matador's hats, red cheese, sherry, lolcat spanish and hugging history

Last Wednesday Amy and I were up SUPER early to catch our flight to Malaga, luckily I only live 15 minutes away from the airport but I was still up at 4.15 to be at the airport for 5.30. Spent the time waiting for the flight getting excited and reading, the flight itself wasn't too bad I read the guidebook to refresh my Spanish history and culture and took a slight nap, but was just excited for the sunshine! Once we got to the airport we got Amy her coffee and she became more human :) Flying into Malaga was brilliant! The Mediterranean Sea and the coast and the mountains!

our first view of SPAIN

So we landed and found the bus into the city and the set out to find our hotel, but the city was GORGEOUS! It was sunny! and warm and just really cute.
We found the hotel pretty easily and then set off for the Alcabaza which is a Moorish fort, the one in Malaga is from the 8th century. The area of Spain we were in was under Arabic (called the Moors) control for about 700 years until they were kicked out by Ferdinand & Isabella (of Columbus fame) with the final city being Granada in 1492. So back to Malaga, the Alcabaza was fab! It was just fun to walk about and take funny pictures.

Amy and I being our usual selves

the Alcabaza

It was walking along here I say to Amy - Tu pones su chaqueta en se bolero? She was like why yes, I am putting my jacket in the matador's hat.... oooops, I was going for bolso (bag). That was really the only instance of completely wrong word that was also hilarious. But Amy also coined my Spanish - LOLcat Spanish, because my verbs were usually completely wrong, I used la/el wrong and ended words with the wrong one o/a... but she understood what I wanted to say, just my execution was lacking. But for almost the whole trip we spoke in Spanish with people when ordering, at hotels, and such. We even spoke in Spanish to each other walking around and such too. I was surprised at how much I remember though!

So after the amazing of the Alcabaza we walked around until we found the Mediterranean Sea! Which was cool, now I saw it when I was in Barcelona three years ago, but it was at night, so seeing it during the day and with Amy was just fun! I cartwheeled and we frolicked and it was great. And there was SUN!

Amy and I and the MED SEA

in the MED... it was COLD!

So after the fun in the Med, we wondered about the city, had an AMAZING lunch. The idea of a "menu del dia" a three course meal for like €10 is great and more places should introduce, plus we had some fantastic sangria! After lunch we headed to the Picasso Museum and saw a few of his more random pieces, but was actually pretty awesome to see his later stuff. And then we just walked around and pretty much collapsed in the hotel.

We were up early on Thursday morning to catch the bus to Granada, it was a nice hour and a half and we got gorgeous views of the mountains. Once we found the cutest hotel in Granada we set off for the ALHAMBRA!
The Alhambra was a Moorish Palace/fort during the Islamic rule over Spain. This was their last city to fall to Ferdinand & Isabella. It was absolutely amazing! The palace was completely gorgeous, the architecture is unbelievable. The intricate carvings and tiles, you just walk in and WOW! You don't know where to look.

there were little pools everywhere, used as a natural airconditioning

look at all that GORGEOUS architecture!

We frolicked and took a ton of pictures of the palace and was just in awe of the amazingness of the Alhambra. We were running out of time so we didn't do the Alcabaza at the Alhambra but headed back towards town where we had a lunch along the street. And we went to La Capilla Real (The Royal Chapel) where Ferdinand & Isabella are burried and a collection of their artwork and a few other personal items are. The alter was incredible and just so intense. It was really awesome to see. Then since we had a little bit of time we went to the Cathedral next to the Chapel and there are no words.
It was so ornate and gold and just WOW! It was built in the early 1500s when the riches of the New World were coming in and just the magnifigance of the place was amazing. Like I've been to Westminster, Notre Dame, La Sagrida Familia, St. Patricks and a few other amazing cathedrals around Europe but this one took the prize. After this we headed back to the hotel for a siesta before going out for some tapas.

So trying to find a tapas bar in Granada was tough. We walked around a lot until we stumbled on one and went in. Amy ordered us two glasses of wine and the man brought us little ham and cheese sandwiches - now I'm not a big ham fan (or any type of pig really) but in Spain EVERYTHING has ham, so I've been trying really hard to branch out of my pickyness and at least try new things. So it wasn't bad, it reminded me of Pruschetto and with the wine it was fabulous (as was the wine) so we had two glasses of wine there and the second tapas was a tuna on bread with olives - which I tried olives again and didn't like, but the tuna was yummy. So we decided to head to another place we saw and this bar was where the sherry incident happened.  Where on accident we ordered sherry and when the wine came we were like.. its brown... and tastes like wine & whiskey together.. hmmm. Which we quickly discovered was sherry. It was horrible, which makes me laugh because in all of the books I read especially British ones all the older women always have a glass of sherry at night and ugggh, disgusting!  So that was realllly funny. So in order to get the taste out of our mouths we found one more place which was great where the wine was good again and the tapas was fab. 

Amy and the lovely sherry... 

So I was slightly drunker than I expected to be, but 4 glasses of wine and not much food throughout the day, guess that will do it to you. So we were up early Friday morning to head to Madrid. Now we weren't sure what to expect from Madrid, so the train ride was nice it was about 5 hours and we got to see lots of pretty scenery. And as soon as we found the hotel we dropped our bags, ate an amazing lunch and practically skipped to El Museo Prado. 

Where we spent the next three hours admiring Renaissance art. It was cool, lots of Valazquez, Goya and El Greco. Las Meninas was quite amazing to see, but I'm not the biggest fan of this style of art, I prefer more 19/20 century art. I love Picasso, Monet, Van Goh... But the Museum was still FAB! So we decided to have a fun night out and dress cute, but we still both were tired, so there was no crazy 5am disco in our plans. We went to 2 tapas bars and had an amazing cheese platter with the red cheese, that turned out to be cranberry, still laughing about that one! 

Saturday we slept in and went to a cafe for churros and they were devine!

I had a vanilla filled one, as well as some regular - the skitty ones which were then dipped in chocolate.. it was fab! After breakfast we went to La Reina Sofia where I got to see Guernica, which was incredible. It is huge and just so powerful. By it there are the sketches and such he used to create each of the charachters and they are just as amazing, the detail and everything is extraordinary! After spending like 3 hours we headed for El Parque del Buen Retiro where we just walked around and took pictures. We just walked around through the streets heading to the Palace and Plaza Mayor which had a cool horsemanship event going on. 

In the park

horse event in the plaza mayor

After this we had a fab late lunch and then wondered about shopping and just having fun! We went back to siesta, but ended up just staying in because we had to be at the airport for 8.30. So Sunday we went off for the airport and had a slightly delayed flight back to Dublin. Said a super quick goodbye to Amy who was running to connect to Boston, while I spent most of the day in the airport. 

So Spain was a complete blast! Looooooved it and getting to see roomie and the SUN!