Espana!

So sorry for the extreme delay in this post.

        We met our French friends in Nantes to begin our long journey to Granada. Laura and I didn’t do anything right. I only printed out half of our bus tickets so we had a long negotiation between the Spanish bus driver, our French friends and us to be allowed on the bus. It was a trilingual catastrophe. We brought too much food and ate at inappropriate times and generally tried and failed to behave with any semblance of decorum. After a fitful night travelling through France, the sun rose on a stunning Spanish landscape. The countryside is immediately different. Browns, reds and yellows replace the green and gray of France. And there’s not a cloud in the sky! Praise sweet baby Jesus—sunshine! Travelling in the morning was a treat since I usually miss the beauty of the crisp, bright morning light. Pockets of mist clung to the red Earth—soft yet stubborn—unwilling to disperse as the morning waned. We must travelled through a cloud at one point. The trees, only ghostly silhouettes in the dense fog, wavered in and out of focus and I feared that, when it cleared we’d find ourselves lost amongst the dry, whispering grass of the Spanish hillsides.

       After all that poetic shit, it got horrifically boring. Never take a 20 hour bus ride. Never. Lesson learned. We arrived thoroughly greasy and disgruntled and managed to find our hostel—the classy Pension Britz—which ended up being right in the center of downtown Granada. It was perfect. We rallied to meet Laura’s friend Alex and got our first taste of the complete magic that is free tapas. I know I’ve told anyone who will listen about how wonderful I think free tapas are, but they ARE SOO AMAZING. You pay 2€ for a beer or a class of wine and they just bring you a delicious snack! Fo free! Alex, who was such a goddess the whole time we were there, has been studying in Granada since September so she knew all these really great little restaurants and bars. But we never had a tapas that I didn’t love. Even when we didn’t get to choose what we wanted they were heavenly. We had everything from something like a grilled ham and cheese, to a light little potato-y/tomato-y soup to some sensational Spanish tortilla (which is like egg and potato and kind of quiche-like in texture). In my extreme over-excitement about free snacks (seriously, it’s perfect for me) I neglected to take pictures of any of them—fail. But I swear. Greatness.

Placa Nueva.

Bah. Always sideways.

       The next day we awoke to some Spanish acoustic version of the Beatles playing in the square outside. We opened the doors to our balcony overlooking Placa Nueva to find that it was already 65˚ and sunny. EE! Our day started slowly, like all of our days in Spain, but we managed to go see La Alhambra which is the 14^th century palace of the kings of Granada. It was absolutely sensational. The architecture has a lot of Muslim-influenced and one could easily spend days there without seeing everything. It is massive and incredibly intricate. The most famous part is the Palace of Nazaris, which they are very serious about. You must only enter at the EXACT time written on your ticket…blah, blah, blah…so Laura and I split up for a couple hours and I wandered around the Palace by myself. I met some British girls who were also on Spring Break and were complaining about how horrid and boring their university was. I was like “Oh! Where do you study?” and one rolled her eyes and replied, “Ohh Oxford.” Pff! As if it were the most mundane and unknown university in the world. What a biddie. That aside, the Palace was stunning with its arches, carvings and fountains.

      After a few hours wandering around in the wonderful Spanish sun I got my first sunburn of the year. WOO! That might sound unpleasant, but really, getting sunburned in February is kind of great if you’re a pasty girl from Vermont…We spent the rest of our time in Granada running around eating as many tapas as possible and were very sad to find our time there at an end. A harrowing plan ride later we touched down in Barcelona! In comparison with Granada and Angers, Barca just felt massive. Gorgeous city, to be sure, but there is just so much to do and so much to see and this girl is just not destined to be an adept urbanite.

      I guess that Barcelona doesn’t really consider itself “Spanish,” the Catalan culture is definitely unique and separate and disheartening as I’d just learned some Spanish words and it felt like people in Barca would rather you speak English than Spanish if you don’t know Catalan. Also, Catalan is crazy. I’ve never seen such arbitrary use of the letter “X.” Xocolata = Chocolate. Really? And all the banks are called “Caixas” which we were amused to discover was pronounced rather like “Ke$ha.” Heh heh. So we ran around, getting lost, eating delicious xocolata-covered treats and gelato and obnoxiously saying “oooh hold on I just need to go to the Ke$ha” whenever possible and laughing at how not funny that is/we are. We went to see Gaudi’s Casa Batllo which is wedged into a normal city block and absolutely incredible. Apparently designed to imitate a massive sea monster, the house has no sharp edges, is coloured in blue, purple and green hues and has the most fascinating minute details (like the fish scales subtly painted on the walls). I could spew some more facts about it, but no one cares, it really is just spectacular and definitely worth seeing. Here’s some pictures.

      Among restaurants, bars, stores, other Gaudi buildings, and the harbor we also went to see the Picasso museum. It traced his life and changing periods in his art and I couldn’t get enough of it. Not only was everything just incredible to look at, but the museum included lots of little sketches on which Picasso would jot random words or phrases and were often so quirky and amusing. He seems like he must have been quite the character. The museum also included a whole study Picasso did on Velazquez’s Las Meninas (which my art history nerd self was very excited to see.) Done during his foray into cubism, Picasso focused on each figure or part of the painting and replicated it over and over in slightly varying style. So cool. For reference:

Velazquez

Picasso

       Brief shout-out to Barcelona Central Gardens which was the hostel we stayed in. Such a clean and comfortable hostel and the staff was incredible. We checked out on Thursday morning, but our flight wasn’t until 6 AM on Friday (oh the joys of poor college student travel) and they let us just hang out in the common area, use the computers, watch a movie of our choice (we chose The Holiday, haha) and drink as much tea and coffee as we wanted. They even gave us fleece blankets to snuggle with as we bummed around on the couch. Magic! It’s the little things. Like free tea, or taking cabs when its late and raining. Oh! I hailed my first ever taxi! (Which clearly is evidence that I am a tried and true country bumpkin.) It was a Mercedes cab. I’m kind of a big deal.

       We had a great meal our last night with Laura’s friend Caity, who is studying in the city, at this little restaurant called Palermo. Surprisingly cheap (unlike everything else in Barcelona), I had a feta and tomato salad with olive oil and balsamic and the largest portion of grilled and marinated salmon. It was heavenly. Not to mention that we got three bottles of their house red. They were 2. 75€! We had to. Despite the language barrier, the waiter still managed to make fun of our rosy cheeks.

      We said goodbye to Barcelona and stumbled to the train and cross-stepped to the airport. Laura and I had decided to pack our stuff into one big suitcase so we would only have to check one bag. Smart, in theory. But Larums (somewhere along the way he was thus named after an entertaining misspelling of Laura’s name on the luggage tag) was a heavy bastard. It was quite the struggle to lug him around Spain. So many hours, a lot of waiting, and a couple freak outs (mine…obviously) later, we finally stepped off the train into the blissfully familiar Angers St. Laud train station. For once it was sunny in France and had somehow turned to spring overnight and we were absolutely giddy to be back. I suppose that sometimes you have to leave a place to fully appreciate it. For the first time it really felt like home. <3