Granada - Wednesday, Feb. 25

Parque de los Pajaros - 100s of birds! Don't walk into it without an umbrella!

We checked out of our hostel early Wednesday morning after grabbing a quick breakfast at Nebraska (someone had a craving for pancakes). Casey was shocked to find that even in the restaurant "Nebraska" people still didn't speak English, which provided for a good laugh. That's like insisting that the waiters at Bertucci's should all speak fluent Italian. I had some delicious pastry at Nebraska, even if it was a bit overpriced. It's hard to gauge coming from Dublin, which is extremely expensive as far as food goes.

The bus ride to Granada took a little over 5 hours. Madrid is closer to the center of Spain, while Granada is in the south along the Mediterranean. The movie playing was none other than Air Bud. Sometimes I'm shocked at what stuff makes it over to Europe and what doesn't. I imagine people most hold very strange views on American culture if they've never visited the States. The 5 hour journey gave us some time to sleep as well as check out the scenery. My pictures aren't all that great, seeing as I took them from a speeding bus, but they should give you a sense of the Spanish landscape we drove through. A lot of it reminded me of Tuscany, but redder in color. Towards the end of our journey the land became a lot more mountainous.
We took a short cab ride to get to our hostel. I tried to explain to the cab driver the street we wanted to go to (Calle Navajas or something like that). He kept correcting me. The accent is sooo different in Granada! The "s" is often dropped (He couldn't understand Calle Navajas, but Calle Navaja worked just fine), and a lot of things are shortened or slurred. It has a really thick sound to it, and it was so much harder for me to understand anything!

After dropping our stuff off we headed to the frozen yogurt place next door. Such a good decision! Then we wandered the streets in our area until it was time to meet up with Katie. The location of where we stayed was fantastic, and it wasn't expensive. The room I shared with Jackie even had a balcony. But I would NEVER stay there again. Over the next two nights, we realized that the place was really dirty. The shower head was so blocked with mold that the water would spray everywhere. I got hit in the eye pretty hard with a stream of water that burst through the mold - not the best showering experience to say the least. I don't need to stay somewhere fancy, but it has to be clean.

Meeting up with Katie was fantastic, and she was the BEST tour guide imaginable! In fact, she's made me nervous about when she comes to visit Dublin in a few days because I know there's no way I can live up to that professional level of tourguideness. She basically gave us a tour of our area - the Cathedral, the different main streets, Parque de los Pajaros, etc. - and she told us the history of pretty much everything we saw as we walked. She really needs to start charging people (but not me of course!).

We decided to see a flamenco and dinner show that night. The place was really small and intimate. The only other people were clearly tourists as well. The French people next to us kept staring and commenting as they picked at their salads. "Those Americans really like to eat a lot of pizza"::insert look of disgust:: (a few people in our group knew French). The intense staring and subsequent discussion is a cultural difference that I frankly will never like or appreciate. It was particularly noticeable this trip amongst French tourists (it happened not once, but 3 times where we had a French person practically sit at our table they were watching so intently and then lean back to talk about us with friends!), but it was noticeable amongst the Spanish as well. I said "hello" once and stared back, but I was ignored. This is not to say I detest the French or French culture as a whole (going to France sometime would be great!), but I am proud to come from a culture where our people are so mixed and heterogeneous that staring blatantly at differences and discussing them as bizarre breakings of the norm is not a regular part of our behavior (though of course it happens on occasion). At least I don't think it is a regular part, feel free to discuss.

The flamenco itself was really cool, and my pizza was delicious, thank you very much! The style of singing is extremely melodramatic, and the dancing is not particularly pretty, but it is all done with such a heightened level of passion that it is breathtaking. Katie helped translate some of the love songs to us, so we could follow along and were not simply listening to a steady stream of unfamiliar words. We also had a glass of tinto de verano, the drink of choice in Granada, which is even better than sangria in my opinion!

The food in Granada was quite different than in Madrid, and overall even better in my opinion! It probably helped that we had someone with us who knew all the good places to go. The food, like the architecture, tends to have a Mediterranean and Moorish influence (not the pizza of course), and the fruits and vegetables are so fresh!! There are beautiful orange trees everywhere, and although you don't want to eat the public ones, the oranges for sale in the shops and stalls are incredible! It was so good to eat so much healthy, fresh food. Dublin doesn't have a lot of good fruit and vegetable options. And don't get me started on how inexpensive everything was - Granada has so many good bargains (food, shopping, etc.). Eating a fresh orange was the perfect way to end my first day in Granada.