Day Fifteen: In Which we do a lot of Waiting and Eating, and I Finish reading Animal Farm (and Paris!)

We have arrived in Paris!

After a long travel day yesterday we got to our air bnb late last night. This place is wonderful, it's a mini house with a hot plate and fully stocked kitchen, en suite bathroom, and a nice large main area with quite a comfy bed. A nice upgrade from our shared kitchen and bathroom in Granada!

It's also 15 degrees and raining right now, which everyone has been telling us is terrible weather, but honestly we are loving the not-scorching-hot weather. Reminds me of home! The pressure change has got Rachel feeling a headache though.

Our final marked up map from Granada:

Yesterday we left our hostel at 11am, and hung out in a Starbucks for a couple hours. 

We got shwarma later once we got hungry, which was nice cause it was our last chance to eat that food here before we left. We took the city bus to the ALSA bus to the airport, and then hung out there for a bit before our bag drop opened at 7pm.

I would say Granada airport is even smaller than Victoria airport- there were only 4 flights that evening and only 4 gates. After going through a very chill security, we ate at the cafeteria only meters away from the security x-ray guy looking at everyone's luggage. The burgers we had were nit the best, but they kinda had a captive audience in that airport so what can ya do.

After heavily considering getting a plushie Spanish tortilla for Rachel because they love them so much, we boarded our flight to Paris. They played music during takeoff and landing, which was a weird choice. I'm just glad they didn't play it the entire flight…

Tinto de Verano in a bottle:

Once in Paris we avoided the scam taxis and got in the real taxi lineup. There are so many random guys who claim to be cheaper taxis! Our Air Bnb host Florence had said to try and take un Uber, but since neither of us had really done Uber before we weren't about to start in Paris with a tenuous airport wifi signal.

We hopped in our real taxi, paid the flat airport rate of 50 euros, and got deposited in Montreuil at Florence's. She showed us around the maisonette and left us with some very helpful maps and instructions, as well as pastries for breakfast! (Which Rachel has just enjoyed thoroughly :)

All in all, not the worst travel day. Goal today is to do some grocery shopping and maybe head into town on the metro!

Day Thirteen and Fourteen: In Which we Pick Various Fruits and Get Through Laundry Day

We've just finished packing our bags for the flight to Paris tomorrow, and there's a bit of calm right now before we go eat dinner for me to write up our adventures from yesterday!

Yesterday after a visit to our local cafe for coffee, we walked up to the highest view point in the city, a church at the neighborhood of Sacromonte. We walked higher and higher until the concrete ran out and we got to the un-gentrified dirt roads. There were also cacti everywhere and bits of grass, which was all weirdly comforting after being in the city full of concrete for so long.

The views at the top were amazing, we could see every area of Granada and a cool view of the Alhambra.

There was a fountain called the fountain of olives, or the fountain of youth. Supposedly it had healing properties, but either way it was a very cool and clear drink of water. There was also an interesting bit of wall with holes in it that you could walk through- replacing a ruined bit of the old city limits wall from Alhambra times.

On the way down I got excited because I had found a prickly pear cactus and the fruits on it. I learned why it was called "prickly" pear pretty quickly though, after I picked a pear-like fruit excitedly and got pricks all over my fingers. I smushed the fruit on the ground and it was a dark purple colour. I got all the splinters out of my hand and I learned my lesson. Gloves next time!

Rachel picked an orange from the many orange trees we see around, and it was mostly pulp and apparently tasted very sour. It's the day for picking public fruit!

On the way to dinner Rachel got a perfect leather fanny pack- something they'd been wanting since we arrived here and saw everyone pulling off the look so well.

Today was laundry day, and while walking down our cobblestone hill and thinking how lucky it was that neither of us had wiped out on this hill yet, I wiped out on the hill. It was a pretty bad tumble, but I'm lucky enough that all I walked away with was a skinned knee and a jammed finger on my left hand. A nice bus driver stopped and asked if I was ok, and I was- just very shaken! Rachel pulled our suitcase of laundry the rest of the way to the laundromat. After getting some detergent from a nearby grocery store, we were in business.

While waiting for our laundry, we perused the laundromat's selection of entertainment. We read this weird-ass autobiography from 2003 about a British dude who pretty much ruined his life by knowing starting a cult but claiming it was by accident. He did all of this without telling his girlfriend of three years, which inevitably ended that relationship. Sounds like the guy, Danny Wallace, is doing pretty well now though- makes a living by doing weird things and writing about them. He wrote the autobiography that was adapted into Yes Man. So, weird book, definitely the kind of thing you'd find at a laundromat.

We packed all our clothes back to the hostel, packed them in our cases, and now we're getting ready to start our travel day to Paris tomorrow!

Day Eleven and Twelve: In Which we Find the Gays and Mix a Daquiri with a Shirley Temple

So, there's a bit to catch you up on! We've been pretty tired the last two days so I haven't had a proper chance to write it all down.

Two days ago was Granada Pride Day! And we actually found other gays. There were lots of them. It didn't start that way though- when we got to the march starting place at 6pm, there were just a couple of other groups hanging around with rainbow items to tell us we were in the right spot. As the hour went on, more gays arrived, until there was a nice big crowd. We found our friend Nancy from the other day with the cancelled drag queen event (I had to ask her name again, turns out I had remembered it correctly!). At some point a lesbian drummer group showed up, and someone brought out two giant long flags (one gay one trans). We decided to help hold the rainbow flag cause they needed more people. The crowd was getting bigger and louder by the minute, but we weren't sure exactly what was meant to happen next. When were we going to start walking? Were there any floats in this parade or was it more of  protest march? If it was a protest, why were the police so clearly involved in clearing the streets for the march?

