No Regrets!

Overnight buses suck. I perfectly cantilevered my ass off the edge of the seat to achieve the lowest possible horizontal angle, but I still hardly slept. No amount of cantilevering made me comfortable for long enough to fall asleep. On top of that, the driver announced over the loudspeaker stops at random bus stations every hour or so. Not cool. The only good thing about the trip was the occasional glimpse of a giant, orange full moon hovering over the roadway ahead.

As sun came up, hills have way to mountains, and then we were in Granada. I’d never heard of Granada, but it’s a decent-sized city. Our hostel was in the historic part of town wedged between two mountains. Everyone was dragging pretty hard, but no time for resting. Off we went to do our orientation walk around historic Granada with Fredy.

Granada’s old town is charming, with a definite north African, Arabic influence to the architecture, people, and countless souvenir shops.

Viewpoints along the walk gave us a glimpse of Alhambra, a giant fortress on top of a mountain and Granada’s highlight.

Unfortunately, due to a weird combination of our arrival time and the unavailability of tickets (supposedly they must be booked months in advance), Fredy could not secure everyone a ticket to go in side. Apparently, he was able to get 13 tickets, but since there are 14 of us, he turned them all down. Not sure I agree with the logic there. This was the first time I was disappointed about something on our trip.

After a tapas lunch, Audrey and I took a hike up to Alhambra. A few cool spots, but there’s not a whole lot to see unless you have a ticket to go inside.

In the evening, Fredy took us to a gypsy flamenco show. Impressive stuff.

And that was it for Granada.

This morning, we were up at 5am to catch a early morning bus. Getting up early had one perk. We were treated to the tail end of a lunar eclipse. (Actually, nobody really cared except me.)

We’re now on bus to Seville (“seh-VEE-uh”). I don’t know much about it. All I know is that there was once a barber from there. Fredy says it’s amazing.

After all the walking and early mornings and overnight buses, we’re all absolutely wiped. The sick and the weak are starting to drop out of some of the activities, and group morale is wavering. They really mean it when they say these tours are very active and physically demanding.