Las granadas en Granada

Did you know, that Granada no sólo es una ciudad sino también una fruta? That’s right! The name Granada signifies the city of Granada, Spain but it also means pomegranate. As I stepped out of my house 2 weeks to go to class, I dropped my keys and as I bent down to pick them up, I saw a tiny pomegranate imprinted on a street cover for the fire department. I was surprised to see that on something so tiny, the city was still represented with the fruit of the granada (pomegranate). Fascinated, this is how my own personal challenge for the last two weeks came to fruition. I told myself to leave a few minutes early for class, not walk con tanta prisa to my destinations, and to look around to see what other granadas there are in Granada. The result? Madre mía, as they would say here, they’re everywhere! We’ll start from where this idea came to me—outside of mi casa along el Río Genil. Within the 100 feet, I had found 3 granadas—all of them in similar locations to the first one I found. One was on the fire department cap; another adorned the cover of the lighting company and the last one landed on a sewer cover. You read that correctly, pomegranates on these seemingly forgettable things that people walk over every day. Crazy, I know! Until that first discovery of the pomegranate on the ground, I had never noticed that they are on every street cover I see.

Pues, seguimos. To find not only one, but dozens more pomegranates, I only had to look across the street. Lining almost every street in Granada are granada pillars to distinguish between the sidewalk and the road. During a 15 minute walk through the city, it is easy to come across over 50 of them. There are even different sizes!

As I continued my walk, I arrived at the Paseo del Salón. Aquí, hay muchísimas. First, leading up to the Paseo, there is a small wall dividing the pedestrian walkway and a garden.  Marking the end of this wall stands one of the larger granadas en Granada. Once you look past this stone granada your eyes fall upon what I have named “El fuente de granadas”. Decorated with large granadas throughout the middle of the fountain, this fountain is beautiful during the day and only gets more enchanting by nightfall, illuminated by the water and the lights. The spouts for the fountain are made after the tops of the pomegranates, yet another little detail that this city has put into demonstrating its pride. Around this fountain and other areas of the city there are granadas inlaid in stone in the walkways. These pomegranates I didn’t even realize were there until I started snapping pictures and saw them in it. This is what I love most—there are symbols everywhere of the pomegranates and some are as obvious as a fountain but others are so subtle you almost miss them.

 

          Some other small granadas but ones that take up a large portion of the granadas in Granada are the ones on the street signs. The classic pottery here is made of only two colors: dark blue and a teal-ish color. They only depict pomegranates and certain other patterns. Every street sign is made up of these colors, a pomegranate at the top and below, el nombre de la calle. This type of pottery decorated with granadas is also everywhere in my host mom’s cocina (and in almost every cocina in Granada) for everything from arroz/rice to aceite to judias/beans.

A hidden granada in the bushes outside the API office

Last but not least, there are the granada trees themselves! The city would not be complete without these trees scattered about giving their fruits for us to enjoy. My friends and I picked off the last granada on one of the trees in the center of town, broke it open, and enjoyed it right there—a delicious granada on the streets of Granada.

A granada tree in the

Las granadas!

Me, Jiela, & Tyler eating one of the last granadas

 

This pride is one of my favorite aspects of Granada. For me, even though it’s a city of 500,000 people, it has the feeling a small town like my town of 6,000 people in Media, PA. The pride and prominence of the granadas provide a sense of unity—something everyone is proud of, something that connects everyone. I’ve never seen a city be so ingenious about something like this. Many cities I’ve encountered are proud of their city but never have I seen so much thought be put into truly making a city stand out as I have with las granadas en Granada.

Halloween Weekend in Granada

          Happy Halloween everybody! This past weekend, we had 5 days off from school because of the coincidence of not having class last Friday, having All Saints Day on Tuesday and having this wonderful thing called Puente. Puente is if you don’t have school on either Tuesday or Thursday, they make a Puente (a bridge) to include not having school on Monday and Friday, respectively. Yup, I know, Spain is awesome. I decided to stay in Granada for this period of time and enjoy/explore the wonderful city I’m living in.

