Granada/Cordoba

This past weekend I went on a school trip with all the other ISU students to the cities of Granada and Cordoba in Spain. I was really looking forward to it, because it was the first trip that we got to take all together as a large group. Usually we just travel in small groups.

We left at 6:30am Friday morning. We went on a charter bus to Granada first. The trip was long, and I couldn't sleep for any of it. When we arrived at 2:30 in the afternoon, we went straight to the Alhambra. The Alhambra is a palace and fortress built in the 14th centurty by the Moors. It reminded me a lot of Alcazar in Sevilla. It was really pretty and had amazing sculpted ceillings and big rooms. But for those of us who went to Sevilla, it wasn't as impressive or big as Alcazar, so we weren't as blown away by it as the others. Still cool though.

After that, we went to the hotel. It was so nice to stay in an actual hotel for once, instead of the cheap hostals we usually get when we travel on our own. Dinner was at 9:30pm. We walked to a restaurant that had a huge buffet. I was really happy, because there were lots of options to eat besides meat (yay for Fridays...) We ate sooo much. I hope they were prepared for a group of 30 Americans coming to a place that said "Take as many plates as you want."

The next day we went to the Capilla Real, or the Royal Chapel. I got to see the remains of King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella, their daughter Queen Juana and her husband Philip (Felipe). That was really cool. I also saw King Ferdinand's crown and robes.The church was really neat too. The structure behind the alter was amazing, but it had a lot of gruesome statues of different saints being killed... Kind of gross.

Next we went to the Cathedral. Ok, so I've been in a lot of cathedrals, in Mexico, Ecuador, Italy, Spain. But this cathedral is the most BEAUTIFUL cathedral I have ever seen in my life. It's huge, and built almost circular. It's a combination of different styles of architecture, so it's white and marble with stained glass windows, not dark and musty like cathedrals usually are. I absolutely loved it.

We had free time after that, so we went and got lunch at an outdoor restaurant. Then we walked around the city. Granada is full of foreigners, but not the touristy type. There are a lot of Brazilians and Africans, and people from Eastern Europe. It was fun to see lots of different people. Oh and in this city, they don't have stray dogs, only stray cats. I'm not kidding. There were tons of cats walking around all the streets, it was so strange!

We got on the bus around 4 to go to Cordoba. It was supposed to be a 2 and 1/2 hour bus ride, but that turned into almost 3 and 1/2 because our Spanish chaperones had no clue where the hotel was, and had to keep getting on and off the bus to ask random people on the streets. We all kind of learned to get used to the chaperones not really knowing what was going on most of the time...

This night we stayed in a hostal, but a nice hostal. It was built like a maze, we had to go through 3 hallways and 2 staircases to get to our room. I shared the room with Steph, and our room was actually smaller than our room in Caceres, which I didn't think was possible. Plus the toliet was literally underneath the sink in our bathroom, which was interesting, and our shower water was so scalding hot I expected it to boil. Oh well.

That night we went out to dinner at 9:30. In the restaurant, we all sat at one long table. We were served about 8 courses of tapas. Tapas are very popular here in Spain. You can buy any drink and get free food with it, like appetizers. So we were given pitchers of water and wine, and lots of courses of appetizers set on the table for us to just divide up and share. We had salad, fried egg plant, croquetes, and other kinds of food that I can't describe because honestly I don't know what they were. We were there for over 2 hours, I didn't think they would ever stop coming out with more food. I was soo full.

Sunday morning we went to Al Madinah al-Zahra , which was an Arab Muslim medieval town. We got to climb through the ruins, which would have been more appreciated if it wasn't raining the whole time.

After that we got more free time, so we went and ate lunch at a nice restaurant. Then we had ice cream at Burger King (yes, we really did) and met the group again at the Mezquita, or the Great Mosque of Cordoba (I looked it up in English). It was originally a mosque, but it was turned into a cathedral. So basically, you walk into a huge mosque with lots of open space and pillars, but there is a big alter and pews directly in the middle of it, and Catholic statues and paintings in the connecting rooms. It was so neat.

We left soon after that. Most everyone slept on the bus on the way home (except for me. again). We got home around 11pm, and we were dead tired. I still had homework to do, and class Monday morning. But it was soo much fun.

Tomorrow night I leave for PARIS! I am sooo excited! I'm going with Steph and another girl. Our bus leaves at 3:30pm to Madrid, then our plane to Paris is at 9. We'll be there until Sunday, so I'll have lots of stories to tell. Also, I finally booked my flight to the Canary Islands for spring break. So all is well. :) I will hopefully get pictures up soon, but I have to steal them from other students because my camera died Friday afternoon of the trip... oops.