Road Trip

About two days ago I got on here and wrote a HUGE summary of what we did on our road trip, and it just spontaneously erased out of nowhere. SO I'm gonna try this again...

I'm doing a class called Advanced Directed Research, which isn't actually a class. I do research and then I analyze it for a grade. For this, I've had to do a ton of "interviews," basically just recording random people here in Spain so that I can analyze their speech. The research is on the use of the lisp sound they make with certain letters.
The first time we went to Seville, I didn't get enough recordings. Seville is a very interesting city in regards to linguistics because they have an inconsistent use of this sound, so I needed many from there. Since I didn't get enough, I needed to go back. Instead of going by bus, I decided to rent a car. I can't drive stick, so i had to pay A LOT more money to go there. To balance out the extra cost, i recruited 3 people from our group to go with! We had SUCH an amazing time! We followed the group bus for the day excursion we had in a beach place called Almunecar and then another in Nerja. In Almunecar we saw a castle (another one), and then in Nerja we saw HUGE underground caves that supposedly had old drawings in them, though none of us saw any. Then we had some beach time, and at the beach we jumped off big rocks! it was like wussy cliff diving, really. :)
All along the way I recorded people in both places. Then the road trip group piled in the car and we just headed west. Our first anticipated destination was Cadiz, on the west coast. However, we didn't make it that far! We were driving on the highway and saw these cable cars going up the mountain like a ski lift. So, we exited and followed the cables to the entrance. We hopped on and got the best view of the mountains as well as the coast of Marbella, which is one of the most expensive beaches in Spain because it's sooooo pretty!
At the top of the mountain, there was a bird of prey exhibit! We had NO idea, so it was exciting because it was a surprise and really random if you think about it. How many times have you taken a ski lift thing to the top of a mountain to find a bird of prey exhibit?? Exactly.
They had a show starting 45 minutes from when we arrived, so we hiked to the top of the mountain and sat on a giant rock and just looked out over the mountains.. It was sooooo nice and peaceful. We sat there as clouds past over and around us :)
The show was so funny, just because we couldn't believe it was happening on top of this random mountain we happened to find. it was also funny because they had this crazy backwoods-of-west-virginia style set up. lol
After that we headed out and were gonna go to a neighboring town that the bird wrangler suggested because there was a beer festival being held in a castle! Cool! But, we missed the exit and decided to just keep driving. We then saw a sign for Hard Rock Cafe and decided to be super American and have dinner there, but again we missed the exit and decided to keep going. We finally ended up stopping in a town called Estepona, on the coast. When we first arrived, there was a soccer stadium right off the highway that was lit up, so we stopped and got to watch some locals scrimmage, which was cool.
We found a little bar and had some food and tried a local beer. Then we found a hostel about two blocks from the beach, dropped off our stuff and just sat in the sand in the dark for a bit. Well, we girls sat there and Frank jumped in, in the dark really cold waters of the mediterranean. Crazy boys. The sand was strange... it was dark!
the next morning we found a cafe on the beach and had coffee and croissants, and the man working it said there was a little market downt the road at the port, so we stopped by for a bit.
We then hopped in the car and headed for Huelva, because they have replicas of Christopher Colombus' ships there. It took us a while to find them after finally arriving in Huelva, but we did! And man was it cool! They not only had the replicas of the ships, but they also had a replica of a Spanish port back then with a full functioning bar, and also a replica of the "indians" Colombus found when we landed in the carribean. It was really neat.
After that, we headed back to Seville to get some recordings. Frank and the other Stephanie went back to the hotel we stayed at the weekend before and hopped in the pool to cool off, and Christy and I split up to get some recordings. We all met up at that same bar, Cervceria Europa for some yummy croquetas! At the bar, we decided to keep the car an extra day and hit two more provinces on Monday. So after eating, we hopped in and headed to Cordoba, which is one of the oldest cities in Spain. We got there super late and it was SO hard driving in those teeny tiny sidewalks they call streets! It was like driving in the Italian Job. We finally found a parking garage and then finally found a cheap hotel to sleep in. The next morning we got up and saw the most beautiful cathedral I've ever seen. All the others really seemed the same, but this one was amazing. It's supposed to be the oldest, having been started in 784 AD by muslims. It's called the Mezquita Cathedral. We also saw the Roman Bridge and the Alcazar of the Catholic Monarchs. Then, we hopped in the car again and headed to Montilla to a winery to taste some wine! We tasted 6 different wines, ranging from light and white to heavy dessert wines. I bought a bottle of this weird wine that looks like bourbon, but isn't, and also a thick, syrupy dessert wine. And I bought my mommy a bottle of the weird bourbonish wine. :)
After the winery, we headed to Nerja, the final destination of our little trip. When we got there we were trying to find the equivalent of a winery but for olive oil because you can try it and then buy some straight from the place, but they were all closed :(
Fortunately, the convenience stores sell local olive oil, so we got some there!
After filling up the gas tank, we chucked our way back down to Granada. It's so hard driving in these tiny one way streets that it took use 45 minutes to drive the 3 miles to Hertz! But, we eventually found it and handed over the car and headed straight to class!
All in all, it was a very successful trip. We got to know more of Andalucia than we'd ever hoped, and I got a lot of recordings from lots of different places!
I probably won't be able to get pictures on here, but since I'll be home in only a week, you can see them all!!!

I don't know if there will be more updates or not on here before I get home because we finish school tomorrow, and then we have a fairwell dinner and everyone leaves Saturday. I leave Sunday morning for Barcelona and Paris and will be getting home August 5 at night. If I don't have access to a computer before then, I'll put up a final posting of that part of the trip when I get home... or when I wake up from a REALLY long nap!