Granada

Today is my second day in Granada, where I am for the next 3 days to sightsee and for our orientation on Tuesday.

Granada is a decently-sized city of 215,000. It is situated at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and is built almost entirely on hills (which is exhausting if you walk everywhere like we do!). At one point, Granada’s population was predominately Muslim, and this influence is still visible today in the city’s architecture (especially in the Alhambra, a Moorish fortress) and in the Arab quarter (the Albaicin).


It was quite the process getting here as I had to figure out the bus and train schedules as I went along. First I had to take a bus to the bus station in Rota, then a bus to El Puerto de Santa Maria (the closest town with a train station) and then a train to Dos Hermanas, where I changed trains to go to Granada. The problem was that I had never been to the bus station in Rota (and it was smaller than I expected), so I missed my stop without even realizing it. Since the buses only go around Rota in one direction, I had to ride around for another 40 minutes and I missed the morning train to Granada. This meant that I had 3 and a half hours to kill in El Puerto before the next train. I also had a huge backpack with me, and there is no luggage storage there, so I ended up taking a taxi to the centre of town and wandering around for quite awhile. So all in all it took me 12 hours from the time I got up, to the time I finally arrived in Granada (about 7:30 pm last night). I then met up with the same auxilares that I had hung out with in Seville, and we are staying in a really nice hostel with a swimming pool and a great view of the city!