Saturday (March 30) I left Salamanca with Chelsey (another ISA student). We rode a bus to Madrid and then took a train to Córdoba. The buses around Spain are ok, but the train is awesome! It's twice as fast as the bus and twice as spacious! We made it to Córdoba in the early afternoon (afternoons last until supper at 9 in Spain). The weather was b-e-a-utiful, so we checked into our hostel and started exploring the city. Luckily, we happened to reach the famous Cathedral/Mosque just as a Holy Week procession was leaving; we couldn't have planned it better if we had tried.
 |
| procession |
|
| Semana Santa Barbie dolls |
After the procession, we stopped by a museum about Al-Andalus, the muslim state that was in modern-day Spain. That probably seems like an odd place to stop, but we're both in a Hispanic-Arabic Culture class that talks about Al-Andalus all the time, so it caught our attention. It's good to know our professor didn't just make everything up.
 |
| Al-Andalus Museum |
 |
| view from the top of the museum |
We wrapped our night up by trying to attend a midnight mass at the Cathedral. Trying... but not succeeding. When we got to the cathedral it was closed. I think we misinterpreted a sign; it said mass was at doce por la mañana (12 in the morning), which might actually be 12pm, since they don't each lunch until 2pm. That or we just weren't at the right entrance. Oh well.
Our hostel seemed a little sketchy at first because the lock to our room didn't work, but the people we met there were fun. We were in a room with two Austrians and two German girls that were studying abroad in Madrid this semester.
We spent all Sunday hanging out with our new German friends. It was pouring all day and pretty much everything was closed for Easter, so there wasn't a lot to do. We basically spent the entire day eating: froYo, coffee, lunch, etc.
 |
| View from the top of our hostel |
 |
| Deserted plaza during downpour |
After the rain finally stopped Sunday night, Chelsey & I explored the old Jewish Quarter, the old city center, and a torture museum. It was actually called the Inquisition Museum, but there wasn't a lot of information about the Inquisition. Basically they just had a bunch of torture devices and detailed instructions of how they were used. It was the most depressing museum I've ever seen. After that, we found some kebabs, which always cheer me up.
Monday (April 1) I got up early to take advantage of the free breakfast at the hostel. They had cold milk! That's surprisingly hard for me to find in Spain. Milk is sold in cartons that aren't refrigerated in grocery stores and my host family only drinks milk heated up in the microwave. I tried it once... it tasted like warm milk.
After a delicious breakfast, we went to the Mosque/Cathedral to wait in line for tickets before it opened. We got there in time to be one of the first groups into the Mosque. The building is very unique because it was originally built as a giant Mosque. During the Reconquista, King Alfonso X ordered the construction of a church inside of the Mosque. A bell tower and other renovations were also added to transform it into more of a church. After the Mesquita, we toured a Jewish museum, so we covered quite a few major religions in one day.
Part II: Granada
Monday afternoon we headed to the bus station and bought tickets for the next bus to Granada. It happened to be in an hour, so we didn't have to spend to much time at the bus station. We had lunch at the diner in the station, which had surprisingly good food for a bus station. I had some spaghetti, which would have been amazing if they hadn't used olive oil mixed in with the sauce. A short 3-hour bus ride later we were in Granada!
Chelsey and I checked into our hostel Al-Andalus, which was super nice. I walked in and thought we were in a hotel! It just opened and didn't have any rankings on hostelworld, so we were able to stay for 9 Euros per night per person.
We were meeting up with some more ISA students in Granada, but they weren't arriving until late that night. After taking a siesta, Chelsey and I walked around the downtown area for a while and eventually found a Chinese restaurant to have supper. It was my first time trying Chinese food in Spain. It was pretty good, and I got soup, a meal, pop, and a dessert for less than 6 Euros!
After eating, we headed back to the hostel to meet up with Christine and Alex, two ISA students that were stopping in Granada for 2 days and then flying to Italy. We also met up with Angie and her cousin's cousin, Christine, who we were traveling around with for the rest of Spring break.
