Granada!

Hello everyone!

Don't forget to check out my posts under here for Cordoba and Madrid! The next stop on this southern tour of Spain was Granada, an absolutely amazing city! Granada was built on a moutain, and near other mountains, ther scenery here was absolutely gorgeous. Also, Granada has the last gem of the Shiite family: The Alahambra. The Shiites of Islam helped Christian Spain over throw the rule of another Islamic family, and thus, were allowed to build their palace and remain in Spain in Granada. The Alahambra is a beautiful kingdom, complete with miles of gardens.

I just thought this was funny.

Street lamps in Granada are really nice aren't they? These would be destroyed in America haha.

REAL gypsy territory. I think modern gypsies just mean hippies, because they all wear tie-die and smoke marijuana everywhere! We were eating at a cafe next to where I took this picture, and every table around us was smoking marijuana!

El Gato Negro! Pj and I studied this fellow, he is all over the city, and we don't know what he means, below is his meaning, but I can't read it.

If you know what it says, comment on this post and let me know!

A view of the cathedral from above the city.

Some mountains near the Alahambra

The Alahambra at night.

Inside the Alahambra: The largest courtyard and reflecting pool.

Fishies inside the reflecting pool!

Some examples of Islamic patterns (next five photos)

The Generallife (Garden of Eden??) at the Alahambra

Can you spot what is wrong with this picture...? :)

An overview of the start of the Generallife.

This cyprus tree was so thick that I am pushing back as hard as I can, can you tell??

A fountain under some trees (see context below)

Me and another blonde (a rare thing in Spain!) posing for pictures!

The fountain above as I photographed it.

A set of stairs with a little plaza on the way down, with little streams of water on the side.

A staircase on the way back down the mountain...

...Followed by a walkway...

...Followed by an archway.

A view of Granada from Alcazaba (guard tower) at the Alahambra

Me and Granada from the Alcazaba

More of Grandada

The Sierra Nevada

The DuNgEoN!!!

Me on one of the historic cannons :)

Cordoba!

Hello everyone!

Don't forget to check out my post below this one on Madrid! Anyway, when we arrived in Codoba, everyone was quite happy to be there, the weather was great, and the city, although smaller feeling than Madrid, was absolutely gorgeous. I don't have too many pictures though, because I wasn't smart enough to take enough, but don't worry, I make up for that with Granada and Sevilla! Anywho, not shown here are the Arab baths (Hamman) that we visited, because pictures were not allowed. They were very cool though, there were three pools inside, a temperately temperatured pool, a very hot one, and a cold one. The way it works is you start in the temperate one, then move to the hot one, which you cannot stay in for more than 5 minutes (it's about 115 F in there!), and then you move to the cold one, which was freezing, but very soothing feeling after the hot one. After a while you get a 10 minutes massage with 3 other people in the same room as the temperate pool. Very cool! One other thing that I do have photographed is the Mezquita/Cordoba Cathedral (??). It's story is that when Spain was ruled by Islam, the Mezquita was built, and once the Islamic rulers fells, the Christians tried to Christianize it. AwKwArD!

The interior of the Mezquita! It's a forest of columns in here. I don't have a picture of the outside... it looks like a huge rock wall... kind of boring. Massive though.

The quibbla wall, that is not pointed at Mecca, I don't remember why though (Not very characteristic though!)

The first christian dome

One of the series that they are still working on.

Madrid!

Hello Everyone!

I just returned to Barcelona after a week long tour of southern Spain! The first place we went was Madrid. Let's just say that when we left Madrid, no one was sad to leave. The weather while we were there was drearyand rainy, and chilly. There were a few things worth mentioning though! Check em out below :)

This is the metro by our hotel, a super long yellow tunnel, much different from DC huh?

The first day actually wasn't as bad as the second. Here is an example of the roads that I shot while en route to the Plaza Mayor.

This is me and my class in front of the Royal building in the Plaza Mayor.

Here is a street performer! He was really funny (although hard to understand because he only spoke Spanish), and his name was J. Africa I think.

The same street performer on a unicycle throwing a torch under his leg while juggeling! Whew!

The entrance to this GIANT park in the middle of Madrid, beautiful park!

A colonnade near the man made pond, it was a semicircle (didn't get as many pics as I would have liked to -- my camera was dying)

Mermaid sculptures were around the bottom of that colonnade, and here's the nicest looking one, the rest were all violent.

Where the geometry started... we didn't stay too long in the geometric section!

Cute birdy... Enough said.

An oddly sculptured tree in the park (you can see it i the geometric picture above)

A literal topography! Pretty neat looking though, it was also an islande because of the little stream they built around it,

An interior courtyard of the museum of modern art in Madrid. Sorry guys, no pictures from the inside, pictures weren't allowed.

Looking up in the glass elevator!

Cars, street performers, and grafitti

Dear Everyone! This is post number two, there aren't as many pictures of the city itself, but some good pictures of the people in it, and some activities I ran into today. I also would like to congratulate Christy's (one of the teachers) sisters, who just had a baby. But anyway, this past week I didn't do too much that was picture worthy, but I got up this morning so that I could post another blog. I walked around for about three hours, and found a classic cars show, and some break dancers, and a few other things, hope you enjoy them :)

This is for Clara, thought is was cool.

The interior courtyard of the museum of Frederick Mares.

The next series of pictures is for Pat, I found a classic car show that had some Porsches and BMWs and others

This is Gaudi's real masterpiece haha, jk, but this is his lamp in Placa Reial.

Street performers! They were doing all kinds of stunts and flips and jumps, it was really neat.

And then of course, standing on top of eachother.

Back from popular demand, the artwork/grafitti of the city.