Qué Calor – 3 Weeks Down ✔️

Hey all! Rebecca here. This past week led us to some beautiful adventures in and around Granada – to a Mediterranean beach, a rocky hike, and through a centuries-old Cathedral.

Let’s start with Nerja! Last Sunday, we hopped on a 2-hour long bus ride to get to a town not too far from Granada called Nerja. We hopped off a bus in an all-white city with colorful roofs that would make even Santorini-ans swoon. We spent a few hours lounging on the beautiful rock beach, dining at a British cafe along the tourist strip, and with floating in the sea, which is Leela’s new favorite activity. Of course, we also had to spend some time indulging in a beach photoshoot.

Nerja was definitely one of the most tourist-geared places we’ve visited so far: most of the beach-side restaurant signs were in English, a tendency reinforced when we settled on a cafe to get our daily coffee fill and the waitress didn’t even try to speak to us in Spanish. Though we were disappointed to be denied the opportunity to speak half-Spanish-half-menu-pointing (as goes our typical strategy in typical Spanish restaurants), we muddled through in our native tongue and got some delicious coffee. Después (later), we returned to our friends on the beach and floated in the salty as heck Mediterranean water. This was a huge deal for Leela, apparently, because she has never been able to passively float in water before?? So she was very excited. Kind of like a youth when they learn how to swim, but instead, a 20-year-old who has been swimming for many years and is just now learning how to float. An accomplishment nonetheless! (It’s worth noting that while Leela was laughing and splashing in her euphoria of first time floating, I was face down in the water trying to see how long I could hold my breath and do the whole Jason Bourne first movie thing where you think you’re seeing a corpse but in fact you’re seeing his very much alive and beautiful spy body just gathering its energy to swim like a maniac when the credit music starts rolling….. yes this was a very fun activity for me thank u for asking). Leela will tell you more about the beautiful (😍) rocks we found there in the next post.

MOVING ON. The day after our dreamy excursion to Nerja, we decided to take a friend’s advice to search for a lesser-known mirador (lookout point) in the Albaicín, the beautiful Muslim quarter of Granada built into a series of hills. We relied on our usually trusty friend Google Maps to guide us up to the Mirador de San Miguel, which supposedly had spectacular views of La Alhambra and the rest of the Albaicín. Little did we expect Google Maps to be feeling extra sporty and rugged that day, as it led us first from a paved path to a rocky one, then from rocks to scree, then to what looked like a small and steep drainage path down the side of a mountain. Our footholds were uncertain, but after just the first few steps, it seemed impossible to turn around and go down the way we came up, so we kept going – hoping there would be another path down awaiting us at the top. Our other motivation? Some of the most beautiful views we’d seen, at every turn. In those moments I was reminded of my time spent hiking the Appalachian Trail last summer, where so many mountains posed ominous challenges and never-ending series of false summits. The difference in this case was when we reached what I thought would be the top of the hill and instead noticed the path kept going and the view kept getting better, I was elated — as opposed to the occasional pang of misery (or Dad’s) when my AT path would lead me up yet another rock scramble to no avail.

Alas, we arrived at the top of the mountain/hill to find a CHURCH and some OLD PEOPLE and a STROLLER which meant we found a ROAD. All good things. We went down via the road because we are not stupid and we care about our lives (and you, dear readers).

I don’t have much to say about the Cathedral we visited later that week. It was cavernous and pretty. Our tour guide spent a long time talking about a seemingly masochistic ritual where 60 people crowd underneath a small platform that precariously balances a sculpture (maybe of the Virgin Mary???) with candles ON THEIR BACKS and runs around the town with it. Anyway, pretty Cathedral, nothing special?? Sorry classical architecture and history nerds.

In other news, we have been going to class! Classes are going well. We’re definitely improving our Spanish, though there’s that thing happening where we’re only more aware now of how much we don’t know that it’s becoming harder to speak in certain situations given our desire to use complex tenses and vocabulary. But we are getting better, rest assured.

Highlight of the week: on Saturday night, instead of ‘going out’ and doing that whole bar –> discoteca thang, Leela and I decided to have a chill night of tapas and we discovered an amazing vegetarian tapas bar!!! The ‘salteado thai’ noodle dish that came with our glasses of wine even boasted the closest thing to spice that we’ve had since arriving here. :’) How we miss spicy foods. Pls send us some cayenne pepper.

OBLIGATORY PROGRESS UPDATE ON OUR FRIENDSHIP W IZAN:

• no progress to report
• he still does not like talking to us
• he still likes dressing up as Spiderman
• our singing along to the Bob Esponja theme song has lost its novelty
• we are trying I promise

Well folks, the time has come to retire for the night and attempt, yet again, to find a clever rom-com from the limited options available to us on the Spanish-filtered Netflix. What difficult lives we lead here!!!!

All our love,

Rebecca (and Leela)