Off to Andalucía

This morning, I woke up when the sky was still dark and the streets were empty—5:15 am.  Fortunately, this early morning was the beginning of my weekend in Andalucía, so the lack of sleep was worth it!  All twenty students and our two professors piled onto a bus for the five-hour drive to Granada.  Interestingly, one of the laws in Spain is that professional drivers (bus drivers, truck drivers, etc.) are required to take a 30 minute break for every 3 hours of driving, so halfway through the journey, we stopped at a rest area.  Now, this was not just any old, bare-bones rest stop.  It was like a mini-mall complete with a gift shop filled with trademark Spanish goods, a store dedicated to different varieties of olive oil (it even had a tasting table set up!), and a food court.  Oh, that food court.  It offered everything from artisan pastries, to the famous Spanish ham, jamón iberico, to salads topped with brie, and gazpacho.  Something I found so amusing was that the food court offered little individual containers of olive oil, just like the coffee creamer containers in the U.S., in lieu of prepared salad dressing.  Don’t worry—there were also little containers of red wine vinegar.

An outdoor spice and tea market 

The cathedral in Granada

            

We resumed our excursion and finally arrived in Granada around 2 pm.  After that, we dropped off our bags in our hotel, took a small tour of the city, then went to see the Alhambra.  It was absolutely breathtaking.  So many intricate designs of tiles, wall carvings, and gardens fill this monument, and seeing it was worth every bit of effort exerted in climbing up its many hills and stairs.

 When we finished admiring all that the Alhambra had to offer, we returned to our hotel and rested for a bit before going out for tapas around 9.  Two friends and I went to a restaurant close to our hotel that had great reviews on Yelp, so we were excited to try it.  It was very crowded when we arrived, but we were able to snag a table.  Our waiter was fabulous.  After we asked a few questions about the menu, he told us not to worry and that he would take care of us, then left.  Spaniards speak pretty quickly, so we didn’t completely understand what was going on until he returned with two huge trays of food…one platter of assorted tapas, and one with roasted meat, goat cheese, and peppers.  There was so much food and it was all very delicious!  Once we had digested a bit, we got more food…my first sampling of authentic churros and chocolate.  They were tasty, but I expected the chocolate to be more, well, chocolaty.  From there, we headed back to the hotel and slept very well after the long day!