Olive trees up the mountains and the great photographer:
We had no expectations about Granada, except that there are some people who live in caves there, so we were surprised at how lush it was. We also accidentally booked ourselves in a hotel that was within the grounds of the Alhambra (the last great Muslim palace before the Spaniards took over), which was pretty cool. Here's to rushing through and not really reading descriptions!
Jim in our fun VW Golf rental and the view from our room into some ruins on the grounds of the Alhambra:
On our first evening in Granada, we decided that we weren't going to try to visit the Alhambra, so we just wandered down to the center of town, where there were lots of hippies and a huge Morrocan influence.
Pictures of our wanderings around the grounds before we went down the huge hill, which we eventually had to climb back up again:
Dogs are definitely dominant in Spain, but we still managed to find some cats to pet:
We saw seven weddings our first night in Granada! It's a beautiful place for a wedding.
We took this picture of ourselves as a huge group of very loud Spanish teens was quickly approaching. It's a miracle that we got the picture taken without them in it.
And then we headed down the hill. Granada is one of the few places in Spain that still gives you free tapas with every drink (the places in Madrid gave you maybe one free tapa, but then you had to buy them if you wanted more). So we took advantage of that. The tavernas also sometimes have a bull's head hanging up above the bar:
In awe of tapas:
Our bartender.
Due to our lack of Spanish, a lot of times we knew what we wanted to order (because we saw other people eating it) but we didn't know what it was called or how to describe it. That's when pointing comes in very handy. But when we were getting free tapas, we just took what they gave us.
These tapas were less delicious, but still free. I lost about half of our french fries as I made my way through a crowd of drunk Spanish men. I managed to keep our sandwiches.
After we were sufficiently full, we wandered around...the cathedral! Every city has one!
Even the ice cream is beautiful in Spain. So beautiful that Jim couldn't resist and had to get some.
Here he is, having to take a break with his ice cream halfway up the giant hill.
Although it appears that all we did was eat and drink, we also did A LOT of walking. Jim took some great pictures of our walk around the Muslim Quarter in Granada, which I will have to download off of the other camera. The only picture I appear to have taken (which didn't get deleted by someone) was this:
It is kind of a funny sign.
After our Muslim Quarter walk, we got in line to go to Alhambra. We had bought our tickets at about 10am for the 2pm slot.
Jim thinks these used to be living quarters of some sort. It was all in Spanish and ti didn't occur to us to get the audio tour, so we actually don't know what anything is.
This cat was inside the palace, plotting how he was going to get to the koi in the pond, which were about the same size or bigger than he was.
The detail on the walls and ceilings was pretty incredible:
I took an up close picture. A lot of the rooms had Morrocan/Muslim poetry carved into the walls. Beautiful!
Jim wanted a fish, too.
The garden was the best part of the palace. It was huge and full of beautiful fountains and flowers. Unfortunately, my pictures don't do it justice. The ones that are still on Jim's camera do, though!
Here is a bush carved into the shape of a chicken with eggs. I have the feeling that the Moors didn't originally card their bushes into the shape of chickens, but what do I know?
And a view:
Very exciting, I know.
After a couple of days in Granada, we were full and ready to move onto our next destination, my favourite of all, Seville!
