Madre Mia

Week numero 2:

This week, in stark contrast to the first, didn't actually have any plans to begin with, so I suppose that nothing could get in the way of the fulfillment of any of those not made plans. I had school/work until Thursday and my mom and host mom (Carmen) spent the days together. My mom also got to know a few of my coworkers at the hotel pretty well and even introduced my host mom to them (which if you know my host mom its pretty impressive that my mom convinced her to go in, because Carmen is probably the shiest person you will ever meet) when I wasn't there. The only kind of tough part was the food. We eat lots of meat, little vegetables and everything is loaded with olive oil and salt - which takes away from the healthiness of the would be healthy foods. Carmen made a big effort to make more salads and other sorts of greens, but even a salad that she claimed had no salt on it tasted like sea water. In terms of the food those 4 days might have felt a little bit long and I think that when we left to go to Granada on Thursday afternoon the thing that we were most looking forward to was the ability to chose our own food.

We took the train from Sevilla to Granada, about a 3 hour train ride, Thursday after my classes and arrived around 9:30 or so that night. The hotel said it was located a little bit outside of the city but within 'striking distance' of the center, so, being that 'striking distance' could have a number of interpretations, we were a bit worried about the location - luckily it ended up being about a 7 minute walk from the busiest street in Granada. We went there that night for tapas and frozen yogurt and then watched Boy Meets World in spanish before we went to bed. (I had forgotten how much I like that show, I think it is the one show that I ever actually watched as a kid). The next day we got up 'early' at 9 (like I said in that previous blog update I never knew that my parents had it in them to sleep so long) and got ready for a big Granadan day. First thing on the agenda was the Alhambra. Built by the Moorish in the 1300s it was used as a refuge for the King and his family. It is a string of palaces built together interlaced with beautiful gardens and water features. It is located on a hill overlooking all of Granada and offers spectacular views of the snow capped Sierra Nevadas in the distance. It is also the biggest tourist attraction in Spain - something that we had to learn the hard way when I went to buy the Alhambra tickets 4 days before (all of them had already been sold out so we just bought the garden tickets which, although we didn't have full access to the palaces, was still beautiful). The history there is really impressive and, although it is very well preserved, back 500 years ago when it was in its hay-day and all the paint was bright and colorful it really must have been a sight to behold. Anyways we spent a good couple of hours there and then walked back down through the woods into a little plaza with a creek running through it in the very upper corner of Granada. From the plaza there is just one tiny little street that follows the stream back into the city center, slowly opening up until the city surrounds you.

From there I told mom that we had to find this Kebab place (Kebab's in Spain aren't like the typical meat on a stick deliciousness we like to think about, but are kind of like a burrito - chicken, lettuce, tomato, beats and really yummy, spicy sauces wrapped in a tortilla type object) where I had ate the first time I was in the city about 5 months before hand. It is in a part of the city known as the Albacin (full of tiny streets that weave there way through white houses up to another great view of Granada) which isn't exactly the easiest place to navigate, but somehow we made it there without much of a problem. After lunch I figured my mom would want to do that Spanish thing she had fallen so in love with and take a siesta, but we were both feeling like doing more stuff so we got on one of those hop-on hop-off bus tours of Granada. This is probably the best, most efficient way to get a feel for the layout and structure of a city because the bus does a big loop and stops at all of the biggest attractions. We weren't really planning on getting off anywhere, but we stopped at this science museum park and both of us immediately knew that we wouldn't be returning to the hotel anytime in the near future. We went to an exhibit on Darwin, an animal exhibit and a butterfly pavilion but the coolest was definitely an exhibit on the human body. There were a lot of interactive activities and probably the most surprising bit of information that we stumbled upon is that the human lung has a surface are of about 70m squared - that is roughly the same area as one side of the tennis court! There was also an 'operation' type game where you have to put all of the body parts back in the body and i was very impressed with my moms knowledge of what us humans have on the inside. We then played a game where two people sit on opposite ends of a table, put their foreheads against a piece of steel and try to mentally push this metal ball in a cage towards the other person. It says that the key is to not actually think about anything and to relax the brain as best you can - i've never thought a had a very relaxed brain but according to that game im good at not thinking haha (i dont know it that is necessarily a good thing though). There was also a birds of prey show which was pretty awesome. They walk around with hawks, eagles and owls then let them fly and give them fake prey to try to catch - most impressive was definitely the eagle.

By the time we finally got back to the hotel room almost 12 hours had past since we left that morning. The thing is that we didn't feel like we were really pushing ourselves to do as much as possible or anything and we didn't arrive to the room exhausted, but we still saw as much of Granada as one could see in one day. For the evening we went to a restaurant where my mom got a salad that made me think we were in America or something and then we went to a cool little arabic cafe and got some green tea/banana smoothie! with whip cream!

The next morning we had to catch a train at 11:30am but we still managed to do some productive things: buy the host family a picture book of granada then walk back to that little albacin area and get some bracelets (that we could have very easily gotten the day before, but there wasn't any time pressure on us the day before and the fact that we couldn't make any wrong turns or we would miss the train this time around made it more exhilarating). On the way to by the bracelets we also walked into a part of the city that we didn't even know had existed and that one could easily spend another day in (reason to go back). The last night in Sevilla we spent trying to get the tv to show the game between Real Madrid and Barcelona (the most highly anticipated game of the year in Spain - and of course our tv decided to give us problems with that one single channel) and then we got up at 5 the next morning to head to the airport of Sevilla.

Anyways I would say that those were two fun, eventful, memorable weeks! My mom and I were just  saying that if that volcano had erupted a bit sooner she might have just had to stay here until I leave! If only if only. In other news its the famous feria of sevilla right now and it is absolutely everything it was ever built up to be. Haven't been to bed before 6 am yet this week and i highly doubt that that will be changing tonight. I also went to barcelona this past weekend so thats what the next update will be about!

Thank you for coming madre y padre of mine!