Granada

    As is the recurring theme of the last month, I said goodbye to the girls and took an 8 hour train ride down to Granada in southern Spain.  Granada is much more my scene than Barcelona was, and the landscape in the Andalucia area reminds me of Texas and New Mexico a little bit.  I had originally planned to stay here for 3 days and I'm currently on my 6th, so I guess you could say I like it here.  

    My first full day in Granada was spent with a group of people from the hostel on a little hiking tour of the nearby area.  The tour consisted of me, some other American guy named Sean who loved to talk about himself, 6 Australian girls, and our super outdoorsy and crazy cute Polish tour guide, Marta.  We hiked a few hours up a hill to see the city and a little down the way to a beautiful river gorge with ice cold water and tons of rock climbing.  It was a solid 104 degrees outside, but that didn't stop Sean from hitting on Marta the entire way to and from the gorge.  He would try to impress her by saying that he dabbles in indoor rock climbing and she would casually mention how she dabbled in climbing an 8 pitch, 100 meter crag a few weeks ago.  Needless to say, I was diggin on Marta.  Granada also locked in a spot on the list of cities I wouldn't mind living in: snowboarding in the winter, rock climbing newby, a beach 40 minutes away, and awesome food culture.  

Wild cherry trees along the way

The village we hiked from

Bridge at the gorge

    Granada is also home to an old Islamic Palace, called the Alhambra, which has hundreds of years of history between the Muslim Conquests and the Catholic Crusades.  I went there the next day with a girl from New York that I met at the hostel.  From pictures online, I didn't think it would be as great as everyone talked it up to be, but I was wrong: it was even better.  I had seen pictures of simple courtyards, which isn't that impressive, but what the pictures didn't show was the insane intricacy of everything in the palace.  This was my first encounter with Islamic art, and I was blown away with the beautiful geometric patterns interlaced into every door, wall, and ceiling.  

8017 wood pieces

    The other days that I stayed in Granada were spent just relaxing, going to tapas bars, and watching the Eurocup soccer matches.  Every bar in town is required to serve a little side snack, "tapa," with every beer, wine, or soda.  Some of these tapas are huge and delicious, and the beers are very cheap here, so eating out was very economical.  I caught on quickly and started hanging out with the heavy drinkers from the hostel and offering to eat their tapas after their second or third.  

First tapa

    Some of you might have noticed that I've been growing a beard during my trip, the so called "travel beard."  Well I also haven' cut my hair since I left home.  A few weeks ago I mentioned to my dad that I was growing it to eventually sculpt it into a mullet, and he was all, "you won't."  Well I proved him wrong.  And I got some racing stripes put on the left side (my left) of my head.  Marta hasn't said anything yet, but I bet she digs it.

Poofy mullet

    Southern Spain has a much different traveler demographic that Western Europe, which has been a lot of fun.  Most people here have been traveling for a few months and it's been a lot of fun to swap stories again and hear about their favorite places.  On the weekends, a lot of Americans studying abroad in Sevilla and Madrid come to visit Granada, which mixes things up a little bit.  Tomorrow, I head for Sevilla, where I'll watch the Eurocup final (that Spain is in) on the 1st and don my American flag on the 4th.  Like Charlie from It's Always Sunny, I'm about to go America on everybody's ass.