Molly I dedicate this story to you:

So it turns out that a week of relaxation in Portugal made me a bit soft and I ended up getting lost on the way to the bus station in Sevilla and missing the connection to Granada. However, trains also go to Granada so all was not lost. I was getting back into the traveling routine and had just finished flawlessly navigating Granada´s train to bus connection, when a rather attractive French guy asks me if I´m looking for a hostel. Why, but of course I am! He doesn´t seem particularly dodgey so I make a wise choice and follow him back to one of the coolest hostels I´ve ever been. The place was run entirely by attractive French guys that just kept appearing from all corners. I sat in the kitchen with a lovely group of English and German girls and we all agreed that we´d done well by getting off the bus that day.

That night the girls went out for vino tinto and tapas while the boys opened the basement bar. I guess we were having a bit too much fun because by the time we returned to the hostel, the bar was already closed. After a late night of dancing and doing serious damage to my feet I woke up the next morning and thought why not climb the massive hill to the Alhambra then walk around town for two hours? So that’s what I did.

What can I say about the Alhambra that hasn’t already been put more eloquently by someone else? Its beauty floors you but there is so much of it that you really have to take time outs: write a few postcards on a particularly scenic bench then keep exploring. I’ve discovered that my brain can only take so much beauty at a time. Then after a while, like with the scratches on my glasses, my eyes adjust and I stop seeing it. So I strolled the Moorish masterpiece at a reasonably leisurely pace then headed to the other side of town to climb a hill that looked like it needed to be climbed.

In all the fuss over the Alhambra (a fuss it deserves, to be fair) people tend to miss the part of town where the two-lane souvenir lined roads fizzle into a labyrinth of one-way, dead end sidewalk-like streets where cars can’t pass. This place feels more like a remote village than a hot spot on the Trustifarian trail. I went around in pleasantly confusing circles for a couple hours before finding my way back to the hostel, saying a sad farewell to my lovely new friends and heading to the train station.