Andalucia: Granada, Seville, and Córdoba

I'm back from my excursion!!!! How fun. It's been great being able to travel so much this past week, but I am very happy to be back in Valencia for a while. :) I just love this city.  Every place I've been to lately has been so different, but Valencia is still my home away from home.
So! I didn't sleep at all last week pretty much.  I had to wake up or stay up till random times to catch taxis,  planes, and buses most days.  Thursday night I stayed up packing and had to meet at the mestalla (futbol stadium) at 2:15 a.m. That was lame. There were 4 bus loads of Erasmus and foreign exchange students that went on this excursion through a group called Erasmus Life.  It took 6 or so hours to get to our first stop, Granada.  It was overcast and rainy when we got there. :( The pictures there could have been much better if it was partly sunny or something. We checked in at the hostel we were staying at and headed over to the historical sites of the city.  Granada is the birthplace of the Alhambra.  If you don't know what that is, you should definitely look it up.  It's super legit.  We went on a guided tour for the beginning of our day there, starting with a view across the valley at the Alhambra and made our way down into the valley visiting patios, buildings, and alleyways.  They sold a lot of Arabic themed things, which interested me immensely! We were on our own to eat before heading over to the Alhambra, so Natacha and I had a sample of montaditos (sandwiches) which were absolutely delicious.  Some had chorizo on them, brie with raspberry jam, tomato sauce, tuna, you name it.  It was wonderful.  We then walked to the buses and took them up to the Alhambra.  Man that place was amazing!!! It had arches and inscriptions and hallways of historical beauty! It really demonstrated the Arabic rule that Spain was under for centuries.  It's a UNESCO world heritage site, and now I know why! I was extremely glad that I decided to carry around my nice Sony camera to take pictures with.  Using a small portable camera is never the same, and you never get as dramatic of an effect with them either.  It was a lot smaller than I thought it was.  It didn't take very long to go through, though we were still some of the last of our group to finish haha.  The courtyard was beautiful with a great view of the city below.  We then found out that out of the 4 buses we took to get there, only 1 was coming to pick us up since all the other drivers had gone over the driving time they are allowed per day.  So we were shuttled to and from the hostel.  One group went, and then the others had to wait about 40 minutes for them to come back and get the next group.  It sucked.  It was cold and rainy and no one was very happy about it to say the least. I did buy a little souvenir and scarf though, so that's good.  I didn't have time to shop in any of the other cities.  We got to the hostel and were exhausted.  We took a nap and then we were suppose to get up and go out to eat tapas and go dancing with the group.  I decided to opt out and take a shower and sleep for the rest of the night.  It was wonderful.  I got to sleep from 9 p.m. until 8 a.m. the next morning.
I don't know why they punish us college students with making us get up so early on vacation. But I'm glad they did, we didn't have a lot of time to visit the 3 cities we got to tour.  We ate breakfast at the hostel and were then on our way to Seville! (Pronounced se-vee-ya) It was about a 4 hour bus drive to get there from Granada.  We stopped at a small restaurant/cafe for lunch.  Man I felt bad for the people working there.  Out of the hour break we had to get food and hang out, we spent probably 50 minutes waiting in line to try and get a waiter's attention to make us a fast sandwich.  Whatevs. haha they did a good job considering there were only 3 of them working in the front.  We then went to the Plaza de España in Seville for our first stop.  It is a large semi-circle of buildings built in the 1920's with little alcoves of tiles around the Plaza, each representing a province in Spain.  There is also a moat with extremely beautiful bridges crossing it with boats going up and down it, and a large fountain in the middle.  We then went back to our buses and had a bus tour of most of the rest of the downtown part of Seville.  We then got out near the Cathedral in Seville to walk around that neighborhood.  Near the cathedral, they had a whole bunch of horse carriages going up and down the cobble stone streets making it seem like we were in a totally different era.  After walking around the barrios, we had the chance to go inside the cathedral if we wanted.  It costed some money, maybe 3 euros or so, but Natacha didn't seem like she wanted to pay the money so I was debating on not going inside.  I had seen so many cathedrals before. But then I kept remembering all of the things that I didn't do on my last trips that I wish now I had done them, so I convinced her to go inside with me.  We ditched the tour group and did our own exploring inside.  