Granada

So my friends (Jay and Eric) and I decided on Thursday night that we would plan a trip to Granada this weekend. We booked our hostel for Friday and Saturday night and then went out for the evening. We stayed out pretty late on Thursday so Friday morning's busride was very rough. I didn't sleep as much as my friends and those turns up and around the mountains definitely got to me. The ride down was a total of about 5 hours. Granada is a city in the south of Spain, famous for a few things. The main attraction of the city is the Alhambra, which is a giant palace/fortress built up on the side of a mountain. Another famous attribute of the city is that it is THE city for tapas (small plates of food that accompany a drink in Spain). There are tapas in basically every city in Spain, but in Granada they give you large tapas. We arrived on Friday around 5ish to our hostel which was located in the Arab part of town. It was back up a couple streets that were filled with Arab vendors, selling everything from purses, flags, tea, lamps, hookahs and anything else you could associate with the Arab world. Our hostel was called Oasis-Granada and it was very cool. The people that worked there were very nice and me met a couple of people from our room (one of which was this mexican guy who taught us all kinds of things about mexican life/spanish-speaking life). So after we arrived at our hostel, we walked all around the area looking at different tapas bars and sampling differing kinds. At one place near our hostel, with every beer we received a whole sandwich and a plate of fries. At a chinese place, we got two rounds of drinks with tapas of 2 things of noodles, dumplings, spring rolls and chicken wings. We took naps later that evening and just kind of hung out, walking around the city. My friend Eric introduced us to shawarmas (a type of Middle Eastern sandwich wrap filled with meat and veggies). They were so good. Later on Friday night we went to a Middle Eastern place called the "Shawarma King" and the king himself (this crazy Arab dude that was big, had a massive beard and an even bigger personality) was the one that sat us. We ordered some tea and some crepes and they were very good (although he overpriced us like crazy). One of the craziest/funniest things that has ever happened to me happened when we told him we were from America. He went "Oh my God!" and started like joke hitting me and pretending to choke me and like bopped me on the head. Afterwards, we all just looked at each other and laughed so hard. I was attacked by the king. We went to bed pretty late and unfortunately had to wake up early on Saturday morning for the walk up to the Alhambra. We were there for an 8:30 tour and it was absolutely freezing. We didn't realize that the temperature in the morning would drop down to the 40s. We had on light jackets and couldn't feel our toes or hands for a good 4 hours. It was so amazing, though. The palace was huge and the Arabic architecture was some of the most incredible I have ever seen. We also had the tour guide headset things and they were an amazing idea because we got to learn so much about the history of the fortress/structures that made up the Alhambra. We then went back to the hostel for a bit to take a nap and then we went on a walking tour sponsored by our hostel. They set up a tour through the hostel that went up the mountain and around to look at the caves of the gypsies and hippies. Granada is all about living in caves. Many people live in caves that can actually be very nice (obviously not the squaters caves where the gypsies live). Our tour guide said he lived in a cave for a year (until he found a giant centipede in his bed). Needless to say, I wouldn't do it. On Saturday, we probably walked more than 5 miles in total, up and down hills mostly. We were all a little sore in our legs after that. When the tour was over, we went to more tapas bars, where we had some bagel sandwiches with some fried steak in them and another place that had a variety of fried fish as their tapas. We then went back to the hostel and napped before going out for the night. We hung out in the hostel bar for a little bit and then ended up going to a cave bar/club. It was very, very cool. They had built a club into some caves. The dance floor was on the side of a mountain and the walls were all glass so that we could have an awesome view of the Alhambra. We were there until very late/early in the morning and only got a few hours of sleep before we had to catch a bus to the bus station to come back to Madrid. Our bus to Madrid left at 10:00AM and we got back to Madrid about 3:15. Luckily, on this trip I slept for most of it. We were all starving and dead tired when we got back to the city. I just sat around the rest of the day watching tv shows and waiting to start my busy week of work. This weekend though I am traveling. On Thursday, I am going to Toledo to do some shopping and take Sam out to lunch and then on Friday-Sunday 9 of us are going to Portugal. I am not sure if I am running this half-marathon or not yet. I have been sick for a while so I haven't had any good running lately. I still have 3 days to sign up so we will wait and see.

Luke