Out first stop in Spain was Granada to meet up with our friend Thomas who came to visit from Texas. We spent just shy of a week there before hitting an unknown festival in Malaga. Granada was definitely one of the highlights so far in Spain…Malaga not so much, but it is all based off what you do in each city. We are a little behind on the blog right now since we left Murcia. We had great times with our friends there. Can’t wait to publish our photos and videos from there, because we did some pretty cool stuff. So right now we just have an ipad to blog off of, and a phone to read maps from. This all means the pictures and videos will have to wait about 3 more weeks until we meet up with our backpacks in the middle of September.

ANYWAY…Granada. It was a great city filled with multiple amazing views, free tapas, siestas, great live music, cheap bills, lots of walking, Sierra Nevadas, and more tapas. We originally got in from blabla car into the main bus station. From there I estimated about 1.5 miles to our apartment. One of the biggest thing we save on is not buying any water and walking everywhere. So with our 30 pounds backpackers we headed to the meeting point for our AirBnb host. Granada is the summer is quite hot just for reference. Katie kinda gave me that OK whatever face, and we started walking. I had no clue granada was as hilly as it was, and had no clue that we were staying just below one of the main high view points of the Alhambra. It made for great sunset views everyday, but made of a tough climb that day. Basically we met this woman with our shirts a little drenched in sweat.

On Thomas’s first international week trip his plane was delayed one day so he got in a day late. We walked around the hills a bit before heading to one of the recommendations we got from someone staying in Granada and it definitely was the best tapas meal we have had. Tapas in certain locations in Spain basically means order a drink for 1.80 euro and you get a free tapa along with it. We were giggling like little kids when they came, like is this real, free good food? Out of all the tapa places we went to this definitely was the best, besides one we went to in Murcia. We ordered 6 rounds of wine and they brought out 6 orders of tapas. We had no clue what they were, but each one of them was awesome and we ate it all. Eating and drinking for that price was a novelty. If your heading to granada, leave us a comment and I’ll dig around to find the name of the place. It was out of the way, more of a neighborhood spot than a main square tourist spot. Side note…schedule in Spain is literally all places shut down from 2:30 – 5:00 for siesta, then open at 8 for dinner, but most people eat around 10.

That night me and Thomas decided to explore some. I had found a wall to climb to get into a locked gated area. I finally had an explorer buddy with me, so around 2:00 am we climbed the wall and sneaked our way up these concrete steps to find a scaffolding on the side of this hill. We climbed that and got to the high point on hill and enjoyed some Alhambra views distracted from no one, with the moon shining bright as daylight.

Another night we headed for a flamenco show. I was skeptical this would be a touristy thing to do, but we did it anyway. It ended up being one of my favorite things we did in Granada. We sat in this tiny cave that held around 20 people and listened to some crazy flamenco music and dancer and singer. Definetly was not expecting that kind of singing or dancing.  The environment was awesome, and the musicians and dancer were better. We later found out that the singer was singing about sticking a dagger in her chest and committing suicide. It was relatively fitting for the way she was singing, not in the the least a bad thing, just very intense.

Later that night Thomas and I went out for drinks and happened to see the guy who was in front of us at the Flameco show. He invited us out with his friends and we went along. We sat with 10 other spainiards who spoke un pequito English. We had a good time hanging out with them, thought the night was over, only to find out we were going to another high viewpoint to drink some more. It was really cool sitting there at 4am listening to two Spanish guys and one French guy improvise on the violin and guitars while drinking a few beers.

We also embarked upon a hike just outside the city where we found great views and gypsy cave houses. Katie was about to go in one because we didn’t think they were real only to find someone scurrying around inside. Literally a small crawl hole with a window in the side of a hill. It was very intriguing. The further we went the more we saw.

We then went to the Alhambra. I will just let the pictures do the talking.

As for Malaga it was not our favorite. If you want to party it’s a great city, but it wasn’t as unique as I woulda hoped for. We did happen to hit it as la ferria was going on, which was real cool to see the women and men dressed up dancing everywhere and the amazing firework show on the beach, but after granada it was kind of a downgrade. Plus our hostal was pretty hot, so sleeping in our sweat was tough after 4 nights.

– W