Before Halloween weekend started though, there was a Barca v. Granada game in Granada! This game was said to be the biggest game in Granada in 35 years. It was very cool to be in the atmosphere of the city getting ready for the game. Rachel, Blake, Chelsea, Tyler, Justin, Jiela, Kristen, and I decided to go to the stadium. Although we had to watch the game through a window of a bar, it was so cool to be watching what was happening on the TV but be able to hear the crowd’s reaction behind us. I was repping my Barca jersey (though, not necessarily flaunting it considering I preferred to not receive a black eye or anything of the sorts) but I was still bummed that Granada didn’t win. They put up a great game and only lost 1-0.

Granada C.F. stadium!

Where we ended up watching the game from

Friday night, Marcela, Kat, Lorelyn, Colleen, Parker, Molly, and I decided to go see a movie! We saw Con Derecho a Rosa (Friends with Benefits) at the movie theatre not too far from my house. It was weird hearing different voices than that of the actors but I kind of got used to it. I was also pleasantly surprised about the amount of the movie I understood. It’s been cool lately noticing myself have an easier time with understanding people speaking fast Spanish. Though, it is a very odd feeling!

On Saturday, we went climbing up towards La Alhambra to go to the cemetery on the top of the hill. We continued up past La Alhambra only to find a beautiful lookout of the city on our way to the cemetery. The view was unreal. I keep discovering places throughout the city where I have to pinch myself to believe that I’m actually living there.

We found the cemetery after this lookout and it was not what I was expecting at all. It was giant with all types of tombs from full, mini house looking tombs, to walls filled with squares with names, dates, and RIP/DEP (Descansa en paz) It was a very extravagant cemetery unlike anything I had ever seen or expected to see. 

The view from the lookout we found! Here is a view of the famous Catedral in Granada with beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

One of the many walls like this in the cemetery

Another part of the cemetery with the Sierra Nevada's in the background

Another day, a few of us that had stayed in Granada went on a hike. We returned to Monachil: Los Cahorros to do more of the trail. We hiked to the waterfall and had a picnic atop of it. Then we kept going past the waterfall to go a little higher onto another part of the mountain. We finally made our way back down a different way and back to the pueblo of Monachil. 

Matt, Parker, Colleen, Lorelyn, me, and Marcela at Los Cahorros

At Los Cahorros

Halloween night was definitely different here. Not as many people dressed up but if they were dressed up, they were dressed up to be scary as opposed to in the States, where you can really be anything your little heart desires. A lot of us from our group went to a bar called Hannigan & Sons II. There was a bunch of Halloween stuff going on there including giving out free masks and hats. After that, we went to a discoteca, El Camborio, which is in the Albaicin with a great view of the Alhambra. For my costume, I dressed up as a black cat! It was much different than the Halloween at home, but an awesome time nonetheless. 

Matt and me at Hannigans on Halloween night

La aventura italiana: Firenze!

Firenze!

We got up Thursday, checked out of our Pisa hostel and made our way to the train station for catch a train to Florence. The train ride was about an hour long and we got there, no problems. Once we were at the train station in Florence, our next objective was to catch one of the city buses to our hostel. We knew which bus to take and after about 10 minutes waiting, it arrived. We had written down which stop we needed to get off at so we were all keeping an eye on the LED screen of the bus. The hostel was only about 10 minutes from the station so after about 20 minutes on the bus without having seen our stop on the screen, we were a little worried. About an hour and 10 minutes later, we arrived back at the train station after having gotten a full bus tour of Florence. We had missed our stop which we discovered was the 3^rd stop on the loop so we just went back around and got off, no problema. It turned out for the best because we got to see pretty much all of Florence and it was BEAUTIFUL. We went all around the edge of the old boundaries of Florence and up to the Michelangelo look out where you can see all of Florence. Here is where one of the 2 copies of David is in the city. The other one is in a plaza in near the city center. 

