Thursday, March 1 – Sunday, March 4
“Cave woman bring banjo” –Rose Hunt
My friends Joni and Sam have fallen in love with the Andalucian town of Granada. I think before they leave to go home after the semester is over the will have gone at least three times. The first time Joni went was for her birthday, she has a tradition of going skiing on her birthday and the Sierra Nevada’s are in Granada. She came back, so excited, and immediately told us she wanted to go back, but this time, to stay in a cave. Cave? Granada? Yes and yes were my responses. Granada was on my list of places to go this semester and what a better way to go than to stay in a cave. As we were trying to figure out which weekend we should go, our friend Josie piped up and told us that her birthday (the big 2-1) was March 2. BAM! We would stay in a cave for Josie birthday, decided.
Rose and Sabrina, two other lovely lady friends in Sevilla, jumped on board with the plan and so the six of us booked our cave and climbed on the bus (watched a terrible movie on the way there) and in three hours we arrived in Granada. Josie and Sam went first, as they don’t have afternoon classes on Thursdays and the other four of us got in around 11 or 12 at night. The first night we stayed in a backpacker’s hostel, my first hostel experience. It had a relaxed, hippie chic aesthetic and the staff was really awesome and helpful but I think I have decided that group rooms are a no go for Erin on future trips. Only child syndrome, I enjoy my privacy too much. Friday, Josie and Joni went skiing in the Sierras while the rest of us lugged our stuff up the mountain to “Las Cuevas de Sacromonte.” We met our cave lady (minus the bludgeon) and she showed us to our place. HOLY CRAP, it was a nice friggin cave dude! Indoor plumbing, electricity, a kitchen, bathroom, three cute little bedrooms and lovely decorations accommodated the cave. We were all instantly in love and declared that one of us, I do believe this is Joni’s responsibility, needs to buy a cave that we can all come visit.
Birthday festivities included jam sesh with Josie on the banjo, belly dancing by Sabrina, a little bit of pre-gaming and then it was off to the dub-step RAVE. Shew… what an interesting night we had too. I’m gonna skip all the glossy details and just leave it at that. The next day, Josie and Sabrina and I woke up and hiked up to the Alhambra (the other ladies had already seen this World Wonder). I think we spent about 4 hours touring the great fortress, bought some souvenirs and some ice cream and trudged back down. The Alhambra was beautiful. I always marvel at places like that, who lived there, what were they like, what they did, how they built this, etc. The inside of the Palace reminded me of what my mom told me about the Taj Mahal in India. The Taj is constructed out of a specific white stone that has a hundreds of thousands of designs carved into its surface and then a brightly-colored matching piece of stone (also hand carved) that fits plumb into the white stone, to create an intricate and beautiful design. The carvings inside the Palace of the Alhambra resembled these designs I’ve seen from the Taj Mahal, although not quite so complex, still very detailed and remarkable.
Saturday night we decided to keep a low profile, and opted for fusion tapas at this place that Joni and Sam had been to before. In Granada, if you buy a drink, they bring you a tapa for free! So we enjoyed our free tapas with drinks and then headed back to the cave. Josie played banjo a little for us (I am now a huge fan of the banjo and can sing the old hymn, “I’ll Fly Away” quite well) and we had a quite night, enjoying our cave. The next morning we all just took it easy, I read some of Frederico Garcia Llorca, a famous Spanish poet who spent a lot of time in Granada, and coincidently read about “Las Cuevas de Sacromonte” pretty surreal feeling reading poetry about the place I was at. Then we went on a quest for breakfast and had a very traditional Spanish breakfast; tostada with tomato and jamon, café con leche and fresh squeezed orange juice. We were doing some more exploring when we got a call from the cave lady saying we needed to scoot out because her next guests were arriving soon. So we went and packed up, said goodbye to our cave, grabbed a kebab (fantastic ones in Granada) and headed to the bus station. FANTASTIC weekend.
