Lazy, Quiet Day

Thursday, June 8, 2017--Granada, Spain

We were both tired from yesterday.  We closed the shutters on the windows and slept until we awoke naturally.  Then we took our time getting ready and having breakfast.  Finally, we went out for about 2 hours wandering through the local neighborhood to the west of us.

We started by going through the San Augustine Market which has lots of interesting gourmet goodies as well as the traditional meat and fish stalls.  I looked for a place one of the guidebooks had suggested as a great one for hot chocolate and churros, but it is no longer there.  I think the upgrade to have more gourmet stalls probably meant that they were pushed out.

From there, we walked down the Gran Via.  It is a street that was created by tearing out a long section of town about 50 yards wide to create a boulevard with new, fancy buildings along it.  It is okay, but is nothing compared to the street with the same name in Bilbao.

We came across a Carrefour Market and went inside.  We needed to buy bread before too late in the day.  The breads eaten here in Spain do not stay fresh.  Everyone buys bread once or twice a day for the next meal.  By 16:00, it is hard to find any bread left in the stores.  In other areas where I traveled earlier, they would still be putting out freshly baked bread until the evening.  But in Cordoba and here, none comes out after early afternoon.

When I first arrived in France on this trip, I went to another Carrefour Market.  While there, I studied the candy bars and found a Carrefour brand dark chocolate bar with almonds that was delicious and only about half the price of similar bars from other manufacturers--1.29 Euros for 200 grams.  When Wes joined me on this trip, I introduced him to it.  He has gone wild over them.  The problem is, however, that only the biggest Carrefour Markets sell them.  The one this morning had 7 of the bars in stock, and Wes bought all of them (to go with the 2 other bars he still had from the last time he bought multiple bars at a store where we found them).

We stopped at a nice park, Jardine del Triumfo, for a while.  We walked by the train station which is being upgraded to handle the high-speed trains.  We walked by parts of the campuses of the University of Granada and a catholic university that is here.  Then we returned to the apartment.

During the afternoon, we washed a load of clothes for Wes and just continued to relax.  We were both on computers, and I read on my book for a while.

In the evening, we went walking down Calle Recodigas of the city.  This is the main shopping area and an upscale living district.  We just wandered the streets watching people.
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I finished reading Redeployment by Phil Klay today.  It is a collection of short stories about deployment in the military to Iraq, and it won the National Book Award in 2014.  It is a very well written book with stories that seem quite realistic in terms of how people think, act, react, etc.  Some stories are more memorable than others, and the best ones were truly outstanding.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.