Viva la Espana!!

My apologies for taking so long to post this... it's been a ridiculously crazy week, and tonight has been my first night to sit down and relax. Ahhhh...

My dear friend Michelle has come and gone. She arrived in Amsterdam on October 26th, and left yesterday morning. We were able to spend her first day in Amsterdam, just exploring the city. We didn't let the rain get us down - no, we just let it soak us! :) That first night, since I knew Michelle would be tired, I didn't make any huge dinner plans with friends... we just made a nice lovely dinner at home... check out this spread:

Monday and Tuesday, Michelle explored the area on her own while I was working, and then Tuesday night, we flew to Spain!! :) We flew into Malaga, which doesn't really have any noteworthy sights except an airport with cheap flights. :) Our flight was about an hour delayed, and, once we got on the airplane, we were ready to relax. The crazy Dutch bachelor party next to us, on the other hand, was just getting started. I have never seen such crazy, loud people on a plane. Seriously - they were up and down, yelling, and drinking non-stop beers. It was pretty rude, to be honest. I was so tired and just wanted to sleep, so, since the flight was really empty, Michelle and I were able to move to a non-party zone. Very strange! We got into Malaga and found our hotel with no problem. We even figured out the public transportation! For two extremely directionally-challenged people, I was quite proud. :) We pretty much went straight to bed, and then woke up the next morning for a run down palm-tree lined streets!

Beautiful Nature along the streets of Malaga

I didn't really want to leave... but, we had to, because we had reservations to see the amazing Al Hambra in Granada in the afternoon. One bus ride later, we were there. We checked into our hotel, which was also really nice, and then made the trek up to the Al Hambra. Let me emphasize the work UP. The Al Hambra was a palace back in the days when Spain was ruled by Moors. It's up on a huge hill, which was the safest place for a palace because you could see your enemies coming. We made it all the way to the top of the hill, and, just before getting to the Al Hambra, we found this beautiful lookout point:

Michelle with Granada in the background

We continued the trek up to Al Hambra, and then spent a few hours touring the whole thing... it's actually 4 different sites: The old Moorish Palace, the Christian Palace from after the Moors were conquered, a big fort, and the impressive royal gardens. We really enjoyed everything, however, it was FREEZING!! We couldn't believe it! Luckily, we had brought our winter coats, but, man, it was SOUTHERN SPAIN... the land of sun and sangria... not chill and hot chocolate!

The Fort at Al Hambra...

Beautiful reflecting pool at the palace

The gardens actually have a live concert venue now, but nothing was going on this evening

View of the town below

KP trying to be artistic...

Okay, so I said it was cold, but Michelle actually lost circulation in her hands - I had to take a picture because this looked SO crazy! The lady at the gift shop let Michelle use her space heater to try to warm up!

That night, we had our first round of tapas, which is a way to serve food that is famous in Spain... it's basically just little portions of everything, which is perfect for me, since I like to try EVERYTHING! :) The really cool thing about Granada is that when you order a drink you get a free tapas dish... so, if you REALLY wanted to, you could get pretty full by just going place to place and ordering one drink at each place... not that I did that. ;)

The plate of tapas that we ordered at the first place - yummy!

The next morning, we went for a run through Granada, and eventually made it up to this amazing viewpoint, where you can see all of the Al Hambra in one place... it was mighty cold, but it was SO worth it in the end.

After checking out of our hotel, we headed to the train station to catch a train to Sevilla... unfortunately, we missed the train station stop somehow (I have to say - this was the ONE hiccup on our trip), and ended up at the main bus station. This ended up not being a problem, however, because there was a bus leaving for Sevilla at the same time our train would have left, and they took the same amount of time. The public transportation was most excellent! About three and a half hours later, we were in Sevilla. We made it to our hotel, which was a really cute place in the Santa Cruz Barrio, run by a family. It looked nice enough, however, the problems began that evening when we realized we had no water in our bathroom, but a huge leak on the floor:

Trying to catch the water in a cup... we realized that this wasn't going to work after the cup filled in about 5 minutes and then improvised another plan to keep our room from flooding!

The next day, our shower didn't work. Our heat NEVER worked. It wasn't the most pleasant experience, but Michelle and I are troopers, so we didn't let it get us down. Just not the nicest place either of us has ever been to.

Anyways, our first night there was pretty normal... just headed out and tried some Spanish food, including gazpacho (cold, tomato soup) and Sangria, which is a yummy drink made with wine, liquor, and fruit. :) Our first full day, we covered most of the main sights we wanted to see. We started out with the Alcazar, which was Sevilla's palace in its day. If the pictures look a lot like the Al Hambra, it's because this palace was built as kind of an Al Hambra knock-off.

The Reflecting Pool

After the palace, we toured the impressive Cathedral and La Giralda, which was once the tower of a Muslim temple, and was made the main steeple of the Cathedral when the town was conquered (are you sensing a common theme in Spain's history?!?). Both were really beautiful, and we saw some amazing views from the top of the Tower. It was interesting... this was the first tower I haven't had to climb a million stairs to get to the top of... this one was ramps (34, to be exact), which were put there so horses could carry their riders to the top to announce when prayer time was. Much easier on the joints! :)

La Giralda

View from La Giralda... the blood orange grove in the church courtyard - these oranges are everywhere in Spain!

That evening, we went to see a local Flamenco performance. Michelle and I were both pretty excited about this... we were picturing women in pretty colorful dresses with castanets in their hands. For anyone who might be thinking about going to a Flamenco performance, let me just spare you the imagery - that is NOT was Flamenco is all about (that is Sevillana dancing - checked with my Spanish colleagues when I got back!). Flamenco is about dancing through the joys and sorrows of life. I think the dancers we saw were having a lot of sorrow, because they both looked so ANGRY the whole time they were dancing. The man looked like he was fighting a secret robot, and the woman looked like she was trying not to throw up. Seriously. I'm usually one for culture, but this was weird. And the singing! The guy that was singing was singing in Spanish, which I can understand for the most part, but he was singing with his tongue sort of halfway out of his mouth, so it was really difficult to understand what the heck he was saying... I was afraid he was going to choke on his tongue!! Long story short... we left feeling a little confused about exactly what we had just seen. I'm glad we went, but just wish I had known a little more about what to expect!

Mr. Flamenco dancing away

The next morning, we went for a run through the city's largest park... it was quite beautiful, and we came across the famous Plaza de Espana, which was part of the World's Fair in 1929. It was super foggy at that point, so we came back and saw it again later. We didn't really have much more that we wanted to check off of the list, so we went to a local international fair, and then spent the evening sampling tapas and sangria at the local bars and restaurants. It actually was quite fun! :)

Michelle and I at the Plaza de Espana

We woke up the next morning and left our dreadful hotel. We made our way to the airport, and Michelle went to Prague for a few days, and I returned home to Amsterdam. Good friends, good times. :)