Blogging through Spain

 All students are required to keep a blog journal of their trip and post photos as they choose. I am impressed with the quality of their work.  

For those of you interested in their perspective:

Alexa 

Clark

Avery 

Robert 

Lieren

Ellen

Merritt

Kylee

Jamie

Shelby

Eve

Kate

Allison

Hanna

Brandon

Conner

 

Home of the Alambra

Hola from Granada.

We are having our afternoon siesta time right now so I thought I would take advantage of the internet and send an email. We arrived last Wednesday morning into Madrid after a very very bumpy turbulent flight. There was more time spent in turbulence than without...and that is lots of time considering the flight is 8 1/2 hours. After bumping our way to Paris we landed and went across Charles deGualle airport to catch our flight to Madrid. We were joined after we landed by Megan and Davin, our National Geographic group leaders.

They took us across Madrid and let us explore the plazas and museums, the food and the culture. The thing that stands out the most about the culture is the time of the day that people do things. So we have adapted.  

Our first breakfast in Madrid was met with less than enthusiasm. We sat down at these cute little white tablecloth tables with large baskets of bread. Very quickly a "waiter" appeared to pour coffee con leche....very good I might add. Then Megan made some comment about this is what a typical breakfast is like. That was it. Nothing else was coming. I walked over to a table of students and told them to eat up. Clark wanted to know when the bacon and eggs were being served. Oh well, there is always lunch.

So back to the culture...we explored around the city and then would eat lunch around 3 or 4. Explore more and eat dinner at 10 or 11. Walk back to the hostel, shower (with a hand hand hose) and rush to bed about 1 am. It is a different way of life.

We took a day trip to Toledo which was very picturesque and then yesterday we left Madrid by train and came here to Granada, another beautiful, quaint city. The NGeo photographer, Tina Soriano, has joined us now and we are working with him. He is delightful. We had class until midnight last night. We are on Spanish time....sleep late - stay up late. I cannot remember getting to bed before 1 am. The students assignment this morning was at the market place. We roamed around for several hours and then met back at the hostel...which is very nice and I would recommend it. Then we broke into 3 groups for lunch. I took my group to this pasta shop. We thought it was a restaurant but it is a freshly made pasta take out. The food was the best of the trip...homemade ravioli stuffed with cheese and asparagus smothered in freshly grated parmesan. We have aa vine covered patio at our hostel so we just took the food back and ate there...magnifico