Granada I- Alhambra

Upon arrival in Granada, the city that all promised would be my favorite for all the students, hippies, parties, and general fun, I went straight to my CS host, Pablo´s apartment in the city center.  Pablo, a clean-cut 31 year old lawyer for an uban development firm lived in a fairly nice 1 bedroom bachelor´s apartment with bare walls, HD TV, table with 2 chairs, fridge full of processed food and condiments (he offered me mantequilla one morning to put on my XXXtra whole grain toast which I was stoked about, only to find that it was industrial margarine, you know the kind, rather than butter.  I slathered a little on each piece of bread so I didn´t look like an ungrateful asshole).  When I asked if he´d eat carrots if I left them for him he said he wasn´t really into vegetables and that they seemed more up my alley and that I should take them.  I thought people only ate that way in the USA!  Anyway, after dropping my bags off in his living room he immediately gave me the keys to his place and told me to make myself at home and do whatever I needed to do while he was at work.  Wow.  I´m always impressed with people´s willingness to just leave me in their home in their absence.  

I went straight for the Alhambra, which is a giant fort/city with all kinds of different styles of architecture and some pretty impressive jazz.  There weren´t that many people there, especially considering they have an 8000 visitor per day limit.  Apparently, Ferdinand and Isabel occupied the place and met with Cristobal Colon to discuss the money he needed for his voyage to the land of  ¨testing swords on the flesh of unarmed natives.¨  They was all, fuck yeah, Cristo.  Take whatevs you need, just bring back some spices if you´re not too busy raping people the Hispañolans.  I remember my mom once told me (with some pride, I think) that there was some evidence that CC was a jew (just like us!!!).  Oy!  She also told me that visiting the Alhambra was like, the best day of her life n stuff, and for me it was cool, but I just don´t think I´m really THAT into old buildings and gardens n stuff.  I´m more into metal guitars and hot girls and...paintball!  Anyway, I spent about 3 hours chilling/maxing in the joint.  At one point, whilst walking amongst the hedges, I was trapped behind a group of Spanish tourists in their 70s, half men, half women, probably all couples.  All the men were gray, all the women had perfectly coiffed and colored hair, as though they had exited the beauty salon only moments earlier in the Palacio Nazarine old-lady-pampering wing.  Those rich motherfuckers and their perfect hair!  

On the way to and from the Alhambra I was offered shoe polishing service by different men who when I showed them my running shoes asked for a euro for coffee and a cigarette respectively.  Sorry, bros.  The road to the entrance is a half mile long hardwood wooded road that was real pretty, so pretty in fact that on the way down, I hopped up over the wall along the road and made my way up to a nice tree to take a whizz, hoping that the grounds crew didn´t see me and...well, there really wasn´t anything they could´ve done, unless there´s some law or something about not pissing near the Alhambra.  On the road in, there were 3 or 4 custom classical guitar luthiers.  All seemed quite preoccuppied with what they were doing so I didn´t bother them.

After all that jazz, I wandered around looking for some foodstuffs coming upon a bunch of markety places and I found a guitar shop which, of course, I went into and asked the dude about their  fancier classical guitars.  In europe, in my experience, you can´t just grab aguitar off the wall and get to shredding, you gotta ask the guy if you can play.  He showed me the nicer guitars, all of which were ridiculously out of tune, as if they´d never been played after leaving the factory.  That´d be like a bike shop where everybike had uninflated tires.   But, clearly things are different here.  I played a few guitars, one of which was actually pretty nice and was 1000€.  I left and went out to finally find a falafel joint which I later realized was amongst a row of 9 or 10 other falafel joints.
Put that in your arabic-inscribed skull-bong and smoke it.