Well rested for the days to come

The past two days I´ve made a point of studying, exercising, sleeping well, and eating well. I was feeling a bit worn out from two weeks of socializing, and really needed the break. I feel refreshed and am ready to enjoy my last few days in Granada.

All week in Granada there is the annual "feria", which is basically a huge party. Every business in town will be closed tomorrow, and most businesses will close for a half-day today and Friday. There´s a parade today and tomorrow, and every night people party from 11PM to dawn. Es una autentica locura.

On Saturday morning I´ll take a bus to Madrid, then fly from Madrid to Geneva, then take a train from Geneva to Brig, Switzerland, which is where my bike ride begins. Here´s an itinerary for the bike ride.

Where I´ve stayed

Here is my current hostel, the Funky Backpacker´s (photos are on the right side of the page)
Here is where I stayed in Malaga
Here is my language school in Granada

Staying in Granada

On a whim, I decided to sign up for 3 hours of Spanish classes per day for this week. The main reason was that I didn´t feel like getting on a bus, then a boat, then a bus, then finding my way to a hostel, etc. I´ll feel quite satisfied about improving my Spanish, and hopefully this wil give me a kick start.

The school is small - about half the size of my school in Mexico. I´m in a class with five others, and the class includes grammar and conversation. Today´s class was pretty easy, so I might ask for more classes, or to be moved to another level. I like my classmates, though.

My hostel room fits four people, but I´m the only one staying there right now. So I practically have a single. This is good, since my stuff is strewn everywhere around the room.

What I´ve done so far

Here´s a summary of where I´ve been and what I´ve done:
Saturday, May 23: Left Birmingham to Philly to Lisbon to Sevilla. The entire trip took about 18 hours, and I arrived in Sevilla around 13:00. I only slept a couple hours on the plane, but had enough energy to make it through Sunday without a nap. I checked in to the Hostal Samay (clean, about 20 bucks a night for a room with 5 others), which is in the Barrio Santa Cruz section. It´s the old Jewish quarter and was built up in the 1200´s, more or less. The barrio streets are typical Andalucia - narrow and confusing, with small plazas dotting the neighborhood.

Bullfights only happen on Sundays, so I walked to the ring and bought a "sol" ticket, which is directly in the sunlight. I had a couple hours to spare, so I had a beer and some tapas at a cafe. I thought I would respect the bullfight for it´s history, but it was truly barbaric. About 20% of the audience were tourists, which makes you wonder how sustainable the sport would be without interested foreigners. For me, it´s a relic of machismo.

Monday: I woke up late and walked around the town by myself, and toured the cathedral, which is the largest gothic cathedral in the world. It´s impressive, but seeing many many cathedrals in my life, they all blend together.

In the evening I went on a tour organized by a few hostels, then a pub crawl afterward. Met lots of people.

Tuesday: Woke up late again, and went to the Alcazar, an old Moorish/Christian fortress and palace. I joined up with a pub crawl again that night.

Wednesday: Walked randomly around the city with a friend, which I enjoyed a lot. Later went to an Irish pub to watch the Barcelona - Manchester United game on TV. I hung out with locals for the first half, and ran into some friends for the second half.

Thursday: Travel to Granada by train.

Friday: Toured the Alhambra in the afternoon, and ended up spending four hours there. By the time I left I was pretty sick of it. The Alhambra is nice, but I preferred the Alcazar in Seville. On Friday night I went to a concert by Ojos de Brujo (flamenco/hip hop/rock band)... awesome time. I went with a couple people from the hostel, and met some other travelers I had met in Sevilla.

Saturday: Took a tour of the old arabic neighborhood in Granada, and had a lazy lunch with some of the tour-goers. Then siesta. Then I met up with a couple people from the tour. We planned to walk to the caves of Sacramonte, but a downpour confined us to a bar. We ended up meeting an Australian couple, and walked up to Sacramonte for a Flamenco show.

Sunday: Purposely lazy day. Had a big Irish breakfast, but am still hungry. I need to figure out what I´m going to do in Morocco, and when. I might go to the beach for a day, and then head to Morocco. Or I might go to Morocco tomorrow, which is looking less likely as time passes, since I haven´t planned anything yet. There´s a big "world sacred music festival" going on in Fes, Morocco. Unfortunately this means that prices will be jacked up... not sure I want to deal with that.