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Published: June 24th 2013
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From Seville it’s a fairly straight forward cross country drive to Grenada and as I really wanted to see the Alhambra, we decided to make this our next stop. We found a fantastic campsite just outside of the city, near a little town called Beas de Grenada, that gave us breath taking views of the Sierra Nevada mountains (during the three or four days we were in Grenada, the temperatures hit a very sweaty 38 degrees and I was constantly in awe of the combination of this heat and the snow covered mountain peaks?!).
The bus, number 300, journey from Beas de Grenada to Granada’s city was quite an event in itself: a 30 minute journey offering fabulous views as the bus driver swung a huge coach sedately around the mountain roads and through little villages, before descending in to the city, this was worth the 1 Euro 60 cents every time. We booked tickets for the Alhambra at our campsite as we thought this would mean we’d avoid queuing for tickets once we got there, well, it did stop us queuing for tickets but unfortunately once you have your ticket, there’s still a large amount of queuing to be
done before you’re actually allowed in to see anything! This, coupled with the heat, almost took the enjoyment out of the visit… but not quite.
The Alhambra is enormous, it covers an area of 142,000 square metres, it stands on a hill above the city and there’s a steep climb up from the street, past the gardens, to the official entrance, so steep that there’s actually bus services to carry people up and down the hill. Anyway, none of that for us, we climbed the hill, collected our tickets and were then herded in to various queues to wait for entry in to the Nasrid Palaces. The Alhambra is made up of four main areas: the three Moorish (Nasrid) Palaces, Alcazaba, Partal and Generalife, knitted together with some beautiful landscaped gardens and surrounded by woods.
The first palace was built in the 11
th century and in the 13
th and 14
th centuries the Nasrid kings built further to turn the area in to three separate palaces. The original mosque was replaced by a church and Carlos I, a descendant of Catholic Monarchs, had a wing destroyed so that he could build his own Renaissance palace. The Alcazaba is the
remains of the walls and its towers, you can climb these and view the almost the whole city! The Generalife was the summer palace, it and the gardens were built between 1302 and 1309, the gardens are said to be the oldest surviving Moorish gardens. During the Napoleonic wars the Alhambra was used as a barracks and was all but destroyed, it’s since then been comprehensively restored. It is an amazing piece of history and beautifully preserved (there are a long list of rules issued to visitors however, written on the back of the map, and one of these, as an example, states that visitors must not lay down on the benches??!) but it does get crowded, you need a bit of patience to help you round. We made our way back down the hill to the Plaza Nueva, where we found a bar that had outside umbrellas that send out jets of cold mist to the tables below, so we sat and drank an Alhambra beer (yes, really!), perfect with the plate of free olives that were also brought out to us.
During a second day in the city we climbed the streets of Albayzin, an old Muslim
quarter, towards Mirador San Nicholas which offers the best lookout point for views of the Alhambra. The journey up to the church took us up steps and cobbled narrow streets, lined with white painted houses and their and walled gardens, it was beautiful and all seemed very clean with no litter or graffiti and very little traffic. Lovely! We had some time to kill before visiting the cathedral as it was shut until 4pm, so we found a bar called Bodegas Casteneda and ordered a drink. Seconds after our drinks were poured, two small white plates, each with a large meatball covered in tomato sauce and a slice of bread, were slung casually along the bar by the waiter, coming to a stop directly in front of us… more free food! The meatballs were really tasty and, looking around us, we noticed that all the tapas plates looked really appetizing, resolving to come back for some early dinner once we’d spent some time at the cathedral, off we went. There are wall to wall ‘souvenir’ shops almost literally on the cathedral doorstep and huddling so close to its perimeter that it’s impossible to get an overall view of the cathedral
itself, it brought to mind the story in the New Testament of how angry Jesus was when he found the market traders in the temple and turned them all out, I had a bit of a giggle at the irony! Unfortunately on our return to Bodegas Casteneda for our dinner (free or otherwise), it was closed (at 5.30pm??) so we found somewhere else to enjoy a lovely bottle of rioja and local cold meat and cheese, just a shame we’d missed out on the free tapas!
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Rob Rowley
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Hi you guys, Great to keep up with you, where are you now? Keep safe. Rob & Chris