Look at the jasmine, whose branches are green
as topaz, and its stems and leaves –
while its blossoms are white as bdellium.
With carnelian red in its shoot
it looks like a pallid boy who’s shedding
the blood of innocent men with his hand.

– Shmuel Ha’Nagid (993-1056)
Field Commander and Chief of Staff for Baiis, Berber King of Granada

It’s spring in our neighborhood in Granada, the Albayzin, and one of the hallmarks of this season is frequent power surges that blow our fuses. Due to this we have several monstrous surge protectors throughout our highly computerized house. The best of them however only provides enough power to allow for some time to try and save data and properly shut down the computers in the case of a true power outage. Yesterday morning we had just that, a true power outage. As Brian rushed around trying to shut down the computers securely I began to worry about the food in the fridge, realized we’d not likely get a hot shower, and that the entire day might be blown in terms of getting anything done.

I went upstairs marveling at how dependent we are for every little thing on the electricity in our house and noticed right away how deafeningly and beautifully silent it was without any of our computers, clocks, hot water heaters, etc. running. As I thought about what we’d do for the day, I got that old snow day feeling. We could do whatever we wanted; it was a freebie day where we should have been working and responsible but during which we absolutely could not without electricity.

After Brian took a short but intensely painful (judging by the sounds coming from the bathroom) shower, we decided to head downtown. Along the way we passed many of the day laborers who work construction in our neighborhood who clearly were waiting out the power outage as well and enjoying sitting on the wall along the river in the sun. Bar/Café owners stood idly in doorways waiting for the lights to come back on and watching the world go by. An already relaxed neighborhood took on that not-your-average-workday feel and everyone was smiling.

In town we had a beer and tapa before noon, bought lots of fruits and vegetables to have a “cook out” on our grill (in case of a truly all day power outage) and shopped for a long anticipated new camera. In short, I’m pretty much already looking forward to the next “snow day” in the Albayzin.

• Respect the Spanish schedule. Afternoon tapas are served generally from 2-4 and at night tapas are generally served from 9-12. (Anything served outside these times is most likely touristy schlock.)
• Get out of the touristy areas. Walk up side streets and explore. Look for bars with lots of people in them and choose those.
• Free tapas are only served (during the above mentioned hours) and when you order beer, wine or something like soda (Fanta, Nestea, Coca Cola). Tapas are not served with cocktails or coffee.
• Be adventurous and keep an open mind. If you get off the beaten track you will be served all kinds of tapas that look nothing like manchego cheese, jamon or olives – the absolute staples of tourist tapas. We have tried all kinds of new things and combinations of foods we’ve never seen and we love it. What’s the worst that can happen??
• Don’t be intimidated. Learn how to order your drink, and that’s all you’ll really need. For example, if you like a small beer and a tapa, order a caña – “cahn-yah”. A larger beer – tuvo (too-boh). For a glass of red wine order vino tinto (bee-noh teen-toh), for a glass of white – vino blanco (bee-noh blahn-coh), or, order anything like Fanta, Coca Cola, Agua con gas, etc. and the rest will happen naturally.
• Tapas are automatically served when you order your drink and will follow a first, second, third, (etc.) pattern. So if you order one drink watch for the server to bring you (or hand over the bar) a plate of first tapas or “primeras”. Order another drink and soon you’ll be served a different tapa or the “Segunda” and this will last for as many drinks as you order although, most likely, you’ll be full or have hopped on to the next bar after two or three drinks and tapas. (There are just so many tapa bars and so little time!)

Enjoy!!

Getting Here (Granada or Andalucía)

When flying to Andalucía from the US check flights/prices into Malaga, Madrid and Granada. Traveling from the West Coast of the US we generally make a stop somewhere on the East (US) Coast and fly directly into Madrid and then fly on to Granada, or, from the East (US) Coast into Malaga and drive or take the bus to Granada. Check flights also through Paris (Charles De Gaulle) if you’re flying from the West (US) Coast. Generally we avoid Heathrow like the Plague because of endless problems with lost luggage and stressful/almost unattainable connection times in that unending airport. For international flights consider arriving in one destination and leaving from another. We do this almost every time we travel because it’s about the same price as arriving and leaving from the same city and gives you more options for cities you might want to visit.

