Tuesday 4 June 2019

Day Seven and Day Eight: In Which we Netflix and Make Fun of Ferdinand's Reign


Today was mostly a nice long rest day, which ended up coinciding quite nicely with one of the hottest days so far here. We went for a walk in the morning, exploring the only view point we hadn't seen yet. We wandered around for a bit exploring the parts of the city we hadn't seen, and ended up by the river buying some very fancy tea for a very fair price. Later in the afternoon we went grocery shopping, and since then we've mostly just been resting- driven back to our hostel as the sun really started beating down. We caught up on some Netflix and have been trying to beat the heat by staying inside, but I will say it's still quite hot! I'm sitting in bed right now just covered in sweat, and the sun isn't even up anymore. It's just one of those days. On longer trips there ends up being a couple of relatively chill recovery days.

Tomorrow is the Alhambra, should be nice.






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Today was the Alhambra!
My mood has improved a lot since yesterday because it wasn't nearly as hot today- there was actually quite a nice breeze tonight. Also, the Alhambra was amazing!
I'd seen it before but I didn’t remember all the different rooms. The intricacy blew my mind again, and I liked not being with a school group like last time so that we could hang back and look at everything on our own time. Rachel got some beautiful photos, including one of stained glass windows projecting coloured light onto the wall. A hilarious detail I noticed this time around was that in one room, there was clearly a carving on the ceiling done by the Catholics after they invaded, and it was so much less detailed and impressive compared to the Muslim wall and ceiling carvings. Whereas the Moorish parts were small and symbolic, the invading Spaniards had carved a giant "F" and a giant "Y"- for King Ferdinand and Queen Ysabella (of the Spanish Inquisition)- right front and centre in their carving. It was almost like they were saying "see, we can do it too!" But not as well tbh.

You vs the guy she tell you not to worry about:







Another funny detail: people back then in this part of the world had no frickin idea what lions looked like. The carved statues looked more like dogs.



The gardens were lovely, I saw some cute koi and frogs, and I appreciated the trees on the way up and down the path to the palace. It made me miss the forests back home!
















In the evening we went out for tapas once more, and tapas-bar-hopped to three different places to get a full of combined tapas. The quality and quantity varied greatly, generally the more there was the less awesome it was. But still a nice dinner experience for a very reasonable price!
After climbing up the hill (honestly, the equivalent of Mt Tolmie) back to our hostel, we are now just hanging out a bit before sleep. We might watch some season three of The Good Place- they have it on Netflix here!

Peace Out.





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