Tuesday morning at 10am, we had tickets for a guided tour of Alhambra, a fortress/palace on top of a hill looking over Granada. Originally we had just tried to order (cheaper) tickets without a guided tickets online, but they were sold out, so we ended up getting the guided tour in order to get into the Alhambra. We were all running a little behind and didn't end up leaving the hostel until after 9:30. Then we started walking in the complete opposite direction of the Alhambra for about 10 minutes. Luckily Angie's cousin Christine had the bright idea of waving down a taxi when she realized we had no idea where we were going and weren't going to make it in time. We made it to the meeting point about 10 minutes late, but luckily the tour was operating on Spanish time and hadn't left yet.
 |
| Bill Steussy look-alike? |
Wednesday we got up "early" to enjoy the free hostel breakfast. It was mostly just bread and jam, but for 9 Euros a night, I can't complain too much. After breakfast, we took a city bus up to the Gypsy caves in the mountains. It was probably a 20 minute ride up the mountain and only cost 1.20, so it was quite the deal. We were the only people on the bus, so it was like our own private shuttle. The bus driver even dropped us off right by the entrance to the cave museum.
Seeing the Gypsy caves wasn't as interesting to see as I thought it would be, but the museum also had a lot of information about the history of Gypsies in Andalucía and flamenco. There was also a really good view of the Alhambra and the entire city.
After the cave museum, Christine and Alex left to catch their flight to Italy. The rest of us slowly walked back down toward the city along the river path. We stopped at Sacromonte on the mountain and ate lunch in it's bell-tower (we'd brought sandwiches with us). We spent the rest of the day walking around Granada and exploring a street market we found.
 |
| view from the top of the tower |
Part III: Málaga
Wednesday we took a bus from Granada to Málaga, which was about a two-hour ride. We checked in at The Melting Pot hostel, which was right across from the beach, and about a 5 minute cab ride from downtown. Málaga was Pablo Picasso's hometown, so it has a big Picasso museum. After checking in, we tried to make it to the museum, but it had just closed by the time we got there at 8:30pm. Dejected, we made our way back to the hostel. We ended up missing the street our hostel was on and walking way too far. We finally found our way back at almost 10:30pm. Luckily the hostel had dinner that we could order, and we had some delicious paella for 5 Euros a person.
After dinner, we ended up getting convinced to go on a barcrawl by Andreas, an Italian whose job is basically to go to hostels, play his guitar, and convince people to pay 10 Euro for his barcrawl. He's good at what he does. It was a pretty good deal, since it included taxi fair downtown and 5 drinks. After we got to the first bar, Andreas disappeared and we got a new guide for the night... the ladies in our group were devastated.
Friday (April 5th), we slept in and then Angie, Christine, and I went to the Picasso museum first thing to make sure we got to see it. It started raining just as we got to the museum and stopped by the time we left, so we lucked out again with the weather. I was impressed by Picasso's work- he started off with more realistic looking paintings and then evolved to more abstract paintings later on in life.
 |
| no pics allowed inside :( |
After the museum, we walked around a garden/ old castle with an amazing view of the city with the mountains in the background on one side and the ocean on the other. It was my favorite place that I saw in Málaga.
That afternoon we went shopping; I guess that's what happens when I travel with 3 other girls. After getting bored of picking out new clothes for themselves, they decided to use me as a life-size Ken doll and play dress up with me, trying to make me look "European." I don't understand why anyone would ever wear skinny-jeans. I actually ended up getting a shirt and pair of jeans that they picked out that I liked... I needed some clean clothes to make it through the rest of the trip anyways.
The rest of the weekend was very relaxing. We had already seen all of the must-see tourist destinations, so we spent most of it relaxing by the beach. The weather warmed up on Saturday so it was hot enough to go to the beach, but the water was still too cold to go swimming. After spending Saturday afternoon on the beach, Chelsey really wanted some Taco Bell (there's not one in Salamanca, but there is in Málaga). She offered to pay for the taxi, so Angie and I tagged along for the ride. I've never felt more American than I did walking around downtown Málaga in flip-flops, swim trunks, and a t-shirt while drinking a coke from Taco Bell. A native Malagan walked by wearing jeans and a winter coat, chuckled at me and asked "Hace mucho frío, ¿no?" (Cold, isn't it?).
We went back to the hostel for supper, because we could get a big plate of delicious food for 5 Euros. The owner of the hostel was also the guy who made the food. He was an older guy who everyone called Papi (Pappa). He seemed to like our group a lot, either because we spoke more Spanish than most of the people that stayed there or (more likely) because we had Angie with us, who's fluent. I was still a little hungry after sharing a plate with Angie, and Papi made me another plate with a burger and a couple hotdogs for free.
Sunday was another relaxing day on the beach. We also hung out with Olaf, a German we had met at the hostel. He was meeting up with a friend from the US who flew to Spain for 3 days to compete in a half-ironman triathlon and meet up with Olaf. For supper, we had another delicious meal at the hostel, courtesy of Papi.
 |
| View from the hostel! |
