The past two weeks have been as eventful as it could get here for me. Between my third (yes, third!) round of midterms, visiting landmarks of Madrid and my trip to the Andalucía cities, I’ve been on a stricter schedule than when I’m on finals but it worked out perfectly. Today, I’ll be writing about my trip to the Andalusia cities – Cordoba, Sevilla and Granada – I consider this trip to be the most important because these cities contribute largely to the history and culture of Spain.
On Friday morning, I headed to Cordoba and spent the day there. Cordoba is a the smallest city of the three; it was once a part of the Roman Empire and conquered by Moors as most Southern Spanish cities. Unfortunately, we walked around about 45 minutes before it started pouring rain so we went to the Mosque – Cathedral of Cordoba, got an audio tour and spent most of our day there. Although some alterations have been made to the Mosque over the years after it was changed to a Cathedral , it predominantly looks like a Mosque.
That night, we went to Sevilla and spent the night there so we had a full day in the city the next day. Saturday morning, we went to the city and rented bikes so we can move around the city quicker. Our first destination was Plaza de España, then Torre Del Oro. Then began our long search for “Las Setas De La Encarnacion,” one of the largest wooden structures in the world (P.S. navigating yourself on a bike with a GPS on very narrow streets is a task of its own!)
We went to the top of Las Setas and had the best possible view of Sevilla. Although you can tell how packed the city is by the narrow streets, seeing it from up there was just incredible.
My last stop before wrapping up my weekend was Granada on a bright Sunday. We did a walking tour the evening we arrived and went to a flamenco show.
The next day, we went to La Alhambra. We walked through the Generalife (the gardens) and the Alcazaba (the main palace). It just felt like we were in La La Land for a couple hours. I don’t think I have enough words to describe how spectacular that place is so I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
I hope you can see where my speechlessness is coming from! To add on to the beautiful places I visited, I got to speak a lot more Spanish than I do on a regular weekend because most of the people on this trip went to other universities in Madrid and spoke perfect Spanish. There were also many Tapas bars in Granada since Tapas originated there but, just like everywhere else in Spain, most of their tapas include pork. However, I got to enjoy their authentic sea food tapas! This trip was a huge leap into understanding the history of Spain because the Andalucia cities are one of the biggest tourist attractions in Spain after the big cities, mainly because of their different conquests and evolving culture. Just by walking through the different cities, you will still see the influence each era has had on their architecture and the people themselves.