Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda

Aahhhh...I'm not gonna lie, I'm getting pretty tired. This has been the most incredible trip I've ever been on, but it is starting to take its toll. I don't like to toot my own horn often, but considering I made the train/accomodation travel plans in about 4 days, and then the rest of the trip over 2.5 weeks, that ain't bad. I'm now in Madrid, in an air conditioned hotel and I love it.

For the music, I thought I'd put in my own video, which I'll discuss later:



So I got to Granada, and my hostel was in the Albaicin district, which was the old Arab quarter of the town. For those that don't know, Granada is located in the very south of Spain in a region that was controlled by the Moops until 1492, when the reconquest of Spain was completed. It was really cool to see the Arabic influences on the buildings. The Albaicin area is on a hill next to the Alhambra, with spectacular views, narrow streets, and white buildings. I'm not going to be able to post too many pictures on here, but I have a lot that I will need to show you at some point. Here's a couple from the area I stayed in:


Typical street


View from my area, unbelievable

The hostel's rooms were extremely small. Mine was about the size of my room at Rainwater Ct, but there were 6 of us. There were two Korean girls and an American girl that I made friends with and we went out that first night. I had only heard of Flamenco briefly on So You Think You Can Dance, but I guess it originates in this area. So we walked around to find an authentic place and went to this cave, essentially, which was the home of this gypsy/Spanish family that does Flamenco dancing every night. This was a really cool experience. One guy plays the guitar, others clap, and another guy will often sing some sort of arabic scat, if you will. I guess it sort of originates from the Muslim call to prayer and it does indeed sound like that. In the video above, the guy isn't doing it, but it's hilarious to watch, because he's kinda yelling at the dancer. Plus, the guy kinda looks like Paul Giamatti, so that made it even funnier.

So, while some of you were watching SYTYCD, I was watching real flamenco in a gypsy cave in the hills above Granada:


Do I hear my male readers swooning? Oh excuse me, that was me.

The next day I went to the Al Hambra. The Korean girls came again, even though their English was quite poor. They thought I looked like Brad Pitt, which was hilarious because I look absolutely nothing like him. I'm not trying to be modest either, I simply don't look like him. The reason I mention it is because I think Asians see white people sort of like we sometimes see them in that we think they all look the same (tried to word that delicately and failed). Another funny thing happened that Becca would like...remind me to tell you later.

Back to the Alhambra. The Alhambra is the Anti-Jeff. Those that know me are probably aware that I like to do the bare minimum. In school I always aimed for a 89.5% so I could get that A-. Not to say I'm lazy, I just think I'm efficient. Anyway, the Alhambra is the complete opposite of me, but as Paula Abdul taught us, opposites attract and indeed, I fell in love with the Alhambra. Francisco De Icaza said, "There is nothing in life so cruel as being blind in Granada," I couldn't agree more. I can certainly understand why Reagan decided to invade this place in 1984. Pictures do not do it justice, but I'll throw a few on here anyway:





You just need to see the detail close up, it is incredible, and it just goes on and on. Just as Hemingway made the running of the bulls famous, I guess Washington Irving made the Alhambra famous when he stayed there for awhile and wrote stories about it. In fact, the audio guide was some of his journal entries or something about the place. It was interesting but the way he'd describe things seemed kind of pretentious after awhile.

The views of the valley were great, here's a picture from the Alhambra of the area where I stayed:



At night, we went to a restaurant and had tapas. I don't know what the big deal is with tapas, they're just small plates of snacking food.

Today, I obviously came to Madrid, but decided to stop in Seville for a few hours as it looked like a cool town. I only had about 3 hours and wanted to see the cathedral, which is the largest roman catholic cathedral in the world. But Jeff, you say, what about St. Peter's? Ah, but that is a basilica not a cathedral. But Jeff, what's the difference? No more questions.

It was huge inside, very much like St. Peters, only Gothic instead of Baroque. The tower, which I climbed, was originally a minaret for the mosque that the church took over and expanded in the 14th and 15th centuries. Here's a pic where you can tell this to be true:



The streets of Seville were really neat, I liked the overhanging things between the buildings to provide more shade.



It kinda reminded me of an Arabic town, even though I've never been to one but I've seen Aladdin a few times. It has been really hot, i think over 100 degrees (41 C today).

I looked unsuccessfully for a place to get my haircut. Well, I just wanted to take a picture of it, I'll let you figure out why. Oh well.

Ok, time to get some rest before my final two days. I probably won't post again until I'm back in America. Thanks again for following along, traveling alone is great a lot of the time, but there's also those moments when you want to share the experience with others, so this has been a nice medium.