Andalucia part 1

So we took a New Years trip to Spain a few weeks back and then came home, tired and lazy, and never blogged about it. Thus, the long anticipation for the blog post has abated, for those who have already looked at the pictures on Facebook, you will see nothing new. Sorry.... But, you will get the insightful commentary to correspond with some of the pictures.

Welcome to Granada, the first stop on our trip

We stayed here for about 3 days and in between trips to the churro stand we got to tour the palace of La Alhambra and fight off gypsies and street scammers (Nothing too serious but a little bit unnerving at times)

I'm not going to try and give any kind of history of the palace because I'll screw it up and Wikipedia is just too easy. I will however say that it was an enormous castle with beautiful gardens and was by far the highlight of the trip altogether. Also, the great American writer Washington Irving (who also wrote stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Legend of Rip Van Winkle) while serving as a diplomat in Spain lived at Alhambra for a time and wrote a book called Tales of Alhambra. I bought the book and it provided some pretty interesting reading about the palace and its history.

One of many Palace Gardens

Some Arabic architecture poking out around my head. Also, reppin' AU, starting to get pumped for the big game. Furthermore, I should add that Granada offered our only War Eagle moment in Spain. While eating ice cream one night a man standing adjacent at the counter greeted us with a War Eagle. He was from Ohio and had come to Spain to work for one year as an engineering project manager, "that was 16 years ago", he sighed. We stood delighted, conversing in English for an hour with John who had no affiliation whatsoever with Auburn but knew about the War Eagle.  After countless miscommunications at restaurants and shops having desires and expectations lost in translation it was a nice change to speak in a native tongue for a while.

I have to go to class now, but I will finish the rest of this blog later with part of 2 of our journeys.

War Eagle and Love ya'll