The Alhambra: (Granada Part 2)

The Alhambra is hands down one of my favorite historical sites I have been to in Europe thus far. The Alhambra is a huge Moorish palace that dates back to the 14th century and is situated on a hill bordering Granada. We purchased our tickets online in advance for 14 euros, and it was well worth it. This is saying a lot coming from someone who hates paying for museum entry fees!

Our group was split up this day, as our other friends opted for a guided tour in the morning, and we decided to visit in the afternoon. This ended up being a good choice, as our friends apparently hated their tour and were freezing, and we got to explore the Alhambra at our own pace. Since neither of us did our research before hand, we decided to rent an audioguide. It was nice to get some background information on each site, but the guide did leave me with one question: who the hell is Washington Irving? (My question was later answered, thanks to wikipedia... apparently he is some guy who lived at the Alhambra in the 1800's... and we was our "tour guide".)

Who is this dude?!

Without a doubt, the Nasrid Palaces are the highlight of the Alhambra. In order to control the number of people visiting the palaces, you are assigned a time slot to enter them with your ticket. I absolutely love the Islamic tilework and geometric shapes, and the architecture was really impressive. I could probably go on and bore you with details of our visit, but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

The walk leading up to the Alhambra.

Palacio de Carlos V

Caña break... sightseeing sure is hard work. Oh, españa!

Nasrid Palaces.

Amazing ceiling

Detailing of one of the many doorways.

El Mirador de Lindaraja

View of Granada from the Nasrid Palaces

We stopped for a photoshoot that blew our senior pics out of the water!

Traveling is always more fun when you're in good company... especially when your travel buddy enjoys acting as a human radio. We spent the better part of the afternoon belting out Shania Twain songs. Any man of mineeee...

Generalife

Hope you enjoyed my pictures. Going in, I didn't really know what to expect from the Alhambra, but I had a great time! If you're ever in Granada, I would highly suggest NOT missing out on the Alhambra!

Un beso!

Lindsay

Granada

After a short 2 day work week, Spain gave us yet another puente in early December! This time, I headed to Granada in the south of Spain. Granada is known for its Moorish influences, the Alhambra, its close proximity to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and its plethora of free tapas bars. We had a good time, but for some reason I kind of expected more from the city. (Note: this is probably due to the fact that it couldn't compare to our epic Sevilla trip, and that it was colder than I anticipated.) I was still a bit tired and out of it, so I think that kept me from enjoying it to the fullest. But don´t get me wrong, Granada does have a lot to offer and I´d still love to go back someday... maybe next time in the summer. Here are some highlights from the weekend.

Shopping

Granada is filled with cute little streets lined with Moroccan shops. These shops include trinkets such as loose-leaf tea and tea sets, hookahs, jewelry, tapestries, lamps, and a ton of other home decor. I wanted to buy everything, seriously! I have always loved Moroccan influenced decor. I surprisingly practiced self control and didn't go crazy at the shops. I left with only a few bags of tea, some postcards, and an adorable gold key hook. If you're in Granada, I recommend checking out the Alcaiceria shops near the Cathedral as well as those near Calle Elvira.

Free tapas

One of Granada's main appeals is that there are still plenty of bars offering free tapas! On our first night in Granada, we were slightly confused as to where to get said free tapas, but by day 2 we were pros. Calle Elvira is full of bars offering free tapas. We just walked in, ordered a caña, and received a big ham sandwich and fries with our beers, all for only 2 or 2.50 euros! I'm not going to lie, I thought I was going to turn into a ham sandwich. I may or may not have eaten 4 ham sandwiches in one day alone! I'd recommend getting tapas at La Bella y La Bestia near c/ Elvira... huge portions, and pretty tasty (not recommended for anyone watching their weight- very generous on the alioli).

Tea time

One of my absolute favorite parts of Granada are the cute little cafes serving tea and hookah. Mmmm, Pakistani tea, so delish!

The Alhambra
The Alhambra was hands down my favorite part of our trip, and it deserves its own post. I can´t stop going back through my pictures from our visit!

Kebab
We had a subpar kebab on Thursday night, but we were already craving it again by Saturday. After watching the Madrid-Barca game in an Irish pub, we headed to the Kebab King restaurant around the corner. Little did I know this would be the best kebab I have ever eaten. Sometimes the sketchiest looking places turn out to be the best ones. I'm embarrassed to admit that we returned to another Kebab King for a 4 am kebab later that night... worth it!

