Spain 2016 – Day 3 – Granada

Today was the only day of the break where we had anything planned. One of the draws of being in this region was being able to visit Granada, somewhere that everyone who has been there seems to wax lyrical about. We had been warned about booking early for the Alhambra and when I did, a couple of months ago, I was amazed at how booked up it was already, so it is certainly popular. In the end we went for a 14:30 slot which allowed us to explore the town in the morning and the Alhambra itself in the afternoon.

We arrived at Granada at 10am and parked up at the Alhambra car park having decided that this would be the easiest option as reading online it seemed that parking could be difficult in the town itself. After a short stop to collect our pre-booked tickets we walked down into town and it was steeply down too so the walk back up would be fun!

First stop was a cafe for a well earned coffee and a Fanta! That out the way we wandered the streets past some lovely buildings following the stream that ran between the road and the base of the hill to the Alhambra. Ideally we wanted to find the iconic view that you see on so many postcards taken overlooking the Alhambra site but this was to elude us (spoiler alert – don’t look too closely at the header image if you don’t want to know yet if we managed to find it!).

We made the climb back up to our staring point and entered the Alhambra. The site is huge made up of at least four distinct areas including the Nasrid Palace and Generalife. Entry to the former is via timed ticket which avoids there being massive crowds traipsing through the rooms, although it was still busy with parties of disinterested school kids.

It is easy to see why it is so popular as the buildings and in particular the mosaic tiles and carvings are spectacular. There is something deeply pleasing about the Moorish geometric designs.

The outside wasn’t bad either!

In the end we spent the best part of three hours wandering around the well preserved site and could easily have spent more time. It was certainly well worth the €14 each entry fee we paid.

We then caught the little train back down to the town and this time stayed on until we reached the highest point. We got off and went for a wander and somehow stumbled upon the view I had been hoping to find across the town to the Alhambra and the snow capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada behind – breathtaking.

A slow walk back down to the bottom where we had some dinner. In my case the local speciality of plato alpujarreño which looks like an English breakfast with it’s sausage, egg and black pudding and was a welcome treat after a long days walking. By the time we had walked back to the top and the car park we had done over 20,000 steps which is equivalent to ten miles and were knackered but it was a great day.