Granada

The girl and I have just come off from a fab weekend of Granada, complete with sights, sounds, pizza and watching the handywork of many a pickpocket in the form of ladies handing out some kind of shrub thing. The same thing happened to me way back in Barcelona, but despite the two ladies taking my €50 out of my wallet, I got my money back. Unfortunately, we saw one guy lose a twenty, and we began hassling the bitches and bitching about them for the next ten minutes as we (and they) headed back towards the entrance of Alhambra. They were trying their tricks on every passerby and knew that we were following them, so they let us pass, and we waited until they walked by, and so it was a cat and mouse scene for a while until they gave up and deathstared us as we bought souvenir fridge magnets and thimbles.

Alhambra was great! It’s really pretty and the gardens are spectacular, but in no time at all I was a walking beetroot, so I curse my heritage and wish that I had some ability to tolerate the sun. It sucks being a vampire :-P

I’m also doing something very similar to when I first arrived in Europe. I did 8 hostels and 7 cities in 5 countries in 3 weeks. This time it’s 8 hostels and 9 cities in 5 countries in 3 weeks, the only difference is that I’m now with my girl for the first 2 weeks and previously I was only in dorms. She hates that I have to count everything, but she has her quirks as well. She counts stairs. Constantly. I’ll ask her how many stairs there are between our first floor room and the lobby and she’ll tell me. The girl is nuts. Thankfully she’s not paranoid.

On Saturday morning we left Getafe for the last time. I remember thinking back to Sendai, four years ago, and was quite nostalgic about hopping onto the shinkansen enroute back to Tokyo. The problem this time was that I was not all that nostalgic, but rather chipper and upbeat. Also, I’d done the renfe and metro’s enough times that nothing was particularly different, and also I’ll be back in Madrid later on in the month so that might be significant as I leave my year behind, as I’m still in Spain for another couple of weeks.

We’re now in Málaga, on the coast, looking out at the mediterranean in all its splendor. And do you know what that means? It means that it’s now Monday, Magda has left Madrid, so the blogs are returning to public!

For those that are curious on a girl’s perspective on dealing with a crazy nutter, check out Andy’s blogs here. She tells all, complete with cute phrases and some that are not suitable for miners!