ROAD TRIP IN SPAIN

All right, you better brace yourself cause this could be a long one!
So, Road Trip. Well, a girl in my program, Stephanie, is doing Grad work for Thompson while she is here and has to collect a lot of Interviews (or Entrevistas). She really had to go back to Sevilla for more data and decided to rent a car.... hence, Road Trip. At first, only I was going to go with her, but that changed later.

Okay, so Saturday Morning:

We start out in Granada. My entire group actually had an excursion that day to Almunecar and to Nerja. We met them at the desginated place, but we rented the car that morning and just followed the bus. On this leg of the journey, it was me (of course :D )and Stephanie and Jeff. It was petty fun following the bus. We had some awesome boy band karaoke going on as well as some 70s playing.

Almunecar:

Here, we stopped to look at some Roman Ruins and an old Moorish Castle, Castillo de San Miguel. It was pretty cool stuff. I don't remember the exact years of it all, but the Moors invaded during the 7th century I believe and the Romans were there before that, so that gives you a pretty good idea.

Nerja

We stopped here to visit some caves. They were also pretty awesome but I never really got the full history of them, so I think I like the caves at Gibraltar better. I know that these caves are really old though.... some remains might have been found in them.... remains from one of the phases of evolution I think.
I think it was in Nerja that we also spotted the remains of a Roman Aqueduct. How cool is that?!
After the caves, we had a buffet lunch with food in epic proportions. You think I'm kidding, but I am not.
Then, after food.... Beach! I did not really get in because we were planning on skipping most of the beach time so we could go ahead and start our Road Trip.

Which brings me to...... ROAD TRIP!!!!!!
Okay, so during the morning, we had picked up two more for the road trip: Frank and Stephanie Pego (called Pego). Jeff, in case you are wondering, did not actually go on the full trip with us, he just rode with us on the way there. LAME. haha, just kidding, he just didn't want to spend too much money.
ANYWAY, so the four of us set out! We were generally heading towards Huelva to see Columbus' ships but to be honest, that was pretty much as far as we had gotten in the planning portion of this trip. Not very long after we had left, though, we drove under a Cable Car line that was passing between a city just below us and the top of one of the nearby mountains. We went there. We literally pulled into the next gas stop and turned the car around to go searching for this Cable Car place. Why? Just because we could.

Arroyo de la Miel

So as we drive through this city using the Cable Cars to navigate our way to their base, we noticed there was some sort of Fair going on. When we parked, because the Fair was right next to the Cable Cars, I realized it was an entire Theme Park. Cool! We didn't go in, though. Instead, we headed over to check out the Cable Cars and decided to go up. It was pretty cool. We all shared on Cable Car which took us to the top of one of the Mountains. It felt AwEsOmE up there and had a really great view of the Spanish coast line.
As soon as we stepped off the cable Car, Frank spotted a sign that said if you drink two beers up there, you get a free hat. Stephanie and Frank drank the Beers, though I think Pego might also have helped a bit. The lady up there was nice, and gave both Stephanie and Frank a hat.

So after the beers, we walked around to check out the mountain.... they had birds there! And I am talking about BIG birds..... like Eagles, Hawks, Vulture, Owls. In fact, they had an entire BIRD SHOW! A FREE bird show, more importantly. Before it started, we hiked up to the top of the mountain and the view, once again, was really amazing!
So, the bird show. It was pretty fun to watch. The guy in charge, aka Stephanie's new Crush lol, would first speak in Spanish and then in English. Later, he told us that his mother was British and his Father was Spanish. 
During the bird show, Stephanie got to wear those thick gloves the bird people use and hold one of the birds.
So the British/Spanish guy.... he told us about a German Beer-fest inside a nearby castle. Well, Frank, Pego and Stephanie were alllll interested. We headed down the mountain (using the super cool cable car, of course) and set off!
Yeah..... we got distracted. First, we saw a sign for a Hard Rock Cafe and we thought we would sort of head in that direction.... then we got lost. Well, it wasn't really lost, but we did miss the exit for the Hard Rock, so instead we just kept driving.

Estepona

We were getting hungry. We started pulling off and noticed a stadium with it's lights on full blast. Naturally, we kept driving. JUST KIDDING! We pulled in of course! Stephanie let Frank park the car because we had to drive it over a curb and then we headed inside to check out the locals practicing their soccer game. It was kinda cool. I felt sort of sketchy with all four of us just standing in the bleachers watching them practice, but oh well :)
Afterwords, we decided to head in search of some food and possibly a place to stay.