Eventually we started walking- for maybe two minutes. Then we stopped again, for no reason we could see. We'd start and stop in this excruciating way for maybe 20 minutes, which is when Rachel and I decided to abandon ship and go see what was happening at the front. We left our flag-carrying positions and walked to the front, where we noticed that the all-lesbian samba band group stopped every few minutes to do a choreographed routine, which was slowing down the whole procession. We weren't sure if this was a weird thing or if this was normal?? No one else seemed bothered by the very very slow pace.

We couldn't wait for the slow march, and we were getting overheated and hungry, so we walked a couple blocks away to Plaza Nueva and ate our snacks. When we came back about an hour later, the procession hadn't even made it to the turn off to city hall!!

We walked to the plaza the parade would end at and decided to meet it there. It arrived about 40 minutes later, all swarming into the concrete space in front of a large stage. Right, we thought, now it'll be interesting and fun. But actually people just started reading speeches in Spanish. Which might have been good had either one of us understood Spanish, but as it was we were hanging out in a very crowded square, being very tired, with nowhere to sit except the ground. There weren't even any food trucks or anything, the one thing that was there was a beer booth. So we were a bit confused- it seems like this pride march is frustratingly stuck between protest and festival? At least in Victoria it's clear it's a festival, and they provide resources as such.

Anyway we hung on for maybe 45 minutes, but we couldn't stay past then. We stumbled over to La Buena Vida, our favourite tapas bar, and got food. It kinda saved the day because we were so pooped. We got ice cream after and ate it at the viewpoint near our house. We could hear the tell-tale booming of a concert happening back at the square we came from.

But we were tired, so we headed home.

Thus we experienced Orgullo Granada, Granada Pride. It was neat to see all they gays in this city, but also it was kinda exhausting.

Food that saved the day:

---

Yesterday was a chill day - we wandered around in the morning, saw some parts of town we hadn't seen before. I found a studio ghibli t-shirt that I bought, Rachel found a good one-piece swimsuit. We are feeling ready to move on to the next leg of our journey, I think we're exhausting what this city has to offer for being a tourist here for two weeks. Paris should be good, also because it has an actual kitchen we can use which will help with meals.

Anyway we were looking for a queer bookshop-café in the hipster part of town, which didn't seem to exist so we went to a different place and got tapas for lunch.

After a long afternoon nap, we headed out around 11pm to try our luck at finding a lesbian club. Turns out we were still too early (there were like three people at the bar), so we hung out at La Buena Vida again. We got a daiquiri and a Shirley temple- neither of which were great, but together they were awesome. So we drank both through two separate straws in our mouths. And then dumped one into the other when we could.

After that we headed to the small nightclub. Most nightclubs are cozy affairs here- you walk in and you're just in it- one room, a bar on one side, and a raised section at the back. No bigger than living room size. We danced like dorks, interspersing swing, fortnite moves, cheesy finger guns, and disco moves. We stayed for about an hour before heading home.

It was fun, but if there's anything we learned today, it's that we are absolute goofs in both the mixed drinks department and the clubbing department. And I wouldn't have it any other way :)

Day Ten: In Which we Fail to find The Gays, and Everyone Claps

Yesterday there was a Granada pride event on, so Rachel and I headed downtown to try to find the Fuente de las Batallas. This was a fountain were supposedly there was a body painting and drag queen competition going on at 2pm, so we were very excited to see it!

We walked to the fountain, but nothing was going on… The only other thing we saw were other confused-looking gay people and couples wandering around. At one point a girl with rainbow eye makeup on approached us and asked if we were also looking for the drag queen competition and if we knew where it was? I only just understood that, as my vocab in Spanish is so low right now that only every third word or so gets through. We talked and walked for a bit, and she said we could check at the tourist offices nearby and they might be able to tell us what's going on. During the conversation I learned that she was from Honduras, but had lived here for a good couple years now. She had come down here expecting a pride event, but was equally as confused as us.

At the tourist centre, the people there tried to find anything online about the event being cancelled, or moved, anything- but the internet was bare of info. All we could find was the original event info, which was clearly wrong as nothing was happening out there… The employees gave us rainbow Granada Pride bracelets and sent us on our way.

The girl headed home after that (I completely forget her name!), and so did we.

We'll see if we run into each other tomorrow at the pride parade (if that's not also mysteriously not happening!).

We got some ice cream treats on the way home to cheer us up; we had really been looking forward to the mystery cancelled event. I got a mango slushie and Rachel picked out one of the five or so dairy-free options. They have AMAZING sorbet here, it just looks exactly like ice cream but tastes more like fruit and has no milk in it. They got lemon sorbet and I had a few licks- delicious.

Bonus: A very very skinny street

That evening we were in for a real treat- El Templo del Flamenco. An amazing tapas dinner and a flamenco show at the same time. The tapas were great, and our strategy of both eating what we can worked pretty well until we got to the flan, at which point we both just ate it and felt a bit bloated afterward. But all of it was so good! My favourite was the potato, egg, ham, and green pepper dish.

The dancing and music was also spectacular! Makes me want to run away and do flamenco in Spain. The clapping was constant and it seemed like the kind of environment where we could join in, but I was too nervous to do much else than clap along quietly while leaning my elbows on the table.

You could tell that the band was very close-knit, because the reactions and communication on stage were very tight. The guitarist was very skilled, but there were parts where he dropped out and all you could hear were the taps of the dancers and the clapping of hands.

All in all, an amazing night, and a wonderful date :)