Granada

We have definitely been putting off the blog lately because our time has been constantly used up by making plans for the holidays. But we’ll get to that later. First I should tell you about Granada.

Granada was a magical as the name itself sounds. We recently discovered that the word granada means pomegranate in Spanish. It is a very old tourist town paved with cobblestone through winding narrow streets. The tiny cars can just squeeze through so if you are on foot or on bike, you must find a place to step off the street if one is passing. We felt like we were in a fairy tale that took place in the 1600´s. Everything was basically the same. We took a big bus to Granada then had to navigate around with our heavy backpacks until we found our bus. The bus that our directions said to stay on until it starts going uphill around a corner… When we asked the bus driver about the street we were supposed to find, he said it wasn’t there, but we followed our directions and jumped off. Luckily we chose just the right spot at our cross streets that were in our directions (bear in mind we did not have a map). We headed uphill for 30 seconds (as the directions again stated) and found the flamenco bar that we were supposed to turn left at head up the stairs until we see cacti, then take a right where there would be cacti on our left again, and finally another left. Well it was quite a treck up many stairs, and I am not going to lie, Blake assisted me in getting me and my bag up all of those stairs. We walked by a little place that had some hippie looking folk, and thought maybe that is our hostel…but there was no name and no number. So we just walked up a little farther to find a completely naked mad just standing outside his door talking on his phone… If that wasn´t strange enough we walked a little further and saw about 10 cats in one spot. Then we realized we had gone in a circle and we were back a the place we thought was our hostel. Someone stopped us this time and said, you´ve been here before. We were confused, and he said he just had seen us walk by. Well that ended up being the place. It was situated up on the mountain below the caves that the gypsies live in.

The view was stunning. If you look up the Alhambra online, you will most likely see the view that we had. It is the only place where you can see the entire place, and a little farther up, the entire city all the way till the snow capped Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance. This place was incredible. The people that stay at this place are extremely chill. A great example of living simply...with few things in mean. The decor was not simple however. There is a local street art artist that paints incredible murals all over Granada and he had obviously been inside this place with his work. The walls were covered in all sorts of artsy things, including the murals. Our room was not any less decked out as the photos show. They had a dog named Pokie because he had a lazy ear and the other stood straight up, and a cat named Bob. We became quick friends with everyone staying there as we all shared our stories of traveling the world...besides us, every single person staying there was done with school, took a break from jobs, and were literally just traveling all over, scrimping a few Euros for food and places to stay.

We walked around for a while enjoying the warm air, went to some shops and checked out all of the intricately detailed beautiful Arabian décor and trinkets. When we were walking along the main cobblestone road which run along a small river, we noticed cats roaming around all over along the river bed. It was like a little colony. And they were beautiful, we saw one Siamese, and a Persian down there. We stopped at a Moroccan tea shop and had the best tea I have ever had and some crepes. As soon as the sun started to go down we realized how cold it was getting. We went back to the hostel to get bundled up and some of the people hanging out there were going to a flamenco show, so we decided to tag along. We went to one place and it was completely full, so we tried another…it was 20 euro per person! We walked on. We found another but it was not starting for another 2 hours and it was free! We said we would come back, and in the mean time we all went to get some free tapas. Granada is known for them. When you go into most restaurants or bars they give you a free tapa for every drink you have. We ended not even going to a Spanish place, but instead an Asian food place that gave out awesome noodle tapas. When we were full and feeling great, we hiked up the hill for the 5^th time that day to do to the show. It was very interesting. There were no flamenco dancers as you might imagine, just the musicians. It was very loud and energetic, and Blake and I could only take it for about a half hour before we stared dozing off. We decided it was time for us to go to bed because we had been up for a little over 20 hours. It was tough staying warm in our open air room, but we felt pretty lucky to have a bed that night. Some people stopped by the hostel to find that it was full, and the hosts sent them up the hill to see if there was room in a cave with a gypsy friend of hers.

The next day we got up, made some breakfast, got some of the free bikes the hostel lends out, and were off for the day. We had to carry our bikes quite a bit down the endless stair pathways and once we were riding for a while realized that this city was not very bike friendly, car friendly, or foot friendly. It was just hard to get around period. But, I guess that is what made it so beautiful and incredible. We wanted to start off for the Alhambra, because we found out that you have to buy tickets online at least a day ahead, or you could get lucky and get tickets for that day or night if you went up there.It is a very, very, large and steep climb to get there and we ended up walking our bikes up the entire way. We got there only to find out that the Alhambra is no building like we imagined (having done no research at this point), but an entire little village with palaces and gardens built by the Moorish rulers in the 14^th century. It was incredible. Every inch of many of the palaces were completely decorated with molded designs and mosaics. The Alhambra has gone through many changes, and many rulers through the re-conquering of Spain. If you would like to read about it check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra.

After the Alhambra we were extremely tired since we were so unprepared at the amount of time it would take to go through it all. Luckily the ride down on our bikes was super easy. We flew down the huge hill that took us 45 min to walk up. We headed back to the hostel carried our bikes back up all of those stairs and took a nap. Later that night we heard about an art festival that was going on and thought we had to check it out. When we finally found our way there, we found that it was a bit of a wilder crowd than we had imagined. We thought there would be food and art there, but found only the most extreme hippies from all over the land having their own little festival. We decided to split and find some food. Not that they didn’t look like a fun crowd, we literally had no energy left and just wanted to sit down, eat, and listen to relaxing music. We walked around the town and found an incredible spot to view the entire city, then found some food, and called it a night.

On Sunday we had some time to kill before our bus headed back to Madrid, so we set off to find some guitar shops. We did find one. We went inside to find a man widdling away on his beautiful instruments. He had three of the most amazing guitars we have seen that he had fabricated hanging on the wall. He also had a collection of antique guitars sitting around. Blake was interested in his story and the guitars and he tried to make light conversation, but the man did not want anything to do with us. All he said after we stood there for a while was, “There is nothing under 2,000 euro here.” We clearly could see that but we were still interested. We finally got out of him that he was a VERY well known fabricator and only the best of the best of professional flamenco players go to him. We were about to leave and we asked if he had a card…that was a mistake. He looked pretty upset and said in Spanish, “I have my name.” We decided to leave then; no guitar. We then went to check out the street art that was all over one street, and found a really cool restaurant. It was 5 floors high and had a terrace at the top and the entire place was covered in colorful pottery that was screwed into the walls all over the inside and out. We of course went all the way up to the terrace in the empty restaurant and made the waiter go up and down all of those stairs just to serve us. I think he was quite used to it. We had a huge bowl of tomato soup and a margarita pizza that we shared. It was the perfect end to our day and we were quite satisfied with our trip to Granada.

Caitlin

This was our view from the hostel!

At the Alhambra

Checkin out some street art

Outdoor public workout park Artsy Pizza place we ate at on the terrace


Pokie the dog Blake in front of Rambutan Hostel