Granadaaaaaa

THURSDAY

I had to skip a couple of days because they all blended together - in summary we took our tests, ate Spanish food, and laid on the beach.  I'm sure I explored some of the city too.  Rough life.

We left at 10:00 this morning to go to Granada.  The bus ride was pretty long – we didn’t end up getting there until 4:00 because for some reason buses in Spain feel like it’s necessary to stop for 30 minutes every other hour.  I think they just need smoking breaks since 90% of Espanoles are chain smokers (for the record, that's an exaggeration and a stereotype.  But I'm saying it anyways).  Our hotel was REALLY nice, and rumor was it that there was a delicious breakfast too.  One point for Labarca.  We had a couple hours to walk around the city once we got there, so I went with a bigger group and we walked to the top of the city and got lost in the side streets – again, it’s my favorite way to explore a city.  Granada was really cute and I feel like there was a ton of personality in the town.  The city itself is busy, but not too busy to the point where I felt like I was in the middle of New York.  There's a lot of Arab influence towards the top of the city, and it's really easy to feel like you're on the outskirts even if you're only 5 minutes away from the center.  Most of the houses have some type of roof garden or decoration on the porches that add personality and make the city a really nice place to be.  Plus, there's an INCREDIBLE view from the top. 

We met for another Flamenco show at 8 – it ended up being in the same area we'd spent the afternoon exploring.  The show was a lot more intimate – it was a much smaller room and the dancers performed in the middle of our circle of chairs instead of on a stage in front of us.  Shivani had to move after she got sprayed with sweat from one of the dancers, but other than that it was a good experience.  This time felt a lot less like a performance and more like friends getting together to dance.  There were two parts of the show – the first part had younger dancers and the second group of dancers were older women.  An old woman came out and we were all SO EXCITED to see her dance because we figured since she was old and had a lot of experience she was going to blow all the other girls out of the water.  But I forgot that her joints were probably too fragile to do that, so she just danced with the hand clapper things and it was very anti climactic.  Another part of this show that was different was that there were male dancers.  They were really good and moved their feet super fast, but I was distracted the whole time by their 2 inch long pinky fingernails that grossed me out a ton.  

After Flamenco we took a walking tour with the male version of Labarca.  Seriously, this guy was a combination of Angela and Miller Templeton.  He was across the street with another tour group when we saw him, and when he called across the street we thought it was just another random guy that Angela knew and who we happened to run into.   Turns out we had actually scheduled a tour with him, and he walked us around the old city at night and told us stories of the history.  We ended on top of the city in front of an INCREDIBLE view of Granada. He kept trying to tell jokes, but he was speaking in Spanish so not many people understood them, or no one was listening.  It was funny/slightly awkward because I think he thought we didn’t have much personality.   He an Labarca kept each other entertained though.

We got back to our hotel around 11:30 - I was STARVING (go figure) and wanted to go get some of the free tapas (appetizers) that Granada is famous for.  By the time we had all gotten ready and left, it was already 1 and when we asked people on the streets where we could find free tapas they just looked at us like we were crazy and were like... it's 1 a.m.  Tapas are closed.  Just when I thought we had finally adapted to the Spanish schedule...

We eventually found the only restaurant that was open at 1, ate and went out for the night.  Nightlife in Granada was a lot of fun because there were a ton of students our age studying in the University or in the surrounding area.  We finally got to go to our first Discoteca - turns out the other half of the group had wound up in the same place we were, so we all got to dance together and it was a TON of fun.  

WT Tip #15: Make sure you know what time free tapas ends.