Tapas and Gypsy caves.

After all of my traveling, I have finally gotten to spend a couple straight weeks in Granada and it has been so amazing! I FINALLY got to experience what the city has to offer. My favorite thing in the entire world is now tapas. Tapas are food that come with drinks you order at a bar. They can range from just a few peanuts to an entire hamburger. In every other city in Spain, you have to pay for tapas, but in Granada, they are GRATIS (free)! You can go out and spend less than 5 euro on a couple glasses of wine and eat an entire meal with it for free (if you know the right places to go to). I have found quite a few of my favorite places lately. Also, we have been going to our favorite tea shop for tea and cachimba (hookah). There is a little tea shop up the street I like to call moroccan ally where there are a lot of morroccan shops and tea shops. We go so much that we are pretty much friends with the guy that owns it ha! Every week my friends and I go there fore tea and cachimba and just hang out. One of my favorite things to do (especially when it's raining) Oh, speaking of rain....there is finally SUN!! It has been so sunny and nice lately and I LOVE it! The city is so much more lively when the sun is out. There are so many people on the streets just hanging out, shopping, etc. I can spend a whole afternoon reading by the fountain and people watching(my fav thing in the world to do). I have also explored the city a lot more these past couple of weeks. We went on a hike behind the Albycin. We went up into the hills for an entire day and saw beautiful views of the city. The best part of the hike are the gypsy caves. The gypsies actually live up behind the Albycin in caves! It's like a mini neighborhood that they made themselves. Some of them even have couches outside like patios and stuff. We have also had time to just go out in the city and check out all of the local bars. I am sort of sick of going to discotecas anymore, though. I feel like they are just full of dirty guys trying to rub up on you. Not my cup of tea. I have had such a great time just going to bars and hanging out in chill places with my friends. I have pretty much completely fallen in love with Granada since I have gotten to spend more time here!

Sevilla and Cordoba

As soon as I got home from Amsterdam, I had a couple days to rest, and then it was off to Sevilla! We arrived in Sevilla on friday night and SURPRISE; it was raining. The next day, we woke up and were immediately on a walking tour of the city. It was STILL raining! There were about 80 of us being herded around the city of Sevilla with one tour guide who I couldn't even hear. We made it about 5 minutes into the tour when a few of the girls and I decided that we had a better way to spend the day haha. We went back to the hotel and dried off and then made our way shopping. We had a fabulous afternoon touring the city on our own and spending our money along the way hahaha. I did make it to the Cathedral tour later on that day when the sun came out, so don't be completely disappointed in me. The Cathedral in Sevilla is GORGEOUS! It is the third largest Cathedral in the world behind the one in Rome and the one in London. There is such amazing detain inside the Cathedral including beautiful stained glass windows. Also, we got see where the remains of Christopher Columbus are. That was pretty cool! We traveled to the top of the tower (which was quite the hike) and looked over the entire city. Sevilla was such a beautiful city, but I think I would have definitely preferred to go when there was no rain. The next day, we went to Cordoba and saw the Mosque (where I got to test some of my skills acquired in history of art class) and walked around the city. The city of Cordoba is basically all cobblestone streets and quaint little shops. A great place to go and relax. On our way back to Granada, we stopped at an olive oil factory. It was really interesting! Best of all, we got to taste test the product haha. I definitely bought a bottle of the good stuff to send home to the father. Also, they gave us these awesome hats after our visit! I feel it was the icing on the cake to a great trip.I really enjoyed seeing Sevilla and Cordoba, but going there, really helped me see that my heart still belongs in Granada!

Brussels and Amsterdam!! or as I like to call it: Chocolate and Anne Frank.

Going to Brussels and Amsterdam was a very interesting experience. It was the first time that I had to travel alone through europe, so I was a little bit nervous. Everybody else left thursday night and I left on friday night. I took a bus all night on Friday night to Madrid and caught my plane to Brussels at 730 am. That was an experience in itself! An all night, uncomfortable bus with a baby crying behind me wasn't a very fun way to start my trip. Not to mention, the Ryanair airplanes! They don't call themselves the low fare airline for nothing. They cut back EVERYWHERE they can. The seats would not recline one bit, I had to have my feet in the aisle in order not to suffocate, and I couldn't even get a drink of water for free, but it was cheap, so that's what you get I guess. I finally made it to the airport in Brussels to realize that I had to pay 13 euro to take a 45 minute bus ride into the city. At least I was finally there! In the bus station, I had my first interesting bathroom experience. It was the first time I had to pay to use the bathroom. I had to pay .50 to go to the bathroom and all the while, a large Dutch woman is trying to talk to me in a language that has a very strong resemblance to the teacher in Charlie Brown. Haha It was the first time I had felt clueless with a foreign language. I never thought I would miss spanish so much! I met up with Molly and Josie and finally got to do some fun stuff! We walked around the city and pretty much just fed our faces all day. I had the most delicious eclair of my entire life, a Belgian waffle with tons of goodies on top, and of course some CHOCOLATE!! Ahhhh I was in chocolate heaven. The fact that they gave out free samples wasn't helping much either! We went to see the famous statue pipi which is a tiny boy peeing. Literally. It was the strangest thing in the entire world, but funny to see. After all of this, we headed to Amsterdam. The first night in Amsterdam, we had a very hard time finding our hostel. We used up our entire allotted hour of metro use because we kept getting off on the wrong stop. Luckily, people are nice there and happy to help us. Wandering into the red light district on accident was a little scary, but funny as well. The hookers standing in the window weren't the awkward part, it was accidentally making eye contact with the man coming out of the building haha. The next day, we got up and went to see the Anne Frank. I don't think that anybody else really enjoyed it as much as I did, considering they weren't hyperventilating as we were approaching the building hahaha. The only bad part, is that they wouldn't let me take pictures, but oh well. It was the most powerful thing I have ever seen. I walked through the tiny space that 9 people lived in hiding for 2 years. It was definitely an experience. After I thoroughly depressed everybody by making them go to Anne Frank we at awesome pancakes with tons of goodies on them and then headed back to the hostel because it was getting late and it was really cold and rainy. One amazing invention of Amsterdam: The strupwaffle Mcflurry. Yes everyone, I went to McDonald's lol. It was the best ice cream ever! I had 2 in two days, which isn't too bad considering I have zero self-control. The next morning we woke up and pretty much just went to a lot of coffee shops and walked around the city to take pictures because it was finally nice out. The city is so beautiful. There is a canal that runs everywhere throughout the city, which was a surprise to me. Also, all of the buildings are so skinny and close together. It was unlike anywhere I had ever been before. Later that day, we went to the Van Gogh museum. It was so cool to see all of the original Van Gogh paintings. The next morning, we had to wake up early to catch our bus and head back home, but not without stopping so that I could buy my weight in chocolate bahahha You didn't think I was going to leave without some did you?