Awesome Blossom: Southern Spain Part 1: Granada

Tuesday morning we headed off to southern Spain. We were supposed to meet at a parking lot near the train station at 8 in the morning. This meant that Kiley and I left our house around 7:30 in the morning to take a bus there. We all arrived and waited about 20 minutes for the bus to come, but it never showed. Finally our director called the bus company and discovered that they had no record of our reservation, but that they could send a bus over at 10. This meant that we all ended up hanging out at the Brown's house for two hours wishing that we were still asleep.

When 10 rolled around we headed off on our adventures with renewed spirits because the bus had arrived. Our first stop was at some la mancha style windows like the ones that Don Quixote thinks are giants. Kami read us chapter 8 of book one of Don Quixote as we drove up to them.

It was rather windy.

So windy in fact that Lara and I blew away.

Our next stop was Granada. Before arriving there we made a stop in a random town so that our bus driver could eat. What's funny is that we happened to notice him drinking a beer with his meal. To say the least, we all felt a little sick by the time we arrived in Granada. I don't know if the roads were windy or the alcohol was kicking in or maybe he was just a crazy driver like everyone else in Spain.

We arrived in Granada and checked into our hotel. Because of our late start that morning we missed our chance to see the cathedral, so we all just headed out to explore the city. Here's a shot of the Alhambra from across the city:

The weather was certainly less than ideal in Granada. It was rainy and a bit cold, but that didn't stop us from wandering through the streets. It also didn't stop this person from making street art like in Mary Poppins, he however was smart and used sharpie so that it didn't get washed away. We need more things like this in the states.

We also need more awesome graffiti. Graffiti in Spain is nothing like what I have seen in the states. Maybe I have just lived in the wrong areas for good graffiti, but in Spain it comes off as much more of an art than just dirty words written on a wall (it may be because we don't know what it says usually). But it also is everywhere, which makes it look much cooler.

We went out to dinner and then stopped in at a pastry shop for a chocolate croissant (the goal is to have one in every city we visit). This time Lara and I split one since it was right after dinner and we knew we were hitting up three cities within five days (the other goal is to not get fat).

The next morning we went to the Alhambra as a group. I've heard it said that if you are going to see one site in Spain, the Alhambra is the one to see. It was incredibly beautiful and full of intricate plaster carvings and mosaics such as this ceiling: