Ok, so it´s been a few weeks... I´ve been swamped with work and travels!
Halloween weekend we had a "puente," or a long weekend break for All Saints´ Day on Nov. 1, known as El Día del Muerte (Day of the Dead). Since it fell on a Tuesday, the brilliant Spanish government made Monday a holiday too so people could travel. So, for the first time ever I got Halloween off from school! (When it wasn´t on a weekend, of course.) We planned a trip to Andalucia, the southern area of Spain, to Granada, Sevilla and Córdoba.
Thursday night Ashley and I took the 12:30 am (yes, midnight) bus to Granada in Southern Spain. We wanted to take the overnight train that has BEDS but it was full because of the puente, so we opted for the bus. It actually wasn´t bad because we slept for most of the 8+ hours, but later that day we really started to feel it. We toured the Cathedral and wandered around the middle-eastern-type bazaars that fill the web of alleys around the Cathedral. Because Granada is in the south, there is a strong Arabic presence in the culture of the area, and in the bazaar we felt like we had left Spain completely.
Saturday we toured Granada´s famous "Alhambra," which is the giant Islamic fortress overtaken by the Christians around the 11th/12th centuries where Charles I of Spain centered his reign. It was really interesting because in about 10 minutes, our tour guide had covered pretty much all of what Ashley and I are studying in our Islamic Iberia class, so we recognized all the names and events that he explained. We spent three hours there exploring the fortress and surrounding gardens with our tour group and loved it, it was so beautiful and overwhelming. Later that day we took the bus up to the Albaicín, or the Jewish quarter of Granada which is now more of a gypsy district, but there is a lookout point called El Mirador de San Nicolás where you can see all of the Alhambra on the mountainside. Basically, it´s where all the postcard pictures of the Alhambra are taken from, and the view is breathtaking. Our tour guide at the Alhambra told us that it´s jokingly called "El Mirador de San Bill Clinton" because when he was young he was traveling around Europe and loved the view there so much that he returned when he was President, and now every big political figure who visits Granada goes there because Clinton made it famous.
Sunday we left for Sevilla by train and stayed for the day and spent the night. I could tell the city is really cool, but we didn´t particularly have an amazing time because it was cold and rainy the whole time, so we were a little swayed in our opinion. But we visited the Cathedral there, which is the third largest in the world behind St. Paul´s in London and the Vatican in Rome. It was gorgeous, but we had to wait outside in the rain to be let in with a mob of people. We also visited the Alcazar, which is the Islamic/Christian palace in Sevilla and that was really cool because the rain hadn´t started yet so we got to wander around the grounds and gardens. We met up with Liz for dinner (we also met up with her in Granada, too! She was there with her program for the weekend) and she gave us an impromptu tour of the city. I wish we could have stayed longer to get better weather, but we had to move on to Córdoba on Monday.
Córdoba I think was my favorite. It was so beautiful and charming, maybe because we had the best weather there, but I loved it! We visited the famous Mezquita, which is this giant muslim mosque built way back when the muslims had control of the area. Later the Christians took over and Charles I had it converted into a cathedral, which was a flop. He hated the transformation and told the people who built it that they ruined what was unique about the mosque. It´s basically this giant beautiful mosque with a cathedral built in the middle of it... a little awkward. You don´t even notice the cathedral until you walk deeper into the mosque.
Afterwards we wandered around the Jewish quarter where all the buildings are whitewashed with flowerpots on the walls, very picturesque. We explored and shopped a little, of course, before heading back to the hotel to pack up. We took the train back to Valencia on Tuesday for 7 hours and couldn´t have been happier to get back "home" to Lucia´s. But the trip was wonderful and it was really cool to get to see Andalucia because the culture there is so completely different from the rest of the country. There is such a strong arabic influence on the food, the culture and the architecture that it was hardly the same country as the area where we live. I hope I get to go back someday, especially to try and go to Morocco for the day if I get the chance!
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