It's been a busy
couple of days! So busy that I haven't had a lot of time to write it all down.
I would keep meaning to in the evenings but I just ended up sleeping. It is
Sunday today, and we're taking a bit of a rest day. I've been checking my email
and whatnot- Duolingo really really wants me to learn Spanish, but
unfortunately my phone is dead and gone. Either way I think I'm getting more
than enough practice day-to-day as it is!
--
The morning of the day before yesterday, we had tortilla with fresh mozzarella for breakfast that we heated up ourselves at our hostel. It was lovely :)
The day before
yesterday, Rachel and I decided to go check out the old Jewish quarter of
Granada, specifically a traditional Jewish home converted into a museum to
preserve the history of the Sephardic Jews in Granada. Among some of the things
we learned that day was that the city was actually originally founded by groups
of Sephardic Jews before the Spanish Inquisition drove most of them out and
away. The city name Granada means pomegranate in Spanish, and also has meaning
from the Talmud about (if I understand it correctly) the number of possible
good deeds being the same as the number of seeds in a pomegranate. Rachel was
telling me all this in the museum, but they're lying down upstairs so I can't
double check.
The house had a
built-in sukkah in it- a tent-like structure for a Jewish holiday called
Sukkot. It was a beautiful mini open-air courtyard filled with plants and a
star of David pattern in cobblestones on the floor. There were no photos
allowed to be taken inside, so I don't have any to post here.
The house-museum was
very interesting- I think I learned more than Rachel did for sure, as most of
it was part of their culture. Rachel was pretty understandably emotional (good
and bad, complicated I think) about the fact that on one hand it's amazing to
see this culture preserved here, but also immensely sad that there's a reason
it's called the "old" Jewish quarter. According to the man running
the museum, only four original families remain.
I've always admired
people who have a rich cultural background to interact with, but I will never
fundamentally understand being part of a culture and people that has been so
heavily persecuted by pretty much every reining majority culture- from the Romans
to present day. It's heavy stuff to bring into intersection with value systems
and identities of 2019. I know it was a hard day but ultimately I think a good
day for Rachel. As for myself, I experienced something I hadn’t before and got
to see interesting cultural history, so I am thoroughly satisfied.
Since learning that
Granada means pomegranate, I've been seeing pomegranate imagery everywhere in
the city. Flags, patterns, masonry,
sidewalks, roads, logos- pomegranates everywhere.
Also, It's lovely that here there are public fountains with potable water on basically every corner. Really helps combat dehydration, and they look amazing and were all built in the 1700's.
After the museum, we
stopped at a café and drank the best sangria I've ever had in my life. It was
so sweet and rich, but not overly so. Makes me wonder if I might actually quite
enjoy wines from this region…
We ate shrimp fried
with mushrooms to start, and it was pretty good. I've noticed they use olive
oil here all the time instead of butter- so Rachel can eat most things. We also
tried snails. I must say, I've never tried to eat snails after having had a pet
snail before, and it makes it a bit weird. Sometimes you could still see the
antennae, and the little mouths… They tasted fine, but neither me nor Rachel
could eat much. I just ended up pulling them out of their shells because it was
very satisfying. Now Rachel can say they've eaten snail, although I don't think
either of us will be eager to order them again really…
On the way back we
stopped to look at some overalls at a market stall we'd passed on the way there
in the morning. The guy selling them was older, maybe 50 or 60 years old. He
immediately started doing the hard sell technique on Rachel, which was a little
disconcerting- maybe he never got any customers? Anyway he seemed to be doing a
technique where he doesn't let any of us talk, calls Rachel really pretty
skinny girl, and me fat ugly girl. Honestly not the best selling technique,
maybe it would've worked on a very specific pair of straight friends? Jokes on
him cause we're a couple. So inevitably when I spoke up and said "you
don't have to get these" he told me to fuck off and stop throwing shit in
the conversation, so obviously at that point Rachel took the reins and said
we're leaving, and pulled me away to leave. This was helpful because I was
kinda dazed and mostly bemused that this situation was happening at all- and as
we were leaving he spat in my face twice, told me to fuck off, and called me a
fat ugly girl.
We got out of there
pretty fast and recovered in a side street- I was pretty shaken! I definitely
hadn't taken it personally, as it's clear this guy was basically just an
asshole with some seriously bad ideas on how to run a successful shop (no
wonder he had no customers!). The other thing was that I wasn't dressed like a
traditional girl, so the ugly comment really had no affect- I almost would have
taken it as a compliment if he had called me mannish (ah the life of a butch
lesbian). But we recovered, and started walking home.