Epic.

Albayzin

Albayzin is a gorgeous Moorish neighborhood situated on a hill above central Granada featuring white-washed buildings, winding roads, and plenty of cute shops and plazas. My favorite part: the Mirador de San Nicolas. This spot has the most amazing view of the Alhambra and surrounding scenery. We were kind of hungry and had to pee, so we didn't get to spend as much time here as we would have liked. Next time I'll be sure to pack a bottle of wine and a picnic lunch.

The walk to Alabyzin

The gypsy caves in barrio Sacramonte... we weren't too impressed, but it was a nice walk with some great views.

Stopped to watch a random band jamming in a plaza.

Exploring the streets of Granada with Christina

We found this awesome hidden garden... perfect for a photo sesh!

Fall foliage.

Our weekend in Granada was fun yet relaxing, and I enjoyed seeing a new side of Spain! Granada is perfect for a weekend trip. It wasn't until I started writing about my trip that I realized just how many great things are packed into that little city. I wasn't even able to condense the entire weekend into one post! Stay tuned for another post about the highlight of my trip: the Alhambra.

Besos!

Day Trippin´: Toledo

** This was written late last month, and of course I´m just getting around to posting**

Two weeks ago, we had yet another day off in observance of Dia de la Constitucion, or Constitution Day, in Spain. A few friends and I decided to take a last-minute day trip to Toledo, the capital city of the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha. Toledo is only 30 minutes from Madrid on the RENFE train.

We didn’t really have an agenda for our day in Toledo. We arrived in the city around 11 am and walked from the train station to the city center. We spent the first part of our day taking pictures and walking around the city. We ended up in this little park with a great view, so we decided to stop for lunch. The girls packed lunch for us, and we spent an hour or so just eating and relaxing.

The view from our picnic spot.

After lunch, we visited one of the city’s Synagogues as well as the Museo del Greco. The Synagogue was a nice change of pace, seeing as I’ve been in quite a few cathedrals in Spain and while I appreciate their beauty and history, I don’t feel the need to go into every Cathedral I come across. After a quick walk through the Synagogue museum, we took a quick caña break and then walked across the street to the El Greco museum. El Greco lived in Toledo, where he created most of his most famous works of art. The museum is a replica of his former home in Toledo. The museum wasn’t anything too impressive, but it was worth the visit. Oh, and did I mention that both museums were free due to the national holiday?

El Greco Museum

After getting our dose of art and culture for the day, we headed to a restaurant for café con leche and marzipan cake before catching the 5 pm train back to Madrid. It was a nice little day and I came home with lots of great pictures. Unfortunately I’ve been a bit sleep deprived and exhausted recently and I haven’t felt quite like myself, so I didn’t have a ton of energy. Luckily, Toledo isn’t a city you need to rush through, so I was able to power through the day. Anyways, I will leave you with a few extra photos from the day.

Toledo is known for their marzipan, a popular holiday sweet in Spain.

Don't miss out on marzipan cake in Toledo... so good!

Un Besito!

Lindsay

I'm backkkkk

Hello all! I'm back from my trip and finally getting settled back into the Madrid life. After a month-long hiatus, I will finally be posting about my most recent adventures.

As you may or may not know, my lovely friend and travel partner-in-crime, Christina, and I traveled to Paris, Rome, Florence, and Venice during our winter holidays! Each of these cities are incredible, and I'm planning to give each city it's own post over the next week or so. I also failed to publish posts about my trips to Toledo and Granada last month, so I will catch up on those first.

I really thought I would be more diligent about blogging, but I suppose I've had a little lapse in motivation recently. To be honest, it just feels like normal life over here... well, with endless three-day weekends and some traveling. But in general, my life in Madrid is pretty normal. I basically just work on the weekdays and explore the Madrid nightlife, shop, and am generally lazy on the weekends.... normal, but good! It's weird... I've only been in Madrid for 4 months now, and I can't tell if I think it's flying right by or if I feel like I've been here longer. It seems like everyone is starting to think about plans for next year- whether to stay here, move elsewhere, or go home. I'm not ready to make any decisions yet, but it does stress me out a little to think that I will have to make a choice in the next couple of months. Living abroad has been such a great experience so far (definitely filled with ups and downs), and it's so hard to anticipate how I'll be feeling six months from now. So for now, I'm trying to stay present and not focus so much on the future. I feel like I spent my last year or so before moving to Spain just kind of waiting for the next step, so I'd hate to repeat that while I'm actually here.