Traveling in Spain

Once you have arrived in Spain you will be able to easily travel around by train and autobus. We recommend never ever renting a car (unless you like navigating one-way narrow cobblestone streets with maps you cannot read and roads which you cannot enter with all the other drivers honking at you…) Renting cars in Spain to drive from one place to another is far more expensive than any other form of travel. And, on the highways there is little to really enjoy between towns that you couldn’t see from a train or bus window.

Always check domestic flights for traveling within Spain (also if you want to fly to/from another EU country) because they are quite often cheaper than the train. Try Ryanair, Iberia, Spanair and Vueling.

Side Trips from Granada

There many who would say you cannot come all the way to Granada and miss either Sevilla or Cordoba because these three are the trifecta of Andalucían culture and history, the longest lasting representation of the history of the Moors and the Catholics (and arguably Visigoths) in this part of the World. It’s hard to disagree with this. If you are coming to Granada, consider traveling also to Sevilla and seeing the Cathedral, the Real Alcazar and Barrio Triana (just a few of our favorites)…. We also like Cordoba – (especially this hostal, the hammam (Arab Baths), and of course the Mezquita). If you are Granada for a bit longer, depending on the time of year, we like to travel either up to the Sierra Nevada (in the Winter) and to the Virgen de las Nieves or to Salobreña or another Mediterranean destination in the Spring and Summer.

Other Travel to Granada Tips

• Notify your credit card company that you will be traveling abroad – we’ve had ours shut off too many times to count.
• Traveler’s checks can be more trouble than they are worth. If you have a major bank card in the US you should be able to withdraw cash in Spain. Travel with small bills – Euros. In Granada it’s difficult to pay with anything other than cash and you’d have to spend like Midas on food and drink to ever climb far above 40€ for two people in one shot. (Although for a 40€ tab you’d most likely be able to use a credit card.)
• Take advantage of the free included tapas with drinks in Granada and know how they work. You’ll get a free tapa with every drink order of soda/pop, beer and wine. (As opposed to coffee drinks or cocktails which are not served with tapas). Timing is ever important – tapas are served only from about 2ish- 4ish in the afternoon and 9ish to 12ish at night.
• Always be mindful of the Spanish schedule and go out to breakfast, lunch or dinner at the same time as the rest of the city. Breakfast is coffee and pastry or toast – anytime up to 12pm. Lunch usually starts about 2:30pm – 3pm – there is only one seating so do not expect to get there either early or late and be able to eat lunch. Dinner is usually about 10pm and often only one seating however some restaurants have an 8:30pm and a 10:30pm seating. The 8:30pm can often be like a ghost town but if you are going to a show, it’s a good way to still get some dinner because afterwards no restaurants will be serving dinner. (If you are able to find food outside of the usual Spanish schedule it will most likely be touristy schlock so try to get on the Spanish schedule if you can.) Finally, it’s best to allow for up to 2 hours for eating either lunch or dinner. And of course, we always recommend drinking a bottle of wine with your meal…
• Although Granada is casual among Spanish cities, travelers here might feel most comfortable with button down shirts in restaurants and never, if we’re being honest, shorts. Bring layers whenever you travel to Granada and if you’re friends of ours, heed any up to date weather reports because we’ve had guests mightily surprised by both the cold and the heat. Generally it’s mild here, but do ask, just in case!
• Ask us for our favorite tapa bar recommendations and we’ll send you the link to our map. We protect these somewhat as they are far more special than many of the ones listed in any of the English language travel books and we simply don’t want them to get overrun!

Last week was a perfect combination of good snow and a sunny clear day, so I headed to the mountains with my friend Ryan, a solid telemark skier who loves to find untracked snow as much as I do. We had a fantastic weekday day with no crowds.

I’ve skied this mountain for the last 2 years and hadn’t ever been impressed – there hasn’t been much snow the last few years and going down groomers of man-made snow is not my idea of skiing; the last 2 years I only went skiing 4 times. For those of you that know me, I used to ski 35-40 days a year when I lived in Seattle, so I had lots of unexpected free time the last few winters. With real snow, the mountain is a completely different place, it has a good mix of steeps and off-piste slopes as well as a huge terrain to choose from. Definitely enough to keep you interested and coming back to discover new areas. This year I’ll be spending a lot more time on the mountain if the snow holds up!

