Nerja? Snoozeha!

Friday, April 16

We woke up Friday around (drum roll please) 3:30pm. Yeah, that’s right we slept about 15 hours. We’re awesome like that. Guess all that partying with our moms wore us out! We got moving and went to find some lunch and ate at a great little restaurant with a really nice man to serve us. After lunch, we decided we needed to veg some more. We went to the super market near our hostel, invested in some Kinder Buenos, Nutella and crackers then headed back to the hostel to catch up on blogging, eat nutella, nap and veg. It was awesome. There are some really cool caves in Nerja, like the ones with all of those cavemen drawings, but veggin’ just sounded way cooler that day than checking out the cave men art. At about 8pm, we decided that we should do something productive so we made it our mission to find the latest episode of one of our favorite shows online: GLEE. We found it. We watched it. And it was awesome. After that, we blogged a bit more then went to sleep. Good times.

Memories of La Alhambra

Thursday, April 15

In case you didn’t already know this, our moms are awesome. It’s true! They woke up super early Thursday morning to go and get tickets to La Alhambra for us. Turns out they only sell so many tickets every day and if you aren’t there in the first hour that the palace is open to get tickets, you don’t get tickets. They came back around 9am and woke us up. We had tickets to walk around the Palace of the Nazarene at 10:30 am. We had been told that if you don’t make it to the palace by the time specified on your ticket, you don’t get in. So we left our hotel at about 10:15. AHH.

We got to the main entrance and started running! We ran and ran. In case you don’t know this, La Alhambra IS HUGE. From the main entrance to the area, all of the signs say that it would take 20 minutes to walk to the palace. Well we ran it in 10, y’all. We got there, out of breath at 10:35 only to find that you could check in anytime up until 11am. HA. Well, at least we got our work out for the day! We stood in line and waited to get in while JL went to purchase an audio guide for herself and Marty. We made it inside and started walking around.

It’s so interesting to see all of the different religious influences within this palace. This is where Sultans, Muslim, and Christian leaders ruled from for centuries. It really is an amazing palace, full of amazing architecture, color and gorgeous gardens. We can definitely see why it was fought over and sought after for so many years. Once we made it out of the main palace, we continued exploring and checking out all of the awesome gardens.

After seeing all of the pretty flowers, it was time to head back towards town. We went and found some lunch at a great little Moroccan/Spanish restaurant up the street from the main square and had some awesome sangria. After lunch, we did some window shopping and walked around all of the cool shops in the area - it looked like the Arab shuk in the Old City of Jerusalem! We then slowly made our way back to the hotel. Where we hung out with our moms a bit longer. It was now time to part ways. We headed out to catch a bus to the bus station as our moms headed out to catch a shuttle to the Granada airport.

We are so glad and thankful that our moms got to party with us for a week and experience all of the fun and craziness that we have been having together. Thanks again to everyone that helped to make it happen - it was totally worth it! We gave them info on how to find us in case they got stranded due to Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud. You never know!

We made it to the bus station and bought our tickets for the next bus to Nerja (there is no direct train to Nerja, you have to go by bus). We tossed our stuff underneath, hopped aboard and went to sleep. After about an hour, we woke up with our necks bouncing all over the place and looked up to see that we were going through a crazy stretch within the Sierra Nevada mountains, full of hair pin turns, perilous drops, and amazing views. At several points we were above or in the clouds. It was really cool.

We eventually arrived in Nerja and found our hostel. We called the number posted on the door and a woman came to let us in. While checking in, we observed a Hamsa and a menorah in the hostel’s main office. We asked if she was Jewish. She explained that her family had only recently found out that their family was Jewish way back in the day. Her family was Jewish and once the Spanish Inquisition was kicking into high gear they went into hiding. We like fellow Jew crew members with cool stories! We went upstairs and dropped our stuff off in our room. Then went out to find the beach. We found it but by the time we got there it was dark (aka 9:45 pm - the sun sets pretty late here) so we made our way back up toward the main drag of Nerja and had some dinner then went back to the hostel then went to sleep.