We stopped in at this one restaurant/bar and ordered some tapas. The waiter was wearing this outfit that was  ketchup-red and mustard-yellow, earning him the nickname of "Ketchup and Mustard." When Ketchup and Mustard figured out we were students from the USA, he called his buddy over who happened to be from Indiana. What are the chances? This guy had come over a few years back and decided to stay. They both gave us directions to some hostels/hotels around and we set off!

Cute pet Ferret we encountered.

Now Estepona is located right on the coast, so as we walked down the road, we were walking parallel to the Med Sea. Of course, since it was around 11pm or so, we couldn't actually see very much of it, but it is still pretty cool. A street or two over, we stopped at a hostel to see if we could stay there..... except, we didn't know how to get in. It was located above a cafe and there was no clear entrance. The cafe guy told us to sit and wait at his tables and the person from the Hostel would come down, We waited. And waited. and might have kept waiting..... but we were impatient people. PLUS, there was this creepy-to-the-max guy sitting at the counter of the cafe and kept throwing us dirty looks.... of course, thinking back, his face might have just been arranged that way permanently in which case he wasn't really creepily glaring at us every time he looked over, but who knows? In any case, we left. We found another hostel about a block over and it was really nice! We got two rooms, but they were joined together with one bathroom, for about 20 each. It was a really nice hostel, though. It probably could have been a low star hotel, as a matter of fact. We stashed our stuff and then went out for some ice cream on the beach of the Med Sea. The water was cooooooooold. No, I did not go for a late night swim, but I walked around about up to my calves. Frank, however, did take a short swim. Literally, it was for only a minute or two, before we went back to our hostel to sleep.

Next Morning:
Breakfast at a cafe then an Out-Door Market before heading off again!

Huelva

We FINALLY made it to Huelva! Yay!.... but it still took us like an hour to find Columbus' boats!
First of all, it was a Sunday. SO MUCH STUFF SHUTS DOWN ON SUNDAYS!!!!....which is weird since MOST Spaniards aren't actually PRACTICING their religions.
But we eventually found them! THEY WERE...... so small. That's right. Small. Tiny. In fact, I am pretty sure I would not consider crossing the ocean on them. The smallest one, which I believe is the Nina (but I could be wrong), was probably smaller than a typical city bus would be. yikes! We wondered around the area a bit.... they even had nude native American statues to represent the New World Area. THAT was super exciting. *insert sarcasm* lol So, back to:

Sevilla

We stopped here for some food and for some Entrevistas for Stephannie. It was here that we had to decide between going south to Malaga for some beach time the next morning before heading back, or instead swinging over to Cordoba, another of Andalucia's provinces and major cities, then on to Jaen the next day on our way back to Granada. We chose the Cordoba route.

Cordoba

We got to Cordoba that night and headed out in search of a hostel or hotel. We quickly learned that Cordoba was NOT designed with vehicles in mind. In fact, Cordoba is very very very very (you get the picture?) old. They don't even have bus tours there because they can't navigate the roads. Our time spent driving around in search of a place to stay involved tiny one way streets, streets that we THOUGHT were streets but were really just walkways, huge circles to just end up right back where we started, and an exciting police pursuit. Yeah, I am actually not kidding about that last one either, though it was not, I repeat, NOT us being pursued. Eventually, we settled on some low ranked Hotel.... partly because it was the same price as the hostel, and partly because we didn't know if we could find either one again if we left. This place was also pretty nice. We stayed in two separate rooms this time, each with our own bathroom.
In the morning, we set our for breakfast, an atm stop then off to see the sights!

Actually, we only really went to one place in Codoba, which is the Mezquita..... this HUGE cathedral. Okay, to give a short and certainly not detailed enough description: Roman temple turned Christian temple, turned HUGE MUSLIM MOSQUE from the 8th- 12th century, and then, instead of building a new cathedral after conquering the moors, the Christians just converted the Mosque into a Cathedral. Really Old. Really Huge. Really Beautiful.

Jaen

After Cordoba, we drove for a wine tasting in Montilla, then onwards to Jaen. Jaen seemed pretty cool, but to be honest, we didn't really have much time to stop or anything. We took some pictures of the surrounding area, but by this time we really needed to be heading back for classes and stuff.

Granada

Well, seeing how it was Monday and it was a school week, we headed back to Granada. Stephanie and I let Pego and Frank out close to their houses and then tried (and failed for almost an hour) to navigate the streets of Granada. I flagged a taxi down New York style after we dropped the car off and we were headed back to school!

End of road trip. To be honest, there was a lot more I could have written, but these were all the important parts, I promise!!!!