Ryan and I found a great slope with hardly any tracks that we went down once to scope out; on our return trip there was a minor mishap. I jumped in and was having a great run through fresh snow; at the end of the run I hit some crusty snow and the nose of my board dove in and stuck, sending me for a nice fall. I wasn’t hurt (aside from my pride), but rolled over to find a little problem…

My trusty Flow binding split in half at the baseplate. I loved these bindings, unfortunately they don’t make them any more. Getting down the mountain was a bit of a challenge with just one working binding but it all worked out in the end. Anyone got a recommendation for a replacement binding?

A popular and refreshing beer drink is the Clara, a mix of half beer and half soda water (often with a hint of lemon or lime flavor), its nice on a hot day. While we were at the bar a group of people came in and all ordered a beer. And then one of the women tried to amend her order with the bartender – a clara please. What? A clara. Not with my beer was the answer.

More interesting than that is what happens once you sit down. The night we were there was quiet, unusually so for a Spanish bar – normally you can barely hear the person next to you but in Verdi you could hear a pin drop. The owner/bartender came over to our table and we asked if he had a menu of cocktails – we have our usual favorites but I always like to see if a bar has any specialties.

Not only is there no menu but you also don’t really order drinks so much as discuss what your ideal cocktail might be like. The bartender began the questioning, interrogating us as to what kind and brand of liquor we liked, what type of drinks we enjoy. Then he left and made our drinks; I was hopeful, after all if you take that kind of trouble you must be really good at making cocktails. I don’t really know what I got, I had been trying to answer the questions in such a way as to end up with a French 75 but what I got was more of a spritzer with a candied cherry. It was ok but not great.

The concept though is a bold one – trying to pick the perfect cocktail, but ultimately I think it can’t win with people who really love cocktails; its just too hard to make a really good one and guessing what someone wants isn’t likely to work.

For us our favorite is still Bemelmans, but here in Granada I think we’ll stick to Papalagi.

I enrolled in an intensive, 4-10 student, month-long Spanish course through UniSpain’s online form, at the University of Granada. It is not clear to me how I might have otherwise enrolled at UGR as I tried several ways before being directed to UniSpain’s website. I followed the webform on the site, registered, then received an email with very little info about the course, (just its name), directing me how to wire money directly to pay for the course. I then received documents confirming my matriculation in the intensive Spanish course, but again with little other information – solely the date on which I should come for a proficiency exam (presumably the rest of the information about the course would be given to me then such as what hours of each day the class would take place, where, and how many students.) The problem arose when I attended the first day of class and there were 16 students – by the second day 2 more had been added.

Sparing any reader the absolutely mind numbing details of what it says where on the UniSpain website about intensive Spanish courses, the real problem was that when I contacted them telling them the course was not what I had registered or paid for they could not have been less interested in helping me. The course and its fees were over 600€. When I asked for a refund because the class was not as advertised in many places on their website, not only did they refuse to give any sort of refund, they did not offer any other classes or solutions. Instead they wrote me that I should have read the student complaints section on their website, said they were too busy to read my emails (when I finally was able to contact them by phone), and essentially told me there would be no further discussion of any sort, end of story.

It is my strong belief that if this company is not downright defrauding people they are exploiting their non-Spanish customer base. To make an official complaint about any business practices or argue for a refund in Spain you must follow a set procedure that involves going in person to the business about which you are making a complaint and filling out forms (in Spanish). In UniSpain’s case although you can enroll for courses all over Spain, you must travel to Malaga to make any complaint about the courses, no matter where you enrolled. (We had to rent a car and drive 1.5 hours to file our complaint.) Students that are only in Spain for a month likely do not know about this procedure let alone how to follow it.

When we went to the UniSpain office in Malaga we waited outside their security door trying to figure out which office number to ring. A man approached and was entering the building. We asked him if he knew which office was UniSpain and he reached out and pushed the correct button then went inside the building as the door shut in our faces. Moments later when we got someone else to buzz us in we met him again because he worked there but hadn’t let us in! Then, we asked the first person we encountered (they would not give us their names) if we could try to work it out again before filing an official complaint. We met with the boss (we think, again they would not tell us their names or be friendly in any way). He was rude and confrontational and again, could have cared less that we were so unhappy with the class, the information and advertising we relied upon to register, and the fact that although we had received absolutely no services (or they argued, the service they provided by doing my paperwork to enroll) they were keeping all of our money. They made absolutely zero attempt to reach some compromise (a new or different class would have been reasonable and agreeable to us, for example.) Finally, when we arrived home I opened an email that had been sent while we were at the UniSpain office writing our complaint. It was from UniSpain. It said:

I hope you had a nice stay in Spain.

