My mom and sister were relieved to get a break from the craziness of Morocco—though unfortunately not from carting unreasonable amounts of baggage (my fault) on wild goose chases looking for badly labeled lodging. Our first stop was Granada, which, unfortunately was grey and for most of our stay, but still beautiful. The Alhombra housed perhaps more ornate and better preserved Moroccan architecture than I had seen in Morocco, and I loved the gardens and plazas that seemed to pop up unexpectedly all over the city. It was funny to see many of the same lanterns, scarves and embroidered shirts for sale that I saw in Morocco, and also the stores that sold them, which seemed to contain a mix Moroccan, Indian and whatever else might seen “Oriental” and exotic.
On the second morning, we decided to try to get into town a different way (we were staying way up on a hill). The map showed a road leading down the other side of the hill, but we must have taken a wrong turn because we ended up scrambling down a muddy trail. Luckily, I was wearing my hiking boots… I had forgotten how much I missed hiking and the mountains.
My mom tried to slowly and gently wean me off Moroccan food. I was so excited when she came back from wandering around Algeciras (where the ferry came in and we were stuck for a few hours waiting for our bus) with a Moroccan hubz. Then we found another Moroccan bakery in Granada. The hubz became slowly less spongy and crusty and more like focaccia, but it was still round and fresh. We even managed to find good avocados! When I was in Madrid the first time, I bought an avocado. I knew it was a bad idea but I wanted it so bad. It was a bad idea; it was shriveled stringy and brown and the pit was loose in the fruit. After that, I was much more careful about which fruit I bought.
We headed out to Madrid the afternoon before I flew out. I had written down the directions to our hostel and they seemed pretty simple, but what sounded like it was going to be a block or two ended up being more like a mile, and we kept worrying that we were going the wrong way, that we were on the wrong street, that we had missed it… After trying to ask several people for directions, I finally went into a different hostel (which was absolutely adorable; it looked like it was run by a family, there was a fire going, and the little girl was in the living room doing her homework). The woman was really nice and gave me a map and looked up the address for me. After wandering back and forth on the street several more times, we finally found it. No wonder we had missed it—it was just an apartment door with the name written in the call button. We rode a rickety old elevator up to the sixth floor, where we were greeted by a blind mad with a long grey ponytail and lead into an apartment with torn couches that smelled like stale smoke. However, somehow we got lucky, and our room was actually in a different building (another hostel, actually—maybe they’re both owned by the same person?), so a woman came and lead us several blocks up a little road. This one smelled much better, though there seemed to be no one in charge of the desk.
The next morning, after a little walk and a breakfast of churros and chocolate, I headed off to the airport. My mom and Raina accompanied me on the metro, which was nice, as there were quite a few stairs and quite a few suitcases involved. We said goodbye and I left them to explore Madrid before they flew out the next day.
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