Pomegranates/ Granada, To-may-to/To-mah-to

Wednesday, April 14

Making it to a city early in the morning by train has its perks and its drawbacks. On the one hand, you’re up and ready to go, on the other hand, you’re exhausted because it’s very difficult to have a full night’s rest on a night train. We stumbled onto the train platform with our bags pretty groggy eyed and made our way to a café for breakfast and COFFEE. After breakfast, we hung out at the train station, researching how to get to Gibraltar and Morocco. We saw that trains were leaving from Granada and figured we could go down to Gibraltar for the day, hop a boat to Morocco (since it’s practically across the street) then come back to Gibraltar and spend the night, then come back up to Granada the next day. Turns out Gibraltar is pretty far from Granada, about a 5 hour journey by bus AND train. There is no direct train line to Gibraltar, you have to take a train to a station within Spain then take a bus the rest of the way to Gibraltar. Looks like that dream won’t be happenin’ folks! We then made it our mission to find a place to stay for the night in Granada. We found some places but were not able to book them, but we did have addresses, so we hopped in a taxi from the train station and went to the first hostel on our list. We got there and the hostel was a hostel no longer. Turns out the hostel had moved. Awesome. We then hiked down to a little park we had passed in our taxi. We left our moms and our bags at a little café and went in search of the Granada Tourism office.

Turns out the tourism office knows a lot! They handed us maps, info sheets with names, prices, locations and ratings for all of the hotels and hostels in the area. We hiked back up to our moms to discuss and research. (THIS IS WHY iPHONES ARE AWESOME). We checked a couple on Trip Advisor and eventually found Hotel Anacapri. We read in one of the reviews that if you say the magic words “We found you in our Rick Steves book” they’ll give you a great discount. It worked! We had some pages from one of Rick Steves’ books left with us. We had sent the bulk of his giant “bible” home and ripped out the pages we needed for our trip back in February. We called up the hotel, said the magic words, and they said to come on down. We walked there from the park, made a reservation then went up to our room for four. We joked that we were getting the penthouse as we were riding up in the elevator. Turns out, it was true! Once we got to the last floor in the elevator, we had to take some stairs up to the very top floor - our room. It was a great little 4 bed room with a sitting area and everything. After dropping our things off, it was time for a nap! So we napped for about an hour then went out to get some lunch and meet Granada. Why, hello, Granada. We’re the Woodmere Gang. Pleasure to meetcha.

After eating, we walked around and eventually made our way to the Cathedral where there was a hop on point for the City Sightseeing Bus Tours. These buses are in every city everywhere and really convenient. You hop on, plug some headphones into your seat and listen to the history of the town and can hop off at any of its stops (always in important, touristy, “you gotta see this” areas). We opted to stay on the whole ride and hop off after hearing all of the history and info about Granada (about 1 ½ hours).

After the bus ride, we hopped off where we started at the Cathedral and did some shoppin’ (always fun with the mommies!) After our shoppin’ we decided to do like the Spanish do and take a siesta! We headed back to the hostel, made a reservation for a Flamenco show, then took a nap. We woke up, showered, got dressed then headed downstairs to meet the person picking us up. Turns out it was also a walking tour! We hopped on our bus and were dropped off in what was formerly the Muslim area of Granada. What makes Granada so interesting is that it went back and forth between the Moors and the Christians for hundreds of years so you have a ton of Muslim, Gypsy, and Christian influences all around the city. We eventually made it to a great lookout point where we could see La Ahambra lit up in the distance. It was pretty cool.

We then went up to the restaurant where the Flamenco dance party was held. It’s located in what was formerly a cave inhabited by Gypsies. We ordered our dinner and sangria and watched in awe as these 4 dancers and 3 musicians took the stage. Although the main volume for the music was up probably a little too high, it was spectacular to hear and watch. The musicians and dancers are constantly moving. If they aren’t clapping, they’re tapping with their feet. It’s elegant and powerful all at the same time and quite a workout! We’ll try to upload a video soon.

