Author: Andrew + Allison

For those that don’t know, Andrew studied abroad for a few months in Granada during high school, so this place has many nostalgic memories for him. He had gone back to visit once, about 7 years ago, with his 2 best friends when they traveled a bit after college. I was excited to explore this part of Spain with Andrew, knowing all that the city meant to him.

Upon leaving our hostel in Sevilla, a bit late might I add, we rushed to the train station to catch our train. I have to admit, we were cutting it a bit close time-wise (even for me), something Andrew was not super stoked on. We ended up making it with 10 minutes to spare though, so had time to grab a quick pic at the train station.

We got bored on the train and took the pictures below for Gabby & Dave, our friends who graciously gave us these glasses on our wedding night…

While on the train, they announced something about taking a bus, which left everyone, especially all the non-Spanish speakers aboard, a bit confused. Apparently they were doing work or some type of construction on the train, so we stopped a few cities prior to Granada and had to take a bus for the last hour into town.

After about 3.5 hours of traveling, we arrived in Granada. Upon entering our Airbnb, we were greeted by our host who showed us around the apartment and gave us some very useful tips and recommendations for exploring the city. The Airbnb in Granada was so cute and perfect for our stay. We highly recommend any couple stay here if you’re ever planning a trip to Granada. Reach out to us for exact info if interested.

Granada Airbnb:

We ended up checking out the local market and picked up a few breakfast & lunch items for the next few days. Once again, Andrew’s Spanish came through, as my Spanglish was rough.

Getting some groceries in El Supermercado:

We spent the afternoon exploring the city of Granada. The city is split into 2 parts, the older area (El Albaicin) and the newer area, which includes modern shops like H&M and Sephora. It’s pretty incredible that you can be walking through some of the older areas, then just a short walk down the road it turns very new & modern.

The most well-known attraction in Granada is Alhambra, an incredibly huge palace that sits upon the hills of Granada. Andrew knew about a great spot to check out Alhambra from afar, so we hiked up the steep hill to get some great photos. We ended up grabbing a drink at a local restaurant and waited for the sun to go down so we could see the lights that shine upon the Alhambra at night.

Mirador de San Nicolas – Alhambra View Point around sunset

All lit up at night!

It is worth noting that there were a lot of restaurants in Granada that reflected the influence of Arabic cultures, so we tried one of these restaurants for dinner. We enjoyed our meal, but we especially enjoyed the amazing chocolate & banana crepe for dessert. It had Nutella in the middle. Enough said.

On our 2nd day in Granada we again took advantage of the free walking tours offered by Feel the City tours, which was the same tour company we utilized in Sevilla. Our Granada tour guide gave us a thorough explanation of many attractions throughout the city, and once again, we were pleasantly surprised about the wealth of knowledge he was able to share with us.

We noticed they have many of these “free walking tours” throughout Europe, with various companies, and we’ve found it to be a great thing to do on your 1st or 2nd day in a new city. It gives you the opportunity to get a high level overview of the city and learn about certain areas you might want to check out at a later time.

Andrew inside La Dobla de Oro – Used to be housed by merchants who sold silk

Fountain in Plaza Nueva – one of the main plazas, very touristy

We wanted to try some authentic tapas for dinner, so we asked our tour guide if he had any recommendations. He recommended a place called Saint Germain, so we ended up checking it out that night. It was the best tapas meal have had thus far in Spain. It’s one of the more authentic places where you get a free tapa with every drink, so we ordered a couple of drinks and received a couple of free tapas. Very tasty. Let’s just say, we had planned to make dinner the next night, but ended up going back to Saint Germain instead since it was so good.

Andrew found another Irish pub in Spain so we were able to check out the Chelsea game after dinner! The drink I ordered, known in Spain as “Tinto Verano”, has quickly become my favorite drink. It’s a different twist on a sangria, and it’s delicious.

One last stop that night (per Andrew’s request) was for the famous Durum Kebab. He had mentioned that he had many of these during his travels in Europe after college with Daniel & David, so we had to try one. I was a bit skeptical, but had to admit, they were delicious.

Andrew and I were both feeling a bit under the weather for the last few days, but luckily we were starting to feel much better, so we woke up and went for an early morning run around the city. What a great way to see more of the city with barely anyone out and about yet. Later that morning, we headed up to explore Alhambra from the inside! As a quick note to anyone interested in checking this beautiful palace out, make sure you get your tickets ahead of time as they book up weeks in advance.

