Granada: Cheap and Delicious

At most restaurants in Granada, if you buy a drink, you get a free tapa!! BEST DEAL EVER. Plus the drinks aren’t bad at around 4 euro. AMAZING. But actually, in general, Granada is much cheaper than Barcelona-sadly because they are having a rougher time economically. But still, it was nice to be able to eat out and not break bank.

Granada: Best Hostel

I had never stayed in hostels before Spain, but I have to say we picked some great ones for our trip. Thanks to hostelworld. Our hostel in Granada was really new and clean-we even got our own room with bunks for just the four of us girls. We basically had our own nice full bathroom for the first two nights, until more people checked in. The hostel also had breakfast included-pretty much all the breakfasts at the hostels and breakfast in Spain in general is minimal, but the hostel provided all sorts of yogurt flavors, corn flakes, bread wiith butter, several types of jelly, and chocolate spread (no not nutella, just chocolate-soo delish), oranges, and croissants. Pretty good for a cheap hostel breakfast I must say. Also, the hostel had a free sangria night (my fav); we made sure to take advantage of that. For the sangria party, everyone at the hostel congregated in the courtyard at picnic tables and chatted. We met a cute couple-the guy from Rome and the girl from Germany, as well as some college kids from Vermont (no way).

Ronda

 Back to vacation—Ronda is the cutest little town I’ve ever seen. It was a nice break in between all the cities I’d been travelling to. Ronda’s main attraction is a gigantic rocky gorge that encircles the town’s historic village. The first night’s scenery was breathtaking-we met up with the guys from our group who had been traveling on a slightly different itinerary (actually they copied our itinerary and just moved some train times around…so original), and had an amazing dinner overlooking the gorge as the sun set over the rocks and surrounding hilly farmland. It was a picture perfect moment.

 Ronda was also nice because we stayed in a hostel that was actually a converted bed and breakfast. Compared to our hostel in Madrid where we slept in a cramped room that fit twelve people, we instead shared hotel-room-esque doubles. Not to mention we got a discount eating at the hostel’s restaurant. And the staff was so friendly, like all the people in the small town of Ronda. Our last morning there, we had to leave at 6:30am before the hostel breakfast started to catch a train to Granada. The owner prepared us a sack of oranges and yogurts for the road! So adorable.

After the first night in Ronda, we of course we had to hike down into the gorge and see the beautiful scenery. At one point the trail split, and we took the narrower fork that led to an area I’m pretty sure most tourists avoid, as the paths were about two feet wide and only permitted walking in single file, not to mention the fences stopping us from falling down to the bottom of the gorge were weak at best and mostly broken. (Oh well, YOLO!) We hiked all the way down to the river at the bottom of the gorge and saw some old city water station/shack that for some reason had not yet been removed. We also made sure to take the famous “bridge photo” looking up at the gorgeous stone bridge connecting the historic village with the rest of Ronda through the gorge.

Another night, we gave in and stopped at McDonald's, the one fast food restaurant in the town,for a late night snack. I hand't eaten McDonald's in a few years, and the french fries tasted amazing even in Spain. The funny thing is, American commodities are really expensive in Spain, so the typical 2/3 dollar burger was around 10 dollars instead. Kind of a rip off McDonald's. Ronda is tied for my favorite place I visited on vacation, with our next and final stop: Granada.

Pause: Run

A little break from my vacation adventures—this morning, with the insistence of my host dad (yes, my host parents tell me daily that I NEED to work out and run and go to the gym so I will be hungry for meals…like I don’t already work out enough for basketball…), I went for a run on Avenida Diagonal, one of the longest streets in Barcelona that passes near my house and extends through the majority of the city. I’m normally not the kind of person who just casually goes for a run, as I am a basketball player and normally work out by doing sprints in a gym, as basketball is more about short sprints than long slower runs. However, I LOVED my run this morning! Running through Barcelona is a great way to get to know the city. The Diagonal has a great running/biking path alongside the roadway where lots of people work out daily. When I left my house, it was a beautiful day-65 and sunny, perfect for running. Of course, about halfway through, it started to rain and even hail!! What the heck Spring in Barcelona. Despite the weather, I continued running, and actually enjoyed running in the rain. It was a great start to my Saturday. Later today I plan on going to a movie theater in Barceloneta that is showing the Great Gatsby (El Gran Gatsby)! Although I would love to try to understand the movie in Spanish, I’m hoping the theater has an English version, as I do not want to spoil Leonardo DiCaprio with a typical high-pitched Spanish voiceover…

Cordoba

We left Madrid really early in the morning to catch a train to Cordoba. I have to say Cordoba is my least favorite city I’ve visited in Spain thus far. The walk from the train station to the actual city center where the mezquita is (red and gold striped double arches, you’ve seen pictures) was very eery and strange. There were hardly any people walking around, and there was a huge four lane road with barely any cars on it. Cordoba also had a funky smell (ok all of Spain does because of the weird sewage system-but Cordoba’s was worse) which tainted the city. The mezquita was just like the pictures, however it was not as interesting as I had imagined. It was basically a ginormous rectangular room with hundreds of red and gold striped arches in a row. Thanks to Christian take-over at one point in time, smack dab in the middle of the mosque was a Catholic church, where the ceiling changed into a steep white dome and the amount of ornate decoration increased tenfold. It was a little much. Sorry for all the hating on Cordoba! It was a cool city, there was just not much to do there. Luckily, we only stayed for the day and left the same night to head to Ronda. The part I loved about Cordoba was seeing the quaint white houses with blue flowerpots holding colorful flowers adorning the walls. Cordoba has such mild weather that the house owners keep the flowers out all year round!

