Katelyn's Semester in Spain: From Granada, with Love

Well, this is quite a bit after the fact, but here is my blog about Granada. I went with two other girls from CMU along with the host brother and his girlfriend of one of the girls. We only went for a day which resulted in a lot of driving, but it was definitely worth it. Granada is about a three hour drive from Alicante and I have to say that I think it was the best way to travel to Granada. The scenery around Granada is completely different from the scenery around Alicante. Granada is in the mountains so when we went to La Alhambra there were some great views of the surrounding areas.
We left Alicante around 7:30 in the morning and we got to Granada around 11 or so. We had tickets for La Alhambra at 2 pm so we had just enough time to head down into the city and eat before getting to main event. La Alhambra is the palace of the Moorish royalty in Spain from when the Moors controlled the peninsula. Granada was the last stronghold of the Moors in Spain until 1492 when the Catholic monarchs Isabel and Fernando reconquered the area and united the peninsula under their reign. So Granada and La Alhambra are full of a lot of history. We toured the palace of the Nazarí (the last Moorish dynasty in Spain) for at least two hours, I'll post some pictures at the end of this blog so you can see why. Each room was filled with intricate carvings on the walls and it was hard for me to believe that people actually lived there at some point in time. After we toured the palace we visited a couple of other buildings such as the palace of Carlos V and the gardens of Generalife that filled the space around the buildings. We ended up spending four hours in the complex itself and I saw a lot of cool things. I'd love to go back sometime to see it all again, I don't think I could ever see those things enough. There is nothing close to this type of thing in the US so I strongly suggest that you visit Granada and La Alhambra if you ever come to Spain.
This weekend is a long weekend because on Monday there is a national holiday so there are no classes. I am going to Mallorca, the largest island in the Balearic Island chain in the Mediterranean. The islands are beautiful and I can't wait to see them in person. This is the one trip that I absolutely wanted to go on when I got here and I'm so excited that I'm actually going.
So, next blog will also be a travel blog. I hope you enjoy it. :)