It was quite the steep walk up, took about 20 minutes and is pretty much all uphill. Once arriving, we noticed that the Alhambra is split into 4 different parts: Alcazaba, Generalife Gardens, Palacio de Carlos V, and Palacios Nacarios. Unfortunately the official audio guides were not currently available on the day we went, so we ended up downloading an audio guide app that took us through the 4 different parts of Alhambra. We spent the entire morning checking out the different parts of the palace and the many beautiful features housed inside.

Our very own tour guide app!

Beautiful features of the Palacios Nacarios

View of El Albaicin area (older area in Granada) from Alhambra:

Enjoying the beautiful gardens

Palacio de Carlos V … or as we liked to call it: Carlos’ Palace

Alcazaba portion of Alhambra – Served as a military function for the palace. Tall Towers.

Before heading to Saint Germain for one last tapas dinner before we left Granada, we checked out the Alhambra look-out point one last time, and were also able to walk by the school Andrew studied at back in high school!

Overall, we both thoroughly enjoyed our time spent in Granada and can’t wait to come back. On to our next, and last, stop in Spain, Barcelona!

After a great start to our trip in Madrid, we packed up our bags to head to our next stop down in the south of Spain, Sevilla, also known as Seville. I forgot to mention this in my last entry, but Andrew’s Spanish has been *extremely* helpful to us. Most of the locals consider him fluent in Spanish and he continues to carry on full conversations in Spanish. My 4 years of high school Spanish is getting me by…I’m trying at least, with the occasional pronunciation assist from Andrew.

Here’s a pic right outside our Airbnb in Madrid, all backpacked-up & ready to go to Sevilla!

For the first time in Madrid, we took the Metro to the train station. Everything else was within walking distance throughout our stay, so we didn’t have to take any public transportation. We arrived with plenty of time before our train left, which helped ease Andrew’s mind, but only annoyed me, thinking I could have slept in another hour longer. Nonetheless, we boarded the RENFE train and had a smooth 2.5 hour ride to Sevilla. The trains are similar to the Amtrak trains in the US, however, they do give you assigned seats.

Upon arriving in Sevilla, we hopped on the local bus to head to our first hostel of the trip. As a reminder to those that don’t know, this is my first hostel experience. Andrew had stayed in a number of them on his Europe trip after college, but it was a first for me, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. When we checked in, we were greeted by this sweet, local girl who told us about growing up in Sevilla and her love for the city. After hearing a quick introduction to the city map and telling us about the nightly “group events” they offer, we checked into our 6-bed dormitory style room.

After making our beds and putting our stuff away in the lockers, we went out to grab a drink and some tapas. We quickly learned that it’s not the best idea to go to one of the tapas restaurants that’s right near all of the main tourist attractions. Let’s just say it was a waste of 30 euros that was spent on so-so tapas, all while listening to a Britney Spears song playing on the loud speakers.

One of the “group events” the hostel was offering that night was a “free dinner”, which was mushroom jambalaya. Andrew and I took part in the free dinner, which was good, but then ended up going out for some local tapas since we were still hungry. We headed to an area in Sevilla known as Alameda de Hercules, which is one of their local bar scenes. It was very lively and there was a lot going on for a Monday night. We saw a lot of locals in this area and noticed some kids playing soccer in the main plaza area.

Tortilla Espanola and Baked Cheese tapas:

The next morning we set out to check out the main attractions in Sevilla, the Alcazar (royal palace in Sevilla) and La Catedral de Sevilla (largest Gothic cathedral in the world, 3rd largest church in the world). Both sites are visible from the main street (Constitution Avenue), which was a short walk from our hostel.

We arrived at the Alcazar about 30 minutes before it opened, which made Andrew happy once again to arrive somewhere early. It ended up being a good thing, as the line quickly grew as we got closer to the time of its opening. Like the Prado Museum, we ended up getting the Audio Guides and used them as our own personal tour guides around the palace. It was pretty incredible to see the architectural influence from the reigns of all the different royal families, as well as the beautiful gardens that existed behind the palace. Check out some pictures we took below from our own personal tour of the Alcazar.

Panoramic shot of the beautiful gardens:

After leaving the Alcazar, we stopped by the hostel to grab our raincoats since the forecast showed a thunderstorm coming in. It was a good thing we did, because it started POURING on our way to lunch.

We headed over to get some lunch at this local restaurant called Bodeguita Romero. We sat outside under an umbrella, since it was still warm out, but ended up having to move inside as the wind started to blow the rain on us as we ate…Overall though, a very delicious tapas lunch at one of their smaller, local restaurants.

