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.

Granada and Salobrena

So from what we saw of Granada, it seems pretty good and we're looking forward to spending the next couple days there. For the moment, though, we're pretty jazzed about this adorable white beach town-on-a-cliff we are in. Salobrena (spelled with a tilde over the n) is made of steps, winding roads and pretty tiled foyers. The beach is covered in pebbles and children, and the freezing cold. Despite that awful sounding description, it's really great- the water is crystal clear and the coastal view is one of mountains and the other tiny adorable white villages that surround us.
Tomorrow, we spend half the day on the beach before we head back to Granada. (yay!)

Terrassa and Barcelona

Wow, that week went fast. We´re totally tuckered out, and have a full travel day ahead of us tomorrow, so we´ll just say this:

Barcelona was great, though we never quite made it to the beach. Instead we got African drums and dancing, all the Gaudí we could ever want, and a beautiful hike on Montserrat. Tomorrow we are stopping by at Granada before heading down to Salobreña for a few days to make up for lost beach time (no worries, we´re headed back to Granada after the weekend.)

Terrassa

After spending all day Friday on a long series of train rides from Loches to Barcelona (we had to go back up to Paris to catch a train that would make it to Barcelona) we made it to Terrassa into the waiting arms of Lissa and Alex.

Of course we slept in on Saturday, but then made up for it with a very full afternoon and evening. In Terrassa right now, the whole city is putting on their Festa Major, which is a festival celebrating the city´s identity. There are lots of parades, performances, and concerts everywhere in the streets. So, we:

-ate out at an amazing Spanish vegetarian restaurant

-saw a building designed by one of Gaudí´s contemporaries (warming up for the Gaudi buildings themselves)

-watched a bit of a parade – mostly this means we saw a lot of Catalonian folk dancing and multi-person dragon costumes.

-went to an ... interesting meditation session/didjeridoo and singing bowl performance.

-watched part of a very long ten-couple uncoreographed performance of the Argentinian Tango.

-witnessed the city shift into mob mentality as the street lights went out and teams of dragons and devils representing the different sectors of the city paraded through the streets. The devils (usually young teenagers) had pitchforks with spinning fireworks, and the dragons were covered with them as well. Each dragon had its own ten- to twenty- person drumline following it, which gave the whole event a wild, tribal air. Almost everything about this event would have been frowned upon, if not completely illegal, in the U.S. Imagine people of all ages (including like 5 year olds jesus) dancing under fountains of sparks and flames through the city streets. It was so great.

Us in our "fire protection" (most people had on jeans and hoodies, with bandanas over their mouths)

Sunday was a little calmer, though also pretty amazing. After sleeping in again, we went out to see the Castellers (http://www.castellersdeterrassa.cat/), who are huge teams of people who build themselves into human towers topped by tiny children. The picture doesn´t do it justice- the scale of it all, plus the shaking of limbs and graceful climbing up and down (really sliding down) is really not captured in an image.

Afterwards, we had a traditional Spanish/Catalonian meal prepared by Alex, and then a super-siesta (we are very good at siestas).

Monday is a planning day, and then we hit Barcelona!

Paris and Loches

Picture catch-up post!
Now that we are on a computer that we can use to put up pictures, we get to show you all the placs we´ve been talking about:

Catacombs:

Eiffel Tower Hat

 Versailles (Our favorite part was the bushes)

 and this tree

The patio in Gail and Maury´s backyard, where we enjoyed many of our meals.

More bushes, but at a chateau near Loches

Chateau Chenenceau - built on/in/over a river. It doesn´t even look like a real place, does it? It looks like we changed out minds and went to Disneyland Paris or something.

This view is from a keep or donjon, looking out over the Chateau d´ Loches

Loches

As you can tell from our lack of posts, this has been a lovely but lazy week, but it was not totally inactive! During the time that we were not lounging in the sun and lingering over delicious meals we:

-made a delicious cobbler inspired by the extra-delicious raspberries from the weekend market.
-had a east-coast swing and waltz lesson (led by Leah of course!)
-gained a new love for scrabble
-went on a rousing bike ride through the Royal Forest (oh yes.) The many (many) hills ended with the reward of a nearby village filled to brim with flowers.


also some more castles.

Also, we had an adventure. One night during dinner we noticed some drifting sounds of nearby music, and decided to venture out in search their source. We and three others thought to ourselves "How hard can it be? It's right around the corner." After about two hours of wandering we realized that this was not the case, and that we were quite lost. Ross, our leader, confidently directed us into a park, which meant that we found ourselves on a little gravel path walking through seemingly endless dark fields, holding up our iPods for light. After what seemed like ages we came a patch of grass littered with piles of teenagers. Judging by that and the louder music, we figured we had to be close. At this point we were desperate to find any sort of civilization, and to escape the dark forms in the grass. Nearby lay what seemed to be our only option: an alley ending in a closed and locked 8-foot tall gate. After minimal debate (go back down the endless path to nowhere? jump a fence into a french reggae concert? hmmm) all five of us clambered over.  About five minutes after we had finished looking around, congratulating ourselves, and two of our group going to buy wine, we noticed the two police officers standing about 30 feet from the fence and about 10 feet from us, who had apparently been on break for the time it took us to jump over.

In other news, pictures are not going to happen at this point, but we'll try again in Barcelona.

Loches

Oops, didn't figure out the camera + computer today, so no pictures yet. We spent all day enjoying ourselves inside (out of the NINETY-SEVEN DEGREE heat. Finally it's warm.)