After the Flamenco dance party, it was about 12:30am so we headed back to our hotel. We tried researching hostels in Gibralatr again and just couldn’t find anything so then we started to look up places on the coast of Spain like Malaga. We asked the woman at reception if she liked Malaga. She said it was cool, but that Nerja was cooler and had lots of cool caves to check out. Sounds cool! We looked up hostels in Nerja (pronounced “Ner-ha“), found one 3 blocks from the beach, booked it then went to sleep.

XOXO J&K&M&R

What a Gaudieous Day!

Tuesday, April 13

We woke up fairly early Tuesday morning. Our moms grabbed some breakfast and croissants for us from the hostel’s breakfast room and we packed up our bags. We got all of our things together and left them all in the hostel’s luggage area and went out to explore some more of Barcelona. First stop - a Gaudi house!

Gaudi was a BA architect back in his day. He started the Neo-Gothic movement in the early 1900s and his work has inspired several modern artists, most notably Picasso. He was commissioned to design the Sagrada Familia cathedral that we saw the day before (which is still under construction btw) and several parks and buildings around Barcelona. He’s kind of a big deal. At one point, he was asked to design an apartment building. It has now been converted into a museum to showcase all of Gaudi’s work and inspiration. The attic of the building is where there are several displays, models of buildings and cathedrals he designed as well as a collection of inspirational items he used to help define his work. There is also a terrace, full of winding stairs, tunnels and funky chimneys. The scenery looks like it was taken out of a Dr. Seuss book! A couple floors down from there is an apartment that is furnished as it was back in 1912 when the apartment first opened, full of art nouveau furniture and period décor.

The rest of the building is all offices now. After playing a fun game of hide and seek around the museum, we eventually all found each other then headed out to find some lunch. By the time we finished lunch, it was decision time: go see the other Gaudi house-museum and Parc Güell (pronounced: “park way,” a park he designed that is now open to the public) or just the park. We voted to go and see the park because that was our priority in case we didn’t get to anything else. We went to the metro via a little shopping stop and made our way to Parc Güell. When we got off of the metro, we checked our email real quick and received some very sad news: Katie’s dog Nicky had passed away. He was already declining in health but we had hoped that he would be able to stick around in time for Katie to get back. We was a precious and sweet ol’ pup and we will miss him dearly. In the words of Katie’s dad, Terrell, “NickNick was dreaming about chasing bad guys and biting them real hard when his courageous little heart gave out. He was a fearless defender and devoted friend.” We took some time to mourn our loss before slowly making our way up to the park. It’s on a steep hill and is a great lookout point to see all of Barcelona. There were several escalators outdoors next to the sidewalk to make the schlep up to the top easier.

Once at the top, we explored the park and took some great pictures from the different lookout points. If you don’t know anything about Gaudi, you should Google him real quick because he’s designed some pretty crazy (aka awesome) buildings and Parc Güell is another example of his interesting style.

Our train for Granada left at 9:30 in the evening, but we wanted to be back at our hostel around 7pm so that we could get our stuff together and get to the train station in plenty of time to hopefully sweet talk somebody into letting us swap beds with them so that we could all get into at least the same car of the train, if not the same room. We ended up being there way too early and we couldn’t even go through the gate that we needed to pass to get to our platform. Eventually, we talked the guard into letting us pass through but sit in the chairs just on the other side and wait out the remaining 45 minutes or so. We finally got down to the train platform and boarded the train and made our way to our compartments. We were able to swap with one girl so that Marty and Rachael were in the same room but Katie and JL were in separate ones. We were all in the same train car together, though, so all we had to do was open the door to the compartment and go out into the hall to see each other. We weren’t quite ready to crash yet so we decided to rendezvous in the restaurant car to hang out and have dinner before going to bed. The meal there was expensive and sub-par, but we ate it and washed it down with a great red wine called “Sangre de Toro”. That means “blood of the bull” for those non-Spanish speakers out there.

After dinner, we hung out for a little while longer and then headed to our respective sleeping compartments. None of us got much sleep but we did get to Granada at 8:30ish the next morning, so that was cool.