Tortillitas de Camarones:

Wild Asparagus with Fried Egg (Forgot the Spanish translation…):

Andrew enjoying his montadito (small Spanish sandwich):

After finishing lunch we headed over to La Catedral de Sevilla. We had seen a pretty long line earlier in the day, and we hadn’t pre-booked tickets, so we figured the rain might have scared some people away. We were right and lucked out with only having to wait about 15 minutes to get in! We spent about an hour checking out the beauty of this cathedral – it was pretty spectacular. One of the most interesting things about this cathedral is that it houses Christopher Columbus’ tomb.

Baby Jesus (Or Nino Jesus as they refer to it in La Catedral):

Checking out Christopher Columbus’ tomb:

One of the cathedral doorways:

While at the cathedral, we also checked out the Giralda Bell Tower, which is the famous bell tower in Sevilla. The bell tower goes 35 flights up, so this ended up being our workout for the day. You could see the entire city of Sevilla from the top of the bell tower, so we were able to capture some great pictures.

View from a few of the windows as we walked up the Giralda

Floor 29…Almost there!

We made it!

View of Sevilla from the Bell Tower (including a great shot of the Alcazar):

View of the Bell Tower from outside the cathedral:

After checking out the cathedral, we went back to the hostel to get ready for our Flamenco show that night. Since Sevilla is known as the birth place for Flamenco, we wanted to try and find a show that was fairly traditional, as opposed to the more “touristy options”. Per Rick Steve’s recommendation (travel book author for those unaware), we ended up checking out a show at La Casa del Flamenco, which was a GREAT choice. We were taken into this small room with not more than 50 or so people, and were able to witness a 1 hour, 4 person, traditional flamenco show. We were only allowed to take pictures during the last 5 minutes, but it is a show we highly recommend if you ever find yourself in Sevilla.

I started to feel a bit under the weather so we grabbed a quick dinner after the Flamenco show in the popular Santa Cruz district before heading back to the hostel for the night.

I mentioned Andrew’s Spanish has been helping us immensely, however, he has had just a few hiccups…Like below, where he ordered himself a pitcher of beer, instead of the glass he thought he was asking for. Needless to say, he didn’t mind…

One of the other events the hostel offered was access to “free city tours”, with Feel the City Tours. The 3 hour walking tours are given by a local tour guide and all they ask is that at the end of the tour, you tip what you feel is “appropriate”. Andrew and I thought this would be a good way to check out some of the other sites in the city the next morning, but since it was free, we didn’t expect much.

Surprisingly, this was a WONDERFUL tour. Our tour guide Lola was born and raised in Sevilla, and had actually studied History at the local university. She gave a thorough explanation on all of the sites we walked by and it was very informative. Some of the info we appreciated was that Dorne/Westeros, one of the seven kingdoms in Game of Thrones, was filmed at the Alcazar.

Carlos Canal (Carlos Street)

Bridge to Triana, where Flamenco originally started:

Local Bull Fighting Stadium:

Plaza Espana – Incredible. Our guide mentioned that a Star Wars scene was filmed here:

On our last night in Sevilla our hostel was offering a cooking class for only 4 euros, so we decided to take advantage of this. We learned how to make sangria and yummy paella. It also gave us a chance to chat with some other people from the hostel and hear about their travels. After chatting with a few people, we were able to get some great recommendations for a few of our future travel locations.

Sevilla has been a beautiful city with an immense amount of culture. We’ve enjoyed getting lost within all of the side streets outside of the main plazas and learning more about the history of the city. Now we’re off to Granada – our next stop in Spain!

 

Our flight from LA to Madrid was long (10 hours), but it went well and we were eager to get to our first stop, so it went by fairly quickly. The free wine with dinner didn’t hurt either…

Once arriving in Madrid we took a taxi out to our Airbnb, which was near Mercado de San Miguel. We booked this Airbnb with not much knowledge of the neighborhoods, but we definitely lucked out with this place. The Airbnb was a cute studio apartment on the 5th floor of a fairly modern building. We tried to walk up all 5 flights every day, as opposed to taking the elevator, to keep up with all the tapas we’ve been trying. Here’s a great view of the city from our Airbnb:

Once arriving and settling down, we wanted to take the opportunity to explore the city a bit, so we walked through a few of the well-known areas, including Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor, both of which were walking distance from our Airbnb.

Puerta Del Sol:

Panaramic View of Plaza Mayor:

Plaza Mayor:

On our first night we decided to enjoy some tapas and check out the Mercado de San Miguel, which was right across the street from us. This market was bustling with locals and tourists, and made for a very cool experience on our first night. We enjoyed various tapas from the different vendors within the markets, of course starting off with some delicious meat & cheese.

