Andalucía: Part 2

So this part might be a bit overdue. But that's ok, it fits right into the pacing I set out to do in the first post. Anywho, a lot's happened in the last two months and it's about time I get to finishing up this trip. So in Part 1 I just covered Monday, which was appropriate as it was quite a packed day. This part shall take me through, oh let's say Thursday. That's not a guarantee though. Actually, I don't know why I'm even setting a goal, I can always go back and change it to make it look like I knew what I was doing from the get-go. And you'd never even know it! So since I've been here studying a new language and speaking with folks who have never known English I've started realizing how awesomely stupid and, at the same time, how stupidly awesome my native tongue really is. I'm digressing, but there's so many things we say without even thinking about. The phrase, "from the get-go," for instance, where the diddles did that come from? When you consider the meaning of the phrase and weigh it against the meanings of the individual words, you won't be getting the same result. At least, I'm not. But then again, I'm not much of a linguist. I like numbers. Now I'm digressing from my digression, but bear with me, but don't bare with me, that's more of a solitary activity. Back to my digressing digression: Numbers are cool. That is all.

Oh yeah, so I went to Andalucía a while back. Here's some of what I did.

I am not happy with the placement of these pictures.
I am, however, too tired to mess with them.

Tuesday morning (day two of the trip), our group visited another cathedral, La Cartuja I believe it was called. But don't quote me on that or tell me I'm wrong if you look it up. I am far too tired to care about fact-checking at the moment. So yeah, this place was grand and gorgeous and all that, much like the cathedral of the day before, but in it's own way. Not quite as tall, but full of intricate carvings covering the walls and ceilings. Very neat to observe.



The alleged head-lopping spot.



After that visit, we were off to La Alhambra, the structure we saw from afar the night before. This place had a ton of beautiful gardens in it. It was nothing compared to Versailles, but still a real joy to walk through. The insides were less impressive. They were kinda cool, but after seeing the two cathedrals, I was less than impressed. Our tour guide did share a rather interesting story with us however. Now, it's really late, this was a long time ago, I didn't hear the whole thing, and as I mentioned, I'm not really in the fact-checking mood. That being said, this might be a little vague. Anywho, here we go. A long time ago, there was this king/emperor/sultan/some-kind-of-ruler that lived at La Alhambra. And he had a wife. And this wife slept with another man, a wealthy man. The ruler was aware of this but didn't know who it was. So he threw a party hoping to figure it out. He invited all the wealthiest people, thirty-some, I believe it was. Some time during the party, Each of the men were granted the privilege of a private interview with the ruler, truly an honor. One by one, each of the men entered a room to speak with the ruler, where they were promptly relieved of their head. To ensure justice was taken agains the guilty man, the ruler had every one of them killed. And we got to take pictures of where their blood was spilled! You can still see the red stains.

The rest of the day was free time for us. Most of the group went to la mercadona for lunch, including myself. At the start of the trip, each student was given 120 euros for food, fifteen for each day. On Tuesday, I got free hotel breakfast and spent less than six euros on everything I needed for lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, I wasn't this frugal everyday and even made up for it on the last day. (At this point during my writing, I debated putting in a sad-face emoticon. I decided that it would be too unprofessional. So just picture a sad Derek after that last paragraph.)

The rest of the day was spent in siesta-mode. I woke up a little before bedtime and decided to go exploring until I got tired again. After seeing a ton of the town, I ran into three guys form the group and spent the rest of the night wandering with them. We were searching for ice cream places, but they all turned out to be closed by that time (sad-face-Derek). We ended up with some packaged stuff from a convience store-like place before heading back. So that was Tuesday. And that took much longer than I thought it would. Dang. Oh well, I've got a goal to meet! On to Wednesday!

A lot of Wednesday was spent traveling. That is, until the bus started dripping on us. So we were moving right along, footloose and fancy-free, when the left side of the bus just starts screaming. I was on the left side myself, but luckily avoided the disaster. There was a blackish liquid that just started pouring out of the cracks in the ceiling all over the students. So the driver pulls over and we all get out. I'm not too sure what happened, but something broke and began to leak. Not good. So we wait by the side of the road as the driver tries to fix what's going on. We all pass the time chatting and playing games and such. Eventually we get back on and continue our way. After some lunch stops and more driving, we make it to Gibraltar, a city owned by the U.K. at the very southern tip of Spain. It was a neat little touristy place. A group of us hiked a little ways up the rock of Gibraltar and got some amazing views. I credit this as the place where (cue foreshadowing) I first saw Africa. And that was basically all of Wednesday. On to Thursday!

Speaking of Africa, I happend to go there on Thursday! So that's neat. Early in the morning, we all got on a ferry that took us across the straight and into the country of Morocco, a totally different world from Spain. Being a Muslim country, it reminded me much of my trip to Malaysia in the early summer. We had a guide that took us through the city. It really got interesting when he took us into these alleys that filled much of the city. I don't know how he was getting around, everything looked the same to me. It doesn't sound too exciting, but walking through all these alleyways was a really cool experience and I can't really go into depth as to why.



I just want to say, this picture took a long time to get into place.
It was rather frustrating.



During our jaunt, we came across the market. The market was claustrophobic, housed scents that made you want to vomit, contained excessive amounts of people that made it difficult to follow the group, and may have been my favorite part of the entire trip. It was incredibly surreal! There was fruit, fish, spices, fish, dead chickens, dead goats, dead fish, and I don't even know what else. Probably even fish. The combination of smells wailing on my olfactory senses almost pushed me over the edge. However, I had heard before that smiling will actually reduce the gag reflex (thank you CSI). I'm glad we were moving quickly, I'm not sure what the locals thought of this American wandering through their place of business shooting pictures all the while wearing the stupidest of grins on his face (smile-face-Derek). This place made me feel like I was experiencing the world. Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend long, or even get to purchase anything. In fact, the only place where got to spend any money was in a rug shop. And that didn't feel natural at all, just another touristy place for Americans where they pushed cheaply made rugs on us at way too high prices.

Lunch was a fun experience though. We had couscous with veggies and chicken. Thinking about the market, I wondered if I had seen the chicken that was on my plate once before. That didn't stop me from eating it though. So after lunch, which was actually really late in the day, we got back on our ferry for the trip "home." I'd say my first trip to Africa was a grand success. And I sincerely hope it was not my last. I would love to go back to Morocco some day and spend some more time in the markets, try haggling with the shopkeeps at the local bazaar and what not. So that was Thursday of the trip, halfway done! I'll try to include the last four days in one post. But we'll see. I mean for a lot of things to happen with these posts. If you wanna see more photos, check out my facebook page. There should be a fair amount up.

I wish I had something profound to say here at the end. But I don't. So I won't. Well, see ya!