Morocco Route

So to my current knowledge, these are all the fun places we're going to visit this week, which will involve the desert, carpets, camel rides, and all kinds of culture shock adventures. Obviously, I'll have photos when I get back! Until then, I'll be pretty much completely cut off from the world–it's super expensive to make calls from Morocco so I'm not even bringing my cell phone, but I'll be with tour guides and ISA directors who will have their phones all week, so don't worry!

Ay de mi Alhambra! (Pomegranate City, cont.)

 I have a feeling I'm about to attach a ton of photos, so I'm just separating our Granada trip into two posts. After lunch on Saturday, we met up with ISA to go visit the Alhambra. Thus the title, that was one of the first things I read in my Spanish literature class in high school, and it stuck with me I guess?

Anyway, the Alhambra, as best I can remember, was basically the final holdout of the Arabic empire during the Catholic inquisition. It means "red castle", which our tour guide was very happy to point out that also kind of translated to "colorado" (colored red) when he found out where the majority of our group was from.

They have super cool irrigation there too. I was very happy.

Also, we kind of accidentally stalked a wedding for the first part of our tour… they were just trying to take pretty photos and we were going the same direction… towards the church at the top of the hill!

Here's a palace. It's square on the outside...

…and round on the inside!! I don't recall why. But it's a pretty sweet design, especially if you look at it from above.

And there were cats all over… we don't know why.

Ladies and gentlemen, the majority of Fall 3, the lovely people I've spent the last few months with!

So this is the sneaky way that one of the Catholic kings got his two cents in without messing up the lovely arabic decoration–the double headed eagle symbolizes Carlos V of Spain & Carlos I of Austria, I believe. Don't quote me on the exact details, but I do know he was king of both and therefore had two different titles, thus two heads. The insignia is definitely not part of the original decoration though.

Arabic detailing

Old-school wallpaper

Also, it's October and the gardens still look like this. We're not in Colorado anymore.

Alhambra from the Generalife gardens on the other side of the hill. There's the church on the left, the square/circle palace in the middle at the top of the hill, and then the buildings that start on the right side and go down the hill towards the left are a series of arabic buildings with insanely detailed decorations and really pretty gardens.

So, this is the point in the tour when my friends, for whatever reason, were insanely hyper, and when we stopped for a mini-bathroom break (this was a 3 hour tour, for the record), decided that our audio tour headsets were Secret Service headsets… Which led to all kinds of nonsense, including the group decision that our ISA advisor who was with us was now El Presidente, and our tour guide making a joke about the Chinese Mafia when an asian tour group walked by a few minutes later… I can't completely explain the utter ridiculousness combined with the hilariousness of  the whole ordeal, but I promise it was funny. 

Ok but back to history & stuff now. We finished the tour of the gardens and got back on the bus, and took a little siesta at the hotel before going out to do our usual wander-then-eat evening. We tried to find a tapas place that ISA had recommended (they give us a little info sheet whenever we go on excursion, which includes restaurant recommendations like the Mexican place we found on Friday night) but it was a magical little place that apparently doesn't exist, so the group split up–half went to instant gratification at an Italian place nearby, and Britt, Matt and I went to get tapas on a street we'd been on near the hotel. After dinner, we met up with the rest of the group and went to a tetería where people could get hookah and tea and desserts, and we just stayed and talked there for the rest of our night.

Here's a photo of the sunset I took at the end of our bus ride home on Sunday, which was pretty much all we did. Unfortunately, the girl across the row from me got carsick and threw up… twice… and that was the most eventful part of my day. Glad I grew up driving mountain roads and have an iron stomach, or we could've had a real problem.  We'll just leave it at that though, no one wants to hear about that!

But when we got home, María had dinner ready for us, and had spent some of her weekend making pastries. She made the dough and everything, and they tasted like the best cream puffs you've ever had in your life. So that made me very, very happy.

Pomegranate City

Beginning your day with an 8:30 bus time is not what I would call the most fun I've ever had. Especially if you are planning to be on that bus for roughly 8 hours. We did stop twice for a quick rest stop and for lunch, but that's still a LOT of time on the bus. In any case, we arrived in Granada after 8 hours, two movies (Million Dollar Baby and Casino,), two bocadillos (sandwiches), and many, many short naps.

About an hour from Granada

After checking into the hotel, we decided to go wander the city and track down a place to eat dinner. We ended up in the shopping district, so we wandered around there for a while, ran into some pretty city scenery, and almost found the Cathedral (we could hear the bats screeching as it was getting dark, that's how we knew. The bats in Salamanca scream all the way through our French class, it's horrible.)

For dinner we found a Mexican restaurant (after wandering in the rain for a while, part of which involved me walking into a very deep puddle and soaking my shoe…). But the food was fantastic. We were all starving by the time we got our food so we downed it all in about 15 minutes from when our waitress brought out the first plate. But the food had actual spice in it!! That was a big win of the night, which made sitting there with my jeans soaked to the ankle slightly more worth it.

After being fed we were all much happier, and we headed back to the hotel to meet up with ISA for a flamenco performance. Which was also incredible. You have to have a crazy sense of rhythm and be able to move your feet to two different beats to do it, which is hard enough without adding the other moves they do. It's amazing

The next morning, we got up and had another fantastic breakfast at the hotel. I'm telling you, I'm going to miss Spanish hotel breakfasts. They serve good stuff, and there's no syrup involved which I actually really love.

After breakfast, we walked up to the Capilla Real, where the Reyes Catolicos (Ferdinand & Isabella) are buried along with their daughter, Juana la Loca and her husband. Photos were technically prohibited… but that never stopped an army of college students armed with digital cameras, right?

Outside of the Capilla–this was technically acceptable.

