After five long days of traveling, sightseeing, and bumming around on the beautiful beaches of southern Spain, I’m thankful for being back “home” in Granada. Including last weekend’s excursion, I’ve been in seven cities in a little over a week: Córdoba, Sevilla, Granada, Cádiz, Jerez, Tarifa, and Algeciras. (I don’t really count Algeciras though…) 

We got Thursday and Friday off from classes because of the Corpus Christi festival - a Catholic holiday that was celebrated in Granada all week long. Our schedule was something like this…

• arrived at Melting Pot Cádiz, our hostel, at 12:15 am Wednesday night/Thursday morning
• went to La Playa Victoria at 10-ish
• lunch at a small cafe by La Playa Caleta around 3
• La Playa Caleta until 7-ish
• bought dinner from Carrefour, the supermarket, and ate back at the hostel
• met people and talked on the hostel terrace until 12:15 or so
• went on a “night tour” of Cádiz - my friend Harpa and I left around 2:30 am
• caught the 11:30 train the next morning to Jerez
• visited Gonzalez Byass, a winery, at 2
• ate lunch, talked, rested in a plaza in Jerez
• 9:20 pm bus to Tarifa
• arrived at Melting Pot Tarifa just before midnight on Friday night
• beach from 10:30 until 2:30-ish 
• lunch from Carrefour at the hostel
• beach again from 4:30-7 ish
• showered/rested until 8:30 when we got dinner and ate at the hostel again
• went to watch a Eurocup game - Germany vs. Portugal - in a small square from 9:45-11 ish
• 11:30 bus to Algeciras
• 3:55 train back to Granada

^more for my memories than because you cared.

Something really cool about hostels is the amount of people from all over that you can meet. I was wary about the hostels at first but there was really no problem at all; people were super friendly and I got to talk to so many different people. In fact, I didn’t meet a single person from the States in the four nights we had at the hostels. The people I met in the past few days were from Ireland, England, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and Australia. Since we were all pretty much there for the same reasons (traveling and on a pretty tight budget), there was a kind of mutual trust and respect for each other as well as a friendliness that you wouldn’t really see in a hotel. 

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a “real” beach - aka one that is on the ocean - when you’re actually supposed to be on the beach (I went to the beach in Brooklyn with my mom… over Christmas break. yup). Honestly I wasn’t thaaaat excited but once we got there I loved it! The sand, the waves, the breeze, the sun…. aaaaaahhhhh. The beaches we went to were all on the Atlantic, although the ones in Tarifa are super super close to the Mediterranean - they might actually be both. I’m not sure. 

The “night tour” of Cádiz was more of a bar-hopping event than anything else. One of my friends and I decided to go since we didn’t want to sit in the hostel doing nothing; we ended up drinking one tinto de verano each in the first bar and dancing a little in the second. We left after they played YMCA in the third bar (what) and went back to the hostel at 2:30 while some other people from our group stayed out until 4:30 or so. 

Also, I’ve decided that I am not ready to properly enjoy wine… it doesn’t taste good… but the winery smelled SO good… maybe I need to become classier first. whatevsyo

I’m getting pretty excited for La Eurocopa. ¡Vamos España! Hopefully I’ll get to watch a game with some Spaniards :)

Going out to see the final fuegos artificiales de Corpus Christi soon! Wondering how awake I’ll be during class tomorrow… >.<