El Camino de Santiago, Granada, Ronda, and more...
- jackbriggs2002
- Dec 17, 2024
- 4 min read
A quick recap of some of the highlights and pictures of some of the things I have done the past few weeks.
El Camino de Santiago
Ever since we watched a movie about el Camino in my high school Spanish class, I've thought it was the coolest thing and had it on my bucket list.
For those of you who don't know, El Camino de Santiago is a series of historic pilgrimage walking routes through Spain, all leading to the Cathedral in Santiago. Essentially, people just walk for weeks on end staying at dedicated "Pilgram hostels" using their Camino passports, in cities along the route.
One of the things that I knew I wanted to do while I was here was go on a solo trip. I knew doing one would push me out of my comfort zone and maybe even build me some character. I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to accomplish both of my missions(especially since none of my friends wanted to do it with me).
While I obviously didn't have enough time to do the whole thing, I took three days to do a portion of the Via de la Plata route.
Thursday night was Halloween, and of course, I had to go to the disco with my friends. The night didn't end until really late (6:00) and I had a bus to catch at 8 AM, so when I got back to my house, I ran in, grabbed my bag, and booked it to the bus station. I didn't get much sleep on the bus only because I was paranoid about missing my stop. So the whole first day of the Camino was on zero sleep.
In the three days, I ended up going from Merida to Zafra, and on Sunday night, I took a BlahBlah car from Zafra back to Sevilla to make my classes Monday morning.
Notes:
Muddy Conditions from Spain's heavy rainfall made portions of the walk miserable.
Not being able to rely on my friend's Spanish abilities humbled my Spanish a little bit.
I thought I had pinkeye for a whole day; it turned out I just got fake blood from my Halloween costume in my eye, and it made it red.
I really enjoyed the overall experience. Later in life, I would like to return and learn the French way.
Granada:
The week after, we went to Granada.
We met up at the bus by ICS at 7:15 in the morning on Friday. Luckily the drive was about 3 hours long so we could catch up on sleep. Our first stop before heading to our hotel was the Alhambra of Granada. Our tour guide was a super funny dude named Pedro. The Alhambra is a beautiful representation of ancient Islamic architecture. We walked through the gardens that once were used to cultivate different fruits, vegetables, and herbs. There were still some beds that were growing veggies. We also got to walk through the palace. It was a great tour overall.
After the tour we drove to our hotel and had some time to rest. My uncle studied abroad in Granada for a whole year back in the day, so my friend Lola and I took a walk to look for his old host house.
In Granada whenever you get a beer while sitting at a bar they give you a free tapa, so we had a great time bar hopping seeing different bars, and trying different tapas. We also went to "Spain's best club" according to someone from Granada, but we had to pay 20 dollars to get in, and it wasn't even all that good.
Rhonda:
(all photos of Rhonda/Setenil day will be below blurb)
The day after we returned from Granada, a bunch of us from the program went to Rhonda and Setenil with the We Love Spain. It was so much fun. Rhonda is at a really high elevation, so the views were insane. We walked through the tiny town and saw a bunch of cool monuments like the bull ring and the famous bridge.
After our tour, we got a couple hours of free time so we went to lunch and then I went on a walk down to the bottom of the bridge.
Setenil was even smaller than Rhonda. The whole town is like built into the side of a mountain, so there were rocky overhangs throughout the town. We walked up and around the whole town which only took about 45 min to an hour before heading back to Sevilla to cap off a great trip.
It was a very fun day seeing new parts of Spain.
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