#3051 three nights in Granada, Spain

 

my wee July calendar

Happy July, friends!

The first five months of the year, almost all I could think about was going on The Trip (and healing my broken wrist). The sixth month was The Trip, and now I guess the seventh month will be writing about The Trip and (hopefully) finishing up the travel journal I started. 

Let's jump right in with the first stop on the itinerary: Granada, Spain. The reason we decided to go to Granada was because my husband, MT, had a burning desire to see La Alhambra. The complex has been a must-see destination since he saw an art exhibit in Norfolk, VA of the place several years ago. Since we were going to Spain anyway, couldn't we fit in a visit to Granada? Sure we can! 

How did we get there? Two flights and a car ride: Salt Lake City to Paris, Paris to Malaga, Spain, and Malaga to Granada. We stayed in an apartment/hotel, Elvira Suites. We were on the third floor. There was an elevator, but it wasn't working. The apartment had two bedrooms, one bath, and very good air conditioning. I liked it. Another thing I liked was that the water out of the tap was quite tasty. I had no problem at all drinking water from the tap in every place I stayed on the trip. 

We were tired/exhausted when we arrived in Granada on the evening of the 31 May. We got to the apartment and all went right to bed. We were scheduled to go on the Alhambra tour the next morning, so we needed to get some rest to be ready for it.

In the morning, we had breakfast at a sidewalk cafe near the apartment. I had a link with the directions on where to meet the tour group, but the link took us in the complete opposite direction of the Alhambra and after a 45 minute walk in the hot sun of southern Spain, we totally missed our tour. We took a taxi to the ticket office, hoping for I don't know what, but hoping just the same. A guide immediately came over to us and pointed us to a person who was associated with the tour agency we were supposed to go with. The good news that if people don't show up, the tickets are left at a cafe onsite. The bad news is that our tickets weren't there. Why? It seems that "we" had cancelled the tour back in April. 

It was all kind of confusing. I guess two tours were accidentally booked, so one tour was supposed to be cancelled, but both were cancelled in error. Oh my dog. MT was so upset. He was just...it wasn't good. We were told the tickets through the ticket office were sold out through July. We'd come all this way and we weren't going to be able to see inside the Nasrid Palaces? There were guides that could take us through the open areas, but we wouldn't be able to get into the actual palaces without a ticket. 

Fortunately, I was able to find a last minute tour for three people for the next day, Tuesday, so I snapped it up and saved the day. (Yes, that's me patting myself on the back.) MT calmed down. I was also able to change the flamenco show we planned to see Tuesday night to Monday night, so I was feeling super capable and like a boss bi*ch. 

We ended up walking down the hill through the Alhambra forest. Here are some photos of little streets in the Albaicin neighborhood:

That night we went to a flamenco show in a cave in the Sacromonte neighborhood. We had a tapas dinner to go with the show. If you don't know flamenco, it is passionate, forceful tap dancing with loud clapping and stomping. The music is classical Spanish guitar and often a singer. It was cool as hell.

family ussie in the flamenco show cave

The next day we made it with plenty of time to spare to the correct meeting place for our Alhambra tour. This involved a 20 minute walk uphill through the Alhambra forest which was shady in many places, but it was a very hot day. By the time we got up to the fortress, I was a sweaty, red-faced mess. Thankfully, I had time to drink some water and sit in the shade and recover. MT was happy to be there.

Alhambra, manifested!

I'm not going to take you step by step through the Alhambra or post too many photos. There were so many people up there that my photos of the inside of the palaces aren't very good. You can look online to learn the history and see way better photos than I have. I'll just show you five photos that I took that I especially like, plus a family pic our guide took of us.

tower of the Alcazar

family photo from the Alcazar with Granada behind us

looking down from Alcazar to the forest with the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountain in background

intricate detail 

view of the Alhambra and Granada from Generalife Gardens

Generalife Gardens

There are a couple of things I particularly liked and found interesting about La Alhambra and the Generalife Gardens. One was the extraordinary and intricate detail in the palaces. The Nasrids included text in their designs because their people could read and write, unlike the Christians who preferred to keep their people illiterate which is why Christian churches tell the Bible stories with stained glass. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. Another thing I liked very much was the use of water and fountains throughout the palaces and gardens. The Muslims washed themselves before prayer, and they prayed five times a day. Water was an important part of their rituals, again, unlike Christians who bathed once a month or something at that time. 

I didn't know anything about what I was going to see other than photos I'd looked at and some elementary reading I'd done. I was pretty fascinated to learn that Ferdinand and Isabella - yes, the King and Queen of Spain who financed Christopher Columbus's trip to the New World - spent time in Granada and in fact are buried there in the Royal Chapel next to the Cathedral of Granada. When we finished our Alhambra/Generalife Gardens tour, we back down through the forest into the city to see the Royal Chapel and the Cathedral.

Granada Cathedral

You couldn't take photos inside the Royal Chapel, but I did in fact see the sarcophagus of Ferdinand and Isabella.

T was plagued with allergies while we were in Granada. We went to a pharmacy to get some allergy relief medicine. He did everything we planned with the exception of going out for dinner on our last night there. He stayed at the apartment to nap and we brought food back for him. MT and I went out to a lovely street, Carrer del Darro, which follows along the Darro River. It was close to our apartment, and filled with both locals and tourists, but it was low key and very pretty.

MT gazing at the Darro River

We had paella to share. (MT is kind of obsessed with paella,) It was a nice evening, and I enjoyed watching the sunset colors wash over the sky above the Alhambra. This last pic is the Alcazar tower from below when it is lit up at night.

view of Alcazar tower

I enjoyed being in Granada. I think if I returned to southern Spain, I might like to stay in Sevilla or even in Malaga (beach town!) and day trip around the area. You can get pretty much everywhere on a train.

Speaking of trains, in the next post, I'll tell you about taking the train from Granada to Madrid, a cool meet-up we had at the Madrid train station, then taking the train from Madrid to Barcelona to meet up with Mom and Lizzie!

If you have any questions or want more info about stuff we did in Granada, put it in the comments and I'll respond in the next post.

xo