Post-Madrid/Granada

After 5 long days, it feels SO good to be back in Barcelona. Home sweet home, haha. For 7 more days at least.

Wednesday morning we woke up at the crack to catch our train to Madrid. It was a 3 hour ride on a high speed train. I tried to sleep, but it was pretty uncomfortable. It was very smooth but the seats seemed worse than airplane seats. I've decided that if I ever travel for a job in the future I need to find a way to not be a bear that whole day, haha, because any sort of travel by train/plane/automobile just takes it out of me. We stayed in Hotel Regina in Madrid which was in a really nice part of town. I stayed with Katie and Molly this time so we would be able to check out early together on Friday. Our room was really cool, but the wood floors squeaked a lot. Anyway, we dropped our luggage off right when we got there Wednesday morning around 10. Our purpose for visiting Madrid last week was to see the different PhotoEspaña exhibits, which are a huge deal in Spain. Photographers from all over the world have displays all throughout Madrid it's all privately sponsored so there's no advertisements or anything to distract from the exhibits. Our first exhibit was located on a rooftop terrace of a museum right across the street from our hotel and it was all about clouds and the skylines of Madrid. It was really cool. Our second was in the same building and it was El Arte de la Luz, which was neat because he didn't even use pictures sometimes to create his photographs. We saw a few more exhibits then had lunch. After lunch, we stopped by an exhibit on the way back to the hotel called Calves & Thighs. It was...interesting. The nudity still continues to shock me. The artist, Juergen Teller, has done a ton of high fashion stuff and then he just has crazy shocking stuff with himself as the subject. After this exhibit, I think Marcel noticed we were all kind of drained and let us loose for the day. After getting our rooms situated, a group of us went out to watch the Spain World Cup game. Sadly, they lost 0-1. They played like crap too. We all went back to take a nap before the South Africa/Uruguay game. We found a cute irish pub to watch that at and feasted on more food than we've seen the entire trip and watched our team lose again. We were all rooting for South Africa this time. They lost 0-3.

Day 2 of Madrid started with some crazzzzzyyyyy dreams and some excellent breakfast. Thank God for complimentary breakfasts at hotels. Our first exhibit was my favorite of all that we went to. The photographer was actually a professor from MIT and he was studying the art of movement. My favorite was the photo of the golfer swinging.


The second exhibit we went to was about time. I didn't get very much out of this one. Also, there were scary dark rooms with odd photo displays that I got followed into twice by older men. One time DJ and I were in a room together and this man dressed in all black came up behind us and ran his hand over the projector really slowly. It was so freaky. It doesn't sound like it but it was pitch black and we could barely see the guy. After this exhibit, Marcel walked us around the nice part of Madrid and we walked through streets that had all sorts of designer brands up and down the streets. One thing I noticed about Madrid was the amount of Range Rovers, Mercedes, and Audis there were! I saw so many TTs. Still my dream car, haha.

After lunch we went to the Prado museum for a few hours. It was cool to see the actual Las Meninas but I literally have 0 appreciation left for art at this point. I can only look at so many crucifixes and not get bored.

After the Prado we watched the Mexico game in our room with some of the girls and got ready to go out. On our way to Kapital, we stopped by McDonalds to have some dinner. Seriously...first time in 5 years I've eaten at McDonalds. But it doesn't count since I'm in Spain, right? It was delicious. I feel like a terrible human being. Kapital ended up being AWESOME. It's a 7 story discoteca in Madrid and they were having a promo for a new whiskey. We got free hats, sunglasses, flowers for our hair, shirts, and a free drink. AND we got in for free. It was awesome. After hanging out on the rooftop terrace for a while, we went down to the second floor and did some karaoke, haha. Me and some of the girls sang No Scrubs by TLC. I never realized how repetitive that song is until then. We did awesome though! Then we checked out the first floor, which had some pretty awesome dancers on platforms. By awesome I mean ridiculously sexy. In Spain, dancing is weird because only boys dance with boys and only girls dance with girls. So after a while of just standing in a circle with no one approaching us, we went to the second story where more Americans and danced there for a little while. We left at around 3 because Katie, Molly and I had to be up at 7 to check out of the hotel and catch our train to Granada.