Anyways, I digress... I hope that everyone had a great holiday season and is enjoying 2012 so far! And be sure to check back over the next week if you'd like to see photos and stories from my recent travels. Ciao bellas<3

Dilemma of the Week:

Packing winter clothes for a 17 day trip (wait whatttt I'm gonna be gone that long?!) in this little carryon backpack. Yes, this is the same backpack I've been using for weekend trips. And yet I'm still worried that RyanAir is going to screw me and charge me 40 euros to check it.

Rei Urban Traveller... please don't fail me!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. First world problems, I know.

Here's what I'm doing to pack light for the trip:

-Black peacoat, black boots. I have doubts that they'll be warm enough, but I'll live.

-Packing lots of solid basics and neutral tones. My goal is to be able to mix and match everything in my suitcase. Europeans tend to follow the rule that all neutrals go together. Yes, I've seen people pull off browns, blacks, and navy in the same outfit, and I'm gonna do it too.

-Lots of thin layers. I'm planning to layer tank tops, long sleeves, light sweaters, and leggings under my coat, jeans, and boots. Thin layers means I can pack more and have to options.

-Mixing it up with scarves. I'm bringing as many scarves as I can squeeze in to add variety, and I'm playing around with different ways of wearing them.

-Wearing as many layers as I can stand on that damn plane, and hopefully stuffing things in my pockets to save space. Did I mention the budget airlines only allow ONE item as a carryon... meaning my purse has to fit in that backpack, too.

I am also determined to not forget anything important on this trip. I always seem to forget something.... maybe because I always pack about 20 minutes before leaving my house?!?! So yeah, I'm a bit stressed about preparing for this trip and staying healthy with all of the other obligations I have this week, but I'm also getting very excited! I still need to catch up on recent trips and such... I'll try to get it done before I leave!

Does anyone have tips on packing light that I'm missing? Besides printing my boarding pass in advance and keeping my bag within the size/weight limitations, is there anything else I should be doing to avoid RyanAir fees? I'd love your feedback.

Un besito! xx

Ponle Freno 5k

A month or so ago, I heard about a 5k run in Madrid through another blogger. The carrera Ponle Freno is a 5k and 10k race in Madrid to raise money for a campaign for traffic safety. Ponle Freno literally means to "hit the breaks" in Spanish. My friend Christina and I decided to sign up, thinking that having something to train for would motivate us to start working out. Of course this plan backfired, considering we only worked out once, if that, in preparation for the race. But hey, 3.1 miles isn´t so bad, so we decided to follow through with it.

The day before the race, we figured it might be a good idea to find out where the race actually was and how to check in. Go figure, we need to check in at an El Corte Ingles store that´s 40 minutes from my house within 2 hours, and luckily we got there just in time to pick up our size XL shirts and our race chips.

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and headed to Parque del Retiro for the race. Holy crap, it was COLD. The race started a few minutes late and due to poor organization there wasn´t a staggered start, so it took a while to get over the start line and the first half mile was pretty crowded. Once we got going, I had a lot of fun during the run. I didn´t push myself TOO hard because I´m so out of shape, but I kept a pace that felt somewhat challenging. My official race time was 29:10 (9:39 min/mile pace).

