Weekend in Granada

Hey yall, hope you're enjoying life as much as I am over here. Last weekend, two of my roommates (Craig and Joe) and I traveled to the south of Spain to the city of Granada. It was an amazing trip that I will never forget. The original plan was for Craig to visit some of his family in Granada, while Joe and I would do our own thing and explore Granada. Joe and I really didn't have any plans for once we got to Granada; we don't speak Spanish, we didn't have a hostel, we didn't really know how long we wanted to stay, we knew there was something call "The Alhambra" there, but hey we were going to Granada. The bus ride was about five and a half hours through beautiful southern Spain. We arrived on Friday night and quickly realized that Granada was much larger than we thought. Thankfully though, Craig's relatives, had known we were coming with Craig  and wanted to make us feel as at home as possible in Granada. They basically made our weekend perfect.  They picked the 3 of us up at the bus station at drove us to there apartment in downtown Granada and they knew we didn't have a hostel so the told us about one that was right down the street from them. Then they invited us over for dinner and said that they want to feed us every meal for the weekend. They were so incredibly nice. The family was made up of Chris (Craig's cousin) his wife Magnolia and their two children Lucas (9) and Carla(5). Their apartment was amazing. Not that biggest, but it had great interior with a balcony and a patio on the roof-it was wonderful. The best part of the apartment was the view. They lived on a hill that over looked the entire city. To the right you could see the local cathedral and the to left was the Alhambra. The Alhambra was an ancient fort that was build during the 14th century by the Moors then taken over by the Christians later. Its huge, like a square mile fort on top a hill and this family that helped us lived 200 yards from the entrance from it. The next day (Saturday) Chris, who knew everything about Granada and the Alhambra, gave us a 4 hour tour of the Granada, which was unbelievable, so interesting, so much history. It was great. After that we went to a tapas restaurant for lunch/dinner, which was soooo good. After that we went on a walk though the city.
Saturday night was sooo much fun. Chris and Magnolia had been telling us about this famous flamenco (Spanish dancing, kinda like tap dancing I guess) show that Granada was know for. People said it was debatably the best show in Spain. What man it interesting was that it was in the gypsy neighborhood of Granada. And to make it more interesting,  it was in a cave in the side of on of the hills. And to make it MORE interesting, it was the same exact show that Michelle Obama went to this past summer. We had no idea what to expect.  So we took a cab, told the driver where we want to go, he knew the place, drove us there, we got out...and realized that we were on the patio of some house with a couple of Spanish people standing around. And all the house in this neighborhood were caves dug into the hill. Now, there were sings for the show, but it really wasn't that obvious that we were in the right place. After about 30 seconds of awkwardly standing around, this older guy in suit kinda showed up out of nowhere and started talking to us. (We later came to find out he was the manager) He knew that we were there for the show and told us to follow him to get tickets. He leads us into like the living room of one the cave houses and lets us buy tickets right there. Very funny. After about 5 mins the show begins and we are allowed to enter the cave where the doing the show. The cave was about 50ft long,10 ft across and about 7 ft tall. It was lined with chairs and had a space in the middle for the dancers. Now, the reason we had taken a cab to the show was because the bus that usually picked people up for the show was full. It was at this point that we found out that the bus was full of about 30 Japanese tourist all going to the show. So to recap, its 30 Japanese tourists and us watching a flamenco show in a cave, in the south of Spain and Michelle Obama has been here before...it sounds like a Mad Lib. The show was amazing, they danced literally inches in front of you and at the end...they pulled me up to dance with them (theres a video of it on Facebook). The last day we got a quick tour of the oldest neighborhood in Granada called the Albaicin. It was very beautiful and there was a light snow which capped of our perfect weekend. Check out the pics below

Sorry for the long post, hope you enjoyed it. hope everyone could understand it. Love and Miss all of you. Going to Ireland this weekend so wish me luck ;)

inside the Alhambra

From the left; Joe, Craig and Ben

Everyone- Alhambra in the background

View from Chris and Magnolia's patio

-Benjamin

Segovia-too cool for school

Hey gang, just got back from our day trip to Segovia, which is located about an hour north of Madrid by bus. It was amazing, such a beautiful city. It literally felt like you were in and old medieval village. Lots of history and culture. Since we are too cool to go on the school trip to Segovia (and didn't feel like paying 40 euro) we decided to take a separate bus (6 euro). The only problem was finding the mythical "bus to Segovia"....we started to think it didn't exist. Our journey started with 15 min metro ride to south Madrid, where we thought the bus station was. We then were told by some security guard guy, who apparently had no idea what he was talking about, that the bus to Segovia was actually a 30 min train away to this place called Charmartin. So we took the train to Charmatin and quickly realized that we were at place that I would consider Chesterfield of Madrid....we're lost as can be. So we ask around and it turns out we're in the exact opposite place and the bus to Segovia was in downtown Madrid. With the help of some friendly Madridians(?) we found the bus and arrived in Segovia. The highlights of Segovia were the centuries old aquaducts and a massive castle that was the inspiration for Disney's Snow White (Yea, I know!!) ... unfortunately we were unable to find the 7 dwarfs, maybe next time. Fun fact: Segovia has more churches than any other town in the world with 28 churches....so now you know! Check out the pics. Going out tonight soooo thats where the blog ends.

Lost

aquaducts- crazy

some really important guy and me

Mucho Amor, Benjamin

So far, so so sooooo good

Ok so everything has been going great… I mean really great. Our journey over here went very well. Craig and I made friends with an English teacher from Valencia, Spain and she talked to us for about 3 hours about Spain/ Europe. She also helped us figuring out the metro and got us to our apartment which was great. Our apartment is Awesome. We’re on a pretty busy street about 15 mins from campus. The past couple of nights, we’ve gone to the main tourist area called Sol and found a bar that had the American football games on. Life is different here and I love it. Having so much great time and loving life. Sorry this is so short, but today is the first day of classes so I gotta run.  I’ll try to write again later.

-Benjamin (I’m going by Benjamin now….much more European)

P.s. Feliz Cumpleaños aunt ann!!!