The First Week
Okay, so as I didn’t start writing until the second weekend of my residency in Granada I thought I’d write a [hopefully] brief entry about everything that has happened since the events of that I wrote about in Arrival In Granada.
I arrived at my hotel in the early-afternoon on the Saturday and, as you may know from the aforementioned post, spent the rest of that day sleeping and stuffing my face with free tapas. Those of you familiar with the days of the week will realise that when I woke from my travel-fueled slumber it was Sunday. Now, in the UK we have a vague idea that things slow down on a Sunday. Perhaps the shops shut a couple of hours earlier than usual, or your bus will be two hours late instead of the usual one (if you’ve ever lived in Lancaster, you’ll share my angst). In Spain, if you want to get anything productive done at all then you just wait until Monday. With this in mind I delayed the flat search until the working week began and decided to spend Sunday wandering around Granada, getting to know the city, taking photographs and finding somewhere to watch the Manchester United match. I found a place called Paddy’s Bar which as you might have guessed is an Irish pub, it’s in the Realejo district of the city. I’m supposed to be avoiding all-English places like the plague whilst I’m over here and my tutor back in Lancaster will probably wince at the notion of me spending three hours of my first full day here talking to an ex-pat in an Irish pub but, United were on (sorry [Year Abroad Tutor]!).
On Monday the flat hunt began.
I arranged a few viewings with a Spanish guy I’d got into contact with via Facebook, and he said he’d show me some flats that were on the Calle Doctor Oloríz, which is at the other end of the Gran Vía to where I was staying, and about a thirty-minute walk. We arranged to meet outside one of the apartment buildings at 7:30, and I arrived at 7:20. I waited until half-past, then I allowed another ten minutes to account for the Spanish tradition of never being on time for anything ever, then I messaged him. This was when he told me that there’d been a change of plans and he wasn’t coming to show me the apartments because he didn’t have time, but I should just buzz apartment 4A and ask for Javier which I did. No answer. He then told me to buzz every other apartment in the building because Javier was ‘bound to be in there somewhere’. I did that too, no answer from any of them. Stinging from my defeat at impromptu hide-and-seek with Javier and realising that this guy was wasting my time I jumped back on the Gran Vía and made my way back to the central part of the city that I already felt like I knew quite well. Back to the drawing board.
For you can read the rest of Lewis' account of his first week in Granada here or browse his year abroad blog.