Granada!

We made it to Granada.

The maids were pounding on the door in our hotel in Barcelona and Chris was somewhere trying to exchange his dollars that I made him bring as some insurance in case our plastic failed. I was so tired. Jet lag, time zone differences, and all of our walking stole my last morning in Barcelona, and I realized that age is a real thing.

We got to the airport too early. Better than being late, but it took far less time to get there than I anticipated and we sat there for hours waiting for our flight, which was only an hour and a half.

But it was a turbulent flight, and if you know me, you know how much I hate flying to begin with. I can tell you with some certainty that I may be the world record holder in number of airport restrooms I have puked in. Flying terrifies me, and it seems to be getting worse with age. Those short kind of flights are the worst, because the planes are older and you can feel every little bump. I was scared on this flight. Because the distance was not that great, we couldn't fly as high as a transocean flight, and I hated every one of those 90 minutes. But we arrived.

The airport was tiny, and we stepped out of the plane and had to go outside to walk to the gate. I've been in those types of airports before, but it's always surprising to disembark down some steps to go outside. And it was very warm. And Chris had left some stuff behind in the security line in Barcelona and just realized it.

Idiot.

Seriously.

But I left my Nats sweatshirt behind in the Beirut airport once. I had worn it everywhere. I miss it.

We didn't know where the heck we were. It's called "Granada" airport, but it was a good forty minute cab ride away from Granada. To be honest, the scenery at first was so much like Lebanon that I got confused for a bit. And then we saw the mountains.

And I didn't take pictures on the taxi ride. Geesh. (See how tired I was?)

I had made a reservation at a pension on booking.com (I now swear by them) but I was worried about our accommodation because the room was so cheap. No, really. Twenty-five euros a night. The reviews had been good, but really, twenty-five euros a night. But it was lovely. The woman owner didn't speak a word of English, and I'm convinced she didn't speak Spanish either, because neither of us could understand a word she was saying except "booking.com." She had a paper with her reservations, and she was very, very nice, but there was not a single place in Spain where we had more communication problems than Pension Mario. Between my broken Spanish and Chris's pretending Italian is closer to Spanish than it is, we couldn't decipher anything. Everywhere else we had zero problems.

Anyway, finally checked into a downright charming room, we headed out for something. It was early evening at that point and we thought we should try to find a place to eat something. The hotel restaurant manager in Barcelona had told Chris there was a big soccer match that night and we thought maybe it would be fun to watch football in Spain. But first we wandered a bit. And we found the Basilica of St. John of God (John the Evangelist.) This is what we saw.

Granada's city color is green...probably because the Moorish history and the color of Islam is green. Loved this dome.

It's called the Basilica of St. John of God (St. John the Evangelist who wrote the Book of Revelation)

And then we went to another church basically across the street.

Then we went for food. We stopped at a square that was populated with many students, as Granada has a student population of 70,000. And they were everywhere. We had tapas. And beer.

Then we searched for the bar that the waiter recommended so we could watch the big match.

We went to the place we were told to go to, but even though it had the game on a big screen, no one was really into it, so we left at halftime and were heading back to the hotel.

But.

As we walked, we passed what seemed to be a true sports bar that was full of people watching the game, and Chris wanted to stop. I did not. But there were people outside smoking and as Chris said come on, let's just have one, I said no, but these guys were adamant in their support for Chris's suggestion, so we went inside for a beer.

So glad we did.

We ended up having two beers each instead of one, and we really into the game. I found myself rooting secretly for Madrid Atletico over Real Madrid because everyone on the planet seems to root for Real Madrid. And though we are not experts in international football, we certainly recognized Ronaldo instantly.  Because of his bad hair.

Our waitress was the best one in Spain. Not kidding. She is the one on the right standing up. She was on top of everything.

The game ended in a draw, which was somewhat disappointing because I had wanted to see the bar erupt into either a fit of jubilation or a fit of disappointment. There's nothing like watching a soccer game in Europe.

Then we went to the hotel and went to bed, because we had an appointment for Alhambra that we absolutely could not miss at 9am. Oh, did this deadline cause me much stress.