Sunday, November 15, 2009

"Nair" jaja (aka Nerja)

Friday, November 13, 2009

Will and I made a spur of the moment decision Thursday evening which sent us on a bus to Nerja at 4pm. FIRST OF ALL, I got up rather early because I had signed up for our AIFS tour of Federico Garcia Lorca’s house. Daryl, Merete and I were on our way to the house, which is in the Garcia Lorca park, when we saw something pretty funny. They have exercise machines in this one part of the park that I hadn’t seen before. There were a couple old people on them, and they actually looked really fun! They had a military press, something that looked like an Elliptical machine and a bunch of others. They were play-ground style…made out of thick dark green metal pipes. It was just funny to see these people hanging out in the park, working out. My favorite was the guy in his dress pants and nice shirt who looked like he just stopped there on his way to work, or Mass, or something. Haha.

Anyway, after the tour I headed over to the AIFS office to print out my Ringling Bro. Barnum and Bailey’s tickets! Malaga, here we come! Well, actually Nerja…and then Malaga! After deciding to go see the circus, we decided to make a trip out of it. We budgeted ourselves to 60 Euros for the whole weekend, and were trying to figure out a way to do so. It ended up that it was a LOT cheaper to stay in Nerja at the Hostal we had stayed at a few weeks ago…between the tickets and places to stay. We tried to make reservations for a place in Malaga, but it was 3 times the price of the place in Nerja, so we booked our (cheaper) tickets and hostal reservation in Nerja! I was excited to go back to get some more Chicken Tikka Masala!

So at around 2 we left for the bus station. We got there and tried to buy our tickets at the do-it-yourself station, but it wouldn’t take our credit cards, so we had to go to the info window. There, we had a little trouble communicating our need for a return trip ticket as well, but ended up getting what we needed…after a bit of time. I blame everything on it being Friday the 13th…which my mom tells me now has no significance in Spain. I’ll have to check that out. We waited a little for our bus and then hopped on and made our way to Nerja once again. The guy at the hostal remembered us right away (“otro vez!”) and gave us a choice between two rooms!

We wandered around the city a bit before going to get our favorite Indian food (still…not better than Anupma’s). The lady there remembered us too…awkward, haha. I didn’t care because I had been craving it for such a long time! We spent the rest of the evening on the Balcon de Europa before heading back to the hostal. I was going to check the bus times to Malaga on the one computer they have at the hostal, but when I looked through the window, I saw that the manager guy was on it, Skyping someone. I started to turn around, but saw him motion for me to wait. He then told me to come over and say hi. He goes: “Mi mujer!” and points to the screen. I recognized the lady who had been there when we had stayed at the hostal before. They were talking loudly in Russian, but I understood when he told her I was one of the Americans that was back for the second time (apparently that Tikka Masala has magical powers…I understand all sorts of languages). He turned the web-cam towards me and I waved and said hola, haha. I thought it was funny. Anyway, I found out the bus to Malaga would be around noon the next day. Time to rest up for circus…who knows, maybe the cloudswing girl wouldn’t be feeling well and they’d need a substitute J

Saturday, November 14, 2009

We made it to Malaga around 1:30. Will was starrrrrving so we ate at McDonalds. Classy. THEN we were looking around to try and figure out exactly where the Palacio de Deportes was. I had looked online and it didn’t seem that far, so we decided to at least try and walk. We didn’t get going until around 2:30, so I figured we would be okay on time. Nope. Granted Will was telling me the time PLUS 10 minutes, we still didn’t make it to the Palacio with much time to spare! We’re lucky they were on “Spanish time” because that meant they didn’t start until about 4:20. We walked for literally an hour and a little more, which was actually pretty fun! We got to see a lot of the city, even though we didn’t really know where we were going. By the time we got there, we had already decided we were going to take a Taxi back to the bus station after that show or else we’d miss our 7pm bus back to Nerja!

