Hello guys! What a crazy month December has been! Time has absolutely flown by and I still can’t believe that we are nearing the end of 2023.
I think this December has to be the busiest month of this year! With it being the final month of classes, a 5-day long weekend thrown in the middle of it all, and finally at the end of it the Christmas break! So let me start right at the beginning.
I’m going to start in the middle of November, because for me that’s where the end-of-year fun really began. I went on a trip with Best Life Experience to Lisbon for a long weekend. I wasn’t even planning on doing any big trip like that, but some friends I’d met a month beforehand had convinced me to join them. And I’m so glad I did! The trip to Lisbon was so much fun! My friends and I met some amazing people who we continued to hang out with even after the trip had finished! It’s funny the situations you meet people in and how they end up becoming lifelong friends, even though you’re all from different parts of the world.
We drove to Lisbon from Granada early Friday morning – we left at about 12.30am. We arrived in Lisbon at 8am and from there the action never stopped, we did tours of the city, trips out to surrounding towns, we saw churches, castles, fortresses, cable cars and so much more! Safe to say, it was actually one of the best weekends of my life.
Moving onto December, the 6th and 8th December were public holidays (Wednesday and Friday), so the university made the Thursday a “no teaching day”, which provided me with the perfect opportunity to go visit some more Spanish cities – so I decided that I would throw Madrid, Toledo and Barcelona into those 5 days! I decided that this time I would take the bullet train to Madrid on the Tuesday night, and man, bullet trains are the coolest thing ever. There was so much leg room and the seats were nice a spacious, but the best part was that there was a little screen inside the train which told you how fast the train was moving. It was epic, we got up to speeds of 250-300km/h! So the trip to Madrid was only a 3-hour ride from Granada!
I booked a hostel right in the centre of the city, quite close to Plaza Mayor, and so it was the perfect location to base myself because it meant that all the main sites of the city were an easy distance – within 30 minutes of the hostel! By the end of Wednesday, I was so tired, I’d done 27,000 steps around Madrid, I’d been to Parque del Retiro, inside which there are mini palaces and art galleries, stopped for a coffee at this cute little cafe nearby. I walked back across the city to the Royal Palace which I decided I’d go inside and explore. It was quite cool (better than Buckingham Palace in my opinion), because the Spanish Royal Family no longer uses the palace in Madrid as their residence, you can see more of the palace and more of the rooms inside of it unlike Buckingham Palace which is very controlled tour in comparison. You can’t take photos inside though (except if you sneak one of the throne room 😋🤭). I visited way too many cathedrals, as well as the Reina Sofia art gallery and the Prado Museum.
On Thursday I did a day trip to Toledo, again on the bullet train so it was only a 30-minute train ride! I got on the Hop On-Hop Off bus at the train station, and it took us around the outside of Toledo (which is built on a hill surrounded by a river), before we went inside. The weather was quite cold and a bit rainy too, unfortunately. I wandered around Toledo, visited the main cathedrals, spent €3 to see one famous painting by El Greco, ate a very yummy lunch of chicken shwarma, and made it back to Madrid by 7pm. I should like to add that Madrid and Toledo were cold, I’m pretty sure it didn’t get above 7º the whole time I was there!
Friday I travelled to Barcelona and met up with a friend of a friend for dinner. We ended up having Korean food (because when in Barcelona, eat Korean food I guess 🤪) – the most expensive Korean food of my life, but also very delicious. Saturday I spent the whole day walking around Barcelona, I didn’t really have a game plan for what I was going to do aside from the guided tour of the Sagrada Familia, but that was at 9.30am for an hour. I walked 45 minutes uphill to Parque Güell from the Sagrada Familia because it had been recommended to me, only to find out that 1) I needed to buy tickets [for a park?!] and 2) tickets for that day were sold out. I visited Las Ramblas and the old gothic quarter of Barcelona, took way too many photos (like I always do) and by 5pm I was back in my hostel room relaxing for the rest of the evening.
I took the bullet train home on the Sunday, but because there’s no bullet train direct from Barcelona to Granda, I had to go from Barcelona to Madrid, then Madrid to Granada. Which I’m going to throw in a special mention to all the security I had to go through in the train stations and museums, it’s just like airport security! Again, the bullet train was super cool and I wish we had them in NZ (maybe I’ll sneak one into my suitcase?😅).
Right, jumping forward in time by a week to the 15th of December: I went to a candlelight concert. It was at Carmen de los Mártires, which is one of the old noble houses next to the Alhambra. The concert was a string quartet (two violins, one viola and one cello) playing Queen music. The ambience was absolutely amazing (as you’ll see in the photos), and I really enjoyed the music! Saturday the 16th of December I did a secret santa with all of my friends which was great fun, then that same evening one of my friends was celebrating his birthday early, so we went out and I had so much fun! Probably one of the best nights of my life, and so many hilarious stories came out from it!
The week of the 18th of December was the last and final week of classes at UGR! It feels so weird 1) studying right up until Christmas and 2) because it didn’t feel like the final week of class. I only had a couple of presentations and one test, but all quite easy. The end of the week was when people started to leave for the 2-week Christmas break (we’re all coming back in January because of exams!), but it felt quite sad saying goodbye to people, also because there were a couple of friends who I was saying goodbye to properly as they weren’t coming back after the Christmas break. I decided to spend Christmas in the UK with a cousin, and I’m so glad I made that decision because for me, Christmas is all about spending time with family, so being able to spend it with a small part of my family, on the other side of the world has really helped the feeling of being homesick I’ve felt this past week.
All in all, December 2023 has been such an awesome month (although I’m not going to lie, my travel battery is getting quite low), and I still can’t believe that I’ve got just under 6 weeks to go left on my exchange. I didn’t think the goodbyes were going to be hard, but they are! Especially when you come from so far away, it’s not easy to see all of the friends you made. I’m so grateful for every moment I’ve spent here in Spain – the highs and the lows; I always thought I’d broken out of my introvert shell before I’d come to Granada: wrong. I’ve made friends who have pushed me even further, have opened the door even wider for me and pushed me to step out of my comfort zone. I’ve done things I never thought I’d ever do in my life, and I’m truly grateful for every single little moment and every friendship that has come from my exchange. I’ll always hold every one of them dear to me.
That’s all from me for now: the next time you hear from me, I’ll truly be at the end of my exchange giving you my full thoughts and reflections of my experience as a Kiwi so far away from home.
