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Published: March 15th 2009
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Street in Granada
How clean does this place look? It had been a very long day - we'd started the drive from Seville at 6am, and it was now almost 10pm as we drove into Granada. We were utterly tired but had that satisfied feeling that you get when you've got a lot accomplished.
So our first impressions of Granada were in the dark. Tell you what - arriving at Spanish cities and trying to find your hotel in the historic centre at night is tough!! I have no idea where we would have been without Brenda telling us to keep left, turn here, do this... as it was I was still often dubious that our car would actually fit some of those ridiculously narrow streets. But hey, we made it.
Hotel was dark and foreboding. We were staying at the Carlos V, which looked amazing on the web site. When we got there, there was what appeared to be a very old building, with no lobby, and a HAND-PAINTED sign out the front. With hearts sinking, we pushed through the heavy doors to see a completely empty lobby. I don't mean a hotel lobby - I mean the kind of lobby that you enter when you enter
a commercial building. You know, the sign on the side of the wall that describes what businesses are on what floor etc. Except this place looked like a bit of a construction zone as well. What on earth were we in for?
Took the lift up to the 4th floor, got out and sighed in relief. The 'hotel' was actually occupying a floor of a business building, but thankfully it came with everything we needed, nice rooms, free wireless internet (!!) and fantastic staff.
It makes all the difference when you're tired to arrive at a decent place to stay.
Granada is a gorgeous old university town situated at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It's famous for the Alhambra (an old Moorish palace), its strong North-African influences (including the food yum!), free tapas, and its university nightlife culture.
We had planned to spend 5 days in Granada, which meant enough time to go see a few day trips. In the back of our head we thought we may even go up into the Sierra Nevada and go for a frolic in the snow (frolic is all you can do when accompanied by a 1
year old!).
Anyway, on to the show. We crashed that night, woke up early the next (courtesy of our child who obviously does not need sleep!) and headed out to see what there was to see. Granada is a very pretty city, maybe not as quaint as Seville, but has a great feel to it. Loved the distinctly younger culture that was there, the gorgeous buildings, and your requisite cobbled roads. See the pics for yourself.
Our first stop was to find a laundromat. Guess what - turns out there is only ONE place in Granada that does laundry! I'm sure this isn't right, but our hotel didn't know any others, nor did the Lonely Planet, so what to do? It was close enough, so we headed out, got greeted by a surly man who was sitting around in an otherwise empty laundromat, and who proceeded to inform us that it would cost 16 Euros to do a load of washing!! That didn't include using the dryers, which were another 4 euro per ten minutes. Erk! But we had no choice - it was either cough up, or get kicked out of the hotel for stinking the place
up. So 32 Euros later we walked out there, laden with stupid clean clothes. At least he threw in the powder for free ha!
But what Granada lacked in laundromats, it more than made up for in tapas bars. Granada is the place for North African food in Spain - even your standard tapas bars served some fusion of Spanish-African food. Another great thing about these bars - you get free tapas with every drink! Ate ourselves very silly, and for ridiculously good value too! Great atmosphere with young trendy people sitting around in these cool bars, sporting ridiculous afros and dreadlocks, smoking what I'm sure were cigarettes. I must admit that we did stick out a little bit with our pram, and baby!
But enough about food and clean clothes. We were really there to see the Alhambra! We'd set aside a whole day for this event. The Alhambra is so popular, you're meant to book your tickets well in advance over the Net. Which of course we'd done.
So it was an excited cadre of Thambiratnams that headed out that morning to see the Alhambra. Boarded the bus nice and early, laughing at the other
tourists who were obviously struggling with the early morning, whereas we'd been up since 5! Got to the Alhambra to find it completely deserted. Like there were maybe a handful of tourists around. What gives? Guess you only need to book in peak season, and winter is definitely not peak season!
It was absolutely freezing (again!) but we were so excited to be here we didn't care!! Traipsed through the gorgeous gardens, took 10 billion photos of every possible rock and building we came across. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, with really nice light for the pics.
One nice thing they do at the Alhambra is limit the number of visitors (hence the need to book) - which meant that even when the other tourists started rocking up, it never got really crowded! So we got to walk around, marveling at the awesome buildings, pretty palace, fort, etc, without having to jostle with 10000 other tourists.
It was a really good day there, and I'd highly recommend it. One snag though... as we were getting to the end of the site, my camera started making strange noises, and there was an error message flashing on my LCD.
Yet another Alhambra shot
interestingly, this square building had a round audience chamber in the centre with an open roof. Kinda like a colosseum. But in a square building. Very odd. Uh-oh. Turned out, my SD card had died, and with it we'd lost all our pics!! AARGH! You must remember that lots of these pics were taken at great personal cost (ie: me risking the wrath of my wife) and honestly, there were some really great pics too!
So believe it or not, we talked about what to do that night over couscous and tajines, and decided that we were going to go back again, just so that we would have photos to remember the Alhambra by. We would sacrifice one of our day trips to go see the Costa de Sol (another beach area), justifying in our heads that this was ok since the best beaches are in our part of the world anyway.
Yes, we are that sad.
So the next morning, headed out again. It was with some chagrin that we observed the mounting clouds. As we walked through the gates (AFTER we had paid to enter, I'll add!), the rain started coming down. But, it was only a drizzle, so we hoped it would clear up!
Unfortunately not so lucky. The rain did stop, but the clouds decided to hang around to
Sahara gets us in trouble
We thought it woudl be cute to take pics of Sahara sitting in an alcove at the Alhambra. We got seriously told off!! see what we were doing, and so our entire repeat of the Alhambra was under a gloomy sky, with dark foreboding pictures. So after all that, our pics aren't that good, but at least we have a story!!
there's probably a lesson in this somewhere, but for present it eludes me.. 😊
There's so much more to see in Granada - like lots of European cities it has its share of museums and cathedrals. Then there is the Albaycin - which is the Arabic quarter with winding streets curving around steep hills, flanked by blindingly white buildings. The paths were steep, narrow and terribly cobbled, which made pushing the pram around a bit of a chore - but it was a beautiful area to walk through. Our Lonely Planet had warned us about this area, telling us we were likely to get mugged if we went during siesta or at night - which was a dilemma because some of the best restaurants are in the middle of this place!! We actually made the sensible decision, reasoning that it was a bit difficult to run away from would-be muggers with a pram and a baby, but we still got
to see some fantastic shops and restaurants while we were there!
Funny thing - once you're 'warned' about muggers - you start to see them everywhere. My xenophocial tendencies started to come out, every time we saw someone with dreadlocks or anywhere remotely 'alternative looking' I would instantly be
aware. It's terrible. The real muggers would have probably gotten away with our stuff while I was warily watching the supposed muggers. Oh well.
OK way too much to write in one blog... stay tuned for our next Granada blog where we go driving into the Sierra Nevada!
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