Granada

This weekend, Cecilia, Erin and I went to Granada, which is only 1.5 hours away by bus. Granada is a relatively small city, but still much larger than Priego. We got there Friday afternoon and found our hostel before heading out to explore. Erin and Cecilia were especially excited to go to Zara and El Corte Inglés. Zara is basically the H&M of Spain (it can be found all over the world). I like the store, but it was crazy busy and I couldn’t really find anything I wanted to buy. El Corte Inglés is a huge department store. We went to look at food that we couldn’t get in Priego (aka a lot of things). My tea supply is doing well, so there was nothing really that I needed to buy. (They didn’t have Cheerios or Life cereal…forget about Kashi.)

That night, we went out for tapas. Tapas are small portions which in Granada arrive free with drinks. The first place served us atún con tomate (tuna with tomato-a personal fave) on bread. The second one served potatoes stuffed with shredded beats, carrots, corn and sour cream. The potatoes were really also really seasoned. The third tapas place was where Jess’s boyfriend works. (She’s also teaching in Priego.) His tapas included pasta salad (which had some weird flavorless sauce on it), potato chips with spicy sauce on them and mini ham and cheese paninis. The bread and cheese was pretty good, the rest of the stuff was pretty bad.

Saturday morning we woke up early and ate toast and tea in the hostel. Then we climbed the hill to the Alahambra, which was a former palace for Muslim rulers. We started in the gardens and the summer house, both of which were lavishly panted and well-maintained. From there we walked around and went into the bath house, climbed a look-out tower, and then went into the palaces. Muslim architecture incorporates a lot of finely carved arches which are ornately decorated. Every surface has a pattern and many have color as well (although the color has worn over time). Ceilings were carved to look like cave rock formations. Water runs throughout the palaces and gardens. There were a lot of people there, but not too many which made it easy to move through the buildings.

After touring the Alahambra (for hours) we had shwarma for lunch (pita bread with chicken and veggies). Then we went back to the hostel to relax a bit before heading to the somewhat unimpressive Capilla Real (Royal Chapel) where Ferdinand and Isabella are buried in an underground crypt (which you can see). Next we continued our shopping excursion by visiting every kind of tourist shop imaginable. We finished our tourism overload by going to Plaza San Nicolas where the views of the Alahambra are superb. We got cold while waiting for the sun to set so we went to a café where the girls got chocolate caliente (hot chocolate), which is super thick and hard to drink. While watching the sunset, there was a party/public art project going on: people put paper flowers in their hair and danced around before trying to form a garden. It was lively and interesting.

After that we hung out at the hostel before heading out for more tapas. This time we went to a place where we could chose our free tapa. I had bacalao, which is a salty cod-like fish. It came in a little dish with potato and onion and spices. At the next place we got empanadas, which brought me right back to Argentina, except they were fried which was pretty gross. Next, the girls wanted croquetas-fried balls of mashed potatoes and ham (just as bad as it sounds). For our final tapa, we went to a third bar and had fried calamari. We went to bed (me feeling gross from fried foods).

Sunday we slept late and walked around the city a little more before having tea at one of the tea houses. I was dying to try the tea, but was let down by the experience because the food was not that great and the tea was rather weak and flavorless. My tabouli had barely any parsley in it and was made with couscous instead of bulgar wheat.

We liked Granada a lot and plan on going back, especially because it is only 1.5 hours away. I’ll probably go back when I need good tea.