La Alhambra (Nothing Else Matters)

Okay, that's totally not true.  Especially after seeing Flamenco last night.  But La Alhambra was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  If I see anything more beautiful on this trip, I don't know if my heart could take it.  But enough melodrama.  I'll let you see for yourself, although I'm sure pictures could never do it justice.  Granada was amazing, and not just because of La Alhambra.  The city centre is just fine.  There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not all that special either.  Had we stayed in the city centre, our experience would have been decent.  But we stayed ten minutes away in the white city, with the quaint, white Spanish buildings and the labyrinthine streets.  It was infinitely charming.  It also had a perfect view of La Alhambra across the valley.  It was exactly what one wants to see when one goes to Spain.  Madrid, in contrast, is very western.  I'm glad we went, and it has a lot of history, but in a lot of ways it's very much like New York.  San Sebastian had its own charm as well.  It was very laid back, and a nice place to take it easy for a couple of days.  Of course, it is a beach town.  Not my ideal, but there was a boardwalk above where I could avoid the beauty without having to deal with the annoying sand and such.  But before you ask, of course I did suffer the sand a few times because Elizabeth enjoys it (silly girl).  What do you do?  The hostel we were staying in was friendly enough, but not really our type of place.  Of course, that could just have to do with the whole surfer town attitude.  Most of the time there wasn't someone at reception like there was supposed to be.  People were rolling joints out on the balcony.  Etc.  Anyhoo... Barcelona isn't as charming as Granada, but we did get to catch a flamenco show, which was amazing.  They are so intense the whole time!  The singers, the dancers, and the instrumentalists are completely into it.  We also saw La Sagrida Familia, designed by Gaudi, which is unbelievably detailed.  The guy was seriously insane.  He took on these elaborate projects and didn't finish them.  Still, even unfinished, this building was a sight to behold.

Okay, it's been really hard to keep up the blogging for the last little while.  We've either been too busy, or more often, without much internet access.  So I'll post this now, and hopefully Elizabeth will be posting soon after with her pictures.  As per usual, mine tend to be the silly ones or foody ones.  Hers will be the actual things we saw and did.  However, since I'm getting really sick of how difficult it is to work the text around the pictures, I'm just going to explain the pictures in this post, and then follow it up with a post of just the pictures.  Which means you will probably have already seen the pictures, since they'll be up above.  Oh well.  Look at them again with the descriptions.  So, here's my little summary of Spain...we're in Florence now, but Italy descriptions will simply have to come later.

The first few pictures are from Madrid.  Tapas is a traditional food in Spain, and you'll find tapas bars everywhere.  I think there are different stories about how it started, but basically people started bringing beers out with a plate and a snack on top.  So if you order a beer, they'll bring you some kind of a snack with it.  This bar is a little more formal about it.  You get a menu and mark the kinds of sandwiches you want, and the beer you want.  You get a glass of beer, and the finger sandwiches with some potato chips.  Their sandwiches are really good, and very cheep.  Oh, and the beer comes with it.  This particular beer (the lighter one) is beer mixed with lemon soda.  Even Elizabeth loved this one.  :-)=  The statue there is just one we thought was very cool.  Although there are tons of street perfomers in Spain posing as statues, this one was in fact a real statue, randomly positioned in the street.  In the picture of me, I'm supposedly standing in exactly the center of Spain.

Next is one picture of Toledo, which was a fun day trip from Madrid.  This is a popular dessert in Spain, with a few churros and some melted chocolate to dip them in.  Their churros are much thinner and crispier than ours are, but it was very good.

The food in Granada was a salad (not too fancy, but very good and large), and some potato cake type things.  And of course, I had to throw in my pictures of La Alhambra.  Only two, and believe me we have TONS more, but I just thought I'd provide a tiny taste of it.

The picture of the food with the fan is our very own Spanish happy meal.  We ordered it in the train station before transferring to San Sebastian, and it came with the sandwich, chips, soda, and our very own souvenir fan!  Of course, we had been craving those finger sandwiches and lemon soda/beer, so after this we stored our luggage and went hunting for that bar again.  Hee.

San Sebastian, although a coastal town, certainly had its charms.  We enjoyed the long walk along the coast, and took some fun pictures, such as the strange claw structure.  The other is just a random windy picture, somewhere near the claw thingy.  And then, of course, the food.  Our second day in San Sebastian, we were supposed to take a daytrip, but it didn't pan out, so instead we ate our way through San Sebastian.  These were very yummy cappuccinos and croissants with chocolate and whip cream inside.  So, there ya go!  That's Spain in my very little nutshell.

EDIT: And also, the pictures aren't in order.  It goes 7-11, 2-6, 1.  I think.  Frmp.

Did ew know...?

Prego is the universal Italian word.

Thank you for choosing Lod's Little Tidbits, and have a nice day.