Spain, Day Five--Granada and Flamenco

I have learned from working with the youth at church that one of the best ways to get "buy-in" from them with activities and such is to let them take the lead on what we do.  As such, when we travel as a family now, I ask everyone if there is anything specific they want to do on the trip.  Mark's request? That we visit a convent in Granada where the cloistered nuns sell dulces.  With more research, Glo discovered that there are multiple convents and monasteries that do this.

So, and I hate to admit this, after I found the names and addresses for the main places we wanted to see, I asked ChatGPT to make me a walking route.  WOW! It was really the first time I had used ChatGPT to do something like this, and it saved me hours of planning time.  We titled this event "A View of Granada through a Donut Hole", and it was a major win.

The day before, I had chosen to wear my comfy sandals, not thinking that we would end up walking ten miles, but they didn't quite have the strength to save me from the cobblestone streets.  I had packed a pair of Snoopy Alegria tennis shoes, but I worried that they might hurt my feet after several miles.  I should never have feared--they were the heroes of the rest of my trip.

Most of the convents are in the historic part of Granada which happens to sit almost at the same elevation as the Alhambra....which means we were scaling a mountain again.  But it was worth it--it was the prettiest part of Granada, and I envy those nuns.  I mean, if you are going to be cloistered the rest of your life, do it there.

Mark was a little nervous to use the turnos to buy his sweet treats, and John was a bit bossy, but in the end, we visited five different places, walked five miles, and had a wonderful time!  

And along the way, Glo mentioned that the word "Granada" translates literally to "pomegranate" at which point she started pointing out all the hidden pomegranates around the city.

And no walking tour of anywhere in Spain is complete until we've had some gelato.  Seriously, I don't even know how many times over the course of the week that we stopped for gelato, but it wasn't enough!

That night, we had tickets for staggered performances of flamenco dancing, so that some of us could go and watch Clarkie back at the apartment and then the others of us could switch off and still take Clarkie.  Flamenco is as stunning as I remembered and while the performance was an hour long, it was done in the blink of an eye unfortunately.