Category: Travel

Finally 21… Pics and Video from Ronda, Málaga, Birthday


So I’m 21 already.

Sure, it’s a bit less meaningful in a country where the age of majority for everything is eighteen, but still… ¡Hay que celebrarlo! I had a really fun weekend. I went to Ronda and Málaga with my study abroad group. Ronda is an old town founded by Celts and later transformed by Romans, Moors, and finally Catholics. The best part of town is a series of three bridges built by different resident cultures. Ronda was hot and we endured (yet another) multi-hour guided tour of the city. I am starting to prefer time running around less touristy parts of the city with a small handful of friends.

Málaga was great. It’s a beach town on the Costa del Sol of the Mediterranean, so the climate is a bit different from mountainous Granada – more humidity, and palm trees! It was foggy for most of our visit but it finally cleared up an hour or two before our departure – enough to feel like we’d really gone to a beach town. I saw a lot but definitely want to go back later when the weather is more remeniscent of summer.

I snagged a quick video of the cathedral bells at noon in Málaga:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNxUayP43dM&w=480&h=385]

I got back to Granada on the afternoon of my birthday and went out to celebrate with a few friends for a couple of hours before the bars closed (it was a Sunday night, so the typical Spanish epic all-nighter was unfortunately not an option).

As for photos, my WordPress plugin that auto-imports my Picasa album is acting up for some reason, so I have to embed this crappy slideshow. I highly suggest clicking through to the actual album to see higher-quality pics:


21st Birthday in Ronda and Málaga

With the folks in Andalucía (w/ lots of photos)

I got an early birthday present this week:


My mom and stepdad came to visit me in Granada! We spent the week running around Granada, both touristy attractions and more typical parts of the city. We got to walk through the Albaicin, toured the Alhambra, had tapas with my Spanish host parents, and took a day trip to a wonderful bed & breakfast in a tiny pueblo in the Alpujarras (Alps).

Jean Claude, the cook/owner of L’atilier (our B&B), made us some amazing vegetarian food – our dinner was the best meal I’ve eaten in many years, possibly ever. Our friends Beth, Lee, Dave and Cory had highly recommended L’atilier to us and practically insisted that we go – and for very good reasons. Thanks, guys, for making sure we got to experience such wonderful cuisine and hospitality! 🙂

Having my folks out for the week was so much fun… It was great being able to show them my new stomping grounds and share the city with them. They’re spending the next few days in Amsterdam before returning home. (My Amsterdam trip will be in early May.)

I got a lot of great pictures during their visit, I will post them after the “read more…” link since there are so many (Facebook and RSS readers, this means you’ll have to follow the link to the original post to see all the pictures.)

Continue reading With the folks in Andalucía (w/ lots of photos)

Paseos & More (with pics)

The real semester has started up here, and with it comes the sad reality that I’m not here on a five-month vacation. 😛

Classes in my program (Hispanic Studies) are mostly taught by University of Granada faculty who normally teach Spaniards. The classes happen at full-speed Spanish, and don’t normally stop to cover aspects of Spanish language except for a few obscure vocabulary words. My most interesting class by far is Hispanoamerican Culture & History. I haven’t been able to take history classes since my junior year of high school, so I am happy to be back in one. My class schedule is pretty similar to that of an American university, except that Study Abroad students here never have class on Fridays.

For the last few weeks, I’ve gone out to different districts of the city on my own to explore everything a bit more. The whole city center feels pretty familiar now, and I’ve started to venture a bit into a couple of areas off the tourist map of Granada. This morning I went with my friends Megan and Korie to one part of town that seemed more suburban and modern – it had a big view of the Sierra Nevada, which made me feel almost as  if I were in Colorado!

Other times I’ve explored more of the Albayzin and Sacromonte districts. It’s great how so many neighborhoods here have such distinct personalities in a small area.

I’ll post a few odds-and-ends photos from the last few weeks here – a little bit of everything from different paseos I’ve done, plus a couple of other things that don’t fit anywhere else.

Paseos & More

Alhambra Photos

Finally got to go to the Alhambra today… We had some blue skies peek out, which was very lucky (it’s been very cloudy and rainy most days).

I’m not going to post this set of  photos here on my blog because they’re better viewed in full detail on my Picasa album. I suggest hitting the “Slideshow” link to get even better detail on it. Check ’em out here.

Shopping and Super Bowling in Granada

About a week ago, I finished my 3-week intensive language course at UGr. I have no obligations until classes start up again sometime around February 12- so I’ve got some nice free time on my hands. Tomorrow I finally will tour the Alhambra, so look forward to a massive photo dump sometime tomorrow afternoon (US time).

Sunday night I went out with some of the full-year study abroad students. There was a bar throwing a Super Bowl party, but we were the only people who bothered to show. It sure was interesting watching America’s biggest day in sports from a country where close to no one is interested whatsoever. Kickoff was at 12:30 or 1:00 AM, and we were there until about 4:00 AM. They had prepared for more visitors than just us, so we got double helpings of free tapas with our drinks. Eating palella and bocadillos in a near-empty bar sure was a strange way too watch the super bowl… I would have killed for some nachos or potato chips with onion dip.

One other thing worth mentioning is what shopping is like here in comparison to good ol’ American suburbia:

  • The ratio of shoe stores to clothing stores is probably about 1.5:1
  • I’m sorry, but Spanish designers’ idea of jeans is just ugly. In every 10 pairs that I look at, there is maybe one that doesn’t disgust me. I made the mistake of only bringing 3 pairs of pants and I’ve been dropping into various stores for a couple of weeks now trying to find one pair that looks decent.
  • If any article of clothing has writing on it, you can bet on it being some kind of broken English. I saw a shirt that says, “Nobody knows I’m metrosexual,” and a clothing tag that said something like, “The most bombastic and iridescent style, threatening the essence of violence. Straight from the jungles of Africa.”
  • The one equivalent of a major department store here is El Corte Inglés. They have horribly high prices but a selection that can’t be beat. They usually have their own sit-down restaurant inside the store. We visited an 8-story Corte Inglés in Madrid with a rather fancy restaurant on the top floor.
  • What I heard was true, a pair of Levi’s here will easily go for 100€, if not more.

For now, that is all. Tomorrow… ¡La Alhambra!

Photos from the first week in Granada

We’re getting pretty well settled here in Granada… Much easier to blend in a bit and feel more like a local. I’m learning the streets more and have a better sense of direction…

Today we went for a tour of the Albayzin – the historic Muslim quarter of town on a huge hill next to the Alhambra. It’s a beautiful, quieter part of town that has less roads and more footpaths. Very hilly, too. We saw a lot of great stuff and I got my first good look at the Alhambra, too.

Getting home from the tour was a bit difficult… There was a huge Gaza protest going on in the street. We wanted to  check it out, but at the same time I knew that abroad, Americans can be seen as “OMG Israel can totally do whatever the hell they want.” So we tried to lie low walking through the enormous crowd, not wanting to look very American. Hopefully with the new presidency our foreign policy might come out of the sewers so we aren’t seen as supporters of genocide.

OK, I digress. The photos:

Granada, semana primera

Well I’ve been in Granada for a couple of days now, and I’ve been able to adjust to the city some more. I’ll commence the unfocused mental dump of my observations from the last few days:

  • Granada feels way more urban than I had expected. I thought it would be a small to medium-sized town like Fort Collins, but it’s about twice the size of that – around 250,000 people. I’ve been saying for a while that I’d like to try living in a big city, and while Granada is pretty small relative to Denver, Phoenix or Madrid, it’s still way more urban than anywhere I’ve lived before. Maybe it’ll make for a good trial of a somewhat larger city before taking the plunge into a city of millions.
  • Living in an old city with old streets is a very – well, foreign – concept. It’s obvious that there was no master planner in Granada, and it’s really easy to make a wrong turn that takes you way farther away from your destination than you had intended. I’ve gotten lost several times but the major streets and landmarks in the city center are starting to become familiar. I know enough to get home and get to class 😀
  • The weather here is abnormally cold. It snowed yesterday, which is very rare. Many, many scarves. I’ll probably pick up the trend this weekend.
  • Because of the crappy weather, I haven’t bothered to go anywhere near La Alhambra yet. I want to tour it when the weather is just a bit better.
  • Going out tonight for the first time, not counting the pool hall I went to in Madrid. I’ve heard good things about the nightlife here, so I’ll have to report back on that.
  • I have one class for the next three weeks. It’s four hours long every day, with two profesoras that teach for two hours each. Neither of them know a word of English (or at least they claim) and it’s not allowed to define or translate an English word for another student – we have to try to define the word we have in mind in Spanish. It’s more difficult, and after several hours of this  my brain definitely starts to hurt. We won’t be learning any new grammar in our class, but instead will be reviewing everything we’ve learned and perfecting it in order to correct all of the little mistakes. It’s exactly what I need, so it’ll be hard, but I’ll be glad I did it by the end of the month. After that I’ll advance a level and take my semester classes one level up.
  • I’m resisting the temptation to eat at Burger King. My roommate went there today and he says it’s better than it is in the States. I’m going to guess that I’ll cave in in another day or two.
  • Everything they say about learning a language by studying abroad is definitely true. Being around it all  for just a week has helped me to pick up so much, and I’ve met a few students who were here for the last semester that are excellent with the language.
  • My English writing has gotten sigificantly worse because my mind keeps trying to form sentences in Spanish structures.
  • In the last day or so I’ve started correcting myself constantly, even mid-sentence. I think it’s good that I’m thinking about the “little rules” that I so often break, but at the same time it’s probably annoying to try and carry on a  conversation with someone who can barely complete their sentences.
  • Spanish food is hearty and healthy. I’m still adjusting to the meal schedule but the food is great (and it’s nice to not have to find a million restaurants of varying quality and prices, like we had to for the first week). It is a bit more bland than some of my favorite foods, like Mexican or Thai, which definitely are a bit more strong in their tastes. I’ll have to go in search of some cayenne or something.
  • Starting to look at plans for my ~10 day break after the intensive month class is over. Ryanair is amazingly cheap, I can fly from Granada to Italy for like… 4 euro. I don’t have a huge list of “must-sees” for while I’m here, but I would like to see Belgium, Prague, Rome, maybe Amsterdam. Overall I’d like to stick to Spain, though. I don’t like the idea of spending lots of time in a place where I don’ know any of the language.
  • Before getting to Granada, I definitely felt like more of an observer than a participant in Spanish life. I’m starting to blend in a bit more and I’m sure that within a couple of weeks it will just come naturally to me.
  • Navigating streets and crowded areas is pretty strange – there really isn’t much of a concept of personal space here. I’m noticing little things I do to get out of others’ way that nobody else does, and realizing how funny it must look. I normally have great “crowd navigation skills” but here people have different fixed habits of which side to move to when you’re in someone’s way, and other things too.

In Granada

I’m here in Granada now… nothing much to report except that I’m really excited! We haven’t seen much of the city yet, but we’ve met our host family and moved into our room. The family is very nice and it seems like it will be a great place to spend five months. (Five months seems like such a long time now, I still find it pretty hard to believe!)

Tomorrow I take my Spanish placement exam and a walking tour of the city, and at night we’ll have our first intercambio, or inter-student exchange with students learning English. We’ll go to something like a café and spend half an hour speaking in English and half an hour speaking in Spanish. And the day after that, we start our classes.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for a week already. Even harder to believe that I’m here for a whole semester. Very exciting though, so far I have no regrets and no worries, besides the basic cultural transplant jitters.