ALHAMBRA

FEBRUARY 5!

molly with her inhaler...this will make more sense later..

We visited the Alhambra yesterday, and it was INCREDIBLE. It is only a 15-20 minute walk away from where I live, and is a Moorish city that was built in the 12^th century. It looks more like a fortress or a castle, but our guide told us it was just a city when it was functioning back in the day. We went up to the uppermost part of it, and it looks out over the entire city. The view was amazing and I took tons of pictures. The day started out really sunny and hot, but as has happened on most days lately, it began to pour down rain and it got very cold, very fast as we were standing on this uppermost point. Luckily I had brought my umbrella, but my friend Molly, who was in the group we were assigned to for the tour with me, didn’t. This detail will become important later in the story.

So we toured the Alhambra and within it there is a huge palace that was built for the king at the time. He was a polygamist and there are 4 doors in the courtyard of the palace, that lead into its side walls, that represent each of these wives. We saw the bathing room for the women and all of the other things within the palace. It’s condition was amazing seeing as it was built almost 1000 years ago. After the tour of the palace we were given the option to go home or go visit the gardens and “general life” area that was about a 5 minute’s walk away from the other buildings. Molly and I decided to stay and see the gardens since we had already paid for the tour and were right there. This decision proved to be our downfall.

After touring the gardens, it was time to go home, and walk back to the city. Unfortunately, the way we came up was not the same way we were supposed to go down and back into Granada, so being with Molly (disaster follows her, I am convinced. If you don’t believe me, please recall the ski trip story), we got lost, and in a hurry. Immediately it begins downpouring again. So we are alone (well not alone, but just her and I), in the middle of nowhere, with one umbrella, in the torrential rain, and above all, LOST. Luckily darkness had not fallen yet, that would have made things sooo much worse.

So after walking up hill (we walked up hill to get there, so we know this cannot be right) for about 5 minutes, Molly and I decide to stand on a corner where cars are coming out and try to get one’s attention. This wouldn’t seem like it would be a hard task, but since we were told by our teacher that Granadans are known for being the rudest/most ass-hole people in all of Spain, it was! One car that was a family drove by, we waved to get their attention, they simply waved back and kept driving (keep in my mind we are two drenched, blonde-haired girls, sharing an umbrella, in the middle of nowhere, on a nonbusy street corner. It is MORE than obvious that we needed some kind of assistance.).

Finally a car stops and tells us to just walk towards the “ciudad” sign. So we begin to do this and realize we are on a highway that is just winding around and around as we get no closer to the city we can see down below us. We unanimously (molly and I) decide we will stop at the nearest restaurant to sit and try to get out of the rain for a while. We find a little place and sit down with our jeans soaked through and my shoes filled with water (good times). Luckily the Granadans serve food with all drink orders, so Molly and I order the Alhambra beer that is the most common throughout Granada and we are served these croquette things that are sort of like mozzarella sticks and then some green olives. Our next drink (it was still raining, we were miserable, we decided to go for round 2) we got a really good hot vegetable mix that was in a red sauce, it was awesome. The owner also cooked us up a chorizo hot dog on the grill, it was INCREDIBLE, and he also gave us some bread. The total for 4 beers and all that food was only 8 euro, pretty bomb. The nice man who owned it gave us some directions on how to get home, so we left, still in the rain, to continue our adventure.

VIEW OF CITY FROM ALHAMBRA

We walked down this creepy small road (we would have NEVER found how to get home, it was the most obscure way to go, thank god we stopped in the restaurant) and ended up walking through what looked to be the slums of Granada. It was getting to be dark, but thankfully these winding roads with graffiti filled walls led us back into the city. Molly has been sick and had to stop and take a puff of her inhaler, it looks really mature when she does this in public, let me tell you. Once back into town we busted out Molly’s horribly ruined map and tried to figure out where we were, but ended up just asking someone on the street how to get home. When we finally saw a recognizable landmark near our dorms, we knew we had made it and were so relieved. It took about an hour and a half to get home for what took most people 20, so that was really cool.

That night (last night) we went out to a tapas bar to eat (yes, don’t judge, we had eaten a bunch of food earlier) and drink some beer and sangria. Afterwards we went to Paddy’s pub where a bunch of API students were, and then I called it a night around 2:30 when I came home and skyped with Jenna and Kelsey.

Tomorrow is my roommate Leah’s 22 bday, so we will be going out for that, I’m sure there will be plenty of stories.

We finally ended our refresher classes today, so we have off until Wednesday! I tested into the level I was supposed to, so I won’t have to change any of my classes, which is good, because my schedule is pretty great. And all my classes are in Spanish, yay!

Mondays and Wednesdays

I have political systems of the European Union from 10:00-11:30. We get to learn all about whats going on with the EU currently and we have debates according to the syllabus, we have debates most days during class.

I also have Spanish Art-Baroque to the 21^st Century. (SO excited about this, we get to go on lots of field trips and I’m weirdly/creepily obsessed with old art and architecture-especially Baroque! It is from 11:30 to 1.

Tuesdays and Thursdays

I have Business Spanish class which is learning how the infrastructures of businesses work and also hopefully learning some useful vocab for the bix world. Unfortunately, this class is from 8:30-10 am, yikes. Luckily though, Molly is in it too, so hopefully we can drag one another there.

My second class these days is a History of Spain class from Franco to present day. I’m really excited about this class too, I think I just really like history. This is from 11:30-1, so I’m not sure what I’ll do during the break, maybe I can find somewhere cool to go during it.

So MW from 10-1 and TTH from 8:30-1, no Friday class, and I’m done before lunch every day! I do have one other class that is like a grammatical class (annoying) so hopefully this class doesn’t throw off my schedule completely.

Having all afternoons off and no Friday classes is going to be awesome, and will help a lot when we want to travel on weekends. We can get going Thursday afternoons instead of Fridays, so yayyyy for an extra day of vacationing time!

palace at the alhambra
me and molly jumping, como siempre
alhambra
superbowl sunday