PARENTAL ADVISORY: This will be obscenely long. I'm not sorry.
Let me set the scene…
I’m sitting in a wooden treehouse. A suspicious black cat comes slinking out of a shadowy hole (presumably a den of thieves) in the adjoining red tile rooftop. The echoes of the gypsies’ tambourines come drifting down the alleyway. Nearby, someone is whistling “Everybody Dance Now”…
Welcome to Spain.
But let me rewind. I awoke that first morning to someone running down the corridor screaming “LAND!” in a British accent. We ran up to the top deck as the sun was coming up and saw birds circling for the first time in over a week. We watched the ship pull into Cadiz, Spain, and a good friend turned to me and said in all seriousness “I’m so happy right now.” Going against all my natural instincts, I didn’t mock her.
We had no plans except a vague (burning) desire to attend Cascamorras, which is a festival near Granada where everyone throws paint at each other and runs through the streets. So we hopped on a bus to Granada and 5 hours later we turned up at an abandoned wooden door that turned out to lead to the best hostel I’ve ever been to. The treehouse is only the tip of the iceberg… a huge courtyard and bean bags and floor pillows and hammocks galore. Basically what I’m saying is this place is the Seating Capital of Spain. We met so many unruffled (I just used Thesaurus to get a synonym for “cool”) people hanging out there and that night Fernando, a Spanish guy who worked at the hostel, took a few of us out on the town with him to the haunts where the locals go. We went salsa dancing and there wasn’t an English speaker in sight. I twirled with the best of them and by the end of it all I was hoisted above the crowd into the DJ booth and was spotted spinning with DJuan Antonio. Back at the hostel we ditched our bunks to sleep in the hammocks under the Spanish sky.
The next day we walked through the winding alley maze of the Albaizin, down the narrow Moroccan markets (there’s a huge North African influence in Granada), and climbed the hill in the middle of town to tour Alhambra, which is amazingly beautiful/huge and reminds me of the following SAT problem… Hogwarts:Alhambra::Harry Potter:Jarrí Póter. A huge portion of the day was devoted to sitting in various tapas bars across the city eating plate after plate of little food and talking about life, love, and the infinite abyss with our new friend collection. That evening at 4pm, this British guy Ed was supposed to pick us up in his rent-a-car to take us to Guadix, the town where Cascamorras was held. HE NEVER SHOWED. “The Most Vivid Hatred Ever Felt” is a good way to describe the general Ed-related feelings that night. I gathered the troops and made a valiant effort to get us there by autobus but by the time we got there the festival would be over. (Epilogue: I later found out they were actually throwing motor oil at each other… I’m speechless. That’s just sketchy is all.)
Later that night my Australian friend Eliza and I went to get ice cream at this lookout where you could see Alhambra all lit up. On our way back we heard music in the distance and followed it through the streets until we stumbled upon a walled park where gypsies were playing music in a circle. They invited us to join them and were so welcoming, aka they didn’t touch my purse. The music wasn’t like anything I’ve heard before, and they all wear cool clothes and smile and dance and sing and all I want to do is be a gypsy for the rest of my life. We hung out with them in the park clapping and dancing for awhile longer and then got kebabs in the street and called it a night. ‘Sleepover In The Hammocks II,’ if you want to get specific about what kind of a night we called it.
Next day we took the train to Sevilla with 3 of the people we had met. Checked into another great hostel after a 3 hour long hunt in the heat. The boys hunted and we girls actually just ate gelato in various air conditioned buildings. Beds were scarce so I ended up in a 4 person room with The Trifecta, as I affectionately christened them: Three 60+ year old men from “Holland” who never wore shirts, were tanned to a crisp, and smelled worse than anything I’ve ever imagined, if the ‘anything’ in question lived inside a toilet in India. Anyway, we bopped around the city and went out for Paella Night with a group of Australians from the hostel who were hilarious and had a waterproof camera (# of pictures of ourselves taken through the inside of a glass of sangria: infinity). We found an extremely authentic (i.e. the best dancer was wearing zip off cargos and a polo shirt/belly top hybrid) Flamenco place where everyone just gets up on the stage at will to show their stuff. One of the Australians, Chris, and I practiced SO HARD in the corner and got really good and asked if we could dance onstage. They said “si” enthusiastically, then proceeded to ignore us until 2:00 in the morning when the festivities ended. We were so unnecessarily nervous. The place closed so we all went and hung out down by the river for the rest of the night and I finally rejoined The Trifecta as the sun was rising. A great day.
The next morning we took the train back to Cadiz and hung out with everyone there until we had to be back on the ship at 6:00pm. I had such an unbelievable time in Spain and I can’t even wait to see what’s next. NEXT STOP: AFRICA. Hasta Morocco mis amigos.