It was well worth going inside I am really glad I didn't skip out.  There was treasure, gold plaques, mirrors, goblets, you name it, in one section of the cathedral.  The stained-glass windows left colored patterns on the tiled floors that you walked on.  It was amazing.  We also walked up the tower (34 levels up) to see a view of the city.  Spectacular.  It was definitely hard getting up there though! haha.  We didn't have much time to view all of the cathedral, so after that we met up with our group again.  We went to check into our hostel, which was a nightmare.  We had originally planned out 4 people to a room, but when we got to our hostel, they told us we needed 5 per room instead and it became complete and utter chaos trying to find another person to fit in their room.  After wasting so much time trying to find someone, we ended up just having 4 to a room.  The coordinator said if there was any problem, then he would just stay in the other bed in our room.  I think he was tired of dealing with the reception there.  We dropped off our stuff and headed over for the Flamenco dancing show at a theatre downtown.  It was 10 Euros extra, but man, that was I think the HIGHLIGHT of my trip.  The women in the show were spectacular.  They were so good at showing emotion to tell the stories in their dances.  The men were also amazing.  The leading man was fantastic.  His feet moved like I've never seen someone's feet move before.  He never looked like he was tired and the stomps and claps and snaps added so much to the whole atmosphere.  All of the dances were so full of passion.  I will never forget that!  After that, we were hungry, so the bus dropped us off and we went to a cafeteria and ate pork, fries, bread, and a fried egg.  I felt like we were at Denny's back home haha.  We went back to the hostel and hung out there for a while.  Some of the coordinators were trying to get us all in the spirit of living up the trip by trying to have a "toga party" in the hall of our hostel.  The 2 had brought mini speakers and their phones to play music and were wearing their sheets as togas.  They went to every door on our floor trying to get people to come out in their homemade togas, but it ended up just being them dancing around in the hall.  Hahahaha it was pretty funny.  My flat mate Ana was in Seville for the weekend with her mom and sister, what a coincidence!, so she wanted to meet up and go dancing, so we all got ready and went down to a pretty street down by the river.  It was great fun and the music was good too! Gotta love that American music they play everywhere! I feel so special being able to sing along to it all. :) Yay, then we took a cab back to our hostel for the night.
Sunday, we left the hostel at 9, after eating breakfast that was included at our hostel, I had 2 chocolate croissants :) so yummy! We had a 3 hour bus ride to Córdoba.  Once we got there, we split into tour groups and toured the main historical part of the city.  It was a beautiful day, with only a few clouds to make my pictures look better.  We crossed a bridge, the oldest bridge in Córdoba, and went through the different old naighborhoods of the Jews, Christians, and the Muslims.  There were a lot of scholars that came from Córdoba or who lived in Córdoba, which I didn't know before.  Sadly though, I don't remember their names haha.  They had lots of statues of them! But I didn't really ever get close enough to take a picture of their names.  All 3 of the cities we visited had a lot of Arab influence in the architecture.  Very interesting.  We ended our tour next to the Córdoba mezquita and cathedral inside the courtyard.  It costed 8 Euros extra to go inside, but I again decided I would definitely regret it if I didn't go in.  This building is the one with the famous yellow and red striped pillars and arches.  I'll leave a picture on here because I'm sure most of you have seen a picture of them before.  There were hundreds of them!! They stretched on forever.  And in the center there was a cathedral, with beautifully carved statues in the pink marble.  So pretty and so spiritual.  I am not Catholic myself, but it still left you in awe to see all the work people put into building such a massive and marvelous thing.  We didn't have enough time to explore this place either, we left and ate lunch that had dessert included in the price, yay :) We then got on the bus and started the long bus ride back to Valencia.  We left around 4 and got to Valencia around 10:30 p.m., earlier than we thought we would arrive.  All in all, WONDERFUL TRIP!!! Granada was not my favorite of the three cities, but it may have been because of the bad weather and us having to wait for the buses and such.  Still.  So worth it.  for 119 Euros that it was, I don't think I could have done it any cheaper on my own! Sorry this is such an excruciatingly long entry, but I just had so much to write about!!! Hope you enjoyed :)
P.S. Here are some pictures!! If you read my whole entry, this is your prize. ;) There are 2 from each city, the first two from Córdoba, next from Seville, and the last 2 from Granada.