Spain time isn't real life time. I don't have time to sleep, much less write about the fun things I'm doing. Let's start with the Andalucia trip.
Andalucia is the southern region of Spain, and saying it is beautiful doesn't do it justice. It was a long 4 hour bus ride at 7 in the morning with 25 of us USAC kids, and obviously we hardly slept. The first city we went to was Cordoba, which was a very very small community surrounded by olive trees in the hills and was absolutely gorgeous. We toured the mezquita, which is a giant mosque that is also beautiful. If I had a dollar for every famous mosque, cathedral etc, I would have a bunch of dollars. We had free time and got to roam around the city. Our tour guide told us about the best restaurant in the town, and after quite the trek we found it and it was closed. Cool. So we found another restaurant and ate tapas and drank sangria. Of course we had to have gazpacho, which southern Spain is famous for. It was good but I prefer Branding Iron's in Merced. The weather was nice and before we knew it, we had to load the bus and go to our next city. I thought all of the cities we were going to were close in distance, boy was I wrong. About 3 1/2 hours later, we arrived in Granada. I assumed this city would also be small and quaint, but when I woke up the first thing I saw was an El Corte Ingles, the biggest department store in Spain, and a whole street of shopping and big buildings. Thought I was back in Madrid. It was dinner time (10 pm, silly Spain), and our hotel was awesome. We casually walk down for dinner at the hotel buffet, and much to my surprise there was amazing food. I can't figure out if it was just normal hotel buffet food that you would find in America which is why I loved it, or if it really was good. That is a battle I face often these days, whether food is actually good or if I'm just hungry. Anyways, they had salad. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a salad. After eating lots of food, we went to a flamenco show, and toured the sacramonte district and the albayzine. We also had a great view of the Alhambra at night. The flamenco show was really cool and unique. It was in a cave like room and we were all front row, there was only one row. The sacramonte neighborhood is famous for being the place where all the gypsies used to live, and now it is a rich neighborhood with many people wishing they could live there. Afterwards we attempted to find a place for us all to go out that was close to the hotel and failing, Morgan and I stayed up talking for hours instead of going to bed to be well rested for our long day of touring the next day. Needless to say we were exhausted and pretty angry when we woke up just a few short hours later.
We toured the Alhambra early in the morning, but after we had the best hotel continental breakfast ever. Bagels. Can't explain how much I miss bagels. The Alhambra was beautiful! And getting there was also really pretty as well. We had beautiful weather, which is good because almost the entire tour was outside and it was supposed to rain. Our tour guide was hilarious and kept calling things "the ol", like "the ol' Alhambra", and "the ol' cathedral." It was presh. Afterwards we had free time and went and ate at a weird trying-to-be-modern-and-hip-slash-mexican restaurant. It was alright. We went to the cathedral of Granada afterwards and saw King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's graves. The cathedral was huuuuuge and squished inside the middle of a bunch of other buildings. We went on a hunt for some ice cream, and there was a shop with a huge sign that said gelateria. So, we go inside to get this gelato, and the only ice cream they have is prepackaged like the kind you get from the ice cream man, push pops and ice cream sandwiches. Lame, thats not gelato. We found good gelato right next door though, so no worries. Eventually we loaded the bus once more and were off to our final destination.
