tripartite

i dozed in and out of the train ride through the sierra nevadas to granada...the sun helped motivate me to write...upon arriving in granada, i found the right bus with the help of two other hostelers from singapore (i think?) and got off at cathedral. the pdf i printed out from the oasis granada website was pretty simple to follow from there. i lugged my rickety (noisy) small rolling suitcase up the narrow alley lined with moroccan import stores (you could practically taste the incense from 3 feet away) and followed the signs to the oasis hostel! the check-in was easy enough, i spoke to the german woman who i later learned was the head honcho and she said that it was a good thing i made my free call (what am i, in jail?) because otherwise she would have canceled my 2-night reservation alltogether (they were booked solid that weekend).

room 6, bed 6. took the elevator upstairs and met a nice aussie girl named belinda who had been traveling around spain with a friend and had also spent a little time in morocco. she's just moved to london, and hasn't found a PR job yet (so is traveling to put off the unemployment). i was relieved to find that the travelers at oasis were talkative, open, and full of tales traveling adventures. i took the map they gave me and went out walking, caught an alhambra bus (1€) up to st nicolas and tried not to get lost in the windy little corners of albaicín. i regret that i didn't make it up to sacromonte to the caves. apparently they have great flamenco there.

i went back down to the hostel to relax a little bit and caught up with a group that was walking back up to albaicín. the weather was pretty, if a little chilly in the late afternoon, so i decided to go back out with them. i forget the name of our guide, but she loves the phrase "hella" and hadn't heard it our used it in a long time. i took a picture of a garage that had "hella" painted on it in her honor. maybe i'll send it on to the people at oasis granada.

but i digress. in that group i met rick (not greg), a long-haired blonde, tan guy from atlanta georgia (and at that i thought of my aunt and uncle living around there) who has been woofing for the last few months (working for food and accommodation on organic farms in italy and spain, most of which are run by german or english people); paula, an austrian painter and graphic artist from vienna who had left her painter boyfriend behind, in granada to learn spanish; sharonne, a zany non-spanish-speaking, wheat-allergic and lactose-intolerant australian dentist who worked for 7 years after university, saving every last penny to buy a round-the-world ticket and travel for at least 1 year (of which she has completed 9 months) - she spent the winter in canada (started west in vancouver and ended in québec...wouldn't be my choice for a winter!!), 2 weeks in cuba and guatemala each, and got laid up in sevilla for 2 weeks with a terribly sprained ankle; some guy from south africa who's living in london; sam also from australia who has been traveling for a while selling stuff at these big road shows all across europe (people drive really fast on windy roads? i don't really know)...basically, i was kicking it with people living in the moment, seizing life by the horns. i like that aspect. everyone has a different tale to tell.

sharonne and i decided to get out to alhambra early (6:30-ish) the following morning (as i only really had a bit over 24 hours in the granada) as tickets are very hard to come by (they let in around 2,000 people the day of, and people line up for hours to get in in the morning). slept a bit after eating a ton of food at this all=you-can-eat buffet not far from our hostel, i think sharonne consumed at least 4 plates of mixed salads (she eats meat, but finding a rice-based diet is hard to come by across the planet), and walked up the *slight* hill to alhambra and arrived in the queue at 7 am. there were about 50 people ahead of us, and the line continued to build...we were able to get into the 8:30-9 am time slot to enter the royal palace. i was freezing my bum off in my sepia h&m shorts because the sun hadn't risen by 7 am, but by the time we started walking to the palace, the sun had come out and the ground had started to unshiver...