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!!!!

More Days in Granada

Hey.
It is Thursday night (10:04) if you wanted to know.... I wish it was friday!

So I went to that Cathedral and the Capilla Real where the remains of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand are. No pictures allowed, but I got one anyway. It is not exactly the perfect picture, though, since I had to be sneaky and people from my group kept getting the way. Plus, I hadn't actually charged my camera so the battery was pretty much running on empty. Oh well, at least my stalker picture-taking has paid off at last. (Kristin, this comment was for your benefit. Stalker pictures ARE worth practicing. *cough cough*)

ANYWAY, The cathedral is HUGE of course and was kind of cool to walk around in.it was actually totally different from the cathedral we visited in Sevilla. This one is all white and super spacious on the inside. All the lighting is like natural sunlight...none of that dark Gothic stuff.



After that, I had to go work on my group presentation power point. Immigration = Blah topic. Not really, I actually think we did pretty well. I put up a slide of all those racist jokes we all love (you know, the "How many Mexicans does it take to screw in a light bulb...." ones) as well as a similar slide of popular jokes about religion. Those were both a pretty big hit.
In other news, I bought TWO pairs of shoes today  XD
One pair is purple heels.... AWESOME, though slightly higher and narrower than I usually wear. Still love 'em though!
The other pair is just plain white flats but I liked them. I will NOT be wearing them around Granada though because my feet always get so dirty here!
As for food today:
Lunch.... Broccoli and potatoes
Dinner.... Soup (some kind of broth with noodles), egg with those hot dog-like (but better) things mixed in and a few potato chips. And Yogurt.

So this weekend I am going to Nerja for at least part of the day on Saturday... still unsure of any other weekend plans. I wanted to go White Water Rafting but that has been canceled. One girl is going back to Sevilla and I might go with her. We would see some more sights there and then hopefully travel around to some other smaller places. We both want to go to Huelva, which where Columbus sailed from! They have replicas of all three ships from his first voyage that you can go on.

Oh, and I can't believe I forgot to mention this..... most Europeans consider there to be 5 continents. I think it goes: Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas (all lumped together). They either discount Antarctica or maybe they just lump it in somewhere else. Isn't that interesting? You would think of all things that we would agree on the number of continents.

No queso por favor.

Hi again! I know, I know it has been a week since I posted but whatever :)

On Friday my computer decided to stop charging, or I guess what actually happened was that my chords decided they would stop charging the computer. And it died. PLUS, I went to Sevilla this weekend with my group and I wouldn´t have had internet there anyway.

So, Sevilla. It is HooooooooooooooT! It at least reached 48 Celcius which, if I remember correctly is around 114 US-wise. We went to this one place called Plaza de España and they said that it was used to film a scene from one of the Star Wars movies!.... the guide had no idea which one, of course. So that was pretty cool. I also saw Christopher Columbus´tomb.

The first night, a group of us went to a sit-down Dominos. We ordered a four cheese pizza.... MISTAKE. Apparently they use some type of cheese not very common in the US and it was nasty! Literally, it tasted rotten. They brought us a different pizza though which was nice of them. That pizza tasted fine, thank goodness. We played Phase 10 in the hotel after that.

The next day, I set off by myself to a town called Caroma. They have the ruins of a Roman Necropolis and amphitheater there as well as some sort of old fort. It was pretty cool to see, though nerve racking to be all alone!
That night in Sevilla, we played more cards. And, we managed to watch Aladdin, Pocahontas and part of Toy Story 2 in Spanish. Awesome!

So.... that was the weekend.
Monday. Pretty much uneventful as far as I can remember. I did get to watch True Blood, though, which was awesome, as usual. And I finally got to Skype my mom and Aunt Stacy which was cool.
Tuesday. el mismo. I got to Skype my dad, though, who is in Korea for business. He doesn´t have a web cam with him, so it was more or less like a phone call.
I did get a universal charger for my computer, except it doesn´t actually charge. It gives just enough power to turn it on.Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.
Today. Well, I gave my presentation today about why the US should have an official language. Super fun. I am going to this HUGE Cathedral later as well as something called the Capilla Real. But after that, it is back to work because I have a group presentation tomorrow on Immigration.
And by the way it is 12 : 46 local time.... none of that 3 am stuff. My poor computer is all confused about what day and time it is here.  :)

Here are some pics from the hiking (or scenderismo, as we call it here) that I mentioned in my last post:

Una Hamburguesa

Hola! It is 12:29 and I am in the school computer lab right now waiting for class to start... I still have an hour! Today, I am supposed to be going on a hike above the city... exciting, I guess :)
Last night, we had hamburgers for dinner! They are not really my favorite but that is okay. We did have watermelon during lunch though which WAS exciting. We also had Paella for lunch but it really wasn´t that good... I think one from a restaurant might be better. Don´t get me wrong, it was tasty, but I think it came in a bag and she just sort of mixed it all together and cooked in like Rice-a-Roni (if that is how it is spelled).
I am already sort of hungry but I won´t be eating lunch for at least an hour and a half. Since one of my classes was canceled today, a group of about six of us stopped in at this bar for a snack on our way to the building. I only ordered some Pineapple Juice (sooooo good!) but I also had a piece of a churro while I was there. I meant to bring some bread with me to snack on but I forgot it :(
Oh well, guess I will just wait for lunch.

On a side note:
There is tons of graffiti all over the city...apparently they like it! Check it out!

The "Rock" of Gibraltar

So you might have noticed the quotations around the word Rock in my title.... well if you have never seen Gibraltar, you might not be aware that it looks much more like a mountain!... especially to us Floridians who are used to everything being flat flat flat.
Take a look:



Okay, so a couple things you might want to know about Gibraltar that you didn't know already:
1.) Gibraltar is considered a part of Great Britain. It uses their currency AND even has the red phone booths.
2.) Gibraltar is at the southern tip of Spain. In fact, it borders the Spanish town of La Linea. The picture of Gibraltar from farther away (up above) was actually taken from Spain.
And the picture below is of the Spanish mountains that end where the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet.

3.) You are able to see the mountains of Africa from Gibraltar.... weather permitting. It is very misty there but this is one of the clearer pictures I have.

4.) Gibraltar has an ANCIENT history.... some think that references to the Gates of Hades from stories about ancient Greek heroes refers to the caves in the mountain. Plus, that area of Spain is one of the first to be populated, not to mention the influence of the Moors and the British.
5.) The entire mountain in filled with Apes that are completely free to roam around.

This Ape, named Gregory, actually took my friend's backpack off of her back and unzipped it to look for food that he smelled. He ate all of her snacks and she couldn't do anything about it! Apes were all over just wondering around freely.

It was a pretty interesting trip, all in all. The bus ride was about 5 hours each way and cost about 20 euros.... not bad. In Gibraltar, though, they use mainly British Pounds which is more expensive. They would let you use Euros, but the hiked up the exchange rate. Many of the people there spoke both English and Spanish, which was pretty interesting.

We stayed in Gibraltar Saturday, got two hotel rooms and then left on Sunday morning.
There were 5 of us total, three girls, two boys, so the hotel situation was a little iffy.  Europe is not big on more people sharing a room than they paid for, and are often not fans of letting guys and girls share rooms together. We ended up finding a place with 3 beds in one room and a room with 2 beds which was perfect. The restrooms where shared at the end of the hallway, though.

Championes del Mundo

Okay, so just a few more words about the World Cup.... It was awesome!

There were SOOOOOOOO many people! I think the entire country was celebrating ALL NIGHT! What's really crazy is.... they were all awake and at work and school today. Impressive!I took lots of pictures and videos, but I think I will never be able to accurately describe the hysteria.

WORLD CUP!!!!

So I have SO much to tell you about my trip to Gibraltar but.....
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! SPAIN JUST WON THEIR FIRST WORLD CUP!!!!!!!!!

When they FiNaLlY scored a goal in overtime, or whatever that is for soccer, there were shouts from everywhere, horns blowing.... it was really cool. And when the game ended, they all went crazy. Actually, I can STILL here them going crazy through my window. Pretty much the entire city.... teens, adults, elderly, parents with their children of all ages.... came outside to celebrate. Suddenly, there were hundreds of cars going by all honking and waving their flags out the window. Everybody crowded around the walking bridge and was jumping into the river. There is also a HUGE statue/fountain of Isabel and Ferdinand a block or so away and apparently people were jumping in that (says the now wet house brother, Nacho). Conchi told me that every major city has a fountain like that or very similar where people go to celebrate.
There were even fireworks going off!... which is cool since Nacho told me they were illegal in Granada.
More on Gibraltar tomorrow.... I have class at 8 and it is 1:15am  :0