Salobrena, Granada and Madrid

Okay, so this time we actually were having too much fun to post- Granada was great.
But first, we have to add to Salobrena. Literally right after we posted our last blog post, we had a surprise visitor show up at our hostel. Elisa, a Spanish teacher from Richmond who we met in Loches at Gail and Maury's, and who is now studying in Granada, had decided to spend the day at the beach with us. We had been emailing her because we were planning on meeting up with her in Granada, and couldn't help raving about the lovely beach we were at and telling her she should visit it if she got a chance. Unknown to us, she promptly decided to come right away, shot us a quick message (which we didn't see until later) and jumped on a bus. Meanwhile we were having one of our planning days, and when we finally finished buying our next tickets and all the boring work stuff, we headed back to our hostel intent on finishing the day out at the beach. We walked into our hostel at 3:42, 3 minutes early for the meeting time Elisa had proposed without us realizing it! Elisa was waiting for us with a big smile, and after sorting out how such an amazing coincidence has lined up so perfectly, we spent a great day at the beach together.
Once we got back to Granada, we walked into our hostel, looked around and decided we needed to stay for an extra day. The hostel was covered in helpful posters and flyers offering activities and day trips and sangria... Also it was just an awesome building in the Carmen style - based around a central courtyard, with bridges coming off the central stairs to each room (it's hard to describe but it was very cool). What did we do in Granada besides admire our hostel?

-shopped (a lot). There were little Arab market shop things on windy little alleys filled with beautiful stuff, which we spent a lot of time in. Emily acquired some excellent green puffy pants.
-saw a flamenco performance in a tiny little cave room. Flamenco is supriaingly stomp-y and tap dance-like!
-went hiking in a beautiful valley along a windy little stream, encountering waterfalls and rope bridges and rock climbers along the way.
-met up with Elisa again (this time a little more clearly planned), had dinner together, and ventured out to the hot springs at 10:30 pm. We were chauffeured out into the Spanish countryside (just the three of us) by Pepe, in his very old truck, to the lulling music of Lady Gaga's Alejandro. The hot springs were made up of several different pools- the first one we found ourselves in was apparently the pool designated for naked gay men, as Pepe informed us. This was a bit much for us, so we stuck to the main pool after that.
-went to the Alhambra! It was every bit as wonderful as we'd hoped.
-visited the Parque de las Ciencias (the Granada science museum) and saw a really good exhibition on Escher, learned a lot about safety in the workplace and home, and saw a giant whale heart.
-bought some cheaper than cheap wine. Some was palatable, some was less so, and some was poured out. Surprisingly the bottle that cost .85€ (obviously the cheapest) tasted the best.

Now we are in Madrid, and devoted to keeping a slower pace. Today, we wander.