In order to help us to improve our service, we would like your opinion about UniSpain, your school and your accommodation (if we provided it).

It will take you only a few minutes to fill it out, and your feedback will be very valuable for the students coming in the future.
————————–

If you decide to use a broker to enroll in a language class, I recommend ANY other broker – do not use UniSpain.

On the flip side, we have had an amazingly positive experience with the language school I.D.E.A. in Granada. When we first enrolled there the professor/part owner asked us many questions about what we were looking for in a language class. We attended there for over a year (and will start a new program in preparation for the DELE) and were extremely happy with the school and its teachers. They are very responsive and will adjust everything from curriculum to homework to schedule depending on what you might need as a student. This will always be dependent on the class as a whole but the classes ranged from 4-8 our entire time there. In addition we have become friends with every teacher and all of the long term students that attend there. Finally, the students are very diverse and come from all over the world, all professions and all ages (as opposed to the class of 85% American, 24-30 year old students in the UGR course).

Azafran – 958 22 68 82, Paseo de los Tristes 1.  In the lower Albayzin a few blocks from our house, Azafran (Spanish for “Saffron”) serves up dependably great food.  They have indoor seating and outdoor terrace seating in Paseo de los Tristes (with an incredible view of the Al-hambra), don’t get thrown off by the fact that the rest of the terrace options are the usual tourist fare.  The food is well prepared and modern Spanish, elegantly presented.  The prices are expensive but not overly so, expect to pay 12-15e for a main dish.  Some of our favorites are the ensalada remojón (a traditional Granada salad with cod, seasonal fruits, hard-boiled quail eggs and palm heart), crepes rellenos, cous-cous, paella and chuletas de cordero (small lamb chops)

Puerta del Carmen – 958 22 37 37, Plaza del Carmen 1.  Across the plaza from the Ayuntamiento (city hall), Puerta del Carmen is lavish inside and serves a lively lunch and dinner crowd at the tables and bar.  Dress is somewhat fancy, I suspect many of the city officials pop over here for a quick tapa.  They have the full range of Spanish food, from salted fish and meat to salads to grilled meat and fish, all of it excellent.  Some of our favorites are the ensalada “Puerta del Carmen”, the caprese salad, the mils-hojas (alternating layers of goat cheese slices and mango, drizzled with honey) and the Solomillo de Buey (thick and tender beef steak topped with a piece of foie-gras and port reduction sauce, ask for it to be cooked al-punto).  It is also on the expensive side with main dishes in the 15-20e range.  It gets crowded for both lunch and dinner, I’d recommend a reservation.

Paprika – 958 80 47 85, Cuesta de Abarqueros 3.  Just off Calle Elvira near Puerta Elvira, Paprika serves modern Spanish fusion food in a wonderful cozy atmosphere.  They typically have specials, we’ve never had a bad one.  We also like the saquitos (small pasta filled with gorgonzola cheese and with a surprisingly good lemon flavored sauce) and any fish they have.  The food is underpriced in my opinion, most dishes are 8-10e and are so flavorful and perfectly prepared you’d expect to pay more.  If you stop here at night be sure to go around the corner and see the archway Puerta Elvira, its stunning at night.

El Aji – 958 29 29 30, San Miguel Bajo 9.  In Plaza San Miguel Bajo, Aji serves a mix of european food.  You can sit outside in the plaza or inside the restaurant across the street.  We’ve not had a bad meal here but I don’t have any specific recommendations for what to order.

Botánico, 958 27 15 98, Calle Málaga 3.  Located a block away from Plaza Trinidad and next to the university’s botanical garden, Bótanico offers a wide range of food from mexican to indian to spanish.  You can sit outside next to the gardens or sit inside.  Some of our favorites dishes are the Secreto Iberico (small pork strips and pate, if you like pork you’ll love this), any of the salads, any of the tuna dishes, any of the indian dishes.

Kirin – 958 26 00 96, Calle Párraga 9.  If you’re in the mood for a sit-down sushi meal this is the place to go in Granada.  The menu can be a bit overwhelming, we stick to the sushi nigiri and sashimi and some of the entrees and skip the various meal combos.