XOXO J&K&M&R

Barthelona

Monday, April 12

We woke up Monday morning to the sounds of dishes clanging - turns out our room is right next to the hostel’s kitchen and breakfast was wrapping up. Time to wake up and get some food! Our moms were quick on their feet to grab croissants and coffee while Katie and Rachael, who move a bit slower, started to get ready. Rachael had heard about the **Fat Tire Bike Tour in Barcelona and had researched it the night before. Turns out they have a tour that started at 11am. It was already 10, so it was time to get moving! We were out the door by 10:30 and started to make our way to the tour’s meeting point. We got there around 11:15, just in time to find some members of the tour testing their bikes before the tour started. They were able to point us in the right direction so we ran and got some bikes then began the tour.

Our guide’s name was Buddha and he was great. The first stop on our tour was Placa St. Jaume which has two important Spanish government buildings. We hit lots of important spots in Barcelona including Sagrada Familia, el Parc de la Ciutadella, the cathedral, the historical museum of Barcelona and much more! The tour also included a lunch stop at a neat restaurant on the beach that served some delish sangria. Good times!

What was great about the bike tour was that there weren’t too many hills and the stretches between each stop were spaced out just enough so that you never felt like you were working too hard. Our tour started to wrap up just as we started to feel a couple of rain drops. Our timing was perfect!

After the tour, Buddha (who is trained to be a chef, not a bike tour guide) pointed us toward a great produce market a few blocks from the Fat Tire shop. When we got there, we went a little nuts snapping photos, but everything was so beautiful! There were all sorts of fruits, vegetables, breads, meats, cheeses, and much, much more!

We browsed for awhile but then found a booth selling all sorts of chocolates that became our downfall. Katie and Joy filled a plastic bag with their chocolate selection and Rachael and Marty soon followed suit. Not long later, one of us (not quite sure which) had the brilliant idea to buy some things to go with wine that could be our dinner that night. We ended up with quite a spread, including bread, two types of cheese, pineapple, strawberries, garlic and some wine we’d picked up during our travels. Another popular thing at the food market were the fruit vendors selling all sorts of wonderful fresh juice smoothie thingies. We all had to try one so we went on our way, browsing stalls and vendors, smoothies in hand. It was a blast! After our bike tour and shopping escapades, we were a little tired, so we headed back to the hostel to drop off our things and rest a bit.

At this point, we still didn’t know exactly how we would be traveling to Granada the following day so we decided it might be a good idea to run to the train station and figure out what our options were. Turns out, Spain’s big! We thought it might be a 6 or 7 hour train ride, but it was 11! Basically, our only option was to take a night train from Barcelona to Granada the following evening. It wasn’t very expensive and we’d sleep on the train so that saved us the money we would have spent on a hostel so we booked it right then. There were only 4 beds left on the whole train so we were just in time! We weren’t able to all be in the same room because, well, beggars can’t be choosers, so we figured we’d just try and sweet-talk whoever was in our rooms so that we could be closer together. We weren’t sure about making it to Gibraltar or Morocco the following day but decided we’d ask when we got to Granada and if we could, we’d go but if not, there’s plenty to do and see in Granada!

After getting our transportation smoothed out, we were excited to basically have a whole other full day in Barcelona. There were still a few things on our list to see! So, we headed back to the hostel, ate our delicious fresh meal from the produce market and went to bed shortly thereafter.

XOXO J&K&M&R

**For those curious, yes, the Fat Tire Bike Tour and the amazing Fort Collins brewed beer are related - the bike tour came first. The guy who started the beer in Colorado did one of their bike tours in Europe and named the beer after the tour company. We are sad to report that there was no Fat Tire beer waiting for us in Barcelona’s fridge, or at any of the Fat Tire tour locations and that there are no Fat Tire Bike Tours in the States because of an agreement between the two organizations. Don’t worry - we plan on writing a letter to complain, because if there is anything that this world needs more of, it’s Fat Tire Ale and bikes.