Spain! Granada Day 1

We started out early on this morning to catch a train to Granada.  I loved our time on trains in Spain!  So relaxing.  Great time to catch-up on journaling the trip, do some reading, and enjoy some views of the Spanish countryside.  We ate lunch on this ride, which was fun, too.  I had prosciutto & manchego sandwich...I'm pretty sure I also had that for breakfast at the train station this day.  You can literally find them all 3 meals of the day.  I ate SO many prosciutto & manchego cheese sandwiches on this trip.  So simple, yet so satisfying.  Of course, I had some Fanta limon, too!

It looks like a bullet that should travel at sonic speeds.  Alas,

Madrid to Granada was a 4.5 hour ride.

 Most of my train pictures were blurry.  Such pretty countryside though!

The trip from Madrid to Granada was filled with mountains
and fields full of red flowers...loved!

 I'm on a train!  Eating lunch!

In Granada, we stayed at Macia Real de la Alhambra.  It was a nice, big hotel.  It was on the outskirts of town and we had to take a short bus ride to get to the city, but it definitely had it's pluses. 

This was the view from our hotel room - so majestic!

 We hit the ground running upon arrival in Granada.  We figured out the public buses and rode into the city to explore.  We originally considered including a few days in Morocco on this trip, but decided against that for safety reasons.  Granada is actually quite close to Morocco and has a lot of Moroccan & Arab influence...I was excited to see that, since we wouldn't be seeing it first hand. 

We spent a lot of time wandering thru the narrow

alleys of the Arab market.  Lots of interesting things

here and fun souvenirs for purchase.

A couple of bracelets I bought in the Arab market

 I always like to find a Christmas tree ornament to buy wherever I

travel.  This Flamenco dancer was perfect for Granada because

that just happened to be our plans for later this evening!

We wandered into the Capilla Real (Royal Chapel).  It was kind of pretty,
yet quite gaudy.  Here, we saw the tombs of Fernando & Isabel.

We also wandered by the Granada Cathedral,

but decided not to go inside this one.

One thing I loved in Granada was this tiny street (Caldereria Nueva), that is lined with Moroccan tea shops.  We went inside a lovely little one (As-Sirat) and enjoyed some hot tea.  I got one called Tres Flores and it was so good that we went to the tea shop next door where I could buy some to take home.  After tea, we popped in a Moroccan pastry shop and tried an almond cookie...it was just okay.

Inside As-Sirat

 Tea time!  By candlelight, nonetheless.

Loved our little silver teapots and glass teacups.

 Measuring out my tea to take home.  So freaking pretty, eh?!

Our afternoon spent exploring Granada gave me a feel for the city. It's a college town and I could feel that.  It felt younger, more liberal, and there were a lot of "granola" types walking around.  This city also felt much bigger to me than Madrid did.  I think because it felt more crowded, loud and dirty.

Then again, parts of the city were quite pretty

After exploring Granada all afternoon, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our evening excursion.  We were picked up at our hotel and, after picking up several others at other hotels, we were taken to Vento el Gallo where we were served a 3-course meal with plenty of wine.  We then enjoyed an amazing Flamenco show.

This place was located in the Albaicin neighborhood, which I LOVED!

If there is any place that makes my heart beat anywhere

close to how NYC does, it's the islands of Greece.  And

this little neighborhood in Granada reminded me so much

of Greece with the white buildings and blue accents.

 After dinner, came sangria to go with our Flamenco show

So, taking pictures of dancing in a dimly lit room is not

an easy task.  I did the best I could.  This was a very

entertaining show...so much drama in Flamenco!

After the show, they took us to see a nighttime view of

The Alhambra all lit up - so cool!  Michelle & I would

be venturing there the next morning.

We also took in some pretty amazing city views

 And we walked thru the Albaicin a little bit

admiring the unique architecture of the homes

Ahhh, so Greek looking.  Love!

Stay tuned....we did some fun things on our second and final day in Granada!

Spain! Madrid - Day 3!

Sooooo....here we are again.  Me attempting to finish up this here blog.  Spain.  Two years ago.  Going to finish it for nostalgia's sake and for a reference point when I (or anyone else) should travel to Spain in the future.  My friend, Maggie, has declared August "daily blogging month".  I'm joining in!  I should put a major dent in finishing this up...if I don't completely finish.

So, let's continue with the Spain trip.  You can read prior entries here :

Madrid, Day 1
Madrid, Day 2, Part 1
Madrid, Day 2, Part 2

Day 3 in Madrid would be our last.  I loved this little city and it was a great place to start our 2+ weeks.  But, we still hadn't had any churros y chocolate (shout-out to my West Jr High Spanish classmates!).  We started our last day in Madrid at Chocolateria San Gines where we dined on what is supposedly one of the best spots for churros y chocolate.  It was at the back of a small alley-like street and there were tables outside and it was very quiet and quaint.  The churros y chocolate was pretty good, but definitely not my most favorite thing in the world.   The churros have a bit of a donut taste and I'm not fond of donuts (ridiculous, I KNOW!).  But, it was still a fun experience and definitely not bad!

Love the little alleys like the one where we found

our churros & chocolate!

