Beinvenido a Espana

That means "Welcome to Spain". No, I didn't know how to say that. I looked it up online. I hope its right. That would be kind of embarrassing if it wasn't.

Mom came over and we both got our one backpack completely packed (we didn't check any bags). With our backpacks, we took the bus over to St. Paul's Cathedral so we could walk over the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern. We went inside and walked around to each of the four galleries. It was kind of tough work lugging my totally full backpack around (I'm a wimp) so I wasn't too interest. Plus I was kind of tired for some reason so I sat one a couch for a little bit with the two backpacks while Mom walked around. I had been there before so it wasn't essential for me to walk around. Anything that I recognized or knew something about I showed to her.

We left the Tate Modern and took another bus over to Victoria Coach Station so we could get to Stansted. We bought our tickets after waiting in yet another line. We didn't have any reason to wait so caught the first bus there. The bus took a different route than it did the last time I was on it (the routes are different depending on when you ride). This route went near Wembley Stadium and through a lot of green fields which was kind of weird. We got to the airport and (you guessed it) waited in line to check in. We did that without a hitch and then went through security. It was about 4 pm and all we had eaten was a couple PBJ sandwiches so we had a couple snacks before getting on the plane.

Mom wanted an aisle seat and I wanted a window seat so we sat across the aisle from each other (Two rows of three seats, Mom sat next to the aisle, I sat three seats to the right against the window). In between us were two people wearing the same color shirt. Actually, there were 15 people on our flight all wearing the same shirts. It turned out they were all visiting a friend of their's who is studying in Spain this semester. Anybody back home want to do that for me? Haha. They talked the whole flight and I read for most of it. It was nice. The landing was not so nice. I was looking out the window and the runway kept going by. I thought, "We need to touch down soon..." All of a sudden, WHUMMP! We dropped a good couple feet and touched down. It was kind of freaky. We grabbed a bus into Granada.

Granada is in Southern Spain which is commonly referred to as Andalusia. It is an area affected greatly by the Muslims who ruled over it from about 720 to 1100. We got into town and found our hotel. We went out to try and find some place to eat and ended up finding an ice cream shop which was very near to the Cathedral. It was located in a square with a cool fountain (picture 1). The ice cream was SO DELICIOUS!!!! Truly some of the best ice cream I have ever had. Mom had Dulce de Leche and I had an almond flavored one. So good! I don't even know what else to say about it. Just great. We walked around a little bit more along the main street, Gran Via de Colon, which had really cool street lights (picture 2). I knew we were in Spain when I saw an orange tree outside the cathedral (picture 3).

We made our way back to the hotel and went to sleep. I didn't take very many pictures (only like 10) today because it was dark while we were in Granada and night pictures are hard. Also, I have a lot of pictures of the Tate so I didn't take any of it. The rest of the day was spent on buses or airplanes which didn't really warrant pictures to me.