Thursday, March 8 – Sunday, March 11
“If France and Spain had a baby, this would be it” –me
There are many different regions in Spain, Andalucia (where I live!), Valencia, Murcia, Castilla y Leon, Galicia, Cataluña, Pais Vasco, la Mancha (I’ll give you a big virtual bear hug if you know the famous Spanish book with this in the title) and so on. Each region has a very specific culture with the broader Spanish culture. In Andalucia, for example, the people are known for being very warm and welcoming and for enjoying life (partying, socializing, etc). I had been wanting to venture out of Andalucia and see a bit more of these cultural differences. For some reason, the Basque Country (Pais Vasco) spoke to me! Back in February, I was talking to Sam about how I wanted to go up north (Pais Vasco is right near the border with France) to Bilbao and San Sebastian. And she was like, “oh, I’m going, in March, wanna come?” I love it when that happens, ha! I immediately jumped on board and we had a coffee date with her roommate Alison to plan the trip. Our friends Joni and Megan decided to come along too, giving us a nice sized group for the weekend.
March 8 was International Women’s Day. There’s a tradition that one this day women all around the world are supposed to cross a bridge, a figurative way of crossing the bridge of the gender divide and inequality. I’ve been wanting to go to a bridge on International Women’s Day for like, 2 years but it never seems to work out. This year, I thought it was going to be the same. There was a celebration in Sevilla, but it was at the same time as my flight. A little discouraged, I jumped on the plane to Bilbao. We got off the bus from the airport to Bilbao and what do you know, there was a parade of women walking to a bridge! Holla holla if you wanna dolla! Of course, I just jumped right in, dragging Sam, Joni, Alison and Megan along with me. They enjoyed it. We walked for about half an hour and then listened to some speeches given in a mixture of Euskara (language of the Basque Country) and Castellano (Spanish) as well as some rocking drum beats before heading to the hostel and out for pintxos (2-3 bites of yummy yummy toasts with toppings, the Basque version of tapas).
On Friday, we woke up early, went and got DELICIOUS pastries (just like in France…mmmm) for breakfast and headed to the Guggenheim Museum. We spent probably 4 hours in the Museum seeing all the cool exhibits. It’s my favorite art museum that I’ve been to yet. Go figure, it’s just, the Gugg. We made friends with the Puppy and MAAAAA, took some pictures with them, grabbed some coffee and played on the awesome playgrounds that they have in Bilbao before walking along el Rio Nervion back to the hostal. We made a friend at lunch and he told us to come back to his restaurant for drinks later, so we did. I was wacked out on cold medicine which made the night interesting, ha! But it was still fun. Sam loves making new friends, like always I love that about her.
Saturday we woke up SUPER early and headed to the train station. We took a day trip to San Sebastian (beautiful beach town in the north east corner of Spain) which is also the setting for Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The train ride there was a bit rough, 2.5 hours on a local train… meaning, it was cold and it made stops every 15 minutes. Ufff… needless to say, we decided to take the bus back. But it was really pretty and we got to see a lot of the country side, which was nice. San Sebastian was incredible! We admired the beach before walking up to see ole San (who Joni thought was Jesus at first… ooh Joni bear). I love climbing to really tall points in a new city and looking out over the whole landscape, its one of my favorite things to do when I go somewhere. We explored the top with San and spent some time watching the waves crash on the rocks before getting lunch. Up north, they eat lunch so early! Like at 1 or 2pm! We were used to eating around 3 or 4 so we had to modify our daily planning to accommodate the seemingly “un-Spanish” schedule. The Basque Country is known for cider and sea food, so we concluded that these were a must for lunch. We stumbled along this restaurant that all the Spaniards were at (always a good sign) and ventured in. We proceeded to stuff our faces with mussels, calamari, bread, patatas bravas and three bottles of cider. It was awesome! Then we got some ice cream and chilled on the beach until it was time to go back to Bilbao.
Sunday we woke up, got breakfast (more pastries!) and headed to the airport to go back to Sevilla. Excellent trip to the Basque Country! I think Alison or I will be buying an apartment in the Basque Country… gotta keep up with our vacation homes! Gotta cave in Granada and a home in the Basque Country!
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