Okay…the show. The arena was relatively small…it was a one-ring circus, and I immediately spotted the cloudswing ring and the Wheel of Death. First of all, they started out with this cute mini program and also let the kids and their parents down onto the floor to dress up in costumes, try out their tiny low wire, and learn how to juggle, etc. They didn’t let us down on the floor…I guess Will didn’t look old enough to be my dad (just kidding). I liked watching all the little kids run around, excited just to be near the ring. I picked out the cloudswing girl and the guy who did Wheel from the pictures Jim from C4Y had sent me.

Overall it was a pretty good show. I was a little disappointed with the cloudswing routine, considering it was about…3 tricks long. Maybe it was because it was a matinee. I really enjoyed the clowns (who spoke about 4 different languages) and the 5 little wiener dogs. I tried to get some photos and videos (videos worked better). The lion act was a bit odd…I’m about 98% sure they ended that act after it was only ¼ the way done. The lions weren’t very responsive and 3 of them actually got into a fight. 2 just ran back into their cages, and one kinda actually listened. The trainer was speaking to them in English, and I could hear him mumble things like “well that wasn’t it”, etc. Too bad…and a bit scary, but their roars were cool! Also included in the show were 3 elephants (1 which couldn’t stop going to the bathroom…the shovel-boy had his work cut out for him), a tumbling team, a cross-bow guy, the Wheel of Death guy and a group of 3 jugglers (1 girl and 2 guys) who were actually really good.

After the show we walked back for a bit before we found a Taxi. Luckily we didn’t decide to try and run back because we found out that our 7pm bus was actually leaving at 6:45! Yikes! We made it back to Nerja and went to find some food. Don’t laugh…we had Indian food again. The lady didn’t even have to ask for our name this time on the take-out order. Almost everything else was closed because it is very off-season by now. Oops!

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Our bus back to Granada didn’t leave until 2:30 so we left our bags at the hostal and headed out to the beach. I decided against swimming, even though it was REALLY nice out (about 80 degrees). It has been so chilly in Granada that I forgot to shave my legs, but I guess my emergency ‘Nair’ frenzy was un-necessary, jaja (that’s Spanish for “haha” J). Regardless, Will had fun ‘bouldering’ on the rocks under the Balcon. I got some good photos, which I’m sure will be up shortly! I also tried to help him learn how to juggle...but using rocks from the beach was a bit painful! There were also 2 guys on weird sailing things…they were sitting in these chairs with giant fans behind them and huuuuuuuuuge parasailing sails behind them. One guy kept flying pretty low over the Balcon…it was fun to watch!

We grabbed our bags from the hostal and walked across the street to the bus stop. Before we left, the manager goes: “vemos la próxima vez!” meaning “we will see you the next time”. Haha. Maybe we’ll be back!

We got back to Granada around 4:30 and when we were getting on the local bus to go back to Jardines, we ran into Marta, who was dropping her boyfriend off to catch his bus. A funny coincidence. I didn’t think I knew enough people in Granada to run into someone!

We saw a billboard for the movie 2012 on our way back so we planned an evening around that. Being as awkward as we usually are, we didn’t realize their seats are numbered in the larger movie theaters (all the other movies we have seen have been in the small ones). Me: “Why is no one sitting the middle?” Ohhh…that’s why. Also, it was interesting to see that literally EVERYONE in the movie theater was eating something. I saw people opening up bocadillos and other things that were obviously not from the movie theater. I guess they aren’t so strict on that policy here. Whew. Some people had literal bags of food they had brought with them…the girl in front of us had a bag of marshmallows she downed before the movie even started. It was like a feeding frenzy. Craziness! The movie was really good, even though I probably only understood about 75% of it. It was basically a mixture between War of the Worlds and The Day After Tomorrow…both good movies! Now, I’m trying to decide whether or not to go see Luna Nueva when it comes out this Thursday at midnight…tempting. J

1 comment:

  1. Hey! Sounds like a good weekend away! Paula asked me to tell you that she's reading, too! She has been having problems making comments, so I said I'd make sure to tell you she's reading!

    ReplyDelete