So this past week I did not have class because of Semana Santa, basically Easter week. But before I go into the blog posts about that, I need to blog about what I did the weekend before that. I was in Granada, Spain on April 4-6th but then I had 3 different 8 page papers to turn in that week and blogging was the last thing I wanted to do so here is the Granada blog and I will post blogs about Italy over the course of this week.
So the main reason I wanted to visit Granada was because that was the other city I considered studying abroad in. I was curious to see how different it would be from Barcelona, for the better or the worse. Luckily, my program offers a trip to Granada so I had to sign up. We got to Granada early Friday morning and immediately went on a walking tour of the city. Walking tours might be the bane of my existence. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing new cities and a lot of the coolest sites are unreachable by car but they are just so tiring. I feel like half of the tour I'm just thinking, "Oh my god my legs hurt and my back hurts and I can't stop yawning can we please sit down on this bench while you tell me the history of some building I will never remember" so that always makes walking tours hard. One good thing about this walking tour is the view that was waiting for us on top of the hill that we climbed:
That's the Alhambra, a huge mosque that was built a long time ago (too lazy to look up the year, sorry). The weather was so gorgeous to that I wouldn't have minded ditching the rest of the walking tour just so sit up there and look around.
After the walking tour and lunch, we had free time. We were so exhausted from waking up early from the flight and walking around so we went home and napped before heading out to discover Granada on our own. We went to a shopping area that was similar to Las Ramblas in Barcelona so that was when I made the first comparison. The shopping is great in both cities though so I can't complain. After we walked around the city on our own we went back to the hotel for dinner. We were still pretty exhausted from the day so mostly everyone on the trip hung out in the hotel and went to bed pretty early.
We spent the better part of Saturday walking around the Alhambra, and we definitely needed that much time because it is massive. It was really interesting because over the course of my semester in Europe I have seen so many grand churches but never a grand mosque. They are so different. There is so much detail it is incredible. This is what the walls look like:
All. Over. The. Walls. It's all words, but unfortunately I forgot to brush up on my Arabic and I couldn't read any of it. Overall, it was a very different feel from a church and it kind of makes me feel like the Catholic Church was just a bunch of show offs with their massive, beautiful churches (just wait until I take about the St. Peter's Basilica in my Rome blog...oh my god). I love all of the churches I have seen but it was cool to see something different.
We also got some cool views of Granada from the top of the Alhambra:
Very, very different from Barcelona! We then got to go into the gardens of the King's summer home in Granada, the Generalife (I'm pretty sure that's right). That was gorgeous and I was excited to see the gardens because I have seen so many people who studied abroad in Granada post pictures of it:
Nevermind how awkward I look. After the gardens we got some free time and then we went to a tea and cookie tasting. I love tea and I love cookies. It was perfect. We tried Moroccan tea and Pakistani tea. Moroccan tea is like a mix of mint and green tea which is really good. Since I had it when I went to Morocco, I stuck with the Pakistani tea this time which was more similar to chai tea. It was basically warm milk and cinnamon. I'm not complaining.
After the tea and cookie tasting we went shopping around in the areas that reminded me a lot of Morocco. AKA more haggling so yay for me because I am so bad at it. Either way, I walked away with a second tapestry for my apartment next year AND placemats! That double as pillow cases! What a steal! Bye money. I also made friends with one of the shop owners while I was waiting for my friend to shop. It's always a nice reminder that I can somewhat speak Spanish and people know what I'm saying because sometimes I forget about that.
After shopping we went back for dinner. Then we went out that night with other children in the program. Needless to say, it was a great time. Also needless to say, the night life is WAY different than the night life in Barcelona...let's just leave it at that.
On Sunday we did something called Arab baths. It was basically a bunch of pools that were varying temperatures. There was a cold pool (which still wasn't colder that IUPUI's pool...here's to hoping some swimmers are reading this), a warm pool (my personal favorite), and a hot tub that was a pool. We just got to hang out and supposedly it's supposed to be a silent, spiritual experience but come on it was like 20 college kids in there...I'm not sure what they expected but they did not get that.
After that, we headed back to Barcelona. Overall, Granada was gorgeous. I could definitely see myself studying abroad there but I would not give up the Barcelona experience for the world (even with all of the Catalan). I'm glad I had to opportunity to see the city I almost studied in and it definitely made me think twice about my decisions but in the end, I'm so happy I chose Barcelona and it's going to be hard to leave in...get ready for this...10 days. Gotta go have as much fun as I can!
Stay on the look out for my Spring Break Part 1: Venice blog coming soon to a computer near you (that sounded funny in my head).
Angela
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