You can't see it in the picture, but the ocean is out there on the right side. So, I now live with my American friend Josh. He likes music and dancing, and is a vast improvement from Juan, my previous roommate, who liked hamsters and deep-frying french fries. Anyhow, other than moving and familiarizing myself with the discotheque scene here in Estepona, I did manage to do a bit of traveling. I saw Toledo, a town just south of Madrid, which is a World Heritage Site and has lots of cool architecture and a pretty cathedral:
I hung out in Madrid with American friends Andrew and Emily:
And then, along with some other Americans, we went to Granada:
It was one of my favorite cities ever, with a vibrant youthful culture, political graffiti all over the walls, and bomb Moroccan food. We also saw a massive Moorish castle called the Alhambra, which had intricate carvings on all the walls and was built during the 14th century:
I decided to be the super-tourist and get an audio guide for the visit (hanging around my neck in the photo), but due to some burst of confidence and a yearning to hear the Spanish language, I asked to have my guide in Spanish (I could have chosen one of many languages, English included). I was the only member of my group to get the super-touristy audio guide, and so, of course, it became my duty to retell the information to my friends. Let's just say I'm not ready to be a translator. Yet.
I also made it up to Ronda, a classic 'pueblo blanco' (white village) in Andalucía, last weekend with a teacher-friend and her husband. There was a lot of ham:
Ronda is also home to a very picturesque bullfighting ring, and it's one that Ernest Hemingway used to frequent! I just finished reading Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises', which is mainly about bullfighting in Spain, so it was really interesting to actually see one of the places that inspired his work.. and see pictures of him all around town:
February will probably bring more traveling and less discotheque-ing, because Erin is visiting (!!!!) in 2.5 weeks, but that's a trade off I'm happy about.
this was nice to appreciate. my spanish geography is pretty lame, and maybe all those cities are all real close and cozy, but how are the accents in the places you traveled, and is there a "standard" spanish like there's a "standard" mandarin? like what was playing on the tour guide phone thing? i wouldn't have been able to understand it in chinese either.
ReplyDeletethese cities aren't very far apart to me - by american standards they're all within a state the size of california or texas - but by spain standards they're halfway across the country; this means that the accents are pretty different throughout the country, and being in andalucía (like me) is like being in the south of the US - really hard to understand. the accents further north are clearer because fewer vowels and consonants are dropped out of words, and the standard spanish for spain is the madrid accent. i can't remember if that was the spanish on the audio guide, but most likely.
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