Madrid II: El Parque Buen Retiro

After the Dartmouth-sponsored trip ended, we spent a lot of our time in the gorgeous Buen Retiro Park. We bought delicious sandwiches and grabbed some croissants from the free hostel breakfast and picnicked in the grass beneath the trees in the park. Naps (with one of us on the watch for thieves of course), massage trains, and hair braiding were involved (throwback to 5th grade sleepovers). After picnicking we traversed the paths of the vast park and took pictures in the beautiful rose gardens. A lot of locals roller blade around the park, and I desperately wanted to join in as I’ve never roller-bladed before! Next time for sure. The park also includes a large pond with boats that you can rent and paddle around in. Of course we took advantage of that, and even raced some other boaters (having two basketball players rowing, of course we won☺). It turns out that one of the girls in the other boat was a student at Stanford studying Spanish in Madrid! Our victory obviously proves that Dartmouth>Stanford. We also visited a palace, saw yet ANOTHER cathedral, and walked around the streets of Madrid visiting shops and eating delicious meals. Thank goodness Spain loves smoked salmon and goat cheese (sadly along with loads and loads of olive oil on EVERYTHING...). Mmm. I have been trying to decide which city I like better, Barcelona or Madrid. The people in Madrid seemed friendlier and more open, but the city itself was busier, more crowded, and dirtier. It reminds me of the Boston-New York difference, Boston being Barcelona and Madrid being New York. I think the closed-off people in Barcelona has to do with the whole Catalonian independence idea. If the people in Barcelona were more open, and if Barcelona had a giant park like Madrid, it would be the perfect city. Even without those things, Barcelona beats Madrid in my book.

Madrid and Toledo

I started my time in Madrid on a planned program trip with my Dartmouth professor Isabel. We all stayed in a really nice hotel off of the Plaza del Sol in central Madrid. We visited the Prado and the Reina Sofia art museums, where the great works of Diego Velasquez, Salvador Dalí, Goya, Picasso, and many others are housed. My favorite artist by far is Velasquez. Velasquez was the hired painter for the royal court in Madrid, and is famous for his unique “Las Meninas” portrait of the royal family. He also painted many scenes mixing mythological Greek gods with very human scenes from Velasquez’s own life. I love his painting style and the technical perfection he achieves in his very realistic figures. In some of his paintings, one being “La Fragua de Volcano,” it looks as if you could reach out and grab the figures depicted. Love it love it love it. Dalí’s paintings were interesting in their own way, but the subject material is very alien and was a little strange for me.

After seeing two huge art museums in one day, we had dinner at an Indian restaurant (yes, Indian food in Spain). I had only eaten Indian food once before, from Jewel of India in Hanover. I was a little nervous at first, but I actually ended up loving it (once I figured out what to order, thanks to the recommendation Jayant, a knowing student on the program). I will be ordering more Jewel of India when I get back to Hanover! We also went to a Flamenco bar to see a Flamenco show. I loved the fast-paced, loud Flamenco beats, and I still have no idea how the dancers moved their feet so fast and stomped on the wood floor for such a long time without their calves and quads fatiguing! I had never seen Flamenco before and thoroughly enjoyed the show, however it did get a little repetitive towards the end.

 The next day, we travelled to Toledo, a quaint little town outside Madrid. It reminded me of a little Swedish or German town, not that I’ve ever been to Sweden or Germany. We toured the beautiful town, saw the magnificent stone bridges and large stone walls surrounding the city, visited a large cathedral (I have now been to SO many cathedrals and mosques I can’t keep them all straight), visited cute artisanal shops, and finished the trip at a delicious Spanish restaurant. Arriving back in Madrid for the night, we all went out to the huge “Capital” discoteca. Unfortunately, during our nights in Madrid, three more of us lost out iPhones to Spanish thieves…more on that later. After the program trip ended, three friends and I planned a week-long vacation during our break from classes. We stayed three more days in Madrid, and then travelled to Cordoba, Ronda, and Granada.

Travels

I'm about to leave for a 10 day vacation from Barcelona, so I'll be back with many more stories after that! My itinerary includes Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba, Ronda, and Granada. Sadly I left my iPhone in a taxi last weekend and have failed to recover it...apparently it started to make roaming calls to the Gabonese Republic in Africa...my bad. I have successfully avoided being pick pocketed thus far (knock on wood), but I managed to rob myself of my own phone. Oops. Unfortunately I'll be without a camera on my vacations but luckily there will be plenty of photos to steal from my friends going with me. ¡Abrazos y hasta luego!