Granada + Barcelona = fun

So here I am in Barcelona. The weather is very different than it was in the south of Spain. It has been chilly (about high 60s), cloudy, and sometimes misting rain. I think I see sun outside, so that is a great sign. Let me fill you in a bit.

Granada was really nice. It was a lot more calm than Sevilla and definitely more than Barcelona. There is definitely an Arab feel that remains. I learned that they just built a mosque there for the small but growing Muslim community. The street that my hostel was on was full of shops selling hookahs, tea pots and cups, scarves, tea, and belly dancing skirts. I talked to one of the store owners who was from Morocco and he said that most of the others were also from there. Our conversation was funny because I started speaking in Spanish and slipped up and said one word in French. He stopped me and asked if I spoke French, and I said yes, why indeed I do. So then we moved into French, cause I'm more fluent in that. Then we switched back to English so my friend Laura wouldn't be excluded. I really enjoyed that!

On Friday we went to the Alhambra, which is a huge Moorish fortress which includes palaces from the Nasrids and Charles V. The palaces were very nice and our audioguide was narrated by Washington Irving because he wrote a book about the place. We enjoyed our time with good ole Washington. The gardens were very extensive and were very pretty. They are called Generalife, which we obviously pronounced as General Life, but in fact its jen-er-al-li-fay. It was really funny.

Saturday morning I was up early and off to Barcelona. All parts of the travel went well. The hostel here is nice, but definitely has a different feel than the others. So far, I have seen Las Ramblas, an amazing market, some great street performers and dancers, Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's unfinished cathedral), and the Picasso museum. Last night, I went out with some people from the hostel to see this cool fountain that does a water-lights-music show every half hour at night. The first one was all disney music which was amazing! Then we got a drink and then realized that we had missed the last metro home. Have no fear, we figured it out. We walked to the center of town (a good 25 min walk) then took the night bus back...all the while trying to figure out which stop was ours.

Happy Father's Day to everyone and their dads. I'm off to Toulouse tomorrow!!!!!!!!