Tha 'Nada

(photo: hill fortress above Jaen)

This past week I spent some time planning out a trip to Granada which came to fruition in the form of a 5.5 hour bus ride from Madrid last Friday morning. I went with my housemate Carlos, and my friends Abram and Aaron. We left Madrid at 8:30 AM, and proceeded across the spanish countryside towards the famed Andalucia region. It was kind of overcast and foggy, so we didn't get a lot of good views on the way there, but we did have some good sun on the way back.

What a beautiful place! First, I'm not sure if I had ever really seen an olive tree before, at least not knowingly, but after this trip I won't ever forget what they look like. There were literally hundreds of miles of olive farms on the way to Granada, with all the trees spaced out and in grid-lines across the hillsides and mountains. Looking out the bus window the olive-covered hills stretched as far as the horizon at some points. I'm talking about a LOT of olives! The mountains and plateaus of the region were beautiful as well, and I couldn't help but wonder if we were following some of the same roads the Romans created centuries before.

We got into Granada at about 2:30 PM, and found that the bus system was surprisingly easy to navigate, and we were at our hostel within 15 minutes of arriving in the city. The hostel we stayed at was called Hostal Antares, and it was as perfect of a location as we could have asked for. It was literally right across the street from Granada's old cathedral, one of the architectural highlights of the city, and a fairly easy walk up the hill to the Alhambra. Not that these hills weren't steep, it's just that distance-wise it was very manageable.

For lunch I ate the biggest calzone I had ever seen in my entire life (the picture is on Facebook), and we did a little walking around the hillside communities near the city center. We spent the first night walking around some more and getting acquainted with the city, and we met Carlos' godmother and her family for dinner at a fantastic (and fancy) Italian restaurant where the waitstaff all used PDAs to take orders. Tres chic! After that we met up with a group of American students from Auburn who were also there for the weekend from Alcala. We went out to a hookah bar and had some really good tea and fun times hookah-ing it up. We ended up going to bed pretty early after that because we had heard the lines at the Alhambra got pretty long the later in the day you went.

We got to the Alhambra at about 9:30 AM, and took some pictures until our tour, which was scheduled for 10:30. Once we got in it was just one amazing sight after another. Everything, from the hand-laid stonework on the floors, to the intricately carved and painted walls, to the arabic arches and columns, to the water features, to the inredible view of Granada, everything was amazing. It was like a photographic gold mine! Altogether we spent almost two hours touring the palace and the surrounding areas, just taking it all in.

Afterward Carlos and Aaron went back to the hostel, and Abram and I took a walk through some new streets, taking more pictures. We also went to a local park and heard some live acoustic guitar, which was cool because the kid who was playing was actually pretty good. Altogether we had a really full weekend, but we are already planning out our next trip, probably to another city here in Spain. More to come mas tarde.