Later that night we tried the famous “churros con chocolate“, which we felt were OK. But I guess we’re just not big churro fans…We obviously still finished them though, didn’t want them to go to waste!

Our 2nd day in Madrid was spent checking out all the big “tourist attractions”. Of course we had to make a morning stop at Starbucks before our day began…

We spent the entire morning at the Prado Museum, which was pretty incredible. We paid the additional 6 euros to get the “Audio Guides”, which helped us learn the history about each painting we saw. Since there are hundreds of pieces of European art in this museum, we focused on finding what they call the “masterpieces/originals” that are located in the museum. A majority of the pieces were by Velazquez, Goya, El Greco and Titian, all of which were beautiful. Photographs of the paintings were not allowed, but Andrew and I managed to sneak a few in throughout the museum…

In Spain, it’s very popular to have a bigger lunch “Menu Del Dia”, take a siesta in the late afternoon, and then have a light tapas dinner around 10ish, so we tried to work this into our daily routine. After leaving the Prado we headed to El Diario, where we experienced the “Menu Del Dia”, which consisted of a salad appetizer, main entree (chicken for me, steak for Andrew), and ice cream for dessert. Not bad.

After lunch we went to check out El Retiro Park, which is a beautiful park right behind the Prado Museum. A lot of greenery everywhere and some great running paths.

After El Retiro Park, we continued our day of sightseeing with a stop at the Royal Palace. The current royal family lives a few miles down the road from this palace, but this 24 room palace boasts some pretty incredible rooms and decor from past royal families.

All of that sightseeing left us pretty exhausted, so we went back to our place and took a bit of a “siesta” and then went out that night for our very own “tapas/bar crawl”. We explored an area known as Cava Baja, which included a few tapas and lots of sangria (cervezas for Andrew).

The next day we started our morning out for a run through El Retiro Park. We then decided to make our own breakfast & lunch from some items we picked up at the local market. Afterwards we went to a local Irish pub so Andrew could catch the Manchester United/Manchester City soccer game. It doesn’t matter where we are, Andrew will always find a good place to catch a game, and we ended up coming back to this pub to watch the Chelsea game the next day.

Real Madrid was playing that afternoon after the MU/Man City game, so we tried to find a local sports bar to watch the game at, but it was actually extremely hard to find a local, lively bar that was playing the game. We ended up coming back to our place since we were feeling a bit of the jet lag and took another afternoon siesta, but not before checking out Gran Via, a large shopping area.

We ended up going back out around 10pm for some tapas and made our first stop at Bodega de la Ardosa, which is known for their Tortilla Espanola. It was quite possibly the best tapa we had in all of Madrid. We HIGHLY recommend you check out this cute tapas bar if you ever find yourself in Madrid. It was very authentic and the drinks were good too. After a couple more tapas/sangria stops, we headed to the well-known, 7 story club, Kapital, around 1:30AM. Apparently you shouldn’t arrive any time before 1:30ish, as you’ll find the club pretty empty.

Descriptions of the 7 Levels…

We stayed for a few hours, checked out the numerous dance floors and left around 4AM. All in all, a good night and felt like we were in college again. We were pretty proud of ourselves making it out past 4AM, so we treated ourselves with some delicious pizza before heading home.

The next morning I actually made it to a local spin class down the street. I wasn’t too sure what the instructor was saying throughout the entirety of the class, but tried to imitate those around me. After our late night, Andrew decided not to accompany me on this one…

We were looking forward to lunch on this day because we had made reservations at Botin, which is the oldest restaurant in the world (according to the Guinness Book of Records), and it was definitely quite the experience. The service was amazing and the food was delicious. We shared some sangria and their most popular item, the Suckling Pig. Doesn’t sound extremely appetizing, but it was very good.

After lunch we walked over to the local flea market and ended up picking up a few goodies from the local vendors.

We spent our last night in Madrid checking out Templo de Debod. It offers a pretty incredible view at sunset, where a ton of locals & tourists gather around to watch. It was the perfect way to end our last night in Madrid.

Farewell Madrid – we’ve thoroughly enjoyed our stay!

How are you supposed to pack for 3.5 months of various weather patterns? As Andrew and I get ready to embark on our trip, we are up late packing, which mainly consists of Andrew telling me what I don’t really need so I don’t overpack…First stab at packing the backpack almost caused me to fall over, which I assumed meant it was too heavy. Second time around it’s better, but I’m sure Andrew will *suggest* I  take out more before we leave. Our adventure begins tomorrow as we embark on our first flight of many over the next few months…first stop, MADRID!