This bus trip took another 4 ish hours. We bonded through music and talked about favorite old songs for the majority of this leg of the race. We ate dinner at the hotel when we got to Sevilla and it was pretty ehh. After the best hotel buffet I had ever had, I was expecting the same. Sevilla already looked a lot different than Granada and Cordoba. The bus couldn't go down the small streets so we had to carry our luggage 7 blocks from the parking lot to the hotel. And now is when it started raining, obviously. I don't think anyone cared though because we were finally off that dumb bus. The hotel was cute and Morgan and I got put in a room way far away from everyone else, but we had a sweet balcony. We also couldn't figure out how to work the shower and a maintenance man had to come "fix" it, when really he just turned it on. Whoops. I think for dinner we had something similar to biscuits and gravy, and then a meat of some sort. I do know I was hungry afterwards. Anne and I ventured off to find a store after dinner, and asked a man for directions. He gave us dumb far directions so we just wandered by ourselves. 10 minutes later, we see the same guy on a random street. We awkwardly say hello and keep going. On our way back to the hotel, we say the same guy again, and he thinks its hilarious we keep running into each other. Morgan, Anne and I go down to a bar down the street to get some food and drinks, and what do you know, the same guy is eating in the restaurant. So obviously we giggle and think its super funny and act immature. Jake and Hannah joined us for a bit then we decided to go out. We get in a cab since it's raining, and ask to go where the guy told us is a cool street to hang out on. While at a red light, we spend however many minutes that racks up 10 euros. Longest red light of my life. We were pretty mad because the cab should've been about 4 euros, instead of 14. We get to this bar and walk in and it might as well have been America. Only english was spoken, everyone was tall and American looking, they served Budweiser, and there were annoying blonde bimbos dancing on the bar. After a few minutes of that we decided to leave. We go to the bar next door and of course we run into everyone else in our program. Were in Sevilla, one of the largest cities in Spain, and we run into everyone. It ended up being a blast and we kind of took over the bar and dance floor since there was 25 of us and the place was tiny. Going to bed at 430ish and waking up to do more tours was a bad idea. No wonder in high school on field trips and soccer trips they didn't allow you go to out, or stay up past 10. Seven a.m. wake up call was awesome, and walking the whole city of Sevilla was even more awesome. not. The place was pretty beautiful though. There were orange trees everywhere which made the city smell great, and it had super cute neighborhoods on tiny cobblestone streets. We went to the cathedral of Sevilla and got to see Christopher Columbus's grave. His coffin is above ground with 4 statues of men holding it. Morgan and I were saying out loud how weird it was that his coffin was above ground. Everyone around us was like, umm obviously its underground and this is just a statue for show, duh. Well, minutes later our tour guide told us that right before Chris died he said he would not be buried in Spanish soil. So, they didn't bury him in the soil, he's above it. So duh, everyone else. We walked up 36 ramps to get to the top of a bell tower connected to the church. There are ramps because the men used to ring the bells a bunch of times a day and would get to the top by horse, and obviously horses can't climb stairs. 36 ramps later we got to see a great 360 view of the city. Keep in mind this is also the third day and going on no sleep and 36 ramps sounds like the worst punishment USAC could've given us. It was really cool though. We got free time and lunch time afterwards, and we ate at an italian restaurant where we would later find out Morgan got food poisoning from. Sorry Morgan, but Anne and I loved our food. We had tons of time until dinner and while they gave us a packet of cool things to do in the city, everyone single person in our group went back and napped instead. We needed it. We ate dinner at a local restaurant and they served us tapas. Since we figured it would be a normal tapa meal, with just a few plates going around, we were eating everything. Little did we know they would serve 12 different tapas. After the 3rd round which took about an hour, we were ready to be done and were stuffed. Dinner lasted about 4 hours and we didn't even touch the last few rounds. Spaniards do things so differently. I also drank about 7 bottles of water during this time. It was nice though because we could try things we normally wouldn't order. At this point Morgan had to leave dinner and had food poisoning pretty bad. Anne and I got back to the hotel and decided not to go out, and just cuddled in bed instead. Oh, it was also on this trip that I figured out how to make my iphone work with internet and such. Good thing I've been here for 3 months and am just now learning. The next day we woke up, got breakfast, and had even more free time. The weather was better and we rented a 3 person bike cart thing to ride around Plaza de Espana. P.S., they filmed Star Wars Attack of the Clones in this plaza. It was a really cool park and the bike ride took up some of our free time, by this point we just wanted to head home. Around 2 we loaded the bus again. Each time we took a rest stop, the bus driver made us all get off the bus, even if we were sleeping. This made many people mad. We played some iphone games, tried to sleep, and ended up having a 4 hour discussion of every movie we could think of. It would start with talking about an actor, then every movie he is in, then co stars, and so on. That helped pass some of the 8 hour bus trip home. I sure was glad to be home, but it really was a great trip. Without going with the program there is no way I would've been able to see everything and take the tours and cram it all in. When I fell asleep that night I kept waking up thinking I was on a bus and was falling. Too many hours. On to the next trip....
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