So, after our impromptu tour, we got off and began trying to figure out how to get to our hostel. GoogleMaps was almost loaded on my Kindle when a man came over and asked us if we were looking for Dany House (our hostel) Not going to lie, definitely sketched out at first. 6 girls had just gotten off of a city bus looking lost and some random person knew where we were trying to go. Alas, it was not sketchy at all! The man’s name is Jonathan and he was the owner of Dany House. He and his girlfriend were at the café across the street waiting for us to arrive. We had told them online that we’d get there around 4 o’clock but with our city tour, it was around 5 when we finally got there. They had figured we had missed the stop and waited. They saw the bus pull up and counted 6 girls getting out and guessed that we were the 6 they were looking for! Jonathan had to run so his girlfriend walked us back to the hostel, which was about a 3 minute walk from the bus stop. She checked us in and showed us our room. We were in the 8 person room so we were living with 2 other people besides us. The first night, one of them was staying somewhere else, I think, so it was only the one other guy from Mexico. Jonathan’s girlfriend then gave us maps of the city and told us about the different areas and good places to go for food, shopping, and site seeing. We got settled in and then headed out to go exploring in Florence. 

We started off at the place where Jonathan and his girlfriend had been waiting for us. It was a Panini place and it was so good. After, we started into the city center. We went to go meet up with Marcela’s friend, Carly, who is studying in Florence. She took us to one of her favorite gelato places which is right next to the river. The area by the river was so pretty. (Again, the bridge with all the buildings on it was once my computer background and now I was standing in front of it. How cool is that? SO cool) It was perfect weather and we were there right around when the sun started to come down. We saw the Duomo which I never really knew anything about. It was so pretty—the whole outside was pink, white, and a sage green all patterned. We never ended up going inside but we heard that it’s really the outside that’s worth seeing.

The Duomo!

One of the famous bridges in Firenze (the one that was my desktop background)

At the river in Florence

Marcela and me in Florence!

We then continued walking around and shopping a little. We found a place to eat about 10 minutes from our hostel and it wasn’t the best but my pasta was pretty good. At 9, our hostel had wine and snacks for us so went back to hang out for a little before heading out to meet up with more or Marcela and Lorelyn’s friends from Marist! There’s a Marist campus in Florence so a lot of people that they knew were there. We went to a bar that was next to the Duomo which was very cool. At night, the Duomo had a very cool feeling to it because of the lights shining from the bottom and the deep twilight sky behind it. 

My pasta from the first night

The next morning, we awoke around 10am to start our first full day in Florence. We heard from Marcela’s friend of a really good pizza place on the other side of the river so we started meandering our way through town. The weather was gorgeous but chilly. Forgetting my jacket in Granada? Not one of my smartest moves. But alas, I survived. We stopped to take some pictures by the river and continued past the wonderful gelato place we went to the previous day and onto GustaPizza! GustaPizza was SOO GOOD. Buenisima! Fresh out of the oven, handmade pizza with fresh olive oil (plain, and infused with red pepper flakes) to dip our crust/put on top of our pizza. Talk about one happy camper. 

Florence had an obscene amount of bicycles and I loved every minute of it

GUSTAPIZZA!

After the pizza that will now ruin all other pizza for me, we went walking around the city center and the shopping areas! The shopping area was full of little tiendas in the street and on the sides. There were lots of clothes, shoes, and all things leather. I purchased a leather side bag that has an eyelet imprinted pattern all over it. I got this bag and also the previous day I bought a coin purse that is nothing like I’ve ever seen before. If you imagine a square but with a round bottom, put two metal tracks on the top that separate in the middle and then put a ring on these tracks that, when closed, fold over the two top corners of the rounded square and then buttons in the middle. Kindof a complicated description, but I hope some of it gets across. Other items purchased within our group were leather boots, leather jackets, and leather wallets (see a pattern??)

