Cordoba and Granada

sunrise in Madrid

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Friday morning we had to meet at 8am but apparently part of the metro was closed so we ended up having to wait for

half the group for an hour!! Lame…after the 6 or so hour bus ride (I slept, watched Volver, listened to Ipod) we walked to our hotel. Ali and Max were waiting there for us at the hotel which was literally across the street from the famous mosque! We checked into our rooms (pretty nice place!) and headed out for some food. Max, Vadim, Jess and I wandered through the Jewish area and sat at a little bar to have potatoes and Cordoba’s specialty vegetable sauce and bread (tasted like garlic ranch sorta). Next stop was the mesquita (mosque) where they gave us a tour (in spanish of course) about how there are so many different parts to it all built throughout the centuries by different people of different religions. Very pretty and interesting. We had a small walking tour of the Jewish area and saw fountains and plazas of importance (Max tagged along for that too). They gave us more free time to get dinner, get dressed and then meet up for a flamenco show. Ali led us to a fun little bar/restaurant (like in Sevilla) with the taps in the middle of the table. We had more tapas there for dinner. We had to walk a ways to get there and back, through the jewish area to the main center which was surprisingly busy! Lots of shops and tons of people out! We headed back to meet with the group and went to a flamenco show at 1030. It was great! There were guys playing guitar (so fast!) and other who sang and clapped and of course the dancers. They made such funny faces when dancing, very serious and focused. After that, we were all pretty tired from the day of travel we just passed out at the hotel. Saturday we had to get up fairly early to enjoy the buffet breakfast and hop on the bus to go to Granada. It was only about 2 hours away. We watched James Bond on the way over to make the ride go by quickly. We got to Granada and had to walk a bit to our hotel. Location wasn’t as great at this place (on the outskirts, by the freeway) but we each basically had apartments instead of rooms... it was like an upgraded version of the freshmen dorms! We were right next to a Cortes Ingles (huge expensive type WalMart) so Jess and I walked there for some lunch. After a quick nap, we took the bus over to the Alhambra as a group. It was really beautiful. There are gardens and fountains all over the place and incredible detail in the architecture. It was a huge palace/fortress with Muslim décor and architecture. Very cool. After a long 3 or so hour tour we went back to the hotel for a few hours. I showered, got ready and then we had dinner at the hotel at 830. It was buffet style, typical (disgusting) Spanish food. I basically had a lot of bread, cheese, and fruit. The rest was ham, greasy ham, or fried ham. Afterwards we went back to our rooms/apartments and actually all hung out in one of the guys’ room. It was so fun. Sunday we got up, had buffet breakfast (not too great) and back on the bus to the center of town. We went to the cathedral there (which we couldn’t go inside because it was Sunday and they were in the middle of service), the chapel (where King Ferdinand, Queen Isabel, their crazy daughter Juana and her husband Carlos are buried). We had 2 hours to tour on our own, so we roamed the streets (which was very Moroccan-like, or how I would imagine it) filled with shops selling incense, lights, candles, etc. We stopped for lunch at Doner Kabop (Turkish food stands that are all over Spain-like pita sandwhiches). Back on the bus for a six hour ride home, where we watched Something’s Gotta Give and Matchpoint. We stopped at a restpoint, where I had a diet Coke and filled Max in (by phone) on the rest of my weekend. We finally made it home, to find tortilla Espanola and soup left for us because Loty had gone to the opera. Jess bought a movie (called Once- indie film about a couple in Dublin) from a guy on the street for 3 euros. She was so excited to watch it (its one of her faves) but when we put it on, we realized it was horrible. It was in Spanish (really bad dubbing), with fuzzy picture and a blurry line across it. That was disappointing so we just went to bed. Such a busy weekend, but so fun!!