Gypsy Caves

The tour has progressed from Granada - the city of love - to Madrid - the NYC of Spain. I admit, I did not get to experience much food related shenanigans in Granada, seeing as our hotel was way up on a mountain and our shows didn't start until 10 30 pm. Mostly we ate at the hotel barbecue which they kept open for us until 2 30 am. Unfortunately, it was not the greatest, and the service was quite awful...mind you serving a hoard of hungry dancers at that time in the morning is probably no one's cup of tea.

Luckily, the city had many other things going for it and surprisingly, turned out to be my favorite city!

I did have one great night in town when my friends and I went to an authentic hookah bar. I have never been to a hookah bar and apparently this city, or this spot we stubbled upon, was the place to experience it.

At first we weren't sure if the place was still open, seeing as it was 1 30 on a Sunday night, but they were indeed open - things tend to get shifted a few hours later in Spain because of siesta. We were escorted to our very own private side of the restaurant. The lighting was dim and the decor was very tastefully done ; it seemed that we had maybe trespassed into a secret room in the Palacio Nazaris..it was great.

We ordered some mint-y tea which was traditionally sweet. It came in a beautifully ordained tea pot with glass cups engraved with beaufitul symbols and arabic print.

The waiter was probably what made the experience so great, he seemed thrilled that four american girls came into his restaurant before closing time. He was very jealous of the male friend we brought along with us...

He was very attentive, and brought our peach flavored hookah out very quickly. The highlight I must say though, was when he showed up with postcards and wrote all of names in Arabic characters for us. It was beautiful!

Of course, perhaps the effects of the hookah made us feel extra specially spiritual and moorish... regardless by the end of the night, we were all outiftted in arabic garber - head pieces and jingly scarves, the music was too good to pass up and we even did a little jig.

It was a fabulous night and the best thing was that it was so different from what we usually did, indeed the bar didn't even sell alcoholic beverages...clearly, that kind of stimulation is not necessary here!