Granada-the city of tapas :)

Well this is a few weeks late.. I got so excited after the Budapest weekend that I forgot to finish this blog about Granada!-Another great city in spain that I love! Mainly for the architecture and free tapa with a beer at every restaurant. That's what Granada is known for and I am completely fine with that :) A beautiful city, La Alhambra, and tapas makes for a fun 2 days with our program! I wish I could have stayed longer, but I'll have to save that for my next trip to Spain I think.

After learning about King Ferdinand and Isabel, I so admire them. They were such a cool couple! Like, literally. They seemed to be really laid back but still made really good decisions for Spain. And as the king and queen of a country that was so divided, their marriage literally brought the two sides together. Not to mention they're Catholic, they had a great relationship that the country really admired. When they came to Granada, they decided to stay there for it's beauty and cathedrals. The Moors/muslims had control of the area, so instead of destroying all that resembled moorish values, they kept them and restored them and made them even better (aka the Alhambra, and this Cathedral).

We toured this beautiful Catedral de Ferdinand y Isabel-gorgeous.

Another reason why I love Isabel so much brings me back to my Seton education :) Christopher Columbus went to Ferdinand and Isabel (mainly Isabel) to ask for the money to make the voyage to discover America! Hellooo!! Now she's definitely on my top 10 admirers list. I remembered this well known fact on the way to the cathedral, when we passed by this statue. Funny how you forget those little details..

It's Christopher Columbus either asking or receiving the treasure to make the trip! Inside the Catedral, we also saw the actual treasure box that Isabel handed Columbus the cash in. How cool! I guess I forgot to take a picture of it, but I thought that was awesome. His hands were literally touching that and it made it all the way to America (maybe..?)

After the tours, we wandered around and found some great deals in the stores! A trip couldn't be complete without a little souvenir, right? Abby got some really nice real spanish leather boots on sale, obviously, and i found some super cheap booties that all the spanish people wear and are really cute :)

That evening, CIEE took us to a flamenco show in the cave houses that the gypsies live in. They actually live in them. When they want a bigger house, they just dig further. Weird right? No, COOL! They were like real houses with pictures on the walls and tile floors and everything. And the flamenco was so good! Luckily in our spanish class on Monday they brought in an instructor and we all learned how to flamenco. It was so cool I wish we had good dancing like they have here. Like actual dance moves. I'm definitely going to practice so I can try to stomp around like these ladies did! The shoes and dress make the scene, but it was really fun!

The trip there was on the smallest windy roads down the steepest hills I have ever seen. Imagine driving through the mountains to Colorado on those steep, curvy roads, but cut the roads into thirds... That's like what it was like. On a rickety bus! Scary, but we made it :)

An evening wouldn't be complete without the sangria!

We went back to have some tapas before getting ready to go out for our one night in Granada.

my friends-abby, kim, and allison enjoying some cervesa

So the club may or may not have been in a mall.. But it was so cool! Like Madrid status. packed with people and we met some kids from Notre Dame studying in Toledo for the semester who were there too! Crazy.

The discoteca, called Mae West. Western style with pictures of her all over

The Latino room had awesome music and these really good dancers were salsa dancing! Once again, awesome real dance moves. They even showed you how and Abby and I were amazed at the skill of these people. We obviously went up to talk to them after they got off stage, in Spanish of course, and I got told my Spanish was good! That's so exciting! I'm definitely getting better. Abby met a guy, Dag, from Norway who spoke English and was about six foot eight, hence the reason she spotted him.. Everyone else was shorter than 5'8 for sure.. We were tired, and I was hungry, so I got a hot dog and we headed home :)

Saturday CIEE had a long day of touring for us. The Alhambra. Allll morning. But they luckily chose the tour in English otherwise none of us would have had a clue what she was talking about. What a gorgeous palace! The views over the mountains (where people were skiing!), elaborate gardens, and typical spanish architecture of mosaics and tile inside. And of course, many fountains.

view from one of the balconies of one side of Granada

pretty tiles! i want my house to have cool mosaics some day

an awesome pond in the middle of this fortress

The actual history of the Alhambra is pretty cool too. I wasn't really paying attention for the whole thing because it was early and we were out late, but it had been used as a palace by the Moors for years and took a really long time to build. When Christians took over, they didn't discover it's beauty for a while and it had been kind of neglected for a long time. One of the kings made it his project to restore and now it is one of the most treasured places in Spain! The architecture is beautiful. Like nothing I've ever seen before.

the lion fountain in the middle has been being worked on for over 10 years and has cost over like 2 million euros or something to restore. We were the first CIEE group to be able to see it finished for a long time!

love early morning tours... not.

some pretty gardens in the middle of it somewhere

My favorite part were the gardens! This place is literally massive. And it's all outside, like there are no sealed doors anywhere. Must be nice to have a climate that you can do that because i would be freezing if we didn't have doors!! Well, it does get kind of chilly in January here, regardless of the "mild" climate.. So we walked all over this huge place and after what seemed like miles, wandered around these beautiful gardens! 

so many fountains and ponds :)

After the tour, Jennifer had this great idea to drop us off on top of a huge mountain 2 miles from the city center to have us "explore" and walk down steep cobblestone streets after walking miles already for hours. Keep in mind we hadn't eaten in 6 hours either.. Everyone was so miserable and starving! We complained so much and just wanted to leave, but they thought we'd like to see the view.. It was pretty cool, but I didn't need any more pictures of granada.. As we attempted to run down to the city center for lunch, who do we run into, but Dag! Abby's Dutch friend from last night! Crazy... we seem to have this weird thing with meeting people on trips and then seeing them everywhere after that! fate.

Once we got a yummy kebap in us, we were ready to wander around some more and see granada before heading to the bus. Kebap's are this turkish food that are really popular in spain, kind of like the taco bell of the US. Its meat that looks like a gyro, as in it's this huge round chunk of meat that they shave off little pieces. You can get chicken or pork and they're realllyyy good. With these 2 sauces, one's white garlic kind of and the other is like tomato something or other. With lettuce and tomato, yummm. I like them just the meat on a plate, but it's also popular to have them in a tortilla like a wrap. Found the food i like now :)

We only had 1 night in Granada, so back to Alicante for the night to my cozy dorm. This was so long ago now I forgot I had moved in to the dorms 2 days before going to granada and i was so excited to come home to a warm room where my stuff hadn't been all moved and cleaned while i was gone!

-k