kallie.elizabeth.walker

Thursday was a long day. I stayed up doing homework and rode my bike to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in Freiburg at 3:00am to catch my bus to the Basel Airport a 3:30. My flight left at 6:45, we landed in Alicante at 8:30, caught the bus downtown to the train station at 9:15, took another bus to the bus station at 9:30, and caught my 7 hour bus to Granada at 11:45. Whew! Am I glad to be at my hostel!

And let me tell you, Granada did NOT disappoint! It's a smaller city, and my hostel (Oasis) was located in the old Arabic part of town. SO COOL! So many traditional, Islamic horse-shoed doorways, Arabic written all over, the smell of Moroccan food and insense burning, and don't forget, the AWESOME hippie shopping! I could spend lots of money here, even though it's cheap!

I called it an early night and woke up Friday morning for breakfast and a walking tour of the Albayzin part of town (more Arabic culture with some Gypsy influences). Our tour guide, Eric, was a riot and I was crackin up nonstop. I usually hate feeling like a huge herd of sheep on tours, but I would definitely recommend this one! We ended up at the top of a hill, overlooking Granada and the Alhambra, listening to Flamenco in the background. Could it get any better than that?

Later than night, I headed off to the Alhambra. Make sure you make reservations online! It gets over 6,000 visitors a day! I would also recommend going late in the evening like I did. The light at sunset was soooo warm, beautiful, and complimented the awesomeness of the Alhambra. It's definitely my favorite palace, hands down! Versailles is for woosies!

I could post a million pictures of the Alhambra alone, but here are a few of the highlights!