On forgetfulness, oversleeping, and hippies

Granada, Spain: Our hostel here, the Doña Lupe, has free internet access, so Sarah and I are both taking advantage of it. We have an early night tonight, because we are leaving the hostel tomorrow morning at 6 to catch a 6:50 train to Madrid. Considering the train ride is six hours long, it will be nice to get in earlier as opposed to later. Our flaming disaster of an entrance into Sevilla has at least taught us to arrive in a new city with plenty of daylight hours remaining.

I mentioned forgetfulness in the title. My family will not be surprized to find out that I mean me. Our train to Granada yesterday morning was not exciting at all until about an hour into it, when, while reading Why the Rest Hates the West, I suddenly remembered that I had not taken my laundry out of the closet. One pair of pants, two shirts, and a zipup sweatshirt constitutes roughly a third of my wardrobe. So once we made it to Granada, we tried calling the Hostal Redes to see if they could forward the clothing to our Madrid hostel. Since neither Sarah nor I could ever really understand what the ladies on the other end were asking, we have no idea whether or not to expect a package. But we gave them the address, and we will hope for the best.

My family may be surprized to find that oversleeping means not just me, but Sarah as well. We planned to wake up at 7:15 this morning to get to the Alhambra for our 8:30 reservation.

The Alhambra system is kind of interesting... you get a ticket with a 30 minute time slot, and you have to enter the main palace during that half hour, because they only let in so many people per half hour. Once you are inside, you can spend all the time you want. We woke up at 8:20, and had to get ready, get to the Alhambra, which luckily enough is literally across the street from our hostel, stand in line for tickets, and dash into the Alhambra complex one kilometre until we got to the palace, all before 9 am. We made it with a few minutes to spare and are pretty proud of ourselves. The Alhambra was a pretty cool place... Moorish culture at its peak.

I have to be quick here, as there is another girl waiting for the computer. Granada has a huge population of both hippies and gypsies, both groups squatters just above the city in some caves. We did not go to the caves, but we have definitely seen a lot of hippies and gypsies. Granada is filled with groups of hippies, wandering around or congregating around a guitar player. In the Albayzin, where we went yesterday, which is I think the Muslim quarter if I remember correctly, there were a ton of hippies. We had dinner right on this great plaza overlooking the city, with an incredible view, both of the city and of hippies. The musicial ones were pretty good, and others were doing handiwork sort of things. One girl was decorating leather belts with fabric paint, which I thought was pretty terrific. I wish I had gotten some pictures of the hippies. Locals call them pies negros, or black feet... guess why. Because of the pies negros, along with probably a lot of other things, Granada has a very different feel than Sevilla. Today Sarah and I spent most of the day in the city, which is down the hill from our hostel... a good twenty minute walk down a very very steep hill, so we are lucky to have a bus pass that will bring us back up the hill. Walking is much easier down in the city. By the Doña Lupe it is pretty much all hill. Tomorrow we head to Madrid, so I will try to post from there.