ESN Trip: Part 1: Granada

Photo Cred: Melisa
Alhambra, Granada

During our first week of what I would consider real classes, we decided to take off for a long, extended weekend. ESN, which is a group also known as "Erasmus Student Network", is for international students to get involved in stuff. They have a ton of activities planned throughout the week and then plan different weekend trips to places. Some of my friends took an ESN trip to Porto, Portugal in February and our trip to Andalusia, Spain was an ESN trip. Compared to what it would have cost us to travel to the three different cities that we went to with ESN, we saved a heck of a lot of money so missing class was definitely worth the price that we paid for the trip. Anyhoo, on Wednesday, March 2nd, we began our journey around midnight. We went to class and everything that day, so we only really missed one class. We even went to the horrible cultural activity which was a 2 hour tour of the old zone of Santiago, because we haven't been around for a month now or anything. I slept for most of the bus ride, with my own seat and everything because I don't know how to share. The bus ride was about 12 hours or something, with us arriving in Granada around noon or 1, I'm not really sure when we arrived. We checked into our hotel and then the adventures began. We started our adventures at Alhambra, which was gorgeous. I would say it was like a garden with some castle things going on.

Photo Cred: Melisa
Alhambra, Granada

Photo Cred: ESN
Probably in Granada on our city tour with Alhambra in the background? #noclue

After the Alhambra, we went on a city tour of Granada and learned all about the calle de triste or something like that. There was a hotel that everyone left sick for a reason I can't remember anymore, but we were all ready to hike over to it and weren't "allowed" to because we had to get in our city tour. The tour was wonderful and we got to see a bunch of cool things. The cathedral where we started the tour had red writing, graffiti, on the walls because when you graduate something back in the day, you would try and climb as high as you could and leave your mark on the cathedral. I'm pretty sure that is what our guide told us. It was rather hard to pay attention since it was later in the day and we were starting to space out. I know it was an interesting history lesson but I just can't say that I took a lot of it in.

Photo Cred: ESN
Flamenco 

After our tour we went for tapas, where I just stared at people while they ate because I didn't want to order a drink. I mean I did go to Granada with only 3 euros (cash) to my name, so I wasn't really feeling in the mood to buy anything while I was there. There was some great elephant pants that I wanted though, everywhere I looked I saw elephant pants so its a really good thing I didn't have money on me. Then we went to a Flamenco shop after tapas. I wasn't super impressed with the show. The guitarist was amazing but both dancers seemed bored out of their minds when they weren't dancing and were just backup singers or whatever. The singer seemed rather bored as well. I just didn't get the vibe that they wanted to be there and it sort of ruined it for me. The dancing was dramatic and they obviously had practiced a lot to do some of the moves, but some of the time they just reminded me of a child throwing a temper tantrum with tap shoes on.

In Granada we got to do rooms of three, so Timothy, Steph, and I roomed together. I decided we were great roommates. The next morning, we had a great breakfast that wasn't a Spanish breakfast at all. There was more than just bread ya feel me? We had bacon, and eggs, oh how I love eggs, and there was yogurt and a whole bunch of stuff. The breakfast was included with our ESN price for the trip but a sign said it was 7 Euros, cause hotels don't do free continental breakfasts. I enjoyed breakfast and all but if I had to pay for the breakfast, I probably would have just gone to a supermarket and bought something there. Around 11 we were checked out and on the road to head towards Córdoba.