Granada Part 2: Lotsa walking, lotsa awesome

We last left our heroes riding home on the struggle-copter after dancing literally all night, arriving home around 7am.

Sunday
This morning (I guess it would be more correct to call it the afternoon at this point) we went to a nearby cafe for beer (haha) and fried eggplant with honey.  Then we walked around the city, but it's shitty out today, so we're probably going to watch Game of Thrones at some point.
Ok, Emily came over and we watched some epic GoT, then walked around the city some more.  Needless to say, we headed in the direction of food.  Emily knew about a little British owned pub, where we had some rounds of drinks and excellent tapas.  We hung out there for a bit just chatting, then went to an arabic themed tea and hookah bar, where we obtained some excellent tea.  Then kebab... I've been noticing that different cities in Europe do kebab a little differently.  In France and Germany it was half a toasted pita, filled like a hoagie.  In Madrid, it was a kind of crunchy flat hamburger bun type thing.  Here in Granada it is a filled pita, rolled up like a burrito, which I think is the best yet.  ...clearly I've been thinking a lot about kebab...
After the kebab nom-session, we hit up an irish pub and got a few more drinks.  A little pricier, but having some Guiness in Europe reminded me how it's so much better than back home.  After Emily left, Sarah and I stayed until 3am for a few more drinks.  Then we tried for more kebab, but it was unfortunately closed.

Just a couple of normal sisters

Monday
We got up this morning for a walking tour of the Albaicin wall and some other areas in the north that we hadn't seen yet.  It's been kind of overcast, but at least it's not raining.  And we got some INSANE strawberries at an outdoor market on our way to meet Emily.  Holy crap: best strawberries EVER.  We basically walked around the northern part of the city, through the quaint-as-fuck passageways and gates and down magical streets.  A lot of great views of the Alhambra from different spots around the city.

Ok this city is pretty rad

The weather is... interesting

Kitteh wanted some Bueno Bar

After getting our walk on, we went to that little hippy cafe again to get some food and tinto.
Later at night we opted to go to an irish pub for trivia.  It was in English, so at least we could play... but it was run by a British guy.  Some of the sports questions were... skewed.  Most of them were based on soccer.  Not so good.  But I rocked the music questions.  And after about 7 coronas (great choice at an irish pub) it was the first time on the trip I felt a little drunk.

Tuesday
Sarah and I woke up at sunrise to see from the hostel roof.  Finally a nice day!
We used the Sun for some extremely pleasant walking and sight seeing.  We went up to a park by the Alhambra, Carmen de los Martires.  It was really pretty and had some peacocks to imitate, so that's fun.  And there were little kittens to play with.  We then returned to the park from yesterday with the great view of the Alhambra.  We had a few beers in the Sun with a great view: always a good way to spend your afternoon.

Kittehs love me

My zoom is pretty decent

I'm not sure which Alhambra I like better!

 
Then we decided to have some cookies and sangria on the hostel roof.  It was a perfect way to prepare for a bullfight.  That's right, ANOTHER BULLFIGHT.  Emily got us tickets at the Plaza del Toros, which is rare now because bullfighting is starting to become looked down upon.  This bullfighting experience was a lot different from the one in Sevilla.  Fans didn't dress in suits and flamenco dresses for one thing.  And the matadors didn't wear flashy, ornate clothes.  But on the bright side, we arrived early AND there are stairs in this stadium, so we didn't repeat the horrific experience from last time.  And the matadors put on a better show.  Well, at least two of them had really impressive moves.  But the last one had a really tough bull, and right off the bat was trampled a bit (how the hell was he ok after that?).  But he kept losing the bull's interest, and then botched his finishing attempts really badly.  The crowd was not pleased.

This dude was nuts

MISSED IT

Anyway, we finished our Granada experience with a return trip to the Poe for delicious tapas.  Holy fuck those are so good.

Granada Part 1: so many tapas

The first few days in Granada were so insanely action packed that I didn't get to writing in the old journal for a couple days.  And soooooo many tapas.

Friday
Sarah's sister, Emily, met us at the bus station in Granada, where we took a city bus to our hostel.  It's difficult to describe Granada.  One street will be large and city-like, but the next street over will be a lot like Sevilla: small and very Spanish.  You can tell that there was a lot of Muslim influence though.  One of the older areas of the city, which used to be the market square, is now occupied by shops whose owners speak arabic.  The main attraction in Granada, La Alhambra, used to be a Moorish plaza before it was converted to a Catholic area.

Granada seems ok

Our hostel is amazing: we finally have our own room (with a bonus bathroom!) and the roof has an amazing view of the Alhambra and nearby Cathedral.

Get out of the way, I'm trying to look at cathedrals!

Fun story about the cathedral: we walked in to take a look, as many others did, and there was a wedding going on.  Really strange.  The bride and groom signed the paperwork in front of everyone?  Is that normal?  I'll tell you what isn't normal: complete strangers, dressed in rain jackets and flip flops, watching a wedding full of people they don't know.  Weird.
But anyway, Emily showed us around a bit, we got some kebab (obviously), had some Tinto de Verano at a cafe (like sangria, but sans fruit and with carbonation), and then walked around some more.

The tinto round came after the beer round

We met with some of Emily's friends at a cheap tapas bar.  Insanely cheap drinks and free tapas with each one.  The best were fried eggplant with honey.  We didn't feel like party cat-ing too hard, so we went to one other bar (sunflower seeds come with your drinks?) before calling it a night.

Saturday
Today was the day we booked a tour of La Alhambra.  There was some mix-up with the tickets (fyi booking online is insanely complicated apparently), but we eventually got everything settled to see La Alhambra and the connecting gardens and Generalife (King's summer house).  It was unfortunate that it was raining and that we got soaked, but that didn't "dampen" our moods.  HAR HAR HAR.  As expected, everything was amazing.  The gardens were really cool, showing the difference in Muslim and Christian design.

Not sure why this guy's summer house was right next to his regular house...

They also had some great views of the rest of the Alhambra.  This was even more gorgeous, with insides that were ridiculously ornate and courtyards that were actually stunning.  The craziest part through were all the walls.  So intricate, most of which had rows and rows of chiseled arabic writing and other designs.  It was nuts.

The outside of the building does not at all indicate that this is a circular structure

We're at Hogwarts

That seems difficult

After that, we changed out of our wet clothes and hung out at a cafe for a bit.  We had to relax before Beast Mode Bar Night 2012.  We started at a tapas bar, Poe, where I had 6 tinto de veranos, mostly to get the free tapas that came with.  They were unbelievable.  A spicy thai chicken, pork stew, skewered pork with pineapple.  I can't believe how cheap everything was.  For less than 12 euros I was slightly tipsy and full of delicious food.  SO GOOD.  Fuck.

That pile of tapas bowls belongs to me

Then around 12:30 we went to an amazing discoteca up on the hill facing the Alhambra, which looked incredible from up there.  So while dancing literally all night, we had an amazing view.  And club music.  Awesome.  Then we headed home around 6am.

This was our view while we danced to "Call Me Maybe"