to Granada to study at the University for a semester. We decided to go out and get tapas together—for in Granada, tapas are free when you buy a drink. Woo! I unfortunately have no pictures of tapas so I shall have to rely on my descriptive powers. The guy at the front desk of the hostel had recommended a certain street for tapas bars not far from the hostel, which we found strangely not as happening as we expected. (It turns out we were at the wrong end of the street.) Neither of us knew what we were doing—we agreed it would have been useful to have a Spanish person with us—so we just went into the first bar that looked good and ordered dos cervezas y queso de cabra con tomate para ella y tortilla de atún para mí [two beers and goat cheese and tomato for her and a tuna omelet for me] The tortilla de atún was actually like an egg sandwich with tuna in it—not the best. The bread was dry and the tortilla not particularly flavorful, but eh, I was hungry. Also, I like beer better than I thought I would. Better than wine surprisingly. And cerveza sounds so much more elegant than beer. Anna’s doing an exchange program called Erasmus, and she’s studying international relations. And she only has half a year of Spanish! So brave to come and live here!

I’ve decided that I really like the tapas tradition of dinner—you get to eat slowly and lots of different things—and enjoy conversation. I’m really glad that we got to go out together, because tapas by myself would not have been very fun.

The next bar we went to, La Bella y la Bestia [Beauty and the Beast] allegedly had the best free tapas. And the cool thing is, I don’t remember if that sign was in English or in Spanish (I just realized that might sound like I was drunk. It’s cool because it means that I’m thinking in Spanish). Anyway, they were pretty good tapas. We each ordered a drink for €2 (Fanta limón for the win!) and each got a plate of tapas with some fries, a melted cheese and ham on bagel sandwich, and a scoop of plain pasta with a cream cheesey dressing. Dinner for under €5!

Goal number one for Granada: Eat free tapas—successful!

So that was the night I got there. Are you ready for the full day?

Granada is beautiful, as I said in the title, probably the most beautiful of the cities I have visited so far. 

El Albaycin

When I woke up Saturday morning, I was ready to be done traveling. But then I made plans for the day. I headed out to a walking tour of the city, this one led by an English fellow. (all these free walking tours—including free accents!) This walking tour was better than the one in Valencia though. Our guide had obviously been in Granada for a while and knew it very well. He said multiple times something to the effect of “I love old people stories—just hearing the stories they have to tell.” Implying that he had taken time to listen to old people and hear the stories they had to hear. So he gave us an informative and very entertaining tour of Old Granada (mostly the Albaycin—the Arabic quarter). He gave us a brief history of Granada via pantomime. I was Thomas somebody or other—advisor to Queen Isabella, another girl was Isabella, and another girl was Columbus “a sexy Italian with because you have those big sunglasses—Italians are always wearing big sunglasses.” So basically, the Moors in Granada lived pretty peacefully alongside “Christian Spain” for many years because they paid tax to the Spanish monarchs. It wasn’t until Ferdinand and Isabella when Granada was basically bought and then conquistadored.

These two women were also on my Valencia tour! Small world!

Unlike Barcelona and Valencia, Granada is hilly—would not be good for bike riding. We walked up and down winding, narrow streets, looking out occasionally—sooo pretty. Our guide, who’s name I don’t actually remember, knew a lot about the architecture and explained why a lot of things were built like they were, which was really interesting. Most of it was for defense. Steps are uneven because if your enemy has to concentrate on the steps, that’s less concentration they have for attacking. Doors are short because it’s hard to ride a horse through them. Streets are narrow for the same reason. British and Japanese drive/ride on the left side of the road so their sword arm is available to attack (or shake hands if whoever you’re passing is a friend) Napolean changed the rest of Europe because he was left handed and the US is different because we wanted to be contrary to the British apparently.

Remains of an old bridge.

These cacti looked like they were trying to escape!

We ended up at a viewpoint where you can look out at Granada and the Alhambra—very beautiful and not fully capturable via the lens of a camera.

I had a very expensive, but good, lunch and discovered that I really like espresso actually. Then I walked up to the Alhambra and looked at the gardens (because tickets were sold out for the actual palace) but I actually think the walk up was just as pretty as the gardens.

Sitting in the plaza listening to guitar music!

From the walk up. (Apparently the Moors were also genius engineers and a whole aqueduct system directing water into the Alhambra.

Part of the gardens

View from Generalife--part of the Alhambra. The keyhole shaped window is signature of Arabic architecture.

That night I went to tapas again with Anna and also a German girl (I think her name was Freya but I really don’t remember.) We actually went to a Japanese tapas bar—yay for cultural crossover! And we had good conversations over cerveza and spring rolls.  Because people in hostels are from so many places, English seems to be the common language. I have it easy.

And—I’m happy to report, I made it to the train station the next morning without getting lost at all! And now I’m in Madrid. I’m actually in a McDonalds :S because the wifi (pronounced weefee here) at the hotel is really slow. But I’m having espresso and they have a bakery case with croissants and cookies and stuff, McDonalds seem to be classier here.  Anyway, I’m reducing the quality of my pictures before I upload them, so hopefully I will be able to post more often. 

Mmm. If you want to pray for me--please pray that I would be seeking to know God and how cool he is more, so that I would not be trying to make other people to think I'm cool, but so they will just see how cool God is by what he's doing with me. 

You can thank God for keeping me healthy and safe and safely to Madrid.

Thank you for reading!