Granada

So on Wednesday night I boarded a bus to Granada at about 8pm with four amigos (In picture from bottom: Dan Couch, Maggie Higgins, Tyler Karlen, Matt Hennessy). The bus ride had two highlights. The first was the movie we watched. The Edge with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. We spent the entire movie trying to predict every next move, and for the most part we were always wrong. Mix that movie with a group of fun-loving Spanish girls who decided it was an awesome idea to get silly drunk on a bus with no bathroom. For the last hour we heard a lot of the word "mear" (which to you unilingual crowd means "pee" in English). They also provided us with the pure entertainment of reading the English subtitles out loud. Good times.

So we get to the hostel after some taxi shenanigans and check in with Kevin, the French guy behind the desk. I am wondering whether Kevin's real name was not Kevin, kind of like when telemarketers from Bangalore call and say their names are Charles and Michael. Just wondering. So Kevin shows four of us to one room and then takes Matt to the room where he will be staying. Matt comes back and tells us that Kevin took him through some hall-way and to the "special-room". First of all I died laughing that Matt was taken to a "special-room" by a Frenchmen. (Not too worried about lots of French people reading this and getting mad). Then he tells me that upon entering there was a couple taking the liberty of getting relatively intimate on the adjacent bed. Who does that in a hostel? Anyways, I forgot to mention that the hostel is called the "Funky Backpacker". There is just not enough time to explain how fitting this name is so I will leave that to the imagination for now.

Thursday was Alhambra day. The whole day we went to the Alhambra and toured the Moorish quarter of town. Before our visit in the morning I stumbled upon a local newspaper which informed that the Alhambra is currently up for election as one of "The new 7 wonders of the world". It is one of only 21 world-wide sites, and the only one in Spain. That bit of news got me excited, but as I ran through the current 7 wonders that I knew of for sure I determined that the Alhambra would probably have to change my life to earn my vote. (Yes, voting is happening online for the new 7 wonders at the clever URL of www.news7wonders.com and it is a really fun site). I feel like the internet itself should be a wonder.

Sadly the Alhambra did not earn my vote. It was amazing and probably Spain's coolest site, but it isn't "wonder" worthy. Had they been giving out refreshments or t-shirts to promote the campaign I may have changed my mind.

So at night we meet up with Guillermo, a friend of Matt's, who is going to take us around Granada for the night. We go to a small alimentacion where the group is buying a couple of bottles of wine for an adventure on which we are about to embark. While in there I spotted something that I couldn't pass up. It was a bottle with a bandana tied around the neck. The only bandana colors to choose from where purple and orange...I got orange. It was three euros and I was gloating over my purchase. It turned out that the wine in the bottle was not wine at all. Whatever liquid was inside that bottle was not something that could sell itself (hence the bandana), but that was a lesson I learned after sip #1. I wore the bandana all night to justify the impulse decision that I had made in buying it.

About 230am Guillermo takes us to a club which is supposed to be tucked into a cave up in the mountains. I was not overly excited but I figured the spectacle was going to be worth it. We found the place and sure enough it was a cave, an empty cave. Upstairs there was a normal looking club/bar where the employees outnumbered the clubbers. Beginning to fall asleep, at 330am I went home to enjoy the comforts of the funky backpacker. Turns out that hostel is an acoustic masterpiece, and at all hours of the day too. It also turns out that good acoustics are just about the last thing you can appreciate while trying to sleep. But that is just one of the charming aspects of the "Funky Backpacker".