We got up SUPER early on Friday morning to take a train to a five-hour bus ride. Since I had just finished my giant research paper the day before, I was pretty tired already. When I got there, though, I wasn't sleepy anymore. Granada is soooo beautiful!
It's right in the midst of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. And when I say "in" the mountains, I mean that the city is literally built on top of the mountains and in some cases built into the rock. Like basically all cities in Spain, Granada is historic and pretty, but it just has something special about it, something extra. Maybe it's the mix of cultures, or maybe it's all the street markets. In any case, I loved it.Once we managed to find our hostel (the directions were actually right!), we settled in and headed over to our first destination: the Arabic baths. The Arabic bathhouse, or Granada Hammam, is fairly famous, and I think I can see why. It may have been a little pricey, but it was really nice and relaxing. They had various rooms with baths, which were basically like small swimming pools filled with different temperatures of water: ice cold, hot, and medium. The bathhouse itself was quite pretty, as it was based on the original Moorish bathhouses in the city (and we went to an old bathhouse at the Alhambra; it really does look a lot alike). There were columns, tile designs, and lots of candles. The two hour bath also came with a fifteen minute massage and lots of mint tea. Mmmmmm...
After the baths, we went back to our hostel to take a siesta, and then went out for a light dinner. That night's activities included Gypsy hunting. We walked over to the Sacromonte, the barrio where the Gypsies live. (NOTE: I say Gypsies because the Spaniards refer to the Romanians as "gitanos", but they're not nomads or anything, they're just not very popular.) We mostly found a lot of dogs and cats, but we did see some cool houses and flamenco bars built into the cuevas, or caves, and we heard/saw some Gypsies singing to the moon! One man we just heard from a distance, and then we saw some kids singing flamenco and clapping around a small campfire they had built on the sidewalk. The whole experience was a bit surreal.
On Saturday morning, we woke up before dawn to head over to the Alhambra, since we were (mis)informed that the tickets always sell out. The Alhambra is a pain to get to, and a pain to enter, but it is definitely worth it. Not only do you get to see the fabulous palace where the Muslim Nazari rulers of Granada lived for 200 years, you get to see the beautiful gardens of the Generalife, another palace where Carlos V lived, an old bathhouse, a church, and an art museum. It is like a whole little city inside the city. The palace was neat to see, especially after writing so much about those darn musulmanes. The architecture is so distinctive; parts of it almost make me think it inspired Gaudi when he was making his drippy sandcastle buildings. The Alhambra took about four hours to tour completely. Awesome.For lunch we cooked up some leftover pasta and powdered tomato soup we found on the free shelf of our hostel's kitchen (yay for free food) and then walked over to the Mirador de San Nicolas to see a beautiful panoramic view and see and hear some more flamenco.
After that, though, it was time for me to catch my bus to Cordoba, so I left Ashley to finish up her visit.
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