Wait, this is Spain, not Germany

In Germany we are given two weeks in our Herbst Ferien, or Fall Break.

In my first week of break, my family and I hopped on a Ryanair flight and headed to Andalusia, Spain. With the only country outside of the United States that I've been to being Germany, I was quite excited to visit Spain.  While not many Griswold-worthy misadventures happened, it had it's interesting quirks (I'm referencing my last post.) The week happened as follows:

Monday, October 14, 2013

I wake up at 4 in the morning to ride to the airport with my family.  The flight is two hours and forty-five minutes long, in which I watch episodes of The Office and read Tina Fey's Bossypants.  We land, gather our luggage, and find the driver.  The first step I take into the Spanish sun was great.  Ahh, warm weather where you aren't sweating gross amounts like I have sadly experienced in Virginia.  We take an hour long car ride to the hotel, which is nicely situated on the Mediterranean Sea, and unpack our things.  We quickly run down to the pool, which feels like it is making ice cubes, and relax for the rest of the day.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The day we go to La Alhambra and I get attacked by a gypsy.  I won't repeat myself, so if you want to read about my friendly time with a gypsy, you can read my last post entitled My Run-In with a Spanish Gypsy.  Read with a cup of tea and muffin in hand, and enjoy.  I will however discuss the beautiful Islamic palace that is La Alhambra.  I'm still not sure what its purpose was, but I do know is it's easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.  My favorite section was a medium-sized outside patio-like area that had a fountain in the middle and you could take a picture with the water reflecting the mind-blowing architecture.  I'm not completely sure how to describe it to do it justice, so here is a picture:

The stupid fountain is disrupting the perfect reelection, but still love it!

La Alhambra has so many beautiful features that I can't list them all.  If you want to see pictures of a lot of them, check my flickr out as I will upload a lot.  In the meantime, here is a picture of me with the lookout over Granada, Spain.  Simply breathtaking, and then there's the city :)

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

We woke up early and embarked on the three-hour drive to Sevilla, a large Andalusian city.  After the hot, muscle-cramping car ride, we arrived near a large wooden structure.  The modern piece is smack-dab in the center chaos.  Preview:

We visited a large cathedral, another Islamic palace, and walked around the city.  You'll never believe, we saw about ten more gypsies.  I was ecstatic to see my best friends.

Street view

The organ of the cathedral

One of the ceilings of the Islamic Palace

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Thursday consisted of relaxing on the shore of the Mediterranean, exploring our town of Almuñécar, and swimming in the hotel pool for hours.  It feels so good not having any stress, swimming for awhile, then reading in a beach chair.  Ah, the life.

Timon in the Mediterranean Sea

Pool

Mediterranean

                                   
Friday, October 18, 2013

On Friday we ventured out to Ronda, which is situated deep in the Sierra Nevada mountains.  This meant that we drove for a very long time looping around the mountains and in the end, I was very dizzy.  If you want to know what our path was like, just think of a cosine graph.  Hurts my head just thinking about it.  The trip was well worth it because Ronda holds one of the oldest bull fighting rings and has an amazing bridge built into the mountains.  It is very scenic and romantic.  We also had tapas and naturally I had to photograph it.  Just to inform you, I took 1739 photographs. . .

Ronda Bull Fighting Ring

Awesome bridge

Las Tapas

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Friday we ventured off to Málaga, one of the largest cities in Andalusia.  This is the city we flown into, but upon arrival we rushed off to the hotel so we didn't have the opportunity to explore.  Málaga turned out to be a very pretty city with the Mediterranean bordering the busy city with dozens of stores, restaurants, and everything else you can imagine.  We walked along the shore, then the marina, then found our way to the city's stores.  Dozens of painted lambs lined the main street, while confusing as to why they were there, they were very cool to look at, all with neat, unique designs.  We went into a church and then had lunch.  There I had the best sandwich I have EVER had.  I'm not stretching the truth at all.  It was simply amazing.  It was a ham and cheese sandwich -- Prosciutto and Brie.  Later we went into a cute pajama store where I fell in love with everything they had.  I gave in and bought a few things, so now I can say that I have Spanish pajamas.  Shortly after we went to another Islamic palace, but this one was much smaller than the last two we had visited, and not as exciting.  

The heads on the processional stretcher

Church

Timon eating his Lecker (delicious) cake

My God-sent sandwich

The head of one of the lambs

Me from the top of the palace

Sunday, October 20, 2013
On our next-to-last day, we took a short trip to a cave in town I am not sure the name of.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to use flash and it was very dark, so a lot of my pictures did not turn out.  Bummer, I know.  The cave was still cool and afterwards we headed back to the hotel to spend a few more hours in the pool where I later got a tan, no burn at all (if you know me well, you know this is a rare occurrence... And I mean rare.)

Inside the cave

You can thank me for contributing to your Spanish vocabulary.
Salida = exit

Monday, October 21, 2013

A week after arrival we fly back from Málaga to Köln (Cologne.)  On the plane I finish Tina Fey's Bossypants and SLEEP!  The trip was amazing and very memorable.

One of the coolest things in Spain is that they have workout equipment on the beach overlooking the glamorous water and landscape of Andalusia.  I think I would be more motivated to workout if I could do it there.  Where's my gym membership to YMBA(Young M

There are many things I realized during my trip to Spain, things I will explain in a later post.  Keep tuned :)

Liebe,

Meredith

P.S.  I figured out how to add icons on my blog, so check out my links to my flickr and instagram, among others, on the left (they're the colorful buttons under "Archive."