La Alhambra

FRIDAY

We met at 10:00 to go to La Alhambra - highlight of the morning was breakfast.  It was absolutely delicious and I'm pretty sure I ate two meals.  And then we all stocked up on fruit to go.

The Alhambra was WAY cooler than I expected.  It was this intricate palace with crazy cool architecture and decorations and beautiful gardens and INCREDIBLE views.  Labarca taught us more about the plant life and agriculture than I've ever wanted to know about an area, but maybe one day it will come into good use.

View from La Alhambra (that's an Arabic word... in case you were interested)

Marnie trying to be artsy

Artsy attempt #2

SHIVANI!!

Granadian sunset

BEAUTIFUL stained glass - you can't really capture it in a picture but I tried

Christopher Columbus's grave... cool.

The Spanish version of MasterCard ads

After La Alhambra we took the bus for Sevilla.  I slept for most of the bus ride, but I figured I had already seen the outskirts of Sevilla several times as a result of all the trips we had already taken there.  We stayed in a Hotel called the Hotel Americana (racists) which was right next to Corte Ingles (it's this giant supermarket that I'm pretty sure every city in Spain has.  They have everything you need, as long as you can figure out how to navigate it).  I took advantage of the Corte and went to buy toothpaste and peanut butter (when I opened the first jar I bought I discovered that it had already been opened and an entire scoop had been taken out.  So I had to bring it back and get a new one) - and ate about a quarter of the jar.  Who knew something could taste SO GOOD.  I brought the jar to Cordoba and offered it to the group, and by the time we were done there were about 2 scoops left.  It was a well spent 4 euros. We walked around the city for about 2 hours (it was amazing, there were actually parts that we hadn't seen yet) and somehow randomly made it back to our Hotel without even trying.  It turns out we were staying about a 5 minute walk from our hostel that we'd stayed in when we were stuck in Sevilla for the night.

We went to some big cathedral that afternoon - it was just this HUGE room with a bunch of pretty art.  It kind of all starts to blend together after a while though.

Emily and shivani got sick that night :[  But Anna, Ariana, Courtney, Rachelle and I still went out and had a great night.  We walked along the river until we found a place that looked fun and we ended up staying there for 2 hours and told embarrassing stories (Kadie Haase if you ever read this... I shared our story :] ).  It was really fun and there were a lot of locals and these random people dancing (one of them was a cross dresser... good times).  We left around 2 because we figured that was enough time to let the night life start (again, Spaniards are crazy) and we walked walked across the river to look for a discoteca.  There were a ton of people our age hanging out along the river, but it was really awkward because I felt like we were a zoo walking down the street.  We finally found a club called Boss, and we walked in and there were a bunch of old people dancing and a huge group from UF that had taken over the DJ stand (until they got kicked out).  We asked some natives who looked bored in a corner for advice on where we could go to have more fun, and they obviously had no idea because they lead us to like 3 different places where nothing was going on.  Random story -  we walked into one bar and this guy came up to me and was like NOOO.  And I didn’t recognize him at first but then three other guys came up behind him and it was the Galician boys that Emily and I had met on the beach!! And it was sooo random and funny and I told them they were following me and they told me that my Spanish was better the other night (dang it) so I said bye and we left.

But anyways …the natives we were following brought us to this Sevillian dance bar and we got to show off our Sevillian dancing skills that we had learned the other day (I didn't think people ACTUALLY danced like that, but they all were)  Right as we were about to leave we started dancing with this group of ladies who were dressed up in Flamenco clothes and wearing crowns (I think it was someone’s birthday?).  We were imitating one of the lady's dance moves and I’m pretty sure we made her night because she thought it was the funniest thing ever.  And then these guys from Finland came over and started break dancing, and they tried to teach us how to dance... but then I tried and they just laughed and told me to keep doing what I was doing.  Whoops.  

It ended up being a really fun night and I got to know a whole different group of people on our trip.  Good timez in Sevilla.

WT Tip #16:  Peanut butter is a staple in any diet, American or Mediterranean.  It's well worth the 4 Euro investment.