GranadaHere, we are in Granada. Friday we left Madrid and took a train to Salamanca to meet up with Cristina, that was very cool. I liked Salamanca a lot. It´s a cute little college town, with awesome old buildings and history. Very cool. Our hostel was right next to the university, and we passed the wall with the infamous hidden frog as we walked to meet Cristina for lunch. We had lunch with her and several classmates of hers, speaking lots of spanish and feeling more confident of my speaking abilities.
It´s been fun noticing the different accents-- for example, us Chileans drop our s´s when we speak, especially at the end of a word (so "los dedos" becomes "loh dedoh"). The Spanish, on the other hand, accentuate their s´s to the point of almost making them sound like sh. The there´s the imfamous th sound that they substitute for c´s and s´c and z´s randomly (ok, so there´s formal rules but they´re kinda complicated).
Anyway.... We went out dancing in Salamanca, it was fun, boy those Spanish boys can DANCE! They´re not all scared of it like americans are. We left the next morning, saturday, on a train back to Madrid to then go on to Granada. The gal sitting in front of us on the train was from A&M, and had been studying spanish at a university here. Small world. My first impression of Granada last night (as we went out around midnight to find food) was not great-- the main street that we walk down to get to the fun areas is under major construction so it all looks kinda crappy. But in daylight thingsa looked better, and we also found this area where there were lots of street vendors selling Indian and Middle Eastern types of garb and there´s lots of restaurants and tea houses, and that was really cool. We stopped at a tea house and were astounded at their selection of teas and zumos naturales (natural fruit juice, literally fresh squeezed from the fruit itself). I want to buy some loose leaf tea here, but part of me is scared of what customs may think of it.... ("I swear, it´s just tea!!").
Tonight we´re planning to go out, possibly to this place called Granada 10 that´s a 1920´s style movie theatre by day, dance club by night. Could be very cool. There´s tons of young people here (duh, university town) which is cool. Our hostel is a bit out of the way, but we have a private room with our own bath which is nice, and the guy running it gave us a total run-down of the city and all the places to go which was awesome. Tomorrow we´re planning on spending the day at the Alhambra, should be pretty amazing. |
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