The graves beneath their pretty marble carvings up above

Yeah I took this photo of the altar without looking. Sneaky awesomeness.

So if you ever studied Columbus in school, there's always a photo of this cool box that the King & Queen give him before he sails off to the Americas… turns out the box is real!

After the chapel, we did more tourist shopping, obviously. We're really good at that. And just wandering cities in general. It's the best way to see it sometimes. We ended up in a marketplace where everything was all shoved together and it was hard to tell one store from the next one, because they all carry roughly the same set of merchandise. I got some postcards, but nothing too exciting.

 Oh yeah, and we found this fountain next to the awesome kebab place we ate lunch. Foods America needs to start loving more: kebabs and peach juice. They don't have to be together, although that's not bad either...

3 Días en Córdoba: Sunday

Sunday morning began with breakfast at El Olivo. Orange juice and tostada again, this time with jelly.
(PS–look at Friday & Saturday too, Saturday has the best photos by far)

Next, we went to the Museo de la Inquisición, which was essentially a torture museum with rusty metal artifacts that were once used in all sorts of gruesome ways. 

Probably a little too happy for someone in the stocks...

We also wandered the town some more, then ate lunch in another Spanish cafe. After lunch, we went to a sandwich place Kristi ate at when she was in Córdoba two years ago, ordered sandwiches to go, and then went to pick up our backpacks from the hostel so we could get on the train back to Madrid.

Kristi's name in Aarabic

Puente Romano again

 Lamps in a souvenir shop

On the Renfe train

And this exists at the train station in Madrid… there's an accompanying one with its eyes closed too

Train station in Madrid

I finally arrived home when it was almost midnight, and realized I did not have my keys anywhere accessible. Turns out they were in my makeup bag, I just didn't know it at the time. Luckily, the Spanish keep very different hours than those of the US, so María was still up when I rang the doorbell!

And then I uploaded and sorted through 400 photos of this city and went to bed at an obnoxiously late hour. Oops.

3 Días en Córdoba: Saturday

So Saturday morning, we all miraculously were up and out of the hostel by 9:00 AM. Amazing. And well worth it, because even though I would've paid to go into the Mezquita, going early meant we also avoided the clusters of tourist groups that like to invade these places. And the mosque is amazing–there's nothing quite like realizing you're in a place you've seen photos of for years. It was a little strange because even though it is also a mosque, the Catholic influence was strong enough that it really felt like a church in a lot more ways. The central part of the mosque, in the middle of all those columns and arches, is designed to be a Catholice cathedral, where they were actually holding mass while we were visiting. Photos not permitted while in session. Luckily, I took mine before mass, when they were just playing the organ–a great addition to the ambiance while visiting.

Arabic arches

Catholic time

Combined religions

The bell tower–and the palm trees

So, roughly 50 photos later, we'd done a lap of the huge expanse that is the mezquita, and ventured into the courtyard. My favorite part of the courtyard was the irrigation system they'd put in place so the fountain would water the trees eventually. Today, they also use a hose to get the job done (something I referred to as the "modern marble of plumbing" in my early-morning, not-yet-eaten-breakfast state), but I loved the design of it.

Courtyard walls

When we were done taking photos, we decided it was breakfast time–the idea that we could survive the whole morning on apples was not our best one. Plus, we had to make an attack plan for the day, so we went to a cafe called Oh La Lá, where I had the best tostada con tomate y jamón, café con leche, and zumo de naranja. Also known as toast with tomato and ham, coffee with milk, and orange juice. Or also known as my absolute favorite Spanish breakfast food.

 

Our attack plan first took us to the Puente Romano–another thing every Spanish city seems to have. There is almost always a Cathedral, and if there's a river, there will be a Roman bridge. 

While at the bridge, we met a man who does impressionist paintings on little slides of glass with his fingers. And they're amazing, so we bought some, and picked out the ones that depicted the white walls of Córdoba with the flower pots that are on every single window.

Next, we were considering going to the hostel for a short rest before lunch… but then we ran into the Alcázar de los Reyes. I don't even know how to describe this place, except that we took about 150 photos of the towers and the gardens–see below.

This is Kristi trying to drink the water even though they put a sign up that it's not drinkable...

Mila & I

After the Alcázar, we went to lunch at a place called 5 Arcos–in honor of the million Arabic arches all over town. This food was not exactly a winner, but it was good enough for a pre-siesta snack.

Also pre-siesta, we wandered around town and found Calleja de los Flores (it has more flowers than your average street) and the itty bitty little skinny street that requires you to go single file through it.

After siesta, we went to a Moroccan place we'd seen the first day, which advertised belly dancing at 8:00 on Saturdays. We thought we'd have dinner there, but unfortunately they were only serving drinks and pastries. So we all drank tea or juice and ate a baklava and watched the belly dancer, and then promptly decided we wished we could do something like that. The girl has some real skills.

Then, it was really dinner time. We found a fantastic tapas place, Taberna de la Tapa, where the waiter was super nice, there was a fútbol game on, and the tapas were pretty much your typical Spanish fare. Also a great dinner find. The waiter even recognized us the next day when we were walking around town! Oh, and I tried blood pudding, Mom & Dad! (Ten years after I was supposed to in London… better late than never?) It wasn't quite as terrible as I'd imagined when I was 9, but still not my favorite. What was my favorite was queso ovejo, the cheese tapa we ordered, which was also on the tostada with tomato and jamón that we ate. Simply delicious.

Om nom nom, tapas.

We wandered around town for a while after dinner, took some silly photos, and ran into a totally random parade/procession of some kind that involved a marching band and a lot of religious-looking things that we don't understand. It was either a funeral or some kind of religious ritual, we just have no idea which. And may never actually find out.