 The little plaza at the back of the alley was

lined with customers eating their churros, drinking

coffee, reading papers

Looks great, right?!

 Our lovely view while we ate

After breakfast, we strolled through the shops of Calle Mayor, stopping in the boutique store, Custo Barcelona, because I had read that Julia Roberts and Christina Aguillera like it.  It was a really interesting shop with very different shirts & dresses.

We walked through the Plaza Mayor again - it was much less chaotic than it was on the day of our arrival since the festival was over.  We also happened to see the motorcade of some Consulate passing through in a carriage surrounded by men on horses.

We had a super fun, interesting adventure to a convent - Convento de las Carboneras.  These little nuns are known for making delicious cookies - especially their almond cookies (almond is one of my top 2 favorite flavors!).  It was really hard to find the convent - wasn't well marked.  We finally figured it out.  The nuns are not allowed to see other people, so we buzzed the door and they spoke to us thru an intercom system in fragmented English and they let us in.  Then, we had to guess our way around until we came to an empty room with a lazy Susan - just what we were looking for!  There was another bell to ring and then they came and took our order from the other side of the lazy Susan (it was built into the wall so that we could hear them, but not see them).  Unfortunately, they were out of the almond cookies, so we got lemon ones instead - they were quite delicious!  They passed the cookies to us on the lazy Susan and we passed our money back.  It was a crazy, fun adventure!  (Shhhh....I could see the little, old nun thru a crack when she turned the lazy Susan).

The convent was at the back of this pretty plaza

The doors to the convent

Some people came in not long after us.  This guy

was the most fluent in Spanish and it got a bit

confusing when they were out of the almond cookies,

so he helped us out!  We got the last box of lemon

cookies, so we shared some with this group.

Our reward!

Next, we went to another park called Parque del Oeste.  It was nothing like Retiro park.  This one was much less groomed and more rustic.  But, it did have a very beautiful, huge Roselada (Rose garden) that was very well manicured.  We spent time admiring the roses and then walked over to a cable car that we rode over Campo del Maro Park - this was a huge park with trails and lots of trees.  We also had neat views of Madrid, the Palace, and a few cathedrals from the cable car.

 

For lunch, we went to Casa Marta, which claims Don Qoixote as a former patron.  I had read good things about this restaurant and its price-fixed lunch, but we were not overly impressed with the food.  We did get 3 courses, plus bread and wine for a good price, but it probably wasn't worth it.  They did give us a plate of delicious olives though - reminded me of all the ones I ate every day in Greece!  But I swear that the mashed potatoes we ate there were instant :)

From lunch, we went to San Francisco el Grande Cathedral which is known for it's amazing paintings.  We lucked into a tour taking place.  It was in Spanish, but Michelle could understand several things and a few other English speakers could translate other parts.  It was interesting and we did get to see parts of the cathedral we wouldn't have wandered to on our own.

We shopped in the Chueca neighborhood looking for good Spanish shoes at the outlets on Augusto Figuero (we came away with none) and hitting up an interesting olive oil shop.

Since we were nearby, we did a little bit more walking through Retiro park - so beautiful!

To finish off our day, we decided to hit up a couple of tapas places.  There were tours you could take, but I did some investigating online and found where those tours take you and what you taste on them and we did a little one of our own for FREE!  We first stopped at a tiny restaurant and were offered a refreshing drink called Tinto de Verano (Summer Wine) - it's basically red wine mixed with lemon soda.  From there, we went to D'Fabula and had some of the very best tapas of the entire trip - excellent food!  We had a risotto dish, some patatas in a delicious sauce, and something called Migas that tasted like okra.  It was a great meal!

After dinner, we took a final stroll through the Centro neighborhood.  It was after dark and there were still TONS of people out and about.  You know I love a lively city like that.

This was our last day in Madrid, we were on a train early the next morning.  I loved Madrid and it's a place I would go back to (although...I'd almost always rather go explore somewhere new).    In summary, here is what I loved :

-- the winding, narrow streets that made the city so unique and cute
-- the buildings...apartments in pretty colors with flowers in their window boxes
-- great food experiences
-- fun times at the bullfight and the undercover cookie operation at the convent
-- RETIRO PARK!  Love, love!!
--  Wandering the streets of Chueca & Salmanca neighborhoods
-- The streets that were pedestrian only for shoppers
-- Their metro system : cheap, fast, easy, clean
-- Loved the plazas/squares lined with restaurants with lots of outdoor seating and tons of people
--  While in Madrid, we stayed at Suites Vienna.  It was nice and very close to the metro systems, making it easy to get all over the city

Happy Birthday Love

I just ran across this video on my computer and it made my heart swell!  Love, love these ladies from my Bible study last spring.  Oh, I miss them.  I wasn't there on this night and neither was one of my very favorites, Kelly, whose birthday they'd planned to celebrate.  Our group loved planning special things to celebrate each other's birthdays or other occasions in life.  And don't miss the harmony in this group!  There's some professional and semi-professionals, and just some good singers!

And while we're at it, I decided to track down another that we just made in December in Texas!  A bunch of my NYC ladies came to Galveston for a wedding weekend and I drove down to spend it with them and attend Katie's wedding.  While we were there, we recorded a birthday video for our lovely Amanda who is now living in England.