Honestly it was a
weird day.
Later that evening
we ventured out to see the Alhambra lit up by lights at midnight. It was
beautiful and chilling.
---
Yesterday we took a
day trip bus to Almunecar- a small beach town on the coast of the Mediterranean
Sea. It was such a lovely day, despite lots of walking!
When we arrived in
Almunecar we had to steal some free McDonald's wifi to download a map- there
were some very confusing minutes as we walked around an empty town at 11am in
the morning. Turns out everything opened around noon or 1pm, and we were just
eager tourists up way too early for this town!
We spend a total of
9 euros for food for both us for almost the whole day- a very worthwhile trip
to Lidl. Thanks to our map we were able to find a good grocery store. They sold
the most delicious fresh mozzarella for 79 euro cents! I love the cheese here.
We also found these fruits we'd never eaten before- they were mystery fruits at the time but we looked them up later, they're called loquats. They were grown locally, and they tasted good- like citrus-apple-plum.
The early afternoon
was spent at the beach, and it was so lovely. We camped out under some literal
palm trees and ate our grocery store lunch. We swam in the ocean, and burnt our
feet on the sand, and sunbathed dry. The beach was full of people with their
beach umbrellas and children throwing balls and everything. I don't think I'd
ever experienced a beach like this, with palm trees and sand and a boardwalk
full of cafes and tourist shops.
After drying off and
changing, we started heading into the medieval part of town. We were greeted by
so many stray cats lying between beautiful white-washed walls and bright
planters and plants on every side. It was so beautiful. We were headed to a
castle- Rachel's fist castle! - Castillo de San Miguel, but unfortunately when
we got there it was closed for the afternoon. So in the meantime until it
opened again, we walked down to the city's public park to hangout. Only to find
that there was a massive festival going on there! They played what seemed like
exclusively 50's rock, including Elvis and the Grease soundtrack. It was a big
food and drink festival, with lots of food stalls, wine stalls, beer stalls,
fish stalls, and bouncy castles for the kids. We used the washrooms there.
We also noticed on
our way out that the entire park was built surrounding some roman ruins of a
fish smoking factory, just sitting there in an inaccessible viewing pit right
next to the festival. We had a weird moment looking at the castle on the hill
in the background, the roman ruins below us, and the raging modern-day food
festival with its giant water-misted tents right in the middle. A tapestry of
time periods!
We ate at a café
until the castle was open, and sampled some amazing seafood right on the beach.
We ordered king prawns and squid. The prawns were giant, and they tasted like a
mouthful of ocean. You also had to pick them apart yourself. The squid was AMAZING!
I really really liked it. It was plated like a whole squid cut into pieces on
the plate, served with a side salad and a baked potato. The whole thing was
slathered in olive oil. It was delicious. We do not have pictures of the entire
plate cause we ate it right away, but Rachel got pictures of bits of it,
including the intact tentacles. Which we also ate. Every part of it was
consumed, with gusto.
Later, after the
castle finally reopened, Rachel and I checked it out. We climbed the hill to
the castle for the third time that day, properly wearing us out. The views from
the castle were amazing though. It was originally Roman, then Muslim, then
Christian. The modern-day castle ruins are a weird hodgepodge of all three
kinds of architecture. Roman pillars and heating systems were right next to
intricate Moorish detailing and giant round Christian towers with cross-shaped
arrow holes. There were two main towers: one Muslim-built, one Christian-built.
The Muslim tower is the only remaining one today, as the Christian tower had
crumbled away and broken in half.
We toured the entire
place, I enjoyed it and Rachel really, really enjoyed it! I was glad, they were
so blown away by everything, and I understood because that was me my first time
seeing a real castle. I think this time I was more enjoying following Rachel
through the secret tunnels, old dungeons, castle gates, walls, and turrets. All
in all, a great castle experience.
At the end of the
day we bused back to Granada and arrived at the hostel, and pretty much both
just fell into bed. We slept like logs.
Before we got on the bus though, Rachel got a cute watermelon ice-pop. It was really good :)
---
Rachel's Comments:
"I like your
blog."
"Is that your
comment?"
The thing is because
I'm next to you when you write this, and you take what I say into account you
end up covering everything I would have said anyway- just in second person.
But seriously olive
oil guys. I ate mashed potatoes for the first time in my life without fearing a
stomach ache. Also re: eating seafood. Some of y'all might be like "prawns
aren't kosher!" but the thing is I've eaten both crab and lobster before
so that band aid is sort of already ripped off. (Don't worry though I still
can't even think about eating pork without feeling like I'm gonna throw up! :)
)
