Yay, puente!

Friday was a holiday because of Constitution Day, and today was a holiday because of the Immaculate Conception, so we had a long weekend, known as a puente (bridge).  It was perfect timing, too.  After a month of traveling every weekend, and knowing I'm going to spend next weekend thinking about finals, I was happy to spend these days enjoying Granada to its fullest.  I wasn't the only one out and about in Granada this weekend.  The streets and plazas were even more crowded than usual.  This was probably mostly due to the holiday weekend and Christmas markets, but I think the warm weather also played a part. Thursday night my friends and I went to the movie theaters to see Disney's Frozen.  It was really cute! I enjoyed it a lot.

 

On Friday I went to the Arab Baths with a few of my friends.  It was quite an experience!  First we got massages, which were just wonderful.  Then we had about an hour to just enjoy the baths.  There was a warm one, a hot one, and a cold one.  We dipped in all three and just relaxed.  The atmosphere was so calming.  It was nice and warm (except for in the cold bath), and it smelled really good from all of the lotions and stuff.  There were also saunas to lie down in and tea to drink.  After our experience in the Arab Baths, my friend Lizzie and I went up to visit the Alhambra.  It's nice that we can just go up and explore this beautiful piece of history whenever we want (at least the parts that are free to the public).  That night we went out for tapas and then met up with some of our other friends to chill in a British pub we like.

Saturday Lizzie and I had a plan to walk across town to the McDonald's for McFlurries, and then trek back to the other side of town and climb up to Mirador de San Nicolas.  Well, that didn't exactly happen.  We arrived at the golden arches, and saw that there wasn't a McDonald's restaurant to be found. So we figured it must be inside the Carrefour that was there, which I had believed to be a supermarket.  I was grossly mistaken.  To call Carrefour a supermarket would be like calling the Alhambra a little shack.  It was a huge store that sold everything, and it also had a mall inside.  A mall, as in a bunch of other stores within this store.  It was weird.  We did find the McDonald's, but their ice cream machine wasn't working, so we never did get our McFlurries.  Instead, we just explored Carrefour.  We visited the animals at the pet store (the German Shepard puppy was the cutest), and browsed around part of the main store too.  I was going to buy some chocolate here, but the line was way too long.  By the time we had left Carrefour, we didn't have enough time to hike up to Mirador de San Nicolas before it was time to meet up with our other friends.  We went to Plaza Bib Rambla, where a Christmas Market was going on, to try out a new place for churros y chocolate (good thing we never got those McFlurries).  Then we checked out this Christmas Market, and the one that is closer to my house.

 

Sunday afternoon my friends and I went to a tetería in Albayzín, which was of course up a hill so we got a pretty view of Granada and the Alhambra.  Next time we'll need to go at a less busy time so we can sit up in the attic and enjoy the view the whole time.  Afterwards we browsed around some shops and Christmas Markets for a bit.  This afternoon I set out to explore Sacromonte, an area a little past Albayzín.  Sacromonte is notable for its cave houses, is traditionally inhabited by Gypsies, and claims to be one of the birth places of Flamenco.  This is actually where we went to see the Flamenco show in a cave at the beginning of the program.  I had only just been to the very edge of it before, and I am so glad I took the time to see more of it today. It is absolutely gorgeous, and a really interesting area.  It it not too far from the center of Granada (and plenty of buses go through), but you feel like you are isolated and just surrounded by all this gorgeous scenery.  I have decided that I really like mountains.