Greetings from Granada: Day Trips to Malaga and Sevilla

As you'll quickly see my last week in Spain was a hectic, exciting, adventure full of traveling--exactly what I wanted! I took advantage of knowing the bus system so well, and decided to hop on the bus and go to several nearby cities. I first planned to go to Malaga with my neighbor in the dorm, Claudia, who had invited me home with her one weekend. Due to a change in her exam schedule she didn't go home and I ended up taking a day trip to Malaga by myself. My main reason for going to Malaga was to see the Pablo Picasso Museum. It was a bit of a rushed trip to Malaga, but I did see the main things on my list: the Cathedral, Picasso Museum, and Picasso's Birthplace. Throughout my traveling I realized that even though I had lived in Spain 10 months, I still stuck out like a tourist in these other cities. In Malaga I had a hard time finding one of the Picasso Museums and a man on the street offered directions. Of course after he directed me to the museum he asked for money. It was creepy that I later saw him again and he tried to offer some more "help." I went back to Granada that night on one of the most noisiest bus rides ever and headed for Sevilla the following day at 10 AM.

Malaga Cathedral

inside the cathedral-very similar to the Granada Cathedral

Picasso Museum

"Picasso was born in this house..."

outside of Picasso's Birthplace

I was warned that Sevilla is one of the hottest places in Spain during the summer, but this didn't stop me from going. I arrived in Sevilla and soon discovered that the heat of this city was no joke. The heat in Spain is so dry that it almost makes it unbearable to do anything. And Sevilla was 10 times worse than Granada. I did make it to the Cathedral, which was the main tourist spot. I walked up to the Giralda and was almost out of breath by the time I made it to the top. I now know that I should have visited Sevilla before the summer months arrived. It did make it nice that Sevilla has an above ground metro train that runs along the main street of town. At one metro stop I got ready to buy my ticket and a man jumped up and tried to "help" me. Later he asked for money and I just walked away while he scoped out his next target. My bus ticket back to Granada was for 7:30 and I arrived back at the bus station by 7:25, confident that the bus would still be loading. Unfortunately the one time I was late, the bus was early and actually pulling out of the platform when I arrived. I waved to the driver but he made a face that let me know he would not be stopping to let me on. Frustrated, I walked to the customer service desk where a not too helpful woman told me the next bus left at 11 PM. I was annoyed that I would have to spend 3 more hours in this hot city. I camped out at Starbucks and walked around the shopping district before heading back to the station. We were all loaded on the bus at 11 PM and while the driver was backing out we all heard a loud BANG. Turns out the driver had forgotten to close the luggage compartment and it hit the post while we backed out. Thirty minutes later, 3 bus drivers had removed the door and all of the passengers were asked to put their bags on the bus. We were off on the craziest bus ride ever. And not even 10 minutes on the bus, someone's huge suitcase falls down from the overhead compartment. The whole bus broke out in laughter. Later, we randomly stopped for a 15 minute coffee break, and kept ending up off the highway in small towns. I was sitting beside an Australian guy who was very talkative, and neither of us knew what in the world was going on with the bus ride. We finally made it back to Granada around 2:45 AM and all of the adventure came to an end.