Granada Granada Granada (by Amber)

We arrived in Granada after a long night on the train. I didn´t sleep as well as I had thought I would but it probably had something to do with the guy across from me (not Trevor) staring at me and playing footsie´s with me, I actually had to tell him to back off. We moved seats later and I slept better. After eating some breakfast we decided to explore the city as we couldn´t yet check into our hotel room, we walked around and saw all the major sites within the city, had some lunch and went back to check out the huge cathedral the Ava Maria. It is a beautiful church however going to all these old catholic churches puts even more questions in my mind about why Catholics do the things they do. When i get home I think I am going to do some research into the Catholic faith as I see I have little understanding of what they believe and why they continue with what seems to be many old traditions.

Anyway, as we were leaving the church this old lady came up to me and gave me a rosemary branch which i tried to hand back to her as she grabbed my hand and would not let me go. I think she was telling me my fortune and I told her repeatadly I don´t understand, No espanio, No intendio but she persisted while Trevor stood by laughing and taking pictures of my horrified face. It was not funny, i felt so taken advantage of....after all this drama and our long night I needed a nap so we checked into our hotel room. The hotel rooms was really nice it had a great view of the Ava Maria cathedral, and a little kitchenette with fridge and microwave. I cannot thank my cousin Sandra enough for planning and booking everything for us in Spain, it was so nice to have everything taken care.

After our nap we had some dinner and walked down the street to view la Alhambra from the city. la Alhambra is an old walled fortress on the top of a hill, the fortress protected a castle and the surrounding grounds. We ate some ice cream and continued on to our appointment at the Arab baths. We decided to take all the back roads while trying to find the address, and by decided I mean we got lost because we left the map from Sandra, showing exactly where it was, at the hotel room. When we finally found it after help from some locals we enjoyed the various baths or pools and a massage. Each bath is a different temperture and you are supposed to switch pools frequently, although i will say we didn´t stay to long in the cold one as I am pretty sure they put icecubes in there. It was very relaxing and exactly what we needed at this point in our trip. I wish there was one of these we could go to every week.

Day 2 in Granada we took a walk to the train station, after a lazy morning, to pick up our train tickets to get to Madrid, grabbed some sandwhiches and made the hike up the hill to la Alhambra. The grounds and gardens were beautiful and it was very interesting to see the palace and the very intricate work on the walls and celings, the attention to detail in the patterns was astounding. I love imagining in places like this what it would have been like to live there and what the Queens, and Princesses would have done throughout the day as well if I was a princess what would I be like. I know silly but doesn´t every girl think of those things? The other part of la Alhambra that amazed me was the genious of the fortress and the tactics they used to protect themselves against there enemies.

After a long day of walking it was time for more amazing ice cream then we sat in a plaza and read our books in the sunshine before going for dinner.

written by

Trevor and Amber on May 13, 2009 from Granada, Spain

from the travel blog: Europe Trip

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