Courtney, Grace and I planned a trip to Granada basically about 2 days before the trip actually happened since the bus website wouldn't let us buy tickets online for some reason. Things got off to a rocky start since we were almost late to the bus at 8:00am. Let's just say I had a flash back to my short time in the Madrid airport: boots, heavy bag, speed-walking....for about a half hour to the bus stop. Luckily, we all got there on time and the bus was less than half-way full so we could sprawl out and relax on the 3 hour ride.
We got to Granada early Friday morning and got settled into our hostel. It was a good deal considering we paid 15 euro/night and booked only 2 days in advance. We got free breakfast, the room to ourselves and pretty clean room/bathroom so there wasn't much to complain about. After we got settled in, we walked around the city and got some tinto de veranos (wine spritzers) and free tapas. The best things about Granada are that the city is amazzzzingly beautiful and you get free tapas when you order a drink :)
Since our tour of Alhambra was at 8:30am the next morning (we had also heard that it takes 4 hours to walk through), we decided it would be a better decision to chill for the night and have a few drinks in our hostel. Woke up bright and early on Saturday, ready to take on Alhambra. Since it was so early, it was a bit chilly, but nonetheless a great experience. Alhambra is a palace city (literally a walled city) and is considered one of the "treasures of Spain".
After Alhambra, we went on what seemed like the world's longest search for some food. Since we had breakfast around 7am, after 5 hours and lots of walking and picture taking, we were pretty hungry. This is where things got irritating. Since it was 11am, most places were only serving coffee and toast (my understanding is that in general, Spaniards wake up a lot later than we do in America). We went to numerous places in the search for food but couldn't find anything except gross "ham" (the quotations are because we're still not even sure it was ham - you couldn't bite through it) sandwiches. This is when we all got frustrated because we were in a foreign town with no knowledge of the area and having to ask people for directions/other general questions gets really old, really fast.
So, we were all tired enough to take a nap without eating anything and were to worry about hunger later. We woke up and decided to walk to a supermarket where we had the excellent idea of making our OWN dinner in the hostel! This was a cheap way to get the food we wanted - and was a nice change from not having any say in the meals we eat. We made Mexican - chicken fajitas with chips, salsa, guacamole and of course dessert of strawberry cheesecake ice cream.
We were in a better mood and started to get ready and make drinks after that. We played circle of death and planned on going to the discoteca, Granada 10. I have heard from numerous people that this was the place to be come nighttime in Granada. We met some people in our hostel and walked to Granada 10 together. The night ended up being very fun - 5:30am came MUCH too fast! The club was packed, the drinks were delicious and the dancing was icing on the cake.
The next morning, we woke up to an alarm @ our check out time. Luckily the hostel owner was cool with us staying a little late. We ended up checking out 2 hours later only to be "homeless" in Granada until our bus departed at 3:30. So we chilled in the sunny, 60 degree weather until we went to the bus station to get lunch and depart. Slept almost the entire 3 hours back to Sevilla and called it a weekend.
All in all, it was the perfect place to have as my first weekend getaway. Not too far, not too expensive and taught me that more planning may be required for future trips. That's all for now...be expecting a post about LISBON, PORTUGAL next week :)
Yay Granada!! :)
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