La vida tranquila: Granada, Spain

Life is pretty easy here in Granada. I'm working at a small hostel in the city center— and by "working," I mean 3 hours a day, 6 days a week for food and housing...let's be real, it will probably be a while until I have a big girl job. *NOTE: spontaneous offers of employment are always welcome.*

view from my balcony!

Some days I take the morning shift (cleaning) and other days I take the evening shift (reception). I must brag that I am exceptionally good at both tasks. Let me tell you, I can scrub a mean toilet. And, after an entire lifetime of my mother trying to teach me about "hospital corners" (seriously though....we don't even live in a hospital), I make beds like a true champion. While I am basically a human Swiffer, I also rock reception. In fact, after only two short days here, I worked my first solo-shift for check-in. The owners could probably tell that I was born to sit at a desk with my boxed sangria, facebook, text, mumble along to incomprehensible Spanish pop music, and then actually act quite charming on the rare chance that someone actually happens to walk through the front door. 

The people who own this hostel are a young, adorable brother and sister pair. Their father is Japanese and their mother is Spanish, but they were both born and raised in Spain, so I have encountered the interesting predicament of learning how to say their Japanese names — Sayano and Takashi — with a Spanish accent. So here's how I've chosen to resolve the issue:
"¡Hola, Lexi! Buenos días." - Takashi
"¡Hola, guapo! ¿Qué tal?" - Me
Just kidding...I'm rarely that forward so early in the morning. 


Anyway, the two siblings had a "welcome" dinner prepared when I arrived on the 21st and we all spent the evening drinking, eating, and chatting (¡pero, claro, en español!). They're incredibly laid back and want to make sure that they're "helpers" have ample time off to relax and explore. That attitude— combined with the fact that this is a fairly quiet hostel— gives me a great deal of down time so I've been spending the last few days exploring the city.

One of my great discoveries thus far in Granada is that whenever you order a drink here, the bartender brings you a FREE plate of tapas. The first time it happened, I was so incredibly confused; this sort of stuff never happens at Denny's. A cheery Spanish waiter came over, handed me my beer, and a little plate of food.  He saw the confusion on my face —probably not my cutest look— and just said "albondigas" — meatballs. As if that cleared things up. 

Turns out, this is just the way cafes work in Granada. Of all the major cities in Spain, Granada is one of the least touristy, so in order to compete for business, the restaurants keep customers coming back for the tapas because the drinks are pretty much the same wherever you go. So say it's 90°F outside (which it usually is) and all you want is to go sit in the shade and order an ice cold beer (which you will), you can go sit at pretty much any cafe and order a round of their local beer and then... let's be honest... order another one and just sit for a couple hours and people watch. Use the two beers and two little plates of food as your lunch, and you walk away having spent 3-4 euro on a couple hours of pure bliss. 

After one such dirt-cheap-drinking-and-eating-and-people-watching-cafe-extravaganza, I realized that I was being pathetically lazy, so I decided to walk up to Sacromonte. Sacromonte is one of the six barrios that make up the district of Albaicín, which is a traditional moorish part of the city (looks a lot like Morocco!). It's located at the northeast edge of the city, and people have lived in cave-dwellings there since the 16th century when the Muslim and Jewish populations of Granada were kicked out of their homes. That area is now an important site for Gitano (Spanish gypsy) culture. All-in-all, it's a pretty interesting part of the city, but the famous abbey (simply called la abadía) in Sacromonte is at the top of a veeeerrrryyyy long hill, the length of which I was unaware due to my lack of research. 

So I was an hour into walking up this hill in 90°F heat and stuffed with tapas, and literally no one was in sight —clearly everyone else had done their research and knew about this stupid hill — when all of the sudden I hear some distinctly American voices coming up behind me. I was so excited. People to walk with, maybe they're from California, maybe they know how long this damn hill is, maybe they're a bunch of quitters and wanna just turn around and go back down the hill and get more tapas with me...my mind is going wild with the possibilities. So I turn around to look back at where my new best friends are and they're riding up the hill on segways. Yes, segways. They are taking a SEGWAY tour of one of the most important areas of the Spanish reconquest. Damn Americans. Next thing I know, they've zipped right by me, not a drop of sweat to be seen on their faces, just oh so very pleased with their choice of transportation. 

the segway-ing americans
passing me on their way back down the hill

I ended up playing this very bizarre game of "walking-sweaty-girl vs. segway-luxury" tag with these people all the way up and all the way down the very long hill to the Abbey of Sacromonte. Every now and again they'd pass me and then I'd pass them when they stopped to do something culturally enriching, and then they'd pass me, and then I'd pass them after taking a short-cut on a footpath. I'm pretty convinced they were messing with me. They didn't just pass me once and then out of sight, out of mind, they kept rubbing it in my face. Next time, I'm finding out how to get myself a segway. And I will proceed to rub it in the face of whoever else is stupid enough to walk the hill to the Abbey of Sacromonte.

the abbey at the top of the very very long hill
...look a little like every other old building you've ever seen in your life?
(hint: the answer is "yes")

Anyway, I finally made it to the top of the hill and there was actually nothing to see. If only this were the sort of thing that would encourage me to do a little more research.