Friday morning we woke up, ate breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and caught a taxi to the train station and left ourselves just enough time to be comfortably early. The train ride from Madrid to Granada was about 5 hours and unfortunately we had the awkward seats on the train that face the row in front of it so the whole way I had to be careful not to knock knees with the (of course) abnormally tall man sitting across from me. When we were pulling into the Granada train station, I was a little worried that it was looking a bit like Mexico. But I was mistaken! The Granada train station is just a little sketchy but nothing else is! Granada is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l! But really, that train station is dumb. They don’t even have maps there. We had to get directions from the people to a tourist center to get a map. Luckily we found it okay. After getting the map and finding where our hostal was, we went and checked in. Hostal Costal Azul was so cute! Our room had a bed and a pull out couch and we had our own bathroom! It was perfect.

After getting settled, we met up with Katie’s 2 friends from back home, Lisa and Miranda, who are studying abroad in Granada. We watched the USA World Cup game at a bar and it was so cheap. First of all, we got free tapas with a round of beer. That NEVER happens in Barcelona. Second of all, the beer was SO cheap! And the alcohol content was way higher than I’m used to. Now I understand why Carson was always telling me how cheap everything was…Southern Spain is much cheaper than Northern Spain. While we were at the bar, Marcel called us to make sure we had gotten there safely. That made us all feel really good, haha, knowing that he was still looking out for us. After the bar, Lisa and Miranda took us to the “tienditas”, which are little shops they discovered that sell lots of handmade things. They were soo cool. I got a purse and a coin purse and some bracelets. I might have splurged a little but it was so much better than all the dumb souvenirs that Barcelona has. After splitting ways for dinner, we met back up at 9:30 to see Alhambra. Unfortunately, we missed our time to get our tickets so we just played around with the different lights they had on the buildings.

The next morning after Molly and I got some breakfast, we met up with Lisa and Miranda again to go get piercings but the shop was closed! It was frustrating but I loved walking around and seeing the city. Katie and her friends were going paragliding that afternoon so Molly and I went up to Alhambra and walked around what we could without actually going inside. Then, we decided to go up Sacremonte to see the caves and Granada from up high. We walked as far as we could and then got scared and turned around, only to find an old Italian man and a young German girl behind us. We decided to follow them and the old man ended up being really nice. He was from Sicily and had been a tour guide at one point and now he’s a painter. He showed us the restoration of the wall on the mountain and pointed out the old parts and the new parts. We never could figure out what the two of them were doing together because the girl barely spoke but we stayed with them until we got down to the town part of Sacremonte and skeedaddled away from them as soon as we could. We got some amazing pictures though! We went back to the hostel and waited for Katie, Miranda and Lisa to get back before splitting some croquettes and calamari for dinner.

Sunday morning we checked out of the hostal and met with Lisa and Miranda to take taxis to the bus station so we could get to the beach. The beach was about an hour and a half away from Granada and it was a gravelly beach instead of sand, which ended up being nice because it got really windy while we were there and there weren’t any sand tornadoes or anything. It did get a little unbearable though after a while...the whole rocks being thrown on us/it got really cold. So we ate lunch and headed back to the bus station. Unfortunately I was not feeling well at all so the bus ride back I just tried to relax and think positive thoughts. My head was killing me. I’m going to have to figure some things out when I get back home for sure. We walked back from the bus station and by the time we made it back to the center of the city, it was time to say bye to Miranda and Lisa. I’m so happy we were able to meet them. They were so sweet and such good tour guides, haha. Molly, Katie and I grabbed our luggage from the hostal and hit up Haagen Daas for some ridiculously overpriced crepes and then headed to the train station. An old man and old woman helped us get to where we needed to go. They were so nice. We made it there safe and sound and killed some time. When we were walking to our train car, we passed all these people with their windows open and we could see their beds and we got SO excited. When we realized that we only had normal seats for the entire ELEVEN hour ride, we were beyond disappointed. It was by far the worst 11 hours of my life because every hour or so the train stopped and picked up more people and they were loud and we were right by the door, which was also loud. Thankfully we were all together and we weren’t facing the row in front of us again.

We arrived in Barcelona this morning at 10. I think we were all ready to get off that dumb train. This week all of our projects are due so I feel like we’re all going to be stressed to the max. 7 days until I’m home!

Granada's ambulances have the same sound that American ambulances use. It's surprising what makes me miss home, haha.