La Alhambra en Granada

A number of weekends ago, I took a wonderful little road trip with my fabulous roomie, Yolaine. It was quite the adventure really. It is the first time we had gone out on a trip together and it was interesting in two respects:

1)      It was super cool to go down to Granada and see La Alhambra and some of the places I am learning about in my European History and my Art History classes.

2)      It was really super hilarious to see how my roommate reacted to tourists. Like seriously, super hilarious.

So, to talk about the first part. We went down to this little town called Granada. It really isn’t that big and there really isn’t a whole lot to do there besides going to check out this wicked awesome palace they have down there called La Alhambra which means Red Castle or something like that in Arabic. It really is this gigantic red coloured castle that has been around since like the 9^th century. It is ridiculously cool! It is this castle with a ton of Arabic and Moorish influences. The architecture is like nothing I have ever seen before. There are coloured tile everywhere and extreme detail on everything. It is amazing and again, it isn’t really something I can describe. It amazes me that people built all of this by hand.

The most amazing thing to me at this castle was the gardens. It was the beginning of March and most of the trees weren’t in bloom and neither were the flowers. Even in spite of that, it was AMAZING!!!!!!!!! Seriously, so freaking cool. I felt like I was walking through a heavenly garden and I could just be calm and relaxed cuz nothing bad could happen in a place so beautiful. There were fountains and gardens and hedges and rose bushes and flower beds and roman bath houses. It was just so completely different than anything else I have seen in Europe. If you come to Spain, you have to hit up Granada.

Through the entire trip we had this ongoing conversation about how important it was for me to get a castle. I have started planning it already. It will be huge with fountains and flowers and gardens were I can have rendez-vous’ with my secret lovers. There will be a dragon and alligators in the moat that will surround the giant gate with a drawbridge. Also, there will be super awesome towers with awesome views and of course all of this will come with a stinking rich, beautiful Prince Charming. Yay! So, if anyone has any leads on where I can find any of these, let me know. Until then, I will continue to traipse around Europe looking for inspiration in various castles.

Oh, final thing. When going through La Alhambra, we found this lady in her late sixties who was your typical tourist. Baseball hat, camera around the neck, waddling around with her husband and to top it all off.... SHE WAS WEARING A TWILIGHT SHIRT!!!! Hahahaha!!! Crack me up. I took a picture of her. I don’t think she was too happy about it. Oh well! Couldn’t pass that opportunity up.

Onto number two. My roommate is ridiculously hilarious. Seriously, it was like she turned into this stereotypical Frenchwoman who makes me laugh. She honestly could NOT stand the tourists. Anytime we neared a group she would just cringe and rant. It made me laugh so hard. Seriously, such a hoot. When Sadie and I were leaving for London, Yolaine decided she wanted to come with us. Ohhhh we laughed and warned her that we would be super touristy and take pictures of everything and that she would have to deal with it. I swear she actually hesitated for a minute! Haha! Such a sweetheart though.

Anyways, check out pictures on Facebook. This place is definitely worth seeing. Also, there is a restaurant with the most amazing asparagus dish thing and there is also a hotel with super comfy beds and tv and everything and it was like 15 euros a night! Yay!! All in all, a good weekend!