I miss running. It´s been a few years since I have run regularly and competed in events... I can´t really call myself a runner anymore. I started training for a half marathon last winter and I didn´t follow through because I increased my mileage too soon and was getting shin splints. Looking at my race time from a couple weeks ago, I can´t believe I was able to run a 20:30 5k at one point. Since the Ponle Freno, I have gone for a run or two, but I haven´t been able to make much time for running. There´s no way I´m waking up for cold, dark 6 am morning runs before work, and I usually don´t get home until dark and running at night here makes me a bit nervous. But hey, excuses don´t get ya anywhere, so I´ll be making an effort to fit running into my schedule. We´re planning to run in the Rock n Roll 10k this Spring, and I´d like to do some solid training for this one and improve my time. I´ll let you all know how it goes! If any of you fellow Madrid folks want to join me for a run sometime, let me know! :)

Thanksgiving in Madrid // el Día de Acción de Gracias en Madrid

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I wrote a little post on Thanksgiving about Thanksgiving in Spain and some things I´m thankful for (yes, I know... realll cheesy)... and of course I forgot to hit publish. Go figure. So here it is, over a week late, an update on my first Thanksgiving away from home.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays for two reasons: one, I love my family, and two, I love food, especially when my grandma and mom make it for me. Seeing as I´m 9 hours and thousands of miles away from home and my family, my Thanksgiving was a little different this year. Since we couldn´t be with our families, some friends and I hosted a little Thanksgiving feast to celebrate.

Well, let´s just say I have a whole new level of respect for my grandma and mom, who know how to host one hell of a Thanksgiving dinner. A few days before Thanskgiving, a couple friends decided to host a dinner at their house. What we thought was going to be a small dinner with 4 or 5 people turned into a 12 person gathering with both Spaniards and Americans. What follows is the story of how I singlehandedly almost ruined Thanksgiving....

I stupidly offered to buy the turkey... and go figure, that was a FAIL. I´m going to assume you are all aware that Thanksgiving is an American holiday and isn´t celebrated in other countries, so it shouldn´t come as a suprise that whole turkeys are a bit harder to come by. In Spain, you have to order a turkey a few days in advance from a polleria, aka a poultry store. A couple days before Thanksgiving I tried going to a couple places and none of them were able to get turkeys for me. I didn´t have the energy to go all over Madrid searching for a turkey last minute, so we settled on roasting a chicken. On Thursday I realized that we didn´t really have enough oven space to spend hours roasting the chickens and I heard that Mercadona had roasted chickens for 5 euros, so I waited until 8pm Thursday night to buy them. Of course, when I get to Mercadona I find that what I thought were going to be warm, rotisserie style chickens are actually cold, shrink-wrapped pre-cooked chickens. So I kinda started freaking out, and I called my friends to warn them that our main dish was going to be a little sketchy. Lucky for me, they were understanding... it is Spain, after all... you´ve gotta go with the flow!

So if you think that eating pre-cooked, packaged chicken for Thanksgiving is bad, you haven´t heard anything yet. Wednesday night, I realized that nobody was signed up to bring gravy. You can´t have Thanksgiving without gravy, that´s just wrong... Of course, I have no clue where to find gravy and I didn´t have time to go to an American store, so I decided I would buy it at the KFC in Sol and then put it in a bowl so nobody would know. So I go to KFC, order a thing of overpriced gravy, get a realllly strange look from the cashier, and then hurry along to my friends´place. As if showing up with KFC gravy isn´t bad enough, I open the already small container to see that it was literally only a quarter full. Hahahhaha, I die.

As you can imagine, I am a little frazzled at this point and I still need to deal with these stupid little chickens. Without thinking, I just sort of threw them from the package to the oven rack without draining the juices or lining the drip pan. What resulted was a burning smell, a kitchen full of steam, and poor Christina freaking out that I was burning the place down. We eventually got it sorted out and finished the chickens.

The good news: the kitchen didn´t burn down, we got the food on the table before midnight, and those stupid little chickens are actually really, really good. So good that nobody seemed to care that we weren´t eating turkey. In fact, all of the food was really, really good. We also had tortilla and olives (thanks to our Spanish guests!), mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green beans, sweet potatoes with pinapple and marshmellows, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and of course plenty of wine. Okay, so maybe we were missing stuffing, cranberry sauce, and legit gravy... but it still felt like a proper Thanksgiving meal!

Our "turkey"... nom nom nom.

I feel so lucky to have shared my Thanksgiving with a great group of people. It was so cool that there were two languages being spoken at the table and we were getting to share some of our culture with Spaniards. During the meal we went around the table and shared what we are thankful for. I am thankful for so much this year: family, old friends, new friends, living in Madrid, new experiences, challenges. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of it! Here are a couple pictures from our meal:

Meal time... por fin!

Happy Friendsgiving, y'all!

Un besito!

Lindsay