We finally made our way back to the hostel to relax a little bit before heading up to the Michelangelo lookout for some wine and the sunset over looking all of Florence. Talk about a perfect sunset. Although chilly, the view from the lookout with the rosy golden glow over all of Florence was priceless to see. We saw Pablo and Francis, two people from our hostel, up at the lookout too so we all sat together to watch it. After the sun set it was REALLY chilly so we caught the bus back down to the city to go to dinner. Jonathan had recommended a restaurant about 10 minutes from our hostel that was very good. We hopped off the bus and found the restaurant after getting a little lost and stopping to ask for some directions eventually. This restaurant had amazing bread that was a warm, salty focaccia sort of bread.  I had the house lasagna… can you guess how it tasted? Yup, DELICIOUS. (I know you might be thinking, ‘not everything you ate in Italy could really be that good.’ Nope, you’re wrong. Because it was. I pinky-promise with a thumb kiss.) Then, I consumed yet another amazing thing in Italy: Tiramisu. It’s my favorite dessert ever and Italy did not let me down with my craving for Italian tiramisu. Mmmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about that meal.

One of the two copies of David at the lookout

View of Firenze from the lookout

Yours truly in her new favorite Italian city :)

Molly, Lorelyn, Francis, Pablo, y Marcela durante la puesta del Sol

Bella.

For our last night in Florence, we went back to meet up the Marcela and Lorelyn’s friends. We went to a bar called Red Garder. It was fun but the best part of the night was by far what followed…

Story time: Florence has a secret and it’s called the secret bakery. There are about 3 or 4 secret bakeries around the city. These secret bakeries start baking at around 2am and then deliver their goodies to all the rest of the bakeries in Florence. Now, they’re secret because not many people know where they (Duh, that’s self-explanatory in the title). If you end up finding the secret bakery at the right time, boy are you in luck. We were given rough directions to one of the secret bakeries from a secret source with the last direction stating “once you’re relatively close, you just follow the smell”. We took a few lefts from where we were and before I knew it, I smelt pastries baking with a slight essence of Nutella and chocolate in the chilly Florence air. Pep was added to our step and we had finally arrived at the secret bakery. There is a sliding opaque door in a little alley way where a man will peek his head out every once and a while (but only if everyone is quiet) and you say a rough number of what you want. Anywhere between 5-10 minutes later, he reappears and gives you a white paper bag filled with God’s gift to man and you give him 1 euro for each piece of heaven you have received. There’s really no rhyme or reason to this process so now is not the time to be picky. We grabbed our bag and went to find a stoop to eat our goodies. When we opened the bag, our nostrils were flooded with a concentrated smell of the warm nutella pastries we smelled earlier. I was handed a warm, golden brown croissant topped with course sugar, filled with warm, melty Nutella. Again, no croissant will ever be the same for me. Por fin, we finished our early morning snacks and then started to make our way back to the hostel (not without getting a little lost, of course)

The entrance to the secret bakery

My warm croissant filled with Nutella. Mmmmmmmmmm

The next morning we got up and packed up our limited belongings to head out to Bologna. We only had to be in Bologna for our flight around 7 am the next day so we were flexible in when we decided to leave Florence. We bid farewell and gave our thanks to Jonathan and everybody from Dany House. Their hospitality only made our stay in Florence that much more enjoyable. I would 100% recommend them to anyone ever coming to Florence who is in need of a hostel. We walked around Florence for a little longer before grabbing some bocadillos and catching a bus to the train station. We were not able to go to the real David statue, which would have been very neat to see, but you have to buy tickets two days in advance or get there super duper early to get into the no ticket line. Luckily, we were able to see the two replicas in the city. All the more reason to leave some things for the next time I go back to Firenze!

All of us with Jonathan!

The entrance way to our hostel, Dany House

Florence was my favorite city in Italy that we had the pleasure of visiting. I loved the atmosphere and everything about the city. I could easily see myself living there for a year of my life. I’m so happy I got the opportunity to have such a great experience there with great people.

Ciao, Firenze! Ciao, Bologna!