Abades Loja

... dinner. We ended up renting "I Love You Man" through iTunes and allowed it to load while we headed to the main street near our hotel and ate some delicious kebabs. Ufortunately my banking situation has been totally screwed up this past week so Scott has had to foo bill for almost everything, though he commented that he did not mind paying for the kebabs at all because they were so simply delicious (the best I've certainly had in Europe). After dinner we went back ...

... the train was ready to begin its journey, the small TV turned on and a safety film was shown, after all, we were going to be traveling at almost 200 miles per hour! Our train traveled most of the time at speeds of 300 km per hour (or just about 190 miles per hour). Spain has some beautiful countryside! There are mountains, ocean views, vineyards, small villages, and deserts. We traveled through all of these areas. Aside from ...

... tapas... wonderful. After a few of these, we caught the bus to Bobadilla, which is a 10min walk to the campsite, and conveniently has a typical Spanish (loud men, even louder women serving) bar, where we continued to consume beer and tapas; 4 rounds later, we had spend just Euros 7 per person and felt sated not just Alhambra (the local beer, very good) but the variety of hearty tapas. We walked back to camp for a well earned sleep.

... so many people on the roads and I don't know if I will ever get back to Granada again anytime soon so I felt like I needed to take the opportunity to see more the city. I walked down one of the roads that had the cool street lights, encountered more Americans, and went to an area with a little different vibe. More modern apartment buildings and spread out a little bit. When I got to the hotel I watched some of the cable TV. That was an experience.

... with Kay and John up on the hill above their house on a Sunday with a lot of other locals, as well as appreciating Kay's great cooking. The kids loved Polopos, they spent a lot of time befriending stray dogs and Cass even managed a new injury here, gouging a huge gash in her heel by stepping on an adaptor plug, not pretty! They also loved little Lilli, Kay and John's dog and she received a huge amount of attention during our stay. We did have alot of rain ...

... the proper words to describe it. My breath was taken away when I saw the honey-combed ceiling of la sala de los abencerrajes... This is one of the most gratifying things about studying history... actually getting to see the artifacts/buildings/places after months of simply ogling at them through a paper window... The salon de Embajadores was the throne room, and it represents the seven heavens of the Muslim cosmos - unfortunately the patio de los Leones was ...

On Friday, 7 of my classmates and I took an amazing trip to Granada. Granada is exactly what I thought all of Spain would look like. Our apartment had ...

... with potted flowering geraniums, it was my favorite city on our tour of southern Spain. First on the sight-seeing agenda was Mezquita, a Muslim mosque started in 784AD. Beautiful, but...once you've seen one "double arch constructed of marble and granite in contrasting shades of red and ocher in the likeness of palm trees" another nine hundred ninety-nine of them gets a bit repetitive. We had a ball at an ...

... modernas, where my classes are, is beautiful!!! The whole city of Granada is absolutely beautiful and amazing!!! It is much larger than I imagined it to be!!! Lots of traffic, lots of stores, lots of small streets in between large streets, lots of people on there scooters, lots of people out on the streets at night, lots of plazas!!! It is a crazy city with a lot happening!!! The weather is beautiful, around the 60s and a ...

... literalmente de sus cuevas para interactuar con esta otra sociedad. Personajes inofensivos e incomprendidos, y entre ellos los gitanos que si bien te pueden tranzar, hay que comprender que han sido los marginados por centenios, aún ahora que observan a los demás inmigrantes integrarse con más facilidad. Sólo sé que todos en algún momento debemos ir a Granada, yo ya espero ansiosa el momento en que vuelva, ahora para verla nevada...maravillosa ciudad de transformación.