Second Weekend In Granada

Hello everyone again!

Sorry it's been about a week since I last posted, but as you all know I'm quite busy and I don't always have time to sit down and write a blog.

This weekend I went to the Albaicin!  For those of you wondering what exactly the Albaicin is, it's basically the old neighborhood areas of Granada.  The houses are absolutely gorgeous, white houses with tall white walls and private gardens, super narrow streets and such.  The Albaicin is set up how you would picture a cute little old town in movies, in my opinion at least.  We met at Plaza Nueva with Paula at 11 and set off on our adventure through the Albaicin.  The first place we stopped at was a cute little bridge close to the neighborhoods.  This river is known to flood a lot during the spring time.  Paula told us that in the twenty years that she has been here the river has completely flooded, gone over the walls and into the streets, twice.  Believe me, if you saw how tall those walls are you'd  be very surprised, that's a lot of water.  It's a very pretty place and there's a saying that goes with the river, but unfortunately I don't remember it right now.

From there we headed over to what you could call the real Albaicin, with the tall walls around the houses and the streets are all wonky.  The streets are all cobble stone, which is not fun if you have something other than sneakers on.  They are also very winding and narrow, but absolutely gorgeous.  We stopped at the a school in the Albaicin where you can take all sorts of extracurricular classes.  I want to sign up for Salsa dancing with my friend, and even though all of you know I can't dance a lick, I might as well try and see how I do.  When in Spain, do as the Spaniards, right?

 

 So on the right is the school that I'll hopefully be signing up for Salsa class.

On the left is Calle Beso





Okay, so right near the school there's this really cute story about this street.  It's called Calle Beso.  Calle Beso means more or less means The Kissing Street.  The story goes that many, many years ago there lived a little girl on the street that everyone loved.  She was considered very special because she has blonde hair and blue eyes, which as you all know is very rare here in Europe, and everyone loved her.  Well one day the little girls mother went to wake her up and she was not breathing.  The girl had died and everyone mourned the death of the very special little girl.  Well, they all prepared for her funeral and said their goodbyes.  They got ready to close the casket for the last time for her burial, and the mother went to kiss her child for the last time.  The story goes, that as the mother kissed her child, the little girls eyes fluttered open and was alive.  So on this street there occurred a miracle, although nowadays the scientists like to say that the little girl was narcoleptic.  However, I like this story of a miracle much better, it's so cute.  So this street is Calle Beso in memory of the miracle of the little girl.


So after we were there at the school and Calle Beso, Paula took us through some more streets, we saw some other nice land marks.  For example there was another old church she took us to, and I unfortunately can't remember the story because I was taking pictures.  But there's a story about one church where I think someone was hosting lots of homeless and others but the guy got fed up with doing it all the time.  So one day he closed the doors, but over night some Saint opened the doors back up and when the guy woke up there were people in the house again. It was a miracle of sorts, but I really don't remember it.

There are a lot of churches or old mosques around the Albaicin, because this city was originally created by the Aarbs.  At a lot of the churches there that have old bell towers.  Well I didn't know this, but apparently a lot of the old towers did not originally have bells in them.  I guess the Aarbs were pretty superstitious about bells, believed that they were only rung for the Armageddon.  So the when the Catholics came they put a lot of bells in the towers and would ring them a lot to scare the, like if someone was trying to fight the city they would ring the bells a lot and that would kind of frighten them because of their superstition.  Also near a lot of the mosques they had a well, because they washed themselves before entering the mosque.  So there was always a well nearby.  

Well near the Mosque

Bell Tower at the old Mosque, now church

 So we saw all of these things while walking around the Albaicin, just stopping at certain places with Paula explaining cute little stories, or factoids about stuff.  We also stopped at a small little market.  We stopped there for about 15 minutes and a lot of us got some fresh fruit to eat during our walk.  After the stop at the market we walked over to the convent in the Albaicin.  The nuns and priests at the Convent make dulces (sweets), cookies, and the wafer that churches use to turn into the host, to fund their convent.  So Paula bought us all a huge bag of the host, because a lot of people have never had it.  My friend Kendall ended up with the bag and me and a few others like followed her around and just munched on the wafer the rest of the walk.  It was awesome, and the best mid-morning snack ever.  The convent was a cute little place, and I liked it.

View from the Plaza. 

 From there Paula took us to an excellent Plaza with an amazing view of the Alhambra.  It was absolutely gorgeous, you can see the whole Alhambra and the Sierra Nevada behind it.  The Alhambra with the mountains behind it was literally one of the prettiest things I have seen.  The plaza was fun too, because there were people playing the guitar and an older woman playing the castanets, and people selling things on the benches.  Ironically, it's illegal to sell things on the street, so the people selling things must have a look out because all of a sudden all the people selling things were furiously putting everything in their bags and getting out of the plaza.  Then the Policia showed up and were patroling.  It's actually kind of comical to see because they all threw their stuff together, and then there was this one guy with dreads who just put everything in a backpack and then walked around like he was a tourist.   The picture above isn't the best picture I have of it, it's very hard to capture it because of the sun.  But you get the gist.

After the short visit to the plaza we went to a little mosque right next to it, and saw the garden.  Inside the garden is very pretty and there is a really nice view from the Alhambra too.  Then when we were done Paula told us our tour was over and we were welcome to eat here and head home whenever we liked.  So we all stayed and went back to the plaza to eat our "bocadillas" (packed lunches).  We all sat on the wall and had our lunches together with the gorgeous view of the Alhambra right there.  Here's a pic of a bunch of us, that I actually took from my friend Ruth.  :)
Afterwords, Kendall, Bree and I headed home and went to the park to read and relax in the sun.  It was very nice outside and super warm in the sun.  So we all stopped by our houses, got our books and headed to the park for about an hour.  It was a very relaxing day from there.  Later Sat. night I went to Mae West, a discoteca (club) here.  We went to the club at around 1 in the morning and left by about 5.  The place was still packed when we left at 5 in the morning.  It was crazy and a lot of fun, and I slept till 11 Sunday morning.  But my Saturday was very fun and well worth everything that I did.

Until my next update, love and miss you all.