GRANADA

first off, last weekend we went to GRANADA! it is in the south of spain and some people call it the "toledo of the south" because both cities have muslim influences in architecture. our hostel was so close to the city and it was warmer there! our first night we went exploring walking through the main plaza and up the main street. i noticed there seemed to be a younger crowd in granada than in toledo. we ate some dinner and headed back to the hostel. our group got split up with the hostel across the street owned by the same man so 4 girls stayed in a 4 bedroom across the street. but the rest of us were divided into three rooms and we got our own floor which was really nice. so after we all got settled and showered we hung out in one room and played never have i ever...there is no better way to get to know someone. it was really fun just because for most of us it was the first time outside of school that we all were able to hang out and really just be ourselves. 

the next morning we woke up at 7 AM to get tickets for the Alhambra. yes, 7 am. we just had to walk up the hill to get there but seeing as how it was 7 am it felt like a dream. i don't think i was fully awake for the entire thing. our ticket time was 2PM so we headed back to bed. woke up got some lunch and went to the Alhambra.

jasmine and i got separated from everyone else but it was a nice break from traveling in a group of 13. we walked through the gardens and stumbled onto the entrance to the palace by accident. and thank god we did because you can only enter within a half hour of your ticket time  so 2-230. we were trying to take a picture of this building and a woman in a red coat said 'palacio?' and we said 'suuuree??' not really sure what she meant. she scanned our tickets and we walked through the ropes to this entrance  way back in the corner-the entrance to the palace. if we weren't trying to take that picture, i am not sure we would have found the entrance and therefore missed one of the best parts of the alhambra! because they only sell so many tickets a day, which makes sense-you wouldn't be able to enjoy it if there were a thousand other people in one room with you.

the alhambra consists of a ancient moorish palace, gardens, churches, and a tower (used for the army and a defense for the city). it is amazing the beauty of such an old structure. i don't want to call it a building because it is so much more than that. it is so large that it took us about two hours to walk through it and there were parts of it that were closed off, we couldn't see. the amount of attention paid to detail was truly amazing. the decoration of the arches on the doors, the elaborate designs carved into the wood on the doors, the walls that popped out with their texture from the carvings of flowers or arabic letters. the other amazing part about these rooms were the ceilings. there weren't simply made of of wood or stone-they also were carved and textured. 

however, my favorite part of the alhambra was the view. it sits on top of the hill in granda and looks out over the entire city. the fact that there was a clear blue sky, no clouds, and it was warm enough for me to take off my coat at one point, made the trip that much better. i don't think that the alhambra would have had as much of an impact on me as it did if there weather wasn't so nice. there was a walkway inside the palace that looked out onto granada. i felt like i was in Greece or another city, it didn't seem quite like spain. jas and i took pictures of each other standing there and it honestly looked like a fake background-that is how amazing the view was.

we then went out for pasta and churros con chocolate. out, bed, up early to catch the bus back to madrid.