Welcome to Spain

After a very long trip - 6 hour layover in JFK, plus a 2 hour weather delay on the runway - we arrived in Madrid. It was very organized. It only took about half an hour to get from the plane to the taxi stand. We went to the train station to get a train to Granada, only to discover that since our flight was late, we had missed the morning trains. Another 4 hours of waiting in the train station! We had fun watching the turtles in the turtle pond, and sleeping on a wall like hobos.

First impressions of Spain - they are very serious about graffiti. Clean - it is very clean - even the train station was clean. People are extremely polite, beautiful manners. Drivers aren't crazy like they are in Paris or in Italy. All around Madrid it looked very dry, almost like desert. Lots and lots of olive trees.

Manners: on the train ride to Granada, about 4 hours, no one talked. It was like being on the quiet car, except it was just a regular economy class car. When people did talk, they used their indoor voices, even the people talking on the phone. In Granada, we walked past this young guy who had a GIANT bottle of beer in his hands. It was half gone and he reeked of beer. He paused mid-swig and said Buenas tardes. Even the young hooligans are polite!

Our hotel is very nice, but they don't have irons! Not even one to lend guests. This is a major inconvenience, and hopefully I'll be able to find one somewhere. [Update: found an iron, thank god. Such a pain!]

On the first morning we bought some croissants, and sat at a corner bar and drank cafe con leche - so good! 

After desayuno, we walked down to the city center. One of the first things we saw was a wedding. We've only been here 36 hours, and we've seen at least 6 weddings. "Granada" means pomegranate, and there are pomegranates everywhere - on the light poles, the bollards, etc etc. We met lots of Arabic speaking people - Moroccans mostly. Ahmed is happy - two languages to bargain in.





We ate dinner at a restaurant called Carmela. Granada is famous for tapas, which are free with a drink order. I ordered a glass of Rioja (excellent!) and got some sort of delicious beef in a spicy curry.
I got two more tapas as a meal. One was goat cheese, caramelized onions and honey on toast, the other Serrano ham and cheese on toast, Ahmed got octopus, which he said was excellent.

While we were eating, along came a man, dressed as a woman, riding a donkey, with a group of guys following him. It was a bachelor party! They were wandering around downtown, saying Hola to everyone.

This morning we went to the Alhambra. We had a guided tour, thank goodness, because it is so big and so full of history and meaning. I am going to go back again to take better pictures. It is really a remarkable place - I will write more about it later.