Don Felipe's Travels: Ghost Ridin in Granada

  Over the past month I have spent the majority of my time outside of Valencia traveling around Europe. Now that school is ending and finals are coming up I will be spending the rest of my time here in Valencia. But before I could finish my travels of Europe I had to visit my fraternity brother, Esteban, in Granada. Following his example we rented a car to travel the 600 km from Valencia to Granada. It was a 6 hour drive with a 15 euro toll each way. We were all really taken back when the toll lady asked for 14.80 euros instead of a couple cents. I never knew tolls could be so expensive.
  We arrived in Granada thursday night and checked into our surprisingly nice hostel. It has been the cheapest hostel we have stayed at but one of the nicest. We had our own room with huge lockers. The kitchen was really nice and allowed us to cook a good dinner the first night.
  After dinner we met up with Esteban and headed to a big beer festival that had been going on all week. It was located in Granada's plaza de toros. But instead of getting into the beer festival we ended up in a club located in the plaza de toros. After realizing this is the place we didn't want to be, we decided to save the beer festival for the next night and enjoy our time at the club.
  The next morning we met up with our free tour guide, Esteban, who led us around Granada and took us to all the important sites. We also were able to experience our first tapas bar. Granada has the best tapas bars in the world...fact. It costs 2 euros to get a beer and a large tapa. There is nothing like that here in Valencia, so we took advantage of this and had tapas for dinner the next two nights.
  But before we were able to enjoy our first dinner of tapas the four of us took the car up the Sierra Nevadas. It was one of the coolest things I have done in Spain. We were able to reach one of the ski resorts at the top and enjoy some PB&J looking out over the mountain range. After lunch we headed down the mountain and got blessed a rainbow.
  So if this day trip wasn't good enough we spotted one of the large black bulls that is one of Spain's most popular images. We couldn't let this opportunity pass so we took a side road to the bull and took some pics. Off in the distance was also a huge lake in the middle of the mountain range with the most blue water I have ever seen in a lake.
  Returning back from the mountain, our first mission was to park the car. When we finally found a spot we were yelling our excitement about finding a spot which attracted a bit of attention from people on the side walks.
  Dinner was tapas from the best tapas bar in Granada, Bar Establo. After dinner we botelloned in one of the plazas and some monkey business ensued including climbing light polls. I made 10 euros that night from bets.
  The next day, Saturday, was our best day in Granada. We barely made it to our 2 PM tour of La Alhambra because we were a bit hungover. An old Moorish fortress taken over by the Catholic Monarchs, La Alhambra is the main attraction of Granada. It is definitely worth seeing this sight because it is tied directly to the history of the city of Granada. As if seeing La Alhambra wasn't good enough, I met my freshman year high school english teacher, Mr. Nicholas, on the top of the Alcazaba(the citadel of La Alhambra). After reminding Mr. Nicholas who I was we made some small talk and parted ways. Still amazes me that I met him there...wow. We continued to see all the really cool gardens of La Alhambra that had a lot small pools and fountains. And that would end our tour of La Alhambra.
  After a siesta it was time for another dinner of 2 euro tapas. But we had to rush because we were meeting up with a tour guide to go to hot springs. Our crew from Valencia with Esteban and two girls he studies got into a van with a crazy hippy lady and headed to the hot springs. But before we could get to the hot springs we had to transfer cars into an old safari vehicle. I swear that thing was from the 70s, she could barley get it started. When we finally arrived at the hot spring we were surprised to notice that no one was wearing a swim suit, so rather than stand out we joined them and did some skinny dipping in the hot springs.
  We had to get up early the next morning to get back to Valencia so after the hot spring we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hostel. The next morning we had an early start and hit the road. The return trip was smooth and now I am back to stay in Valencia (except for an Italy trip in June). As I won't be traveling too much my blog posts may be less frequent but I will doing more stuff around